Should You Have To Earn the Fun?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 30, 2012

It’s pretty classic game design, because it works: As you play, you unlock abilities, which adds to the fun. In a tower defense game, maybe you get new towers to experiment with. Or in an RTS – of which Tower Defense is a subgenre – you unlock new units and buildings as you progress. In a single-player FPS, you get access to newer and cooler weapons. In an RPG – well, okay, in an RPG, it’s everything, as you get the cool spells and abilities later on. In a casual game, you may get access to new moves or tools that must be mastered to move on to the next part of the game.

It’s classic game design because it works. First of all, it gradually exposes the player to gameplay, allowing them to learn their full options a piece at a time, rather than demanding mastery of a bewildering array of choices and skills all at once. And as a player, the promise of new abilities / items / unlocked whatevers can be pretty compelling – particularly for those of us addicted to RPGs. That’s like the basic story of RPGs – get cooler and more powerful as you play.

The problem is that while these new options add more fun to the game as they get doled out, by definition that would make the earlier stages of the game less fun without them, wouldn’t it? Agreed, as a newbie player learning a system I may have my hands full mastering the basic systems, and you could argue that I can’t handle the fun. Or maybe I have a fun threshold caps my fun at a certain level no matter how much additional stuff you drop in my lap – and so it makes sense to dole these goodies out only after my fun begins to wane from mastering the basics.

Fine. That all works. Those all make sense. But there’s still a problem – especially in RPGs (and my own RPG, Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, is not really an exception). Maybe it’s because I’m too veteran of a gamer and have covered the basics far too many times in the past, but it seems that those introductory levels don’t come very close to pegging that theoretical “fun threshold” anymore, and I find myself slogging far too long before getting to the “good stuff.” In some cases, this has caused me to give up on a game early – maybe a half-hour or an hour in. When have I done enough time to earn the fun?

I don’t know the solution to this one, really.  It’s not that I start a game knowing all of the controls and nuances. It’s not that I start somewhere mid-way up the learning curve for a game… it’s just that veteran gamers tend to move along the learning curve a bit faster than inexperienced gamers, but the games don’t necessarily keep up. They have their own pace.

Beginning gamers are the lifeblood of the industry – I get that. I understand why they are being catered to. I agree. But it seems that game developers answer the needs of the experienced gamers by simply making the games more difficult. That’s not what I want, personally. Getting my butt kicked in the bunny-slope levels is not the answer. I simply want the game to let me go through the learning curve more quickly. Not that I pretend that’s an easy thing to do, but maybe it’s an approach that game developers should think about.

As a possible example: Rather than simply unlocking new abilities at the same rate as the game introduces them, allow veteran players to take advantage of figuring these things out on their own to speed up the conclusion of a level.  Maybe give them the ability to double-jump to a shortcut halfway through the level, or if they figure out how to make a tank before its been officially introduced, they can go ahead and let it demolish the enemy more quickly and move on to the next battle.

Just something to think about. Don’t get me wrong: I love earning new options and unlocking new gameplay. And I need to master the basics of any new game the same as anyone else.  And for some genres – like platform-action titles – I probably need the remedial learning period. But for some of my favorite genres, the beginner’s class goes far too slow for it to stay fun.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Utah Indie Night – July 2012 Report

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 27, 2012

The Utah Indies met this month at Neumont University in South Jordan, Utah.  I really like this venue – they’ve got big-screen monitors hanging on the wall to show off your games, and a nice lecture room next door for the primary presentation. And it’s not far from either my house or my office, which is a very nice bonus.

The formal presentation was by Josh Jones, head of the Utah chapter of the IGDA, another veteran of the Sensory Sweep collapse, and currently a developer for Smart Bomb Interactive and an indie on the side. He’s a busy guy. His lecture was on experimental gaming. In his view, experimental games are the lifeblood of the industry – they are the games that will help us find new genres and experiences when the “big money” is focused on low-risk repetition of past successes.

Most of the lecture was explaining the different experimental gameplay events / venues, and sharing some examples of experimental games and “art games” (though I don’t remember if he provided a clear definition of the difference between the two). He noted how the World of Goo guys created dozens of experimental games before creating World of Goo – implying that their previous experiences with experimental gameplay may have been a factor in their eventual success. But more than anything else, experimental gameplay is about trying new things, new ideas, and innovating. Some games cited included Cursor*10, Cannabalt, We the Giants, This is the Only Level, Every Day the Same Dream, I Wish I Were the Moon, Passage, and several others.

After Josh’s lecture (and much pizza-consuming), we went to the informal game presentations. Josh had an experimental game of his own to show, The Escape, which was kind of an experiment in user control. It was developed using XNA as part of a “game in a day” project at his company. The “Markorian Library” – running in Blender’s game engine – was an early demo on display. LinkRealms – still doing its thing in the MMO Space, and still improving, had some videos of gameplay running on one monitor. Chris Tart was again showing his game Bullet Train Hell, which remains a very cool platformer which will hopefully be available for sale soon.

My buddy Curtis of Califer Games, now that he’s shipped March to the Moon for XBLIG (and soon, PC), was showing off the current beta of Syphon Spirit – which was developing something of a fan base amongst the gamers. It’s looking like a lot of fun now, and it’s got RPG elements and a story to boot. It’s still got a little ways to go, but it looks like a winner.

Then there was Hippie Shooter, by Rhett Akers. The game is rude and offensive on just about every level – and enormously fun. You play a redneck protecting his cabin from hippies who are coming en masse to make it community property for a big party or something. So you use an array of lethal weapons – including shotguns, assault rifles, and dynamite – to stop them. There are also pork rinds you can eat so you can release a devastating fart to gas out squatters who have already taken residence. The sound effects were the loudest in the room, and they were hilarious.

As usual, the best part of the meeting for me is meeting other indies, and hearing them talk about their games.

Filed Under: Utah Indie Game Night - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Windows 8: Sucks For Gamers?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 26, 2012

At Kotaku, Gabe Newell and Brad Wardell have some serious reservations about Windows 8 for PC gaming:

Gabe Newell Wants to Support Linux Because Windows 8 is a Catastrophe

Three Killer Problems that Threaten Windows 8

Newell, in particular, references the rush by Apple and Microsoft to close their platforms to competitors. In the notes from his interview at Casual Connect, he said, “In order for innovation to happen, a bunch of things that aren’t happening on closed platforms need to occur. Valve wouldn’t exist today without the PC… or Epic, or Zynga, or Google. They all wouldn’t have existed without the openness of the platform. There’s a strong temptation [by Microsoft] to close the platform, because they look at what they can accomplish when they limit the competitors’ access to the platform, and they say ‘That’s really exciting.’”

(Note that Newell himself worked at Microsoft for 15 years before starting Valve).

This trend – and it’s been happening since Vista – has been worrying me, too. I am a computer gamer at heart. Yeah, I do enjoy my consoles, and my handhelds, and one day soon when I actually have a tablet I’ll probably enjoy gaming on them too.  But my truly hardcore gaming has always been at the desk. Go figure.

I doubt this will be a death knell for PC gaming or anything like that, but it does sound like they are going to make it harder – again – for independent developers. Sure, users may be able to bypass some of these problems if they know what they are doing… but would that mean our audience is limited to experienced power-users?

We’ve already got Windows giving scary warnings about running anything you’ve downloaded off the Internet, which can frighten some users off from trying out downloaded games. We’ve got idiot antivirus programs going one step further and automatically deleting said software just because it’s not yet popular and they haven’t “white-listed” it yet. Is it going to get harder yet for small, independent developers to get games onto the hard-drives of the players, or make the kinds of games PC gamers want to play?

I heard a lot of scarier things about Windows Vista before it was released, and fortunately it seems like Microsoft got a clue before release. Other than Vista being kind of a disaster in it’s own right, that is. So I can hope this is much ado about nothing. I guess we’ll see.

