Keeping an RPG Series Fresh

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 20, 2012

One summer day I was running a Call of Cthulhu adventure for some friends who were old hands at the game.  They’d played it a lot more than I had, but hadn’t played the module I was running.  They had new characters, as it was a one-off-game. And… well, we all noticed it right away. It felt stale. The Chaosium module adhered to formula, I guess, and everybody was playing their characters “ignorant” even though the players could immediately identify with the vaguest of hints who the “big bad” of the game would be centered around. The characters had been made with an eye towards the rules and style of the game, so the “best” characters were usually not those with the highest firearms skills, but strong Research scores.

Yeah, for those of you who unfamiliar with Call of Cthulhu, a lot of the game involves spending time in libraries or halls of records or interviewing old-timers. It’s generally a game about solving mysteries, but the mysteries usually resolve into some cult or another worshiping some horrible elder being and in turn having access to some dark magic and supernatural minions.

And that was the problem. As much as we loved the game (and still do…), it had gotten kind of stale. Too predictable.

This became a little bit of a problem with CRPGs as well. Especially RPG series. Which opens up a question – what part gets stale? The mechanics? The story? The “formula?” All of it? Many readers here can name some games series that really started getting that way (arguably, Wizardry started out that way). And in some ways, the entire genre suffered from this during the early 90’s (though I think a glut of low-quality products had more to do with it…)

How much needs to change? Is a CRPG using the same engine – or same game rules – for more than a sequel or two doomed to getting stale and boring?  Do you have to change everything to keep it fresh? At what point do you screw up the series so the fans no longer feel like they are playing the same game?

I’ve played several game systems where the mechanics of the game were fine (not perfect, but fine) for many, many campaigns.  The game didn’t need to change, only the story and characters. The mechanics formed a platform, a foundation, that didn’t need many changes to make an enjoyable game. Part of the reason we’ve still enjoyed Call of Cthulhu for so many years is that we started playing adventures that really departed from the traditional Lovecraft / Chaosium formula. So maybe it was more of a content problem than a case of game-system fatigue.

On the CRPG side, I think of Planescape: Torment.  While it used the same engine and rules system as the Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale series, it stood out as something very unique. Possibly too unique, as I understand sales of this critically acclaimed classic were never as good as either of its siblings.

This really isn’t limited to RPGs, or video games. TV series deal with the same issue. Viewers want “more of the same, only different.” Change too little, and viewers depart in boredom. Change too much, and viewers depart because it’s no longer the same series they enjoyed when they started watching. You can find parallels in almost all other media – music, books, movies, you name it.

With CRPGs, we have three axes to play with: The narrative axis, the “mechanics” axis (I’d call this the underlying rules system), and the presentation axis (user interface, graphics, sound, etc.). Is it okay to change things on one axis at a time? A little bit on all three? How much is too much, and how much is too little, to keep a game series “fresh” and interesting but still true to its core?

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

Mining Super Metroid for Design Lessons

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 19, 2012

I never really played much Super Metroid. I didn’t own the correct hardware.  While at the time – before I got a job making games for consoles – I disdained consoles for PC games, but mainly I think it was because I didn’t have the money.

But Hugo Bille writes a fascinating article entitled, The Invisible Hand of Super Metroid, discussing all the things done very well in the design of this classic SNES game. There are lessons to be learned here that can be applied to any game – including RPGs. A lot of the discussion is how the designers took a basically linear design and used tricks to encourage particular paths and methods of play, but allowed alternative approaches while still making sure the player encountered the key events (though not necessarily in the “correct” order).

I read these kinds of essays and realize that I have a long way to go as a “game designer.” But it’s good stuff to fill your head with if you have aspirations as a game designer.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Stop Piracy, But Protect Liberty

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 18, 2012

Okay, so today’s a big black-out day for Wikipedia and Google and stuff.  I’m not going to be doing anything like that. As you’ve probably heard, there are a couple of bills in the U.S. Congress that are supposedly out there to protect the rights of copyright holders, like me, against rampant piracy on the Internet.

Now, as you know if you’ve read this site for very long, I’m very much anti-piracy. I support legislation that makes it easier to enforce copyright law and protect guys like me, and every other person out there who produces media for others. It’s far too easy for people to rip off the intellectual property of others – AND MAKE BIG BUCKS DOING IT – without any serious fear of legal repercussion. This is strangling several industries, and it is the reason games are going more and more towards “online only,” or having key online components, and so forth.

That being said, I’m not in favor of these bills.

Why not? For these reasons the EFF has outlined. I see these bills as being more of a power-grab by government and big media corporations which will have a chilling effect on the entire Internet, not just the illegal activities taking place here.

Worse, when you have something like this that makes all kinds of otherwise decent, good behavior being made illegal (or punishable even without strictly being illegal), you can turn people thumbing their nose at the system into heroes – mini digital Robin Hoods. It’s happened before, and will happen again. That’s fine in the case of people performing otherwise legal activities turned criminal by what feels like a stupid and improper law. But the copyright infringers who rob from the poor or middle-class and give to everybody (because it somehow doesn’t “count” when they aren’t “really” stealing and it’s only “potential” sales)  do not deserve any kind of cultural approval.

And will they actually curb piracy? I don’t think they’ll stop it. Move it more underground, sure, which would be a good thing. But not at an acceptable cost.  I think the collateral damage from these bills is far too high. It’s otherwise law-abiding people and companies who will suffer the most, and it opens the door for a metric buttload of abuse. I can see big companies abusing it to cripple competitors, and political powers abusing it to silence opposition. We’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again.

We need a better way. We need to solve the problems of the digital age as citizens – not just of our own countries but as a digital world – and we need to do it as adults and thinking human beings who are both consumers and producers. We need to protect the rights of artists, writers, programmers, musicians, and these days pretty much everybody else to their own creations. But we should not trade our liberty to do it. We need to draw the line against government and corporate overreach somewhere. In my opinion, this is a good place to make a stand.

Filed Under: Politics - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Lousy Choices and Linear Dungeons

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 17, 2012

A year or so ago this illustration of FPS level design “evolution” over the last twenty years made the rounds, and struck a little bit of a nerve.  Yes, many folks agreed – particularly the old-school gamers who remember gaming from the last century – it’s gotten awfully simplistic.

But the maps don’t tell the whole story. The linearity was a little exaggerated, and the map complexity of the old Doom level (E1M5?) hid some inherent linearity of the design that only becomes apparent in gameplay, when you grab the appropriate keys in linear order to allow you access to the rest of the level. But it was an amusing way to make a point.

I’ve been thinking about this a little bit lately with respect to RPGs. In particular, the linear dungeons of Skyrim come to mind (since that’s the RPG I’m playing right now), which are extremely linear.

The comparison becomes pretty stark when you realize the Elder Scrolls games were directly inspired by Ultima Underworld, way back in the early 1990’s.  The dungeons of The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall could get insane in their procedurally-generated three-dimensional complexity.  To illustrate some differences in dungeon design in CRPGs over the last couple of decades:

Ultima Underworld (1992)

The Elder Scrolls:  Daggerfall (1996)

Dragon Age: Origins (2009)

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (2011)

I don’t know if I’d really call this a trend. But since Skyrim seems to have been one of the best-selling RPGs of all time, it’s worth noting (as I’m sure many publishers will follow suit).