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Age of Decadence – Impressions

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 25, 2012

Strangely enough, the fantasy series I really got into as a kid was not Lord of the Rings, or the Shannara series – the latter being fairly recent and popular, in an era where “fantasy” wasn’t quite a genre of its own and tended to get lumped into the “Science Fiction” section of the bookstore. No, it was Conan, in all his pulp-fiction-y glory, that I dove into. Not just the Robert E. Howard stuff, but the later authors – including L. Sprague de Camp and the not-yet-famous Robert Jordan.

I have spent a little bit of time with the demo for Age of Decadence this last week, an indie RPG which has been in development for… well, quite a while. My thought is that this game was probably more inspired by Conan than Lord of the Rings, itself. In a bit of a departure from standard fantasy fare, Age of Decadence takes place in a dark, gritty, fictional world. It is based loosely on Europe during the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire… so a little prior to the dark ages and medieval era you usually find in fantasy RPGs.

I should note here that this was the R2 Beta of the demo, and the full game is likely still a ways out. As far as I can tell, the Iron Tower crew is doing something similar to what I did with Frayed Knights – creating a “test” version to solicit feedback so they can improve the full version before it is released.

Age of Decadence is “low fantasy,” with magic and supernatural (so far) appearing as more of an exception than the rule. This has never been a common approach with CRPGs – I think Darklands was the most notable example. There are plenty of stories of magic and demons and sorcerers, but the only magic appearing in the game thus far has been a couple of old artifacts which have no discernible in-game powers. One of said artifacts is named, “The Eye of Thor-Agoth,” which is close enough to “Thoth-Amon,” the name of Conan’s nemesis, to make me view the game through the lens of Robert E. Howard rather than … I dunno, J. K. Rowling?

The classes – well, backgrounds –  available at start-up also exemplify this gritty approach. Classes are much more mundane professions – including quite a few seedy ones: Thief (not rogue, thief), assassin, grifter, drifter, mercenary… And from the looks of it, being a nobleman or noblewoman doesn’t make you a paragon of virtue, either. Playing a merchant in one run… you know, an honest, hard-working salt-of-the-earth small businesswoman… my opening mission had me paying off the assassin’s guild to murder a competitor who dared to show his face again in town after being run off years earlier. Supposedly with one last warning. When I questioned the guildmaster about the legality of the act, his response was basically along the lines of, “What? It’s not like we’re stealing from anybody.”

This ain’t a pretty, happy, fairies-and-unicorns world under siege by a nebulous Ancient Evil. It’s a crappy world of hard survival in the carcass of a once-flourishing civilization.

The character generation sequence is good old-fashioned stats-based point assignments. Your core stats (Strength, Dexterity, etc.) seem to be dictated by your character class (profession), although there is a box for “stat points” which you can perhaps increase later in the game. Mostly, you’ve got skills – also determined by your background – can be adjusted individually by spending skill points. Skill points are awarded for completion of quests or accomplishing specific tasks – not by kills. This is a good thing, considering the nature of combat in this game. More on that later.

The quests themselves – at least so far – are something of a mixed bag. Each starting background comes with an early quest or two that will get you on the path for an overall storyline.  Quests and events play out a little bit like an old “Choose Your Own Adventure” book (for those who remember them). You’ll stumble into several of them, and the game politely teleports you to the important spots on your quest for at least the earlier ones. Many of the choices depend upon skill checks to succeed, and are politely prefaced with exactly what skills will be checked.  I was pleased to see in one dialog that failure was not a complete disaster – it simply dictated whether a situation was an insta-win, or it put me into combat with a wounded opponent.

The branching nature of these quests and events is definitely interesting, leading to some cool replayable options. But there are always limitations.  One downside of the branching dialog is that the game sometimes assumes a behavior on the part of your character that doesn’t match your intention. Some of this could be prevented by giving your character more limited dialog – not putting words in his or her mouth – but that makes for less compelling dialog. The branching events also mean that as a player, I tend to consume quests pretty quickly.  With a couple of failures and some dumb purchase decisions, I soon found myself kind of stymied in one play-through, where the only remaining quests on my list either demanded money I didn’t have, or seemed to not yet be implemented. It’s tough to tell, as the game gives you few hints on some of the later quests as to where to go.

While I don’t mind a game not leading you by the nose on some missions, there are some modern niceties that would be appreciated. To find an interactive object or person, you have to move your mouse cursor over them, which will glow. But there is no name or identification of the object to go by. The only way to know if find your guild-master is to talk to people in the guild hall until you stumble across him.  The interactive elements of the starting city are pretty sparse, so I spent a lot of my time wandering around moving my mouse cursor over everything, hunt-the-pixel style, trying to find something that would trigger a new event or resolve a current one.

Sometimes events seem to find you instead.  For a short time, the world seemed pretty rich in events going on. I’d walk around the city and stumble into things that would trigger. This was pretty exciting. Then I seemed to exhaust the events, and the game revealed perhaps its biggest weakness – there’s no regular “loop” of activity in the game to engage in. In this way, it resembles an adventure game with RPG-style task resolutions.  But if you get blocked for any reason, there’s not much to do but wander around already-explored territory poking around to find anything else you may have missed the previous dozen times you passed the spot. Occasionally it works, and it’s awesome when it happens. But when you spend fifteen minutes moving from place to place and clicking on the same people who have nothing more to say, it gets pretty old pretty fast.

Hopefully this is something that will be addressed in the full release.  But whereas most RPGs have the explore-fight-loot loop to fall back on (and fall back on it they do far too often, IMO), the Iron Tower developers seem to have actively avoided this approach. I applaud them for the effort  – I’m really excited to play through an entire game as a merchant and as a thief and see how those play out – but it’s going to require them to pull something out of their sleeves to make it really work.

I guess this is as good a place as any to mention combat. Apparently, a lot of players have been complaining about the difficulty of the combat in the Age of Decadence demos. Having played only three combats (that’s right – a grand total of three in as many playthroughs), I can’t fully respond. I was playing primarily non-combat oriented characters, and knowing the combat was supposed to be gritty and brutal, I took the assumption that I was unlikely to survive less-than-even fight. So far that assumption has proved true.  Most of the time, you seem to at least be given the option of escaping the fight. I’ve jumped out windows and made a run for it a couple of times to preserve my character’s head. Why should a thief expect to be able to take on a couple of armed and armored guards?

A bigger problem – and it may have been my lack of understanding – but it feels like there aren’t that many options once combat is joined.  If later in the game, you get to control more people than your own character, then I can see the tactical turn-based combat being much more interesting. But lacking any sort of magical spoilers like healing spells or potions, or any special magic-like feats or special moves that demand fluid and dynamic responses, combat seems pretty limited to taking turns beating on one another until you or your opponent(s) goes down. Since you can get multiple actions – movement and attacks – in during your turn, I suspect there are some tricks I could use to try and force my opponent’s expenditure of action points to my advantage, but that’s pretty subtle stuff. The relative scarcity of combat in this game (again, that’s not a bad thing, just a different thing) suggests I may not have many opportunities to master the art.

I’m actually okay with this, in theory. If combat is downplayed for non-combat oriented characters, booyah! But something else has to take its place. I’m just not sure what else is in place in the “skeleton” of the game to give structure to the meat.  But as I said before – I’m thrilled that Iron Tower is trying. There are several points in the demo where dialogs or descriptions make fun of standard fantasy RPG tropes, reminding the player that this is not conventional RPG fare. I’m on board with that. I think the game has some pretty exciting potential in its concept, setting, and approach. It’s pushing some boundaries that are long overdue for pushing. If Iron Tower can really focus on the core, without losing sight of the delightful “exception-based” events that make the game stand out, they could have a winner on their hands upon release.

Filed Under: Impressions - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Not Your Father’s Ultima IV

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 24, 2012

I hate to be critical of games that have not yet been released, especially when they are so clearly a labor of love for the developers. And in this case, it sounds like the principle folks here really, really pushed to make this happen. But man, this preview / interview about Bioware’s upcoming “Ultima IV reboot”  – Ultima Forever – really doesn’t sound much like Ultima IV to me.  I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve played it to completion. But…

Bioware Aims to Reinvent Ultima with Ultima Forever at Joystiq

Lady British?

Multiplayer? (Okay, I don’t have too much heartburn with that in general, but it does tend to change game design requirements to something more… Disneylandish).

Multiple avatars? Obviously, a concession to multiplayer, but…

Hrrrm….

I want to believe them when they claim they want to please the old fans, and want to be faithful to the original game and universe that Garriott & friends created. I really do. I want to believe their heart is in the right place, and that the end result will be a delightful new chapter in the Ultima saga. A return to its roots. I really do. And I hold out hope.

But … man.

Okay. So maybe “Lady British” is something they had to do because Richard Garriott still holds the IP rights to the original character (I think I heard something about that many years ago).  And in order to make it multiplayer (a requirement from EA, and also pretty much a requirement to make this kind of free-to-play game work), they had to do the multiple avatar thing. Though that could have been resolved another way. And I’m actually in favor of modernizing the interface, adding quest logs, etc. And I’ve been told that Kelly Flack holds a lot of the same opinions and reverence for the original game (and series) that I do.

And let’s be completely honest here – a remake of Ultima IV for modern audiences (even those who are fans of the original – we’ve changed since then) and technology could not be a simple graphical overhaul.  It’s quite possible to “reboot” the series like this and still remain faithful to what made the earlier games great.  So I’m still giving them the benefit of the doubt until I play it myself.

But… Lords of Ultima. Can we honestly say the EA suits have a true love for the original series when they slapped that branding on an otherwise run-of-the-mill free-to-play strategy game?

So I’m just going to say that I am skeptical. Free-to-play and multiplayer force game design in certain ways that I do not feel are easy to reconcile with the core of Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar. But can it be an awesome new entry into the series that draws inspiration from Ultima IV? I’m worried. But I want to believe.

(Tip o’ the helm to RPGWatch for the link)

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Retro - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Games With Messages

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 23, 2012

I take a pretty firm stance that video games should be entertaining.  Even if a game is supposed to be educational – or rather, especially if it is supposed to be educational – it is only successful at its job if the player finds himself enjoying the exercise. Otherwise, you may as well just be doing plain ol’ rote drills, watching an instructional video, or reading a manual. (I feel the same way about movies – including documentaries. Anything you’d go to a theater or rent a disc to see.)

But even for games where entertainment is the primary focus – a game intended for the masses (or for the hundreds or thousands, for many indie games): Should games have a message? Should games contain controversial themes? If I’m playing a game for entertainment, am I going to be angry if the game also tries to drive home a politically-charged message to me?

For me – the answer is maybe.

A case in point for me is Craig Stern’s Telepath RPG: Servants of God.  Now, I’m a religious guy, and I did feel a little bit of concern about the setting and main enemy group of the game, a theocracy (“The Cult”) with some parallels to Christianity. Now, I’ve not finished the game, so it’s still possible I could come up against some parts that really piss me off. But from what I’ve played, Stern has done a reasonable enough job of leaving the theme open enough to interpretation that I’ve not had a problem with it. As it so happens, I’d be pretty dang terrified of a theocracy, myself – a medieval history class in High School left me thoroughly disgusted with what has been done in the name of Christianity. I feel I have room in my mind to view the Cult as a broader metaphor, this hasn’t bugged me too much. But I could see how mileage may vary for others.

Ultima VII: The Black Gate did kind of the same thing, and remains my favorite CRPG. It’s predecessor, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, broke entirely new ground in its time by rolling in a system of virtues into the RPG formula which made players accountable for not only their results, but the manner in which they acquired them. Again, the beauty of Ultima IV wasn’t in that it was submitting a defined philosophy that the player must subscribe to outside the confines of the game, but rather in that it made players have to think about these kinds of things at all, and balance out their actions and decisions accordingly.

There have been some games with a much stronger message or theme that I really liked. Airport Security, by Persuasive Games, is one that stands out. Passage, by Jason Rohrer, was a game that I felt was fairly moving, and it made me think about the subject matter a little bit in a different light (mainly thinking, “how would I do this differently?”). These games weren’t in any way revelatory or opinion-changing or anything – but simply made me reflect a little about their subject matter beyond just “beating” a level.

I felt a six-hour session of the board game Supremacy back in college taught me more about international politics and diplomacy than half a semester of any political science class. While the game didn’t have a specific message, the rules were structured in such a way that it truly encouraged exactly the kind of bluffing, promises, backroom-dealing, suspicions, arms-buildup, tension, and everything else between national powers that I’d read about in the news for years. Especially when someone in the game threatened to invest in the discovery of anti-nuclear satellites … I finally understood why that could cause such a major international stir between nations.

I guess my feeling is that if a game has a message, it should still be enjoyable even if the message is rejected. Perhaps it’s a less critical subplot (I have one of those in Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, actually). Perhaps it’s simply something that’s left open to interpretation. Or perhaps its just something really subtle. Maybe it’s just a tiny little dig at current events. Or better yet, it broadens its metaphorical view to bigger concepts and philosophies.

I think that games can provide a pretty fascinating canvas in which to draw some metaphors that might encourage gamers to not only think about them, but also to interact with them. I just feel that, for me, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this. I know that when I’m playing a game, I don’t want to be preached to – even if I happen to agree with what’s being said. I don’t want to be hit over the head with the author’s pet doctrines.  I’m not interested in that at all. But give me a game with the ability to explore real-world ideas in a “safe” environment – where it is still “only a game” but may have some additional meaning to spice an entertaining, quality experience – and I’ll be happy.

Filed Under: General - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

What CDProjekt Learned About RPG Development from The Witcher

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 20, 2012

Gamasutra had an interview this week with CD Projekt about the lessons they learned in RPG development from their experiences creating the two Witcher games, and how they intend to apply these lessons to their upcoming Cyberpunk RPG:

What The Witcher taught CDProjekt About RPGs

Most of the emphasis is on story development and the insanity of producing two completely different acts based on player choice (which they neither regret nor apologize for).  One interesting tidbit mentioned in the interview is they will not be adhering to the specifics of any of the Cyberpunk dice-and-paper rules systems, but rather just drawing inspiration from it.

This doesn’t bug me very much. While I’m a big fan of dice-and-paper RPGs (duh!), and played the crap out of D20-based computer RPGs (including the unofficial adaptation Knights of the Chalice, using it’s own variation of the rules available through the Open Gaming License), and would love to see more dice-and-paper concepts filter into computer gaming rather than what seems these days to be exclusively the other way around, I’m fully (painfully) cognizant of the fact that they are games presented through radically different mediums. What works best for a bunch of people sitting in a living room joking around and bouncing dice is not usually optimal for a computer or console RPG, and vice-versa.

And, to be honest, I didn’t ever really fall in love with the Cyberpunk rules system (any of the three editions). I liked the idea behind their mechanics – the emphasis on more lethal combat befitting a gritty, dark system, and the “humanity cost” for cybernetics and risk of “cyberpsychosis” stand out in my mind – but the rules in general were simply serviceable.

I cannot say The Witcher series represents any kind of pinnacle of RPG development from my perspective, but I did enjoy the games, and I like CDProjekt’s attitude. I’m glad they are doing what they are doing.

Filed Under: Interviews - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Games With Personality

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 19, 2012

If you go to the main website for Rampant Games, you’ll see the slogan on the header: “Games with Personality.”

I came up with that several years ago when I was trying to distinguish the value for indie games compared to their big-budget cousins. With so many mainstream games available for cheap in the ol’ bargain bin (this was long before the appearance of GOG.COM and many similar services offering old mainstream games for really cheap, though Steam and a few others were already there), it was clear indie games couldn’t compete on price alone.  This challenge has not gotten at all easier over time.

While some indie games are extremely innovative and fresh, it’s not like the creativity fairy uniquely blesses all those (and only those) with who call themselves an “indie,” either. In fact, many indies have achieved success by simply catering to a pretty well-defined, straightforward niche (albeit an under-represented one).  Sure, they do what they can, but the current narrative in games journalism notwithstanding, indie isn’t limited to artsy, experimental stuff. Not even a little. Never has been. As I was coming up with the slogan in the midst of the era when indie was rapidly becoming synonymous with casual games, this wasn’t going to stick.