I was reading on a blog that this is sort of the 4E Dungeons & Dragons (pen-and-paper)  style of dungeon as well – more of a linear arrangement of set-piece encounters. Having not really paid attention to the Fourth Edition adventures and supplements, this is only hearsay, but that seemed to be the “official” trend towards the end of 3.5’s run, too.

RPG level design is a funky thing – particularly with good ol’ traditional dungeons. The linear dungeons of Skyrim are awfully convenient, and in all honesty may be a trifle more “realistic” (does that ever matter?) than the sprawling dungeon complexes of many classic games. It’s easy to avoid getting lost in them – the map screen is usually only necessary to see if you missed a corner or closet somewhere where there may be some additional loot.

But they do rub me the wrong way a little. I like my big, sprawling dungeon complexes. And I do like to harp on having choices.  However, a choice between a door on the left or a door on the right – or whether you take the left or right branch in a corridor – is a lousy choice. Without some kind of knowledge about the difference between the two (or more) choices, it’s really no choice at all.

This wasn’t such a problem in the open-ended play of pen-and-paper games. Players could make choices blindly, but they could also use spells and skills to scout out the differences. Were there far more tracks going up and down the left-hand passage? Were there voices behind the south door when the thief listened to it? How about using “Wizard Eye” to check out exactly what’s happening down the hallway?  But in CRPGs, those options are rarely represented, and aside from saving and reloading, there’s often not much of a way to gain any background on which to make that kind of choice. In general I support the idea of removing those kinds of uninteresting choices in the name of “streamlining.”

The difference with some (not all, and not even “most”)  of the mid-to-late classic old-school RPGs was that the levels were not simply maps of isolated encounters.  They weren’t all actually linear designs separated by keys, nor were they just sprawling random encounters arranged randomly. Good level design had all the pieces of the level come together to tell a bigger story or form a larger puzzle. Maybe I’m just looking through +2 Goggles of Rose Tint,  but I seem to recall some levels of certain games (I’m specifically thinking Eye of the Beholder and Ultima Underworld series, but there were no doubt others) where this felt like it was the case.  While the first time you were presented with the choice of going left, right, or straight may have felt pretty meaningless, they all tied together somewhat both narratively (is that a word?) and mechanically.

But my memory is hazy and I may be applying coolness and wishful thinking where there really isn’t much there. If that’s the case… well, there should be!

I don’t hate linear dungeons, but I do think they are not the ultimate answer to the problem.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 18 Comments to Read

RPGs, IGF, RTFM, KISS, and How Those Acronyms Can Be Used To Make a Better Game

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 16, 2012

I decided to enter the 2012 Independent Games Festival (IGF) in spite of my general feeling that the chance of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon becoming a finalist was pretty small (over 560 entries this year!). It’s not that the game is unworthy – not at all.  While I’m obviously biased as the creator, I have some nice independent validation that Frayed Knights rocks for its intended audience.  It’s not perfect, and I’m definitely trying to broaden that market for the sequel, but for my first shot (or maybe the second, if you include the pilot) going into beloved old-school RPG territory, I’m quite happy with it.

That’s why I entered the IGF. It felt wrong not to let the game compete. The list of finalists came out last week,  and as expected, Frayed Knights was not among them. While I had no realistic expectations of that actually happening, I have to admit to being a little disappointed. But as I said, it didn’t seem to be an IGF type of game, and admitted as much when I made the submission, though folks on Twitter and at home asked me what I meant by that and I couldn’t really explain it.

Craig Stern of IndieRPGs.com explains why RPGs don’t play well to the IGF.

He’s guessing, of course, but it feels “right.” It also explains a lot about the winners of previous years. Quite simply, the format of the competition dictates which games will do well. This includes the makeup of the judges, the time period, the number of games, the categories, and so forth. While he goes through many more explanations, my own interpretation breaks it down into the following. Games that have the best chance of success in the IGF are:

• Short: Judges can play through a reasonable subset of everything the game has to offer in 15 to 30 minutes.
• Stand Out In Innovative Mechanics or Visuals: This is based on the offered categories.
• Simple: Judges don’t have time to mess with complicated explanations / manuals (no RTFMing here!). The simpler the mechanics are to understand, the better.
• Focused in Scope: Likewise, an extremely polished but limited game will do better than a game that has had to ‘spread out’ the quality over a much larger scope.
• Don’t Emphasize Narrative: Or rather, their narrative elements tend to be revealed visually. Often abstractly.

This explains things much better than my previous vague description: That IGF games were more “artsy-fartsy.” Though I still think that description often holds…

This isn’t really a “fault” of the IGF, and my personal feeling is that any “genre bias” on the part of the IGF is pretty minimal.  It’s simply the structure and reality of a competition, and any other competition would have its own problems. I have read of similar issues with things like the annual Interactive Fiction Competition: By it’s nature, it tends to reward shorter works rather than lengthier. That doesn’t preclude large-format IF titles from winning – they just face more headwind.

The rule with the IGF and similar competitions with limited windows in which judges have to play games is really “K.I.S.S.” This is alternately defined as, “Keep It Short & Simple,” “Keep It Simple, Stupid,” or many variations thereof. But this is something like the arcades of the 1980s – the games that do well are the ones that attract potential buyers from the get-go, are intuitive to play, offer a quick focused experience, and stand out from the competition.

And honestly? Aside from maybe adding an extra category (which would make the awards ceremony even longer), I don’t know if I’d like to see the IGF change to be more accommodating of indie RPGs. If anything – and I know I am treading into heretical territory amongst some old-school RPG purists here and sounding like I’m advocating the approach of modern mainstream RPGs – I think RPGs should look at some of the above criteria as virtues that they should try to embrace a little more.

Should RPGs be shorter? Mmm… maybe. Maybe not. But many could do better about getting to the meat of the game earlier. Simpler? I think simple games appeal to beginners much better, and the judges should be considered beginners. I don’t want every RPG to be a “beginner-level” title, however, and while making a game that appeals to both beginners and veterans to the genres sounds good on paper, doing it right will probably take not much less effort than creating two entirely separate games.

Should RPGs have better/more innovative visuals and/or mechanics? I think RPGs – even those emulating old-school titles – should try to innovate. Admittedly, with the exception of Frayed Knights‘ drama star system, most innovations in this area tend to be a lot lower-key. Maybe it’s something we need to just show off better?  As to better visual presentation… man, that’s a toughie, for exactly the reasons Craig outlined – the breadth of the games makes it impossible to just say, “Work harder at it!”  If a game has 1/20th of your scope and content, it stands to reason the same amount of effort and budget will make it look 20x better. That’s a losing battle from the get-go. But I think there may be some clever work-arounds.

No matter what, an indie RPG should stand out (in a good way) from not only its current indie competition, but any old-school titles that serve as inspiration. Because really – if I can play the original for $5.99 from GOG.COM, Gamer’s Gate, or Steam, why would I want to play your indie title that seems to be doing little more than aping the gameplay and style? The original is probably better. No, your indie title has to offer a unique experience and stand on its own in some way. I should want to play your game because it offers something I can’t get anywhere else. And dang it, the RPG field is so broad and ripe with possibility that really shouldn’t be too hard!