But it really hit home when I was comparing the two RPGs which (at the time) had just been released – The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Aveyond. As much as I enjoyed Oblivion, it seemed more generic and bland than its predecessors. Aveyond, on the other hand, was exploding with flavor and really seemed to reveal it’s authorship. It had personality – partly a reflection of its creator, and partly its own.  This concept really struck home to me, and I found that in a field that is more defined (IMO) by its diversity, this was as close a point of commonality as I was likely to find. And it was also a big part of the appeal.

It made me think back to my younger years playing dice-and-paper RPGs with a variety of game masters. Yeah, some kinda sucked. And in a lot of cases, it wasn’t the GM running the game so much as the players themselves that defined the gaming experience. But there was a lot of fun to be had in that raw variety, and I enjoyed some unique and thrilling games from some very talented amateurs. Maybe I was just lucky to get some really good GMs and groups, but those were great experiences.

I’ve noticed lately that this topic has come up a bit lately. Some studios get it, and are actively making an effort to allow their team to express themselves in their games, in spite of them being such a collective effort. It’s hard to do with a large studio. Very hard. Not only is it more difficult for authorship to get lost in the crowd of a large team effort, but large teams also demand large budgets. With so many stakeholders (managers, stockholders, marketers, etc.) involved on so many committees worried about maximizing sales, there’s a lot of pressure to minimize anything that might limit its appeal to the lowest common denominator.  All sharp edges must be filed off. And because publishers cannot own people, only IP, there’s even a deliberate effort by many publishers to scrub away any vestiges of individual authorship. This way they can better avoid the negative effects of swapping teams for future titles in the series, or having a signature designer leave the studio and take his fan-base with him.

It’s something that I noticed declining in mainstream games on a subconscious level over the years, and had trouble putting my finger on it for a long time, simply wondering “why don’t they make games like they used to.” It wasn’t just nostalgia; a little bit of retro-gaming helped serve up a big portion of that personal expression, good and bad, and it contrasted against similar modern offerings. I’m not saying that modern mainstream games are devoid of personality or a feeling of authorship, but there’s definitely a trend towards things getting too even, too balanced, too clean-and-polished, too deliberate.  I am not alone in this feeling. Even amongst mainstream developers. But it’s a natural tendency as budgets, teams, and stakes have grown.

Granted, I sometimes run afoul of those “sharp edges” in indie games, myself. And there are some personalities that really don’t appeal to me very much. That’s the risk. The small indie teams don’t have much choice -they don’t have the layers of committees and meetings and focus groups and so forth. They don’t need to appoint some vision-keeper to keep the focus and spirit of the game alive through the development ordeal because they already have one by default. It’s simply a natural result of tiny, fully independent teams.

This is what keeps me excited about indie games. This was what I thought was the most valuable message of Indie Game: The Movie. It’s what makes an Aldorlea RPG fundamentally different from an Amaranth RPG, even though they do share the same audience and game engine, or a Spiderweb game from a similarly-inspired Basilisk game.  It’s why I get so enthusiastic about upcoming releases from these indies that I’ve come to be acquainted with – if only on a very informal, Internet-only way. It’s a human connection between the creators and their audiences in an exciting medium.

I want games with personality.

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

Indie Innovation Spotlight: Gratuitous Space Battles

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 18, 2012

Innovation isn’t usually a burst of complete originality, but rather an incremental probe of territory only brushed by previous titles, or the combination of existing ideas in a new way. The former  is pretty much how the “Tower Defense” genre was born. It originated not as a specific genre, but as sort of an evolutionary offshoot, primarily as mods / maps for certain real-time strategy games, like Warcraft III (though the idea had appeared in other games before). It caught on, and indies started making some very fun stand-alone titles. Planning and building a defensive fortress and letting it defeat hordes of attackers is apparently a lot of fun.

And, as indie Cliff Harris has shown, it makes a useful seed to combine with other ideas to make something new and exciting.

Gratuitous Space Battles, by Positech Games

What Is It?

Take the core idea of the Tower Defense genre – the planning and building that goes into it, followed by setting it loose and letting the automation do its thing – and combine it with the giant space fleet combat from movies like Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Star Trek: First Contact, and a few choice episodes from season 4 of Babylon 5, and dozens more… and you’ve got the core concept of the aptly names Gratuitous Space Battles.

The basic game has three “phases.” First of all, there’s the main menu “HQ” section of the game where you can buy (unlock) technologies such as new power or weapon systems, or new ship hulls. The points you obtain to unlock these items comes from victories in battles. You can then create ship designs based on your unlocked technologies – but nothing is free. Bigger weapons and faster engines and more powerful shields may sound great, but they require more or bigger power-plants and more crew. And those, in turn, require more of your precious slots – all of which are arranged and limited by hull design. Ships come in three sizes – little fighters, frigates, and the giant cruisers.  And the more powerful your tech and bigger your ship, the more points it will cost in the deployment phase. Finally, you can choose your next battle (and battles unlock as you score victories), and its difficulty.

Then comes the fleet deployment phase. You are given a certain number of points (very different from the points you use to unlock tech in the previous phase) to build your fleet. While you can go back to ship design from this stage of the game as well (and I frequently will),  the focus on this phase is to put together a fleet capable of handling the enemy forces. You know in advance what the enemy force will look like, as well as special rules for the upcoming battle. For example, a battle may take place in a part of space that renders shields useless, a la Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, meaning you are wasting points putting shields on any ships.  Your job, then, is to choose the right ships for the job, arrange them in a proper formation, and give them their standing orders / priorities.  You have only so many points with which to build your fleet, so the biggest ships with the best technology may be too expensive to use exclusively. Smaller or cheaper ships may be put in a role to protect these “jewels” of your fleet.

Once you have arranged your fleet in the most efficient manner possible, the third phase begins, which is a non-interactive view of the battle taking place in real-time. You can move and zoom the camera, and slow or speed up the action,  but your only real choice during the battle is whether or not to retreat and give up the battle early. If you fail, you can try again at no penalty. If you succeed, you can try again at a higher difficulty or with a more efficient fleet deployment; as you get awarded more victory points (to unlock tech) the fewer points you spend in deployment.

The game also allows you to square off with your own fleets against other players.

The game offers multiple expansions with new races, ships, and technologies. One of the expansions offers a full-on campaign mode which combines traditional 4x strategy games (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) with GSB’s unique space combat system.

What Makes It Stand Out?

While Gratuitous Space Battles may have originated with the Tower Defense idea, a casual inspection of the game might not reveal its genesis. It ran with the core concept in its own direction, which is why I felt it worthy of an innovation spotlight. In the end, it’s more of a space-battle “simulator” for gear-heads. It’s like drag-racing, where the the vast majority of the work comes before the car even gets to the starting line. You can go back and tweak your winning strategy with slight variations in commands, formations, or technologies. Or try something completely different. Your efficiency is rewarded with extra victory points if you are successful, so it’s worth trying to squeeze as many points out of a battle as possible through multiple efforts to give you the maximum flexibility in more challenging battles to come.

Positech also really polished the concept to a fine gloss. This is most obvious in the battle views, where high-tech destruction is revealed in brilliant cinematic glory. Ships burn, shields buckle, fragments tumble out into space, missles arc off wildly as their tracking systems are defeated by countermeasures, and the screen fills with lovely – and one might say gratuitous – smoke, lasers, tractor beams, and lots and lots of explosions.

The polish went into the gameplay as well. One of my favorite game rules is the damage experienced by a ship’s friendly neighbors when it is destroyed.  This encourages you not to let your fleets get too “bunched together”, an otherwise too-effective tactic. It also discourages an over-dependence on the bigger cruisers – which have much more lethal explosions. Otherwise, you could end up with a fleet that can go from winning to losing in battle in a very quick chain-reaction.