Should indie RPGs be more focused? I’m going to answer this by saying no, I don’t believe they all should, but yes, I’d like to see some more “focused” indie RPGs that really explore the depths of a more limited subset of the genre. There’s a risk of losing the essence of “RPG-ness” if a game does this, but I think this is ripe for indie exploration. What about a game that focuses principally on character creation? Or non-combat interactions? We’ve got some good ones already that focus more on combat and puzzle-solving in RPG style, but I think there’s more that can be done here.

Should indie RPGs de-emphasize narrative? Many already do. Look at the roguelikes. I do think indie RPG creators (and really, ALL game creators, regardless of genre of level of indie-ness) should consider other ways of creating and presenting the narrative. Yes, mainstream RPGs addicted to voice-acting and linear storytelling, this means you, too.

I don’t think “big” RPGs are ever going to do well in any competition structured like the IGF. But I do believe that indie RPG makers can take a few steps that might not only improve their chances, but may also improve the commercial success of their games. And I think if we keep thinking of RPGs in broad terms, there is still an incredibly broad field of untapped potential out there within the genre that is waiting to be explored and tinkered with by innovative game developers.

Get cracking!

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

The Indie Plunge, or, “WOAH! The Water Is Cold!”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 13, 2012

I feel a little guilty about this, as I’m directly referenced as an example in Matt Barton’s latest development diary expressing his frustration, disappointment, and lowered expectations as he pushed for making a 3D RPG. He’s done some amazing stuff over the last few months, going from nothing to three(?) released games, including one commercial release.  So he’s broken the ice and gotten some great experience, but the next step – attempting to do a 3D RPG with isometric battles (a la Pool of Radiance) in a new engine (Unity) is proving to be a bit of a doozy:

Matt Barton’s Dev Diary #7 – Lowered Expectations

“Where I’ve been becoming increasingly disappointed, though, is what a dude like myself can hope to accomplish on his own. I had originally been naive enough to think that the tools had reached a point where you didn’t need a full-on team of professionals to make something that looked like, well, it was made a full-on team of professionals. I didn’t expect to make the next Bioware game here, mind you! But I thought it was within my ability to make something like Jay Barnson’s Frayed Knights game. Jay had help, of course, and plenty of professional experience, so I figured–heck, why can’t I learn the same stuff and make my own game? It *seemed* doable, and definitely fun!”

I’ve been kinda silent as he’s been working on these, because I’ve been both rooting for him and a little concerned that he was biting off more than he could chew. But I didn’t really want to pollute his experiment with my input. Or something.

And since Matt’s got some indie games under his belt, now, I hoped (and still believe) that the step up to a “lite” RPG or 3D game or a new engine aren’t such a big one as he is concerned about. The trick may be doing all three at once. Four, if you include the iso-style tactical combat. That adds up to what is probably too big of an elephant to east in one sitting.

I think his current plan is actually a good one – to take a single step at a time. In this case, creating a simpler 2D-based game in Unity, so that his attention is focused on learning the engine.  I may even suggest looking at the improved 2D libraries that they have available for Unity out there – they aren’t too expensive, and can make things a little easier. And “2D” is really just a camera mode in Unity – everything is still 3D, and it’s possible to mix and match sprites with actual 3D models. It’s also possible (but harder) to mix and match them so that they look good, too.

Creating good 3D content (models and artwork) is something I can’t even do yet. I suck a lot less than I used to, but I’m still not good at it. I’m still proud of getting the doors and treasure chests in Frayed Knights to look halfway decent. But I’d say simple models – perhaps viewed from a 2D view (iso?) might be the next step for a game.

From there, tackling the RPG side of things – perhaps a bit scaled down from the original plans – would be not such a bad step. I mean, in the time it took me to create Frayed Knights in the first place, someone like Matt could have four or five games out, two of ’em RPGs… 🙂

As for what constitutes “scaled down,” I’d recommend three things:

#1 – Go first-person perspective or a third-person perspective. Don’t try to tackle both (yet), as cool as it was in Pool of Radiance. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done (I’ve been kicking around a similar idea myself for a while… I even considered it for Frayed Knights for a little while), but it may be too much at once. In a sense, you’d be making two games at once… and you may need 2x the assets as well.

#2 – Start with a single-character based RPG rather than party-based. I know, my heart is more in party-based games more than single-character games too, but it definitely adds to the challenge, especially when it comes to the user interface issues. Of course, there are things that get harder with this choice as well (like making character development and combat more interesting), but on the whole I think it’s easier.

#3 – Throw out everything that doesn’t speak to the core of your game. For example – many of the older games featured the “town” as nothing more than a menu of options. Why not do that and keep that part as simple as possible, so you can focus purely on exploration and combat? Oh, and leveling, according to his second dev diary entry.

Maybe a cooler, better, polished, and most importantly finished game along the lines of my ancient little project Hackenslash. It may not sell a ton, but it would probably be a great way to learn.

Matt laments some issues that I think resonates with anyone embarking on something as massive as indie game development: He says, “By the time you stack up all the books, tutorials, websites, forums, or whatever you need to learn this stuff, you discover that even if you had the time to go through it all, you definitely wouldn’t have the memory power to retain it all, so it becomes rather hopeless.” My response is that if anybody was trying to learn Calculus without having learned anything at all about elementary mathematics or algebra, the feeling would be the same. You learn by doing, and you need to do it a step at a time. You eventually internalize it, though like everything else it’s important to keep brushing up on the basics from time to time.

He follows up with another comment to which I don’t have an easy answer: “To make matters worse, once you start learning HOW to do stuff, you learn how long it takes. If it takes weeks to create, rig, and animate a crude rat or hut, for instance, who are you kidding thinking you could create dungeons swarming with orcs and castles full of fiends?”

This was my bane in Frayed Knights. It will probably remain my bane (and that of about everybody else who makes games) forever. I don’t think there are any magic bullets here, but I do have a few (somewhat obvious) suggestions:

#1 – It gets easier (and faster) as your proficiency improves. But no matter how good you get, there are limits to how quickly you can get things done. And it definitely takes a lot more effort than one would expect.

#2 – Tools. The right tool for the job makes the job MUCH MUCH easier. I really like Blender and think it’s an excellent tool for 3D modeling. But there’s the old problem of the tools forcing a certain development path… like the old saying goes, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Should you build entire dungeons / levels in Blender? (Okay, I am totally projecting here with some issues I’m having on my own, sorry…)

#3 – Scope down the requirements. Should the enemies be all animated and rigged? Notch claims the blocky look in Minecraft came about because he was working within the limits of his own artistic abilities (and indeed, the earlier prototypes had far more realistic trees). Maybe something more stylized will work better. And going with a third-person perspective (especially a “distant” ISO-style camera view) means you can work with simpler models, you can probably ignore issues like Levels-of-Detail, etc. In fact, using an isometric view game with actual 3D models is arguably simpler than making one with 2D sprites! Again, doing something like making “town” a simple static menu (with maybe some cool background art) can really simplify things and allow you to focus your efforts.

#4 – Seek help. Besides just therapy, though you may need that too.  I believe an indie developer should have the ability to “carry a project on his/her back” and do it all, that doesn’t mean that’s the best approach.  Filling a game with stand-in prototype sounds and art is not a bad approach – particularly when you can give your outsourced content providers some very specific explanations of  what they need to create. Unfortunately, if your luck is anything like mine, they’ll STILL get the requirements wrong every single time…

Anyway, that’s my $0.02. I’m armchair quarterbacking the guy from Armchair Arcade, I know, and I really don’t know that I’m qualified to offer advice. Or if it would be appropriate to do so publicly, but hey, Matt posted his diary publicly, so I’m counting it as fair game.

But really, this isn’t directed directly at Matt (or I’d just email him). I thought that since he was kind enough to make his experiences public, I’d respond publicly in a general-enough way that hopefully others who may be struggling with their efforts to create an indie game will find some semi-useful advice as well.

But really, while “lowered expectations” sounds like a negative (and I’m sure Matt’s feeling pretty disappointed), it’s really not. I think that in a lot of ways, the reason we remember many of the old classics so fondly is that the creators figured out how to do something very cool within their (strict) limitations, which were mainly dictated by technology. Today, technology is not nearly such a hindrance, but indie game designers are just as constrained by budgets, skill, distribution, you name it. I think many modern games suffer from really trying to do and be too much, “because they can.” They lose focus and flavor. If indies accept their limitations (yes, I have a hard time with it too) and choose to be creative about how they will create something those constraints, the results will be spectacular.

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Ten Tips for Becoming an Indie Game Developer

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 12, 2012

Post-Mortems on indie games always seem more interesting to me than post-mortems on big-studio games. It may be because they are just less conventional overall, or that the post-mortems I read of mainstream games usually conform to the Game Developer Magazine “5 things that went right / 5 things that went wrong” formula. I dunno.

I really enjoyed Sophie Houlden’s post-mortem of Switft*Stitch, and the things that really hit home for me were the following comments:

“Swift*Stitch is my first finished commercial game, and probably the only game I’ve spent more than a couple of months on that has actually been finished. Suffice to say, I didn’t have the skills to finish a game when I started it. I thought I did, but that was me being an idiot again.”

Followed by this (the bolding is mine):

“… I finally managed to become the kind of person who can finish games. Basically it comes down to making lists of what has to be done, and doing it no matter what. I’d only take a break if I’d been productive enough to not feel guilty for taking a break, and that got me through the bit that people who haven’t finished a game call the last 10%, and the people who have finished a game call the last 90%.”

This has to happen with every developer. I still struggle with it, and I had help from a career in mainstream games where I was driven to that point by my team and management. As much as being an indie is about individualism and being true to your own creative self, I think there is a part of it that is really about that transformation – perhaps into an ideal, the person you want to be, or “becoming who you really are.” I’d never thought about it that way before reading this, but it rings true to me.

It’s kind of a mindset thing – and again, something I struggle with. Some days I am that game developer, other days I am not.  Maybe if I was that person all the time, Rampant Games would be a full-time business for me and I’d be rolling in the dough with a couple of full-time employees by now. I don’t know.  I think that’s something I may have to work on, and I’m glad Sophie explained it in that way. It’s food for thought.

But that’s also why I, heedless of my own hypocrisy, urge new aspiring game developers to START SMALL (which I say in big caps here). You may possess the raw abilities necessary to ship a larger game, but they haven’t had a chance to grow in experience or disposition to handle something like that. You aren’t that person yet. But you can be.

The process of shipping a commercial game (as opposed to just throwing quick demos up to the public… I’m really talking about the quality and player experience of the game here, not whether or how it is monetized) is a massive undertaking even for the simplest games. I’ve done it several times, and I still underestimate the difficulty on a regular basis. People who haven’t done it really can’t grasp the challenge (thus the oft-quoted 10%/90% thing Sophie mentions).

Becoming a game developer – someone who can finish games as Sophie puts it – is a growing process. It probably involves making changes to your life. Not necessarily huge or sweeping changes, although for some people it might. And the changes won’t be the same for everyone, as everybody works differently, and some folks may already be further along in the process than others. But iIf you aren’t already shipping finished games, you may not be that person yet.

Some suggestions on how to become an indie game developer. Completely serious, this time:

#1 – Commit. Make indie game development a priority in your life. Be willing to juggle, shuffle, and sacrifice lesser things to be an indie developer. And you should be willing to make that commitment right away. This is a tough one, as making games may require you to sacrifice a significant chunk of game-playing. Since most of us become indies because we love games, this is a hard thing to do. It may not be worth it to you. But decide right now – is this what you want to be, and are you willing to do what it takes to be that person? Then once you do this, recommit often, daily if needed, until it’s practically part of your DNA.

#2 – Become a Time Manager. A lot of game development is not sexy stuff like making explosions and brilliant gameplay ideas. It’s a lot of “scut work.” And time management is about as unsexy of a term – and action – as I can think of. But it’s completely necessary. I still suck at it, but I’m getting better. Get a book on time management from the library, or read up on it online.  If you want to actually have time to play games or catch up on episodes of favorite TV shows once in a while, this is necessary. That’s the hidden sexiness of time management – it allows you to have ‘spare time’ while still being productive.

#3 – Become organized. Lists. Lists work great for me, and apparently work great for Sophie. Task lists are critical. Prioritizing, scheduling, reevaluating, and executing those lists are all part of the process. The exact system you use may vary! Something that works for me may not work for you. I find that simpler prioritized lists work best for me – too much complication screws me up. But one way or another, you have to organize your tasks and execute on them in order to see them (and your game) through them to completion.

#4 – Be humble and ruthless. Novel writers talk about “killing your babies,” or cutting things from their stories that they love but detract from the finished version. Good writing is often more of a case of good editing and good cutting. The same is true of games – except its best if you cut a major feature or section before you spend two weeks or more implementing it. A person who finishes a game has to be both humble and ruthless when it comes to shipping the game.  Humble enough to realize that not every idea that proceeds from their brain about what will make the game “cool” is actually worthwhile, humble enough to realize that a lot of great ideas may actually detract from the game they are building in one way or another. Humble enough to accept that your game is not going to be perfect no matter what you do, and willing to accept criticism. You must be ruthless enough to carve all of that away for the sake of making a better experience for their target audience, and ruthless enough to kill even those super-awesome ideas that WOULD be awesome, but can’t be finished with reasonable timeliness or quality.

#5 – Understand that the Perfect is the Enemy of the Great.  It’s part of being ruthless, but it’s really easy to get caught in a loop where you endlessly tinker with one feature or idea until it’s “perfect.” It’s never perfect, and you’ll never get done if you get stuck here. As much as we try and claim that we go after perfection and quality, we have to set tolerance thresholds and be willing to be satisfied with these.

#6 – Be Willing to Learn. This scares a lot of people, and it’s something that will definitely hamper your ability to be an indie developer. Indies have to be a little bit of everything, and have to know a little bit about every part of the process – even the parts they hate. Marketing, business, programming, art, sound, new platforms, UI design, new tools, color theory, storytelling, new technology, etc. A good indie needs to be pushing outside of their comfort zone. It takes courage and effort to go beyond that. As an indie, you can’t just stay in your own little box and assume it’s somebody else’s job. Because even if you aren’t a lone wolf, you will need to provide input and act as an intelligent sounding board for the dude (or dudette) who is in charge of that stuff, and if you are the one shipping the product, the buck still stops with you.