While overall – for me – it’s not quite as satisfying a strategy experience as something like Galactic Civilizations II, it’s also a game that doesn’t take hours and hours to play like Gal Civ II. It’s a great game for a “quick fix” emphasizing… well, gratuitous  space battles. Just what it says on the tin.

Filed Under: Indie Innovation Spotlight - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Those Are Mighty Big Numbers

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 17, 2012

How many games were published for the original Nintendo Entertainment System? MobyGames lists 1116. And the Super NES? 1043. The Nintendo 64 had only 324, the Game Cube 557, and the Wii an astonishing 1201. So all together for the Nintendo  consoles, that’s just under 4,250 games.

The Nintendo  handhelds enjoyed hundreds of published titles each – again, according to MobyGames’ list.

The XBox 360, all by itself, has over 1700 titles. That probably does not include the indie games.  The three Playstation generations combined have 5,503 games.  The Commodore 64, all by itself, tips the scales at over 3,000 games listed.

But how about DOS games, in the bad ol’ days before the mid 90’s? Again, not including the indie titles (and those were relatively scarce back then):  Almost 5,500 listed.  The Mac has over 3,200. And Windows? A staggering 13,500 games! And that doesn’t include most small, indie games.

GOG.COM has 423 games available – mostly classic games, with a recent influx of several newer games, especially indie titles. These are all compatible with modern Windows operating systems, and while many are lacking in the graphical pizzazz department, they are still (mostly) fun titles ( Master of Orion III being a major exception). If you think they don’t make ’em like they used to, you can always go play them exactly like they used to.

Desura – which is mostly (but not exclusively) indie games, has 620 games currently available. Yeah, that’s almost twice the total games ever released for the Sega Master System.

Steam has 1,667 games for PC currently available, and 268 Mac games.  Bear in mind that some of these may be duplicates – deluxe versus standard editions – but this doesn’t include DLC.

Kongregate? “Thousands upon thousands” of free-to-play online games.

Android currently lists almost 40,000 games for that platform.

Newgrounds? Newgrounds has over 60,000 flash / browser games available on their site.

iPhone / iPad? Hellatons. From what I can tell, over 100,000 game titles. Not all are unique, mind you, but… that is not a small number. That is a very big number. When you say, “one in a million,” you are only off by a factor of ten when you are talking iPhone games. With a new one released approximately every hour. I think that’s actually slowed down somewhat…

For a bit of historical perspective, the “glut” that doomed the video game industry on the original Atari 2600 (AKA VCS) in the early 1980s was less than 600 games. It was a different era back then, granted, with a much smaller market than we have now. But still… that’s a lot.

So what all that means is that the “average” indie game released today has a 99.9% chance of completely getting lost in the noise. While this has always been the case, it’s more true than ever that a new game has to stand out – both on its own, and with its marketing – or it is going to be totally and completely drowned out. It’s not enough to make a game that’s simply a really good example of its category. And you absolutely cannot be “average.” If my retro-gaming habit has taught me anything, it’s that there were plenty of excellent games that I totally missed the first time around just because I was too overloaded to pay attention, and they didn’t call enough attention to themselves.  And things are much worse now.  Game developers are competing against past, present, and even future games.

I really don’t know how the brave, new world of gaming is going to work. I hope I can figure it out, as a developer.

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Still “Hardcore Gamer” Enough

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 16, 2012

Sometimes I worry that I’ve lost whatever it was that made me such a hardcore gamer in the past – whatever it was that made me sometimes not notice how late I was playing games until the rising sun streamed in through the window, or that made me want to write stories set in the Wing Commander universe.  The thing that made me love games so much I decided to chase a career in the field. Now that I’m older, theoretically more responsible, definitely more jaded, I often find I don’t have the patience for a lot of the games that are consuming the attention of today’s hardcore gamers. You know, the kids who are the age I was when I definitely considered myself a hardcore gamer.

It shouldn’t worry me, but it does. I get going on a COD:Modern Warfare (2, this was a few months ago just before 3 dropped) and think, “Wow, neat game,” and enjoy it for about a half-hour. At which time I’m pretty much done and ready to do something else. And part of me wants to slap myself and say, “DUDE!!! Don’t you realize that this game could have threatened your marriage back in the day? What’s wrong with you?”

Not that I’m sorry that I can resist such a temptation. I’m just saying… I worry I no longer appreciate games properly. Have I changed too much?

Every so often (probably too often), a game comes down the pipe that reminds me that yes, I’m still a sucker for a great game, and yes, it can come from a AAA studio just as easily as an indie. The same genres still tempt me – even the first-person shooters – but they have to offer something truly new, not just shinier graphics. A compelling story works pretty well here. A compelling story plus interesting new mechanics to go along with impressive (or at least cool) graphics will work even better.

Of course, the bad news upon discovering that I’m still “hardcore gamer enough” is realizing that I’ve significantly exceeded my game-time quote for the day and eaten into game development time. D’oh!  But the thing is – while my patience may be a little more lacking after decades of gaming (and playing a lot of crap), I still love to play. It’s nice to know that hasn’t changes.

(For those interested: This post has been brought to you most recently by Many Faces of Go and Borderlands).

 

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Advancing the Role of Role-Playing – An Example Project

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 13, 2012

My big rant yesterday about improving the “role-playing” experience in computer & console RPGs seemed to strike a nerve, based on comments received on the blog, in twitter, and in emails. The gist of it was probably summed up by Justin Keverne on Twitter: “The designer in me looks at that and nods, the programmer in me has a heart failure.”

Craig Stern suggested that the ideas are outside the indie capabilities, while my own feeling is that they are outside mainstream capabilities. Now, I love AI programming, although it can be some of the most frustrating kinds of coding.

So I thought – if I were to tackle this project myself, how would I go about it? How would I scope it in a bare-bones way to dip my toe in these waters? So here’s what I came up with. It’s a little something I’d love to do if I have time some… er, I want to say weekend, but the basic gameplay would take more time that that just to get the RPG part running (I know, I’ve tried to make an RPG in 40 hours…) While I really like the idea and want to do it myself, I honestly don’t know if I’d have time to do it, and I’m always talking about how ideas are a dime-a-dozen – it’s the implementation that counts.

This is not a full and complete implementation of every one of the ideas from yesterday. It’s not even an implementation of any of them – just the sort of “indie-sized” idea I might use to start experimenting with one or more of these concepts, with the goal of making a CRPG feel more like a true “role-playing” experience. This is really just intended as an example for other indies to get ideas and discussion flowing.

First off – for a tiny experimental project, I’d want to think small.  Too often, when we think of role-playing games, we immediately think of these epic, globe-spanning adventures with a cast of hundreds.  Indies, we need to break from that mold. sure, it may be possible if we keep the detail levels low, but indies must always re-evaluate these assumptions. In this case, let’s go the route of Ultima Underworld and the more recent Legend of Grimrock and have the entire game take place in a single dungeon. Let’s further constrain it so we’re really only concerned about a handful of non-player characters.  And we want almost every action to count.

So here’s the setup: You are in a single dungeon. Maybe three floors deep. We’ll come up with a backstory later, but the point is – you are trapped in a dungeon and need to escape. Easy, traditional opening. There are three other people trapped with you – your party members. The party members are AI-controlled NPCs. As you all wish to escape, and may need to rely upon each other to survive the dungeon to escape, it’s natural that you’ll band together for mutual protection. But this isn’t guaranteed. As could happen in the Baldur’s Gate series, Ultima VII, and the Ishar series, party composition isn’t automatic.

Each NPC will be assigned some personality traits (at random?) with some basic makeup of preferences, tendencies, hates, desires, and fears.  The player may have to deduce these during the adventure based on some procedurally-generated comments that they make and actions they take. The player’s character takes the leadership position by default, but getting the trust and obedience of the other NPCs is not a give.

Anyway, here’s the twist: The exit is a magical portal that requires one living person to remain behind (willingly or unwillingly) in the room.  That person will face almost certain death.