#7 – Accept Risks. Making indie games isn’t safe. You are going to be sacrificing time and money, and possibly your reputation and self-image, with every game you make and release. There’s no guarantees – and often, even any likelihood – that you’ll get back what you put into it, let alone improve things. You need to determine how much risk you can accept to meet your goals. Is it worth a second mortgage on your house and quitting your day job? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But you are the person who has to decide where you’ll draw the line.

#8 – Practice. Work on sketches. Work on short “game jams.” Write up quick one- or two-page designs for new concepts. Read a book on programming or project management and implement parts that might work for you. Use your growing Time Management skills to devote some time to honing your craft in a way that’s not strictly devoted to getting your current project out the door. You need to constantly exercise and grow your skills (and gain new ones).

#9 – Start Small. I said this already, didn’t I? I’ll say it again. If you bite off more than you can chew (and you have no idea, starting out, how much – or how little – that is), you will probably choke on it, quit, and never come back. This is on the job training. Work your way up to your mega-project.

#10 – Finish. Don’t jump into a new project and leave an old one hanging. Some developers can do several projects at once – usually with a lot of outsourcing – but most of us work best on one project at a time. If your current project is just not working out, cancel the it (been there, done that), back-burner it until another project is completed (ditto), or whatever. But it needs to be a serious, carefully considered decision to change or quit your goal. If you keep starting new projects, you’ll never finish any of them.  Don’t be wishy-washy about when and how you will release the game to the public.

So there you go. If you really want to be an indie game developer, these are my suggestions for what you need to do to get there. It’s not for everybody. It shouldn’t be. But it can be for almost anybody if it is important to them.

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Last Chance to Vote on Your Favorite RPGs of 2011

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

The RPG Watch poll for the PC RPG of the Year closes in a few hours. Go Vote!

If you happen to be voting for Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon for the “indie RPG of the year,” category, I’d strongly encourage you to go vote right now! Don’t wait!

If you don’t think you would vote for Frayed Knights as either of your first or second favorite RPG of the year, take your time! What’s the hurry? 🙂

 

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

Dungeons & Dragons Retreats, Goes Back to the Drawing Board?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 11, 2012

On Monday, Wizards of the Coast (WotC, part of Hasbro) officially announced development of yet another new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and the story has surprisingly been picked up by such publications as Forbes and The New York Times. Fourth Edition, we hardly knew you.

Why change now (which still feels sudden)? Besides the fact that WotC has gotten into the habit of changing editions the moment the current edition has started to feel to “mature” and players are finally used to the rules? Well, a lot of things have been said, but what it boils down to as best as I can figure is this: Third Edition (probably not coincidentally with an Open Gaming License) blew away their wildest expectations, and Fourth Edition (without nearly such an open gaming license) failed to meet expectations.

WotC even clamped down and removed all copies of older versions of their games from digital sales channels. Why? Because players were stocking up on older edition stuff. Why? Sounds like there was a perception that the older games were superior among the fan base. This has always been an issue amongst a subset of the fan base – but that wasn’t a problem with 3E. If that perception is so high amongst your fans that the new version is inferior to your previous offerings, you have a real problem that just making your older product hard to acquire isn’t going to solve.

And it didn’t. Among other things, open-gaming-license-powered Pathfinder came along – largely as a response to Wizard’s clamping down on the “open gaming” thing and trying to put third-party publishers “back in their place.” The new GSL for fourth edition really put the fate of the third-party publishers completely in the hands of WotC. So Paizo decided (late into the process) to do their own thing, with a fraction of WotC’s clout and cash, and over the last couple of years  pretty much eaten D&D‘s lunch. I understand it is now out-selling D&D 4E, though I strongly doubt its total sales have been able to trump 4E’s totals since 2008.  But it doesn’t need to. It’s a major victory regardless.

Now, I don’t know how much the open gaming license(s) affected the success of these games. Maybe there are people at WotC/Hasbro who think that the Open Gaming License, which enabled Pathfinder to happen, is the source of all their woes (and there are folks who formerly worked at WotC who now work at Paizo and elsewhere who seem to feel like the “open gaming” thing was the primary source of 3.0’s success, too).

I can only relate my personal experiences. I may be unique and weird in all this, but that’s how it worked out for me. This is entirely “my take on things,” which reveals more about my own mindset and play style than it does about D&D. It’s colored heavily by my own perceptions (and frustrations).

I (mostly) gave second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons a miss. Oh, I bought the core rulebooks (eventually), and played some 2E in its computerized RPG incarnation (Yay, Baldur’s Gate!).  But around the time 2E came out, I had moved on to the Hero gaming system from 1st edition.

Why? Mainly because I liked the flexibility of the Hero system. Which turned out to be its biggest fault, as well, but at the time, with the highly constrained class-based 1E and 2E systems, it was exactly what I needed. (This was before they came out with all the splatbooks with a hundred class variants which, of course, everyone needed a copy of the splatbooks on-hand to use, though they did have a tiny rule section on constructing your own classes.) I was also not too thrilled with the tone and style of the second edition — I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but it “felt” too clean, too lacking in whatever mysterious charm the earlier editions had possessed.

Later, I discovered that TSR (then the owners of the D&D property) had largely changed hands and creative staff, and had made a concentrated effort to… well, “dumb down” the game. They’d deliberately written the game to appeal to younger readers, and to remove any material that had ever been used to generate free publicity from fringe groups in the early 1980’s. Evil could never be characterized as competent and powerful (this was in the writer’s guidelines for TSR). Demons and devils were no more… and were later brought back with an explanation that they were simply evil alien races from an alternate dimension. Um, yeah. The “flavor” thing. Sure, for a good Dungeon Master it didn’t make a lick of difference… the new rules were cleaner and more complete but basically the same, and a good DM could provide his own flavor. But it just didn’t hook me.

Hero had its own problems and frustrations, some of which I noted in a recent article on skill-based and class-based RPG systems. We were ready for a change when third edition Dungeons & Dragons was announced. It had three things going for it:

1. Old-school flavor. At least that was the perception from my end, having played Hero system as our primary game for a decade. It felt like it was written, once again, for adults (or reasonable mature teens). It felt like an old, familiar friend. (And in the meantime, we’d gone back and played a one-off D&D game and remembered how fun it was).
2. A radically redesigned game system that tried (and largely, IMO, succeeded) to combine the best of class-based and skill-based rules system. It had built-in flexibility not present in earlier editions. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a giant leap in the right direction.
3. The “open gaming license,” which for me (remembering the years of TSR sending C&D’s to fans for their D&D websites) meant one thing: Huge third-party support. And that was exactly what happened. Too huge, actually, as even the huge demand couldn’t keep up with the exploding, pent-up supply of materials.

I was thrilled. I was converted. My gaming group made the (somewhat painful) switch to D20, gradually figured out the rules, and had a blast for several years. We switched to 3.5 somewhere in there, which caused a bit of confusion and frustration for a bit as we’d forget what rules had changed, and everyone had to upgrade to new books. It seemed we’d barely hit our stride with 3.5 when Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons was announced.

That was one strike against it – it felt far too soon for us, especially considering it was going to be another radical redesign of the system. But then, once it was released, it had none of the three benefits 3E had enjoyed (in my mind). The licensing was really not “open” at all and potential third party publishers were alarmed and disgruntled. On paper, the game seemed a totally different fantasy game that had little in common with previous editions of D&D, so there wasn’t a perceived need in my mind to “keep up” with the game… the new system was a totally new game that was D&D in name only. And finally, the rules system felt like it went into the completely opposite direction, trending towards less flexibility and even more rules-bound than 3.x had been (which made the Game Master feel like more of a referee than a participant and storyteller).

And most importantly – we were still having fun with 3.5, and the radical redesign of the game system didn’t address any of the perceived weaknesses in 3.5 that we felt needed to be fixed. It was filling a need that didn’t exist. I guess it did exist – the need to attract new players to the game system rather than appealing to us old gaming farts – but it wasn’t our need.

And that’s where Pathfinder came in. In my mind, the biggest boost Pathfinder could have received came from Wizards of the Coast’s decision to cancel all digital distribution agreements on their older systems. This total jerk move on WotC’s part made staying with 3.5 an expensive proposition (if you wanted to do it legally), and extremely difficult to bring in new players for. It torpedoed any potential for lingering third-party support of 3.5.  It painted Wizards of the Coast as the “bad guys,” especially when digital sales channels had to explain to customers why they would no longer be able to re-download copies of PDFs that they had purchased. And it sent a signal to many of us that WotC had no confidence in their newest edition of the game, as they had to protect it from older versions.

But here was Pathfinder, all ready to fill all those needs. It was readily available, happy to have third-party support, addressed many of the weaknesses of 3.x D&D without radically transforming the experience, and still maintained much of that “old-school” D&D flavor (not as much as 3.x, but a lot more than 4.0, in my mind). Plus, it was every bit as polished and cool as D&D had been (partly because many of the same people who’d worked on the previous editions were now working on Pathfinder).

Also, the Pathfinder guys were very, very active in soliciting playtesting feedback from the community during development – a playbook page that Wizards of the Coast now seems to be trying to emulate for their next edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

For me, it feels like WotC destroyed a lot of the faith and goodwill they gained from me in the early 3E days. I think some great game designers put some really hard work into making a good game system that looks to be a lot of fun to play. To me, 4E was unnecessary, and the decision to make it was a money- and control-grab on the part of the higher-ups at WotC / Hasbro, cannibalizing its fanbase to go after some larger potential market. They didn’t make the game for me, and they didn’t make a game I really wanted to play. Paizo did.

Paizo acted like the white knight, rescuing the game system in a lot of ways for me, and doing a really solid job making Pathfinder a game I really, really enjoy. So I now look at the upcoming new edition of D&D with mainly academic interest. I can’t say I’m excited about the game system at this point.  And part of me just wants to say, “Neener, neener!” to WotC for having treated me poorly in their revenue-generation calculations.  For my gaming group right now, there’s really not much chance that a new edition of D&D will win us over. Its only chance would be to capitalize on some act of massive stupidity on Paizo’s part – the same way Paizo capitalized on WotC’s massive blunders. Otherwise, I don’t see us being very enthusiastic to buy a NEW set of rulebooks for everyone in our group and learn a whole new set of rules for our Saturday night games.

I really hope that doesn’t happen.

Filed Under: Dice & Paper - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Game Designer Sentenced to Execution in Iran on Propoganda Charges

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 10, 2012

I  doubt that U.S. born Iranian-American Amir Mizra Hekmati had any idea that being a game designer would target him by the Iranians when he went to the country to visit his grandmother and other relatives (for the first time) last fall.

His crime? As near as I can tell from the usual smokescreen of wild-ass claims that come from countries like this, it is being a designer on a video game that pissed off the Iranian regime. The fact that he was a former U.S. Marine was probably all the “proof” that they needed.

This is scary stuff. This is not the sort of thing that I ever expected to see in my most paranoid delusions. I really hope that this is just saber-rattling on the part of Iran, and that he’ll be released unharmed soon.  According to the New York Times article about this, Iran has a history of “arresting” Americans on espionage charges and then releasing them after their ransom “bail” is paid. Whether or not this remains true with the escalating tensions over Iran’s nuclear program remains to be seen.

Gamasutra: Video Game Designer Sentenced to Death in Iran on Propaganda Charges

Free Amir Website

I don’t want to make light of any of this, as I’m truly worried about a fellow game developer. This really sucks. But if you wanted any more evidence that Video Games are a legitimate medium of expression of ideas – worthy of first amendment protection here in the United States (which the Supreme Court already validated last year), this would be a biggie.

Prayers for Amir, and for his family.

Filed Under: Politics - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Vote Frayed Knights as Indie Role-Playing Game of the Year!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 9, 2012

RPGWatch is doing it’s annual reader’s choice game of the year awards. This year, in a show of fairness to the mainstream games, the categories were broken up into Best Mainstream and Best Indie RPGs. That’s only partly a joke. But it does mean more categories, more games getting covered, etc.  And it means you have a chance to vote for your favorite RPGs of the year.

No, you don’t have to vote for Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon for the “Best Indie RPG category.” I know I’m up against some really great games, like Avadon and Dungeons of Dredmor. ‘Sall good. But you get a chance to vote for both first place and second place choices. A word of warning: Don’t vote for the same game as both first and second choice, or your vote will be invalidated. Instead, vote “none” for your second-place choice.

Frayed Knights 2 (subtitle has been selected, but not announced yet) is also a choice for the “Most Anticipated Indie RPG of 2012” category. Although the chances of me getting the game out by December 31 are slim, I’ll be giving it a good shot. Feel free to vote for that one, too. 🙂 Naturally that’s my personal first choice (I’d be thrilled), but there are some other outstanding-looking games out there that may or may not make it out this year that I’m really anticipating. Grimrock, Dead State, Sword & Sorcery Underworld: Gold, etc. Wow. 2012 is shaping up to be a GREAT year for indie RPGs.

Anyway, I’ll shut up now and let you vote. Here you go:

RPGWatch Reader’s Choice Game of the Year Voting

 

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Game Development. Cheaper.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 6, 2012

I was going to write this longish piece about lessons learned from working on Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon. I still plan on it, but then prolific game-design thinker Raph Koster went and did a write-up about making games “more cheaply” (which can also be interpreted as, “more quickly,” as the major cost in software development is time). While I can pick nits over it, I’d consider it a “must read” for anybody involved in game software development – mainstream or indie.

Raph’s Website: Making Games More Cheaply

My thoughts…

#1 – Re-use engines. I’d also suggest: Consider off-the-shelf engines. I didn’t always subscribe to this philosophy (and if you recall, Void War was a totally home-brewed game engine).  But over the years, game engines have gotten a lot more sophisticated, a lot more price-friendly, and customer expectations have gone up a lot. But I will suggest that an off-the-shelf game engine can be a lot more trouble than it sounds.  I am honestly not sure if Frayed Knights would have taken less time if I’d written the game engine myself.  Or at least used a different engine. Every engine has its limitations, problems, bugs, and a learning curve.

There’s another factor as well, which Koster implies here… do you want to write game engines, or write games? While I love solving the technical problems (the higher-level architectural and optimization problems, not the “this game won’t run on this video card” problems) that come with engine design, I realized that my real love was making games. Back in the day the classic game developers had to create worlds that could be envisioned by players at 256 (or 16, or worse) colors at 320 x 200 resolution (or worse). They made do. Game design is all about creating entertainment within constaints.