All four of the party-members know this fact from the get-go. One of them is going to be sacrificed – willingly or unwillingly. Yet their best chance of surviving the treacherous journey to the portal room are together as a group. Keeping each other alive maximizes their chances, because it’s not a limit on how many can leave the dungeon – it’s the limitation that at least one must stay behind.

Every action undertaken by anyone in the party – especially the player – gets evaluated by the other party members in this light.  Will the other party members turn on them, knock them unconscious or bind them with rope? Will it be every man (or woman) for himself in the portal chamber as everyone races to the portal, with the slowest or weakest left behind? Or will one (or more) of the party members make the noble sacrifice and willingly stay behind so that others can escape?

As there’s really no way for characters to get away in secret to make pacts or alliances, it’s all in how they treat each other. The AI characters may actually try to misdirect their intentions through their actions – being extra nice to the character they intend to betray. And the player character may be that person.

So there’s the set-up.  Gameplay-wise, it’s a fairly traditional – let’s say turn-based RPG. You can give directions to the other characters that they may or may not follow, depending upon their personality, abilities, and attitudes.  But every AI pulls it’s own filter in place for all the actions taken – whether it’s looting and being given useful equipment, put in harms way, healed first versus second, etc, and tries to average things into its own evaluation:

a) How does this character feel towards me?

b) How does this character feel towards the other party members?

c) How does this action influence what the other party members feel towards this character?

d) What personality traits might this demonstrate that I can assume of this character? Does this action lend or erode support towards some of the traits I’d previously assigned to this person?

e) How do *I* feel about this party member in light of this action?

f) Do I have reason to believe this party member is being deceptive in their actions to misdirect me? In which case, invert my reactions on a through e (except c).

The AI is constantly updating it’s assumed models of the other character’s personalities as well, which it uses for evaluation c. This can go a little deep, such as asking questions as, “Does character B recognize that character C is a liar?” It may also choose actions based upon not only its own preferences, but based on how much it cares how favorable (depending upon how it defines ‘favorable’) the responses will be from the other party members. Reactions may be exaggerated closer to the end of the game – the perception of being left in a vulnerable state might convince an AI character that she’s the one on the chopping block.

And at the end of the game – in lieu of having life really continue beyond the magical entrance – the game spills out some information for the player on who these characters were that he spent the last few hours surviving with. Their character traits, and their relationship with and assumptions about each other.

Okay – this is a first-pass idea that might not hold water. And I harbor no illusions that the other characters will perfectly model human behavior.  But the point isn’t to pass any kind of Turing test for the player. The point is for the player to manage these little artificial personalities, to make the little and big decisions in light of the fact that he is under observation, and to give the final decision some real weight.

That’s assuming the final decision is really in the player’s hands. The player could very well find himself overpowered and either left for dead, or shoved into the portal.  Depending on the other characters and how it’s played, the portal room could be a bloodbath, a final battle where the only mercy is to try to avoid striking a killing blow.  A character who suspects they are the designated sacrifice might abandon the party just prior to reaching the portal room, maybe sneaking ahead in hopes of jumping into the portal as soon as the rest of the party enters. Or they might just quit in disgust, assuming that if they are going to be left for dead anyway, they might as well do it on their own terms.

By no means is this an easy programming (or design) task. But I feel that by constraining the domain, it could be an appropriate indie-sized project that could yield some surprisingly interesting results.Would it feel like “true” role-playing? I don’t know.

But I think it’s only one idea in a sea of possibilities to make more interesting CRPGs that embrace a bit more of the “role-playing” experience.

 

Filed Under: Design, Programming - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Advancing the Role of Role-Playing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 12, 2012

Many years ago, I read a book entitled “Shared Fantasy,” a sociologist’s exploration of the RPG subculture – back when the hobby was new and not so much computerized. As a member of said subculture, I was a little defensive when I started reading it, but soon found that author Gary Alan Fine was pretty accurate in his depiction of the gaming groups and their psychology and social constructs built around their hobby. His analysis seemed pretty reasonable from my own experience.

One of the observations that stuck home to me was about how the role of role-playing shifted. Younger male players, in particular, tended to gravitate towards playing a role that was an idealized version of themselves. The characters were calm, cool, strong, competent, independent, in-control, good with the ladies, often mysterious and dark, etc. Everything that they, themselves, were not.

Shortly after reading that, I was in the leadership of a medievalist / larping group and I saw forms of “characters” being played by all these teenaged young men. And they were all alike. Almost every single one described the same character with only a few variations. We’d laugh about all these orphaned young dark, brooding heroes who trusted nobody but themselves, but were nevertheless super-competent with the blade in spite of never needing or receiving training (or help of any kind) from anybody else. We had a full roster of introverts who desperately wanted everybody to pay attention at how awesome they really were on the inside. I guess that was something the players and their characters had in common.

And yeah, while I pat myself on the back for making characters in my younger years that were a little bit deeper than that for various role-playing games I participated in, many of my early characters were pretty much wish-fulfillment for myself. They were intended to be badasses at level 1. I gave them a few quirks to make them interesting, but in some ways I wonder if role-playing wasn’t a way for me – and lots of other teenaged kids like me – to “fake it ’til you make it” – to envision myself as I’d want to be, in hopes of achieving those qualities within myself.

Did it succeed? Maybe. Though I still aspire to some of those qualities. 🙂

Later, however, I noticed that role-playing among my peers shifted purposes. Mostly. We’ve had an active weekly game going almost every week since college, so it’s been a long time, and we’ve played a lot of different characters of all kinds of genders, professions, personalities, races, sexual persuasions, and goals. In a lot of ways, role-playing games create kind of a social laboratory for experimentation with character traits. How would a person with X and Y trait respond to situation A or another personality B?

(Good) fiction writers get to do the same thing, but the lab is entirely in their own mind. That’s where their characters come alive, and the results get reported on the page for others to read about. Dice-and-paper role-players (and LARPers, and others…) get to do the same thing in a shared fantasy, testing their creations with other living, breathing participants and their creations.  It provides feedback, and sometimes some real frustrations as the feedback doesn’t match your expectations as a player. You’ve got some general ideas about a story you WANT to build around your character, but it doesn’t match what the game master and other players are providing.

But those frustrations aside, that’s a big part of the fun of role-playing games. Whether it’s trying on an idealized persona, experimenting with a role, or acting as an interactive author of your character’s story, role-playing for its own sake can be an extra layer of fun on top of the hacking and slashing and looting and coming up with bad puns to make your friends groan.

It is also something that is extremely difficult to translate into computer games. It’s often very difficult to maintain in tabletop games or even LARPS, as well. But once you have the computer acting as both medium and (in multiplayer games) an intermediary between players, it gets even harder to keep that aspect of RPGs going.  After all, the game world itself is completely immune to all but the most coarse of interactions – very little more beyond “destroy,” “loot,” and “trade”  – so aside from some canned dialog or story options, there’s really no way to express the subtleties of character. You can’t wink at a barmaid to try and catch her attention, or bribe some of the street urchins to tip you with information when they catch site of your rival, sneer at the mayor as he welcomes you to the town, or treat your horse to an extra bit of oats and an apple and a good brushing to reward it for its courage and the hard run it made to bring you back to the town in safety.  These are things that might not make much impact in a human-moderated world either, but might at least gain some acknowledgement from the other humans around the table.  They’d at least make a mark on their collective history of the game world to register what kind of person your character is.

Computerized game worlds don’t do that. Yet. And probably at no time in the near future. Computers aren’t any good at that.

Now that’s easy enough for me, a guy who slings dice with friends every Saturday night, to simply acknowledge that this is one way in which dice-and-paper games are superior to their CRPG cousins. I have the luxury of playing both. Well, sometimes. Don’t have nearly the time to play CRPGs as much as I’d like, and I’ve pretty much had to swear off MMOs …

But I do wonder what else can be done to bring some of that subtlety and role-playing into CRPGs. Even single-player games. It seems like it would require more of a simulationist approach than modern RPG design favors these days. But you could make a full-fledged RPG with all the simulation detail of ten Dwarf Fortresses and still not get anywhere near we’d need to really capture what I consider a true “role-playing” feel.