#2 – Aesthetics, not bleeding-edge graphics: Sadly, the average gamer tends to associate the worth of a game with the “awesomeness” of the graphics. I wish this was not so, but considering how many players are dinging a game like Skyrim for its graphics (which for me are still in the mind-bogglingly cool realm – I don’t care if there are some tightly constrained games with marginally better-looking visuals), it’s definitely an issue. This is especially frustrating for programmers like me who aren’t great at art. 🙂 But Koster’s point is that you don’t need to be bleeding-edge to look good. The graphics and style of Bastion really impressed me this year.  Frankly, we passed the point of diminishing returns several years ago, IMO, which means it costs an increasingly greater amount of time and effort to produce a marginal improvement in graphical fidelity (or “awesomeness”). The biggest publishers can still ride that train, but I think for most developers it’s more a question of what the artists can do within a limited amount of time rather than what the next-gen consoles or highest-end computers can do.

#3 – Embrace Tools. Abraham Lincoln is famously quoted as saying, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”  Meaning spend the time in preparation and making sure your tools are up to the task. This was something that bit me repeatedly in Frayed Knights. When I finally broke down and spent time building even the simplest of tools to help me through some bottlenecks, things improved substantially. And I was constantly fighting tool limitations (and bugs). The simplest example I can make is the plethora of RPG Maker titles now available – both free and commercial.  Yes, making a good, quality RPG is still a major effort even with that powerful toolkit.  But the tools (and, obviously, the engine) make it several times easier. Or, to put it in more practical terms – it frees up the time and effort to be put towards quality, rather than just getting the game to work.

#4 – Embrace Procedural Content, but don’t over-rely on it. This was another huge lesson I learned with Frayed Knights (which had very little procedural content, aside from some randomized encounters and loot) which I am really trying to apply to the sequel. I’m going to have a larger post about this in the future, but it really goes hand-in-hand with tools creation. The bottom line is to make it so that the designers only have to focus on custom-building the parts that are important to them. Let automation handle the rest.

#5 – Systemic Game Design vs. Content-Driven Design: This is a toughie with RPGs and adventure games (which he acknowledges), but an emphasis on repeatable systems and mechanics can really save the day. This also goes hand-in-hand with the procedural content and tools points, too. I mean, a big aspect of RPGs (for me) is exploration, which can be loosely interpreted as “devouring content.” At a voracious rate.  But at it’s heart, an RPG has a few core systems – particularly combat (usually) which can be emphasized without necessarily turning into repetitive grinding.

I think this is more important than many RPG fans & designers might credit it. What constitutes a “grind?” For me, it’s repetitive gameplay. What makes combat repetitive? It’s when I have little variation on my actions or tactics. It doesn’t matter if the graphics for whatever monster I’m fighting have gone through a dozen different changes – if they are all acting the same but getting tougher, I’m grinding. I’m getting bored. It’s the variations of actual gameplay that keep me interested – from interesting tactical & terrain-based challenges or unusual new powers that force me to cope and vary my tactics. Or – better yet – more interesting AI approaches. Or multiple competing goals (like, “don’t let the hostages get killed”). Think about how well X-Com worked back in the day with essentially random battlefields and challenges. Build upon a solid foundation, and all of this can come pretty easily and new content becomes icing on the cake.

#6 – Embrace Prototyping: I can’t agree with this one more. I have an issue with giant design documents. And there is an overwhelming abundance of evidence that getting a playable “demo” working internally as early as possible is a major factor in the success of a game.  The prototype doesn’t even have to be playable on the computer. RPG designers – ever consider running your concepts as a pen-and-paper D&D game first before committing them to code & data?

 

 

 

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

A Real X-Com?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 5, 2012

Okay. Here’s what would be incredibly funny (if unlikely). 2K Marin’s first-person shooter X-Com remake tanks, while Firaxis’s newly-announced X-Com: Enemy Unknown – which sounds to be a straight-up strategy game with turn-based tactical combat – sells near-Civilization quantities.

Anyway, we old-school fans of the original may have reason to rejoice…

Game Informer – X-Com: Enemy Unknown Cover Revealed

The excerpt that makes me fight to temper my glee and optimism with caution:

“Unlike 2K Marin’s previously announced XCOM shooter, which sparked tempers among longtime fans for turning its back on the series’ cerebral roots, this title is a full-on strategy game that puts players in command of a global anti-alien defense force. XCOM’s leader needs a worldwide perspective where threats are identified, populations reassured, and national leaders mollified – but a tactical mind is just as critical considering every shot XCOM’s soldiers fire on the battlefield is under the player’s turn-based control.”

Man, I hope it rocks. The fact that it’s going to be released on the consoles as well does make me a little concerned that it’s going to be too console-ized (which can be a good thing or a bad thing, but too often means “dumbed down” and a bad thing). But while I’m trying to temper my hope, there’s a very good chance this will be my first mainstream game pre-order I’ve made in years.

 

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

Bite-Sized Hardcore Gaming Manifesto

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 4, 2012

Cliff Harris breaks things down in a way that I think many of us here feel. The industry these days likes to divide the market into two groups: Hardcore gamers with lots of time on their hands and a passion for realistic violence, high-action, and long games; and the casual gamers, who are almost exclusively female and who like cute, fuzzy free-to-play games that take no more than 15 minutes to play.

Guess what? There are probably more players out there who don’t neatly fit in either category as those who do. Like… um, me. And most other gamers who started out in the “hardcore” category as kids but grew up and now have work and families to worry about. And hey, not all women gamers prefer the so-called “casual” games, and not all the people who play those games fit that characterization either.

So what about games for the rest of us … the people who don’t neatly fit into either category? The people who love big games but don’t have big chunks of time to play them? The people who are experienced (you can even call us “jaded”) and aren’t impressed by the newest game with flashiest graphics which is repeating the same gameplay we’ve repeated dozens of times over the years?

Cliffski has a manifesto for game developers and publishers. It will probably be ignored by its intended audience, but I think many readers here will greet it with some enthusiasm:

Cliffski’s Blog: Bite Sized Hardcore

Preach on, Brother Cliffski!

Now, I’m not totally anti-grind (I actually kinda like having the option to make some small progress this way when I don’t have enough time to “properly” play through a segment of the game), nor am I fundamentally opposed to the “freemium” approach of some games which are extra-cheap or free but offset it by charging small amounts for in-game bonus items. I have a little bit more of an issue with a full-price game that tries to pull the same-thing, especially when the “bonus” feels like something that was once integral to the game but was ripped out in order to charge more. But overall, I like the list – more as guidelines than hard-and-fast rules.

And to that list, I’d like to add the following:

9) No arbitrary save-game restrictions! With some acceptable exceptions (like in the middle of a combat sequence, for example), I expect to be able to save and exit the game at any time, and then come back and pick up more-or-less where I left off.  If for some technical reason your game does have “checkpoints” rather than save-anywhere, EVERY SINGLE FRICKIN’ ONE OF THOSE CHECKPOINTS SHOULD BE A VALID SAVE LOCATION! None of this B.S. about having three or four checkpoints in-between valid save points. You obviously DO have the game state recorded from each check point in memory, so there’s no reason you can’t store it to the disk.