There are a few ingredients I think that CRPGs (single-player or multiplayer) would need:

Generalized, Abstract, Flexible Actions

One solution is a generalized, abstract mechanism to simulate a variety of specific actions. As I’ve suggested before, The Sims series provides a good template for this kind of thing.  Players can fill in the specifics in their own minds. In multiplayer, perhaps the players could provide more description to the abstract actions. In game terms, the player may be talking to an NPC using a number of social skills – or skill settings – intimidation, seduction, diplomacy, oratory, whatever. In a tabletop game, a player might describe their actions in specific terms, and the game master does his or her best to translate it into more general game terms.  In a CRPG, the player himself may have to provide that translation. But it’s possible.

I’m not saying that everything should be abstracted. And I’m well aware that this could cause a horrifically complicated UI. After all, if there’s all these things you can do with an NPC besides attacking them or talking to them, ALL THE TIME, those choices have to be represented somehow.

Consequences for Everything

Actions should have consequences, and an impact in the world. Too often, we limit this discussion to big, canned events that change the direction of the game plot. Those are definitely fun and interesting, but sometimes it’s now so much how you change the story, as the little choices you have to make to navigate it. Consequences may be minor, but there should be at least the potential for ’em – good or bad or in-between – for every action. Impactful choices shouldn’t be limited to a few canned decisions or a simple faction system.

The causality doesn’t even have to be explicit – and maybe it’s better if it isn’t. At least, not always. If there are enough hints as to causal relationships between the player’s actions and events in the game, players will see causality even when there is none. It’s enough to ignite the imagination. And in the end, that’s really what we want, right?

NPC Perception of Player Actions

I guess you could say this is a second-order consequence thing. But canned actions generally have only direct consequences. What about indirect ones? What do the other characters in the game perceive? How do they react? If you kill someone on the street, do the other townspeople freak out? Do they try to understand what you did and why you did it? If you are seen talking to an untrustworthy fellow, do they start treating you with suspicion?

History / Memory

One of the best ways for an action to have an impact is for it to be remembered by someone (or something) other than the player.  And not just in big “Hero of Kvatch” ways, either. Maybe the barmaid starts wondering why you don’t wink at her anymore.  Maybe a farmer complains that somebody stole the five gold pieces he had hidden in the barrel behind his house that you looted by habit earlier in the game. While a lot of history may get baked into certain mechanics, (like a faction system), it’s even more fun to see permanent changes or a history of specific actions reflected in the game world.  Especially actions that reflect choices you, the player, made on your own rather than prompted by a canned event.

And yes, I know talking about memories of “specific actions” here may seem contradictory with my appeal for common, broadly abstract actions above. And maybe it is. This is fodder for thought and experimentation, not a formula. 🙂   And hey, as long as I’m making wishes, why can’t I wish for some way of making them work together, huh?

A Different Approach to Game-Building

In traditional scripting of quests in an RPG, an NPC might have a key piece of information that you need to complete the main storyline. What happens if you piss that NPC off?

Generally, you can’t, or he’ll have to give you the information anyway regardless of attitude, or the designer has to create some custom alternatives. Traditional game-scripting tends to follow pretty exact sequences of events. The player must follow rigid steps in sequence to advance the storyline, although there may be alternate paths to give the player some choice in his or her approach.

If some of the above ideas above get implemented in a more open-ended, simulationist CRPG world, things can get out of control with this approach very quickly.  In response, a designer could abandon the idea of deep human-generated storylines and create a Daggerfall-esque game of procedurally generated content. Appropriate, but not very satisfying.

Or – this might suggest a completely different approach to how CRPGs get scripted. Is it possible to have the game decide how to trigger specific events at run-time based on game state? To delay the binding of who is an “important” NPC in the game (with critical information or quests) until the player has selected these people through their own interactions? To set up the quests as more generalized events and triggers that leave the player more freedom on how they accomplish (or fail to accomplish) goals?

This would be a pretty cool thing to experiment with on a small, indie basis. I see it being far too risky for a big AAA game, and something like this would probably need to go through several prototype iterations of varying degrees of suckage to get right. But it’s something to noodle on.

With all the game genres now borrowing “RPG elements” to blur the lines between categories (which I approve of, BTW), this is an area of exploration that could really make the genre more distinctive, and add a lot of new fun possibilities…

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Oh, Yeah – The OUYA!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 11, 2012

It’s a new kind of video game console. Now the fastest-funding Kickstarter yet. And on track to possibly become the highest-earning Kickstarter project. Though since most of the Kickstarter donations are actually more pre-orders for the console, this may not be quite as impressive as it sounds. But still… two million dollars in 24 hours is pretty frickin’ amazing.

(And yes, I’m a backer… Here’s hoping I don’t regret it…)

So what’s the big deal, anyway? It’s a console. It’s a console in a world of consoles. Apparently I didn’t get the memo that console gaming was dead, but even after three years out of that side of the biz, it’s clear that it’s kind of on the rocks. So why the heck are they launching yet another console – and one that will obviously be woefully underpowered with the next-generation consoles? (Well, okay, maybe not compared to Nintendo, but we’ll see).

It’s basically an open game console that also acts as a gaming portal. The console manufacturer takes its cut of the sales, just like Apple does with its app store, or Microsoft does with XBLIG. Since it’s basically running on the Android O.S., it’s even something that can be ported from portable devices. At it’s core, it is basically a high-end Android tablet with a cool controller that plugs into your TV instead of having its own screen.

So technologically, it’s pretty simple. The business model is familiar. I’ve seen this kind of thing (maybe not with the app store concept) launch and fail several times during the mid-late 90s, and as recently as the vaporware ND handheld. The big difference here from some of the past failures  is the number and quality of games industry vets that are involved or supporting the project. Individually, several of these folks do have track records in the biz to give them some credence.

Their take is this: If you ignore things like XBLIG (which Microsoft seems pretty content to ignore most weeks, anyway), the existing consoles are still very closed platforms and very expensive to make games for. Not only the indies, but a lot of publishers are jumping onto doing games for mobile devices because the games are much cheaper to make (thus less risky), and the platform is becoming ubiquitous.  So… why not make a living room console that is as easy to develop for as the mobile devices, is pretty wide open for indies and hackers, yet still capable of producing high-def, modern(ish) 3D games (at least by current-gen console standards)?

The other “trick” is that every game available on the system must have a free-to-play component. Which includes good ol’ fashioned game demos that can be unlocked.  Not a problem for the majority of indies.

So it’s a game platform that is easy to make / port games on, where consumers have “free games!” at their fingertips. I’d assume the market is pretty crowded with consoles already, especially with rumors of next-gen systems on the horizon. But as of this point, they’ve effectively got over 20,0000 pre-orders for the console through Kickstarter, which isn’t too shabby. Especially for a system almost nobody had heard of on Monday.

It’s too early to say that this will truly be a viable market opportunity for indies on release, but by the time there are guarantees, a platform is usually already saturated.  That’s always the risk developers have to take. I think the question is whether the early Kickstarter hype will be enough to make the platform a success in the long run. Usually a console has to release with some “must-have” exclusive titles to have much of a chance in the marketplace. The Ouya has a potential Minecraft port. Maybe there are more things “in the works” for the system they’ve not announced yet, but there’s definitely a risk that their niche is too narrow.

But I am in love with the concept.  And in the last 24 hours, I’ve gone from being a complete skeptic (“Oh, boy, it’s the Phantom or ND all over again…”) to being hopeful, to pre-ordering a console.

I’m just a little fascinated by how the indie “revolution” has really challenged the established industry over the last few years. When I first began this adventure,  it was all very much an ‘upstart’ concept, and the trick was just figuring out how to survive in the shadow of the big publishers. Now we have Valve crowd-sourcing its indie-game publishing functions, a ‘crowd-funded’ game console that may actually get some real traction, and of course mobile devices (with tons of indie games) eating away at the big console business. Big publishers are even starting to have to play a little bit of defense. These are amazing times.

And my answer to the inevitable question is: Probably, at least Frayed Knights 2. Assuming Unity ports okay for it.

Filed Under: Biz, Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Steam Greenlight: Crowd-Sourcing the Slush Pile

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 10, 2012

Valve just announced a game-changer for indies that will go live in a few weeks. Entitled Steam Greenlight, it appears to be an answer to the overwhelming number of indie games being submitted regularly for Steam release:

Steam Greenlight

So basically, we’re talking Valve crowd-sourcing their growing slush-pile. The theory is that the most popular games rise to the top of the heap where they eventually cross some threshold to get noticed by the folks in charge of adding titles to the service. And then they make the final selection.

This seems to be a better approach than having the whole thing be fully automated, and it’s a step in the right direction for Steam in relation to indies. They’ve obviously not been able to keep up, and this should help solve the problem. In theory, this program enlists the aid of the community to help them discover promising new indie games. And in many ways, it will effectively open up a new place for indies to get their games listed and hopefully noticed – whether they are on Steam or not.

So all-in-all, I count this as a reasonably good thing.

But is it a huge thing? A game-changer? The dawn of a new golden age for indies? I’m not so sure. Here are my reservations about the system, based on what limited information we currently have:

First off – I used to work for a pretty successful “Network Marketing” company, AKA multi-level marketing company.  One of the facts of life about that environment is that when you are talking about the kind of money the top distributors made – which was probably in-line with what many of the more successful indie games make on Steam – well, let’s just say people didn’t necessarily conform to what we at the company considered fair practices. They would game the ever-living crap out of whatever system was in place.  And as the company, we had to walk a fine line between protecting the system from abuse, and not pissing off our top distributors. We didn’t always err on the side of fairness.

When you are talking about the kind of revenue a game on Steam can bring versus other distribution sources, it’s a pretty big deal. Sure, you might have to sell your game for half as much on Steam, but you’ll probably sell 10x as many copies, for a net improvement of 5x revenue. Think to yourself: What would YOU do in order to win a contest that would quintuple your salary?

Now think what people with fewer scruples than you might do.

So yeah, I expect to see the system abused and exploited in all kinds of lovely ways. Policing it will be a major job for Valve, because the stakes are high. I don’t know that they are up to it. Hopefully they’ll grow into it.

Besides the personal-gain exploitation, you other kinds of community issues that will function to distort rankings. I have heard tales of XBLIG community issues where games (allegedly) get downvoted because of the developer’s failure to behave the way the community leaders want them to behave. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don’t know – I’m not there – but things can get political when you have community control over things like this. Then you have some self-appointed vigilantes on places like Desura who will down-rate a game in protest of its price. As if all games should be knock-it-out-in-a-month platform shooters. I don’t know if a “down-vote” counts for anything (there’s a thumbs-down button in the screenshot at the above link), but it’s another potential vulnerability of the system.

Another concern is that this kind of popularity contest may hinder the more niche titles – like RPGs. Could this turn Steam into just-another-publisher churning out nothing but the low-hanging fruit of the indie scene? Nothing but FPS titles and platform-action games from now on? One of the best things about the indie scene for me has been its willingness to explore dormant game styles and experiment with new ideas that defy easy categorization. I’d hate to see the biggest platforms for indie games once again turn into a narrow genre ghetto. (I say “once again,” because it happened before with the portals that once offered a broad variery of games that eventually became “casual game portals.”)

Hopefully, Valve will protect against this problem as well. After all, if you’ve already released four platform-puzzle action games this month, the folks who really love this kind of game may be feeling a bit saturated, while the fans of sports management simulators are still waiting around with money in their pocket for something to buy. But considering the dearth of sports management simulators on Steam already, I’m not going to hold my breath for Valve to entertain the really narrow niches.  But hopefully they – and the community – will break up games by categories and look at games on a per-category basis. The very fact that they bother with indies at all speaks to their willingness to give the “little guys” a shot, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hope this new system won’t overly penalize the niche titles.

So there may still be a number of barriers preventing some great games from being available on Steam. And we will all have questions regarding implementation details. But while I have some serious concerns that prevent me from declaring this a major victory for indie gaming, it still looks like a positive development. We’ll find out in a few weeks, I guess. And then keep finding out as Valve deals with the inevitable bugs and policy problems and refine the Greenlight system to something which will hopefully end up as fair as can be reasonably expected.

A lot of things won’t change. Indies will still be in charge of their own marketing, to have to try and drum up support for their games in the community.  Making a great game and doing great marketing will still be requirements.

I still worry about Steam monopolizing the indie games scene for computers. I’d like to see more / better competitors shaking things up and keeping Steam honest & hungry.

 

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Programming, Gear-Shifting, and The Zone

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 9, 2012

One of the things I need to get better at as an indie is shifting gears. Or, more correctly, task-switching.

As an indie, I don’t have the luxury of specialization, or concentrating on any one task for too long. I have to be agile. I have to wear lots of hats. It gets very, very easy to get comfortable in one task, especially one that takes several days (as a part-time indie who can only work a few hours at night, that describes a lot of my tasks, especially in the early-to-mid stages of a project). When working on Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, I frequently had to switch between acting as a designer and acting as a programmer. The transition was jarring. I feel I can do an adequate job of both, but it feels like two completely different modes of thought for me.

I’m not sure why that is, though it may be something restricted to making a game like an RPG. I didn’t experience much of that problem in Void War or other past projects where I did contributed to the game design (which was most projects I worked on at SingleTrac). But in those games, much of the design was mathematical and problem solving. Balancing weapon and enemy stats is an easy job for programmer-Jay to handle. But dialogs, visual imagery, or storytelling stuff? I definitely have to shift gears to designer-Jay, and it’s not a trivial switch. Yet.

Even in programmer-Jay mode, it can be a little rough to task-switch. Many times, I’ll be working on a major task, and must spend several days getting it “right” – fixing bugs, making sure all the functionality works, etc. And then, suddenly, everything seems to be working right, and I’m… a little lost. What next? Switching tasks – especially choosing the next task – can be a little rough,  though it’s a critical skill for any software engineer. But I fight the temptation is to linger on the old task and spend some time silver-plating it.

Part of this is a side-effect of a good thing – as a programmer, there’s this magical place some of us call “The Zone” where highly efficient and productive coding exists. The deeper you get into the zone, the more amazing your work becomes. The code is cleaner, faster, and more maintainable. The minutes and hours fly past but you are on such a roll you barely notice it. This is the place you want to be as a programmer. It’s hard to get there, and once there you don’t want to leave. Shifting gears can force an exit from The Zone.

In the past, lists helped me overcome the latter problem. I keep a list of issues, tasks, suggestions, and ideas in a  simple text file that I keep updated with ideas as they come to me. Then, before I begin each night’s development in earnest, I prioritize the new tasks or re-prioritize some old ones, and move some tasks to the top of the list. Then when I’m down in “the zone” and coding away and find myself finished with a task, I don’t have to come up for air too much to jump to the next task, and the next one, on down the list as needed.

That helps when switching between programming tasks.  I need to adhere more firmly to that system, as it’s easy to get lazy about it, particularly in early and mid stages where a lot of what you are doing feels a bit like “tinkering.”

The solution to the former may not be too different – scheduling the tasks so that related ones occur in clusters that allow me to stay in the same “mode” and avoid gear-shifting too much in the course of a single session.  This at least limits the problem.  And I’ve been in the design / writing “zone” before too, although the experience is more rare to me, but arranging times in blocks and setting clear goals for those activities may help.

I wonder what other things I can do to help make that transition better. Maybe I can come up with a musical playlist for each transition, so I can help force some kind of Pavlovian response over time?  Work out some kind of self-hypnotic mantra or visualization exercise I repeat to center my focus?  I don’t know. Goofy as those may sound, something like that may work.

The bottom line is this: I have a lot of games in me that I want to make, so I need to be more efficient about making ’em.

Filed Under: Production, Programming - Comments: 5 Comments to Read



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