10) Make your PC game as playable as possible WITHOUT a game controller plugged in. It’s fine to port a game from the consoles and note that the game plays “best” with a controller. You optimized it for that input device, that’s fine.  But make a friggin’ effort. Not all PC gamers want an XBox controller plugged into their system, but they DO want to play your game, especially as a “casual” diversion between sessions of “serious” work. Ridiculous control schemes that are obviously just brain-dead remappings of controller inputs poorly implemented on the keyboard are not acceptable. And no, players won’t appreciate your attempt to “force” them to use a game controller on their PC.

11) In addition to keeping the cut-scenes short, make them easy to pause, review, or at least check out the summary and critical exposition / explanations revealed in the scene. Because when the wife enters the room and needs to talk, she does like having to wait until the cut-scene is over.

I think Cliffski’s list and my additions aren’t really tall orders, even for indies.

Filed Under: Casual Games, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: The Independent RPG of the Year!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 3, 2012

This time, it’s not just wishful thinking…

 

GameBanshee’s “Game of the Year” awards are up!

 

And Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon took the “Independent RPG of the Year” award for 2011! I don’t know how narrowly we managed to win against Dungeons of Dredmor, the runner-up, but with the amount of respect I have for that game, it’s quite an honor.

Frayed Knights was also the runner-up for the new category, “Best Character System” award, while Drakensang: The River of Time took the top slot. I’m still quite pleased with this. I went a little overboard on character development in Frayed Knights, and while I think it could use a little bit of clean-up (one of many little projects for Frayed Knights 2), I’m pretty proud of its depth. It’s great to be recognized for that. I’m glad that GameBanshee has added this category to (in their words) “recognize the games that haven’t overlooked a good progression system in order to cater exclusively to the cinematic-seeking crowd.”

Besides those mentioned above, other big winners included The Witcher 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Bastion and Might & Magic Heroes VI also find a place. I’ll let you read more to see how everything shook out.

GameBanshee, as many of you know, is a news site for PC RPGs, which a few years ago might have been quite the specialization. Gareth Fouche voiced the opinion on Twitter that this was the best year for PC RPGs in a long time. I don’t know that I’d fully echo those sentiments, but I’d say at least the last 18 months have reinforced the belief in my mind that while the genre may be struggling with a bit of an identity crisis, things are definitely brighter for PC RPG fans than they appeared five years ago. This is particularly true for those who are tuned to the indie RPG scene, with the quality and variety expanding by leaps and bounds. And it sure doesn’t suck to be a retro-gamer these days, either, with old classics getting a new lease on life through digital distribution and actually getting talked about again by new players. Once again, the pronouncements of the death of the genre have proven not only premature, but dead wrong.

Here’s to a great year for RPGs behind us, and many more in front of us! And here’s hoping that the “Best Indie RPG” award stays hotly contested with a steady stream of excellent titles!

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Mainstream Games - Comments: 18 Comments to Read

RPG Design: Skill-Based Systems

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 2, 2012

Okay, I figured I’d chat a bit about the features of skill-based RPG systems – good, bad, and neutral. This is a continuation of my previous articles about the skill-based vs. class-based systems, and the features of class-based systems.

When I first started playing skill-based systems, I thought I’d never want to go back to class-based systems again. This was really nothing more than a reaction to discovering that skill-based systems overcame the significant limitations of the early class-based systems. It took a little while before the honeymoon was over and I got tired of the limitations inherent in the early skill-based systems as well. Fortunately, game rules have generally experimented and improved over time, borrowing from the best ideas of either style of rule system, so that while weaknesses remain they are not quite as overwhelming as found in the early systems.

But here are some things to bear in mind with skill-based systems:

Increased Flexibility: This is the obvious advantage of skill-based systems. Rather than adhering to a designer-manufactured template that may not match your character concept, you can build your character piecemeal and achieve a closer match to your ideas. Note that I said “closer match.” Skill-based systems still have to abstract abilities and balance the game somehow, so you may still have a tough time creating your perfect rock-star / brain surgeon / test pilot character.

Gradual Progression: This may or may not be a feature of your skill-based game. While level-based progression is normally paired with class-based systems, that’s not necessarily the case. But more often than not, skill-based games offer the players the chance to build up their skills or attributes gradually rather than massive increases all at once. In a system like The Elder Scrolls or the Call of Cthulhu dice-and-paper RPG, this could be a chance at an increase based on usage. In a game like the Hero System or World of Darkness, you can purchase your increases directly with experience points (or some similar analog). Gradual progression is more realistic, but lacks the inherent milestones of level-based progress, which is a great reward / gratification mechanic.

Skill Combination Imbalance: It’s a lot harder to balance skill-based games, and one of the challenges comes from the difficulty of testing all possible skill combinations. If the game system is “interesting,” meaning that there are several skills that can interact with each other in a course of action, there’s a chance that some “combos” of skills are far more effective than others. If it’s extreme enough, this can cause game balance issues. One example of this is in Dungeons & Dragons 3.0, where the reworked “Haste” spell – which was intended to make higher-level melee characters moderately more deadly in combat –  could be used to allow spellcasters to double-cast spells every round, which was an extremely powerful side-effect (and corrected in 3.5).  And speaking from personal experience, the challenges of balancing feats like Dual Wield, Speedy, Auto-Fade and the various special attacks in Frayed Knights felt like it was constantly fraught with peril. I still don’t know if I got ’em all right, but at least they don’t seem terribly broken.

Skill Specialization Imbalance: This issue is often a problem with unbounded skill systems. The game mechanics are normally balanced with the assumption that players will attempt a somewhat rounded character, and even make efforts to enforce it (sometimes with the imposition of an artificial level-based mechanic). But there’s always a risk that a player may create a paraplegic pantaphobic idiot-savant who can destroy worlds with mind. It’s really hard to create an interesting adventure that works for a character like that.

Paradox of Choice: Creating a new character for an unfamiliar system can be a frustrating in any sytem. Trying to choose one of a dozen character classes in a class-based system can be hard enough. Trying to choose eight out of forty potential skills can be much worse, particularly when the player has no idea whether or not their favoring of the “Big Guns” skill might actually be nearly useless later in the game.  (Yeah, I’ve been there…)

Characters Can Adapt (eventually): In a skill-based RPG, players may have the opportunity to adapt their characters over time to the content and demands of the campaign.  Or perhaps players might like to experiment with some other skills they ignored earlier in the game, without starting over with a new character. Skill-based game systems do allow this kind of character transformation in a way that class-based systems generally don’t. (Let’s ignore respeccing for the purpose of this article…)

Everybody Does Everything: This is particularly a problem with multiplayer games, but the tendency for players is to take all useful skills (useful can be defined as those skills most conducive to the character’s continued survival, followed by those that work best to maximize progression rate), resulting in all characters being minor variants of a jack-of-all-trades theme.

Minor Skills Get Ignored Completely: With players focused on maximizing all of the skills that yield the biggest bang-for-the-buck, there’s never enough points left over to spend on less significant skills. Which means they will be ignored completely by 99.9% of the player base. Pickpocketing is a great example for me… it’s generally a high-risk / low-reward skill which is useless by the time the player can build it up to a reasonable success level. Plus it often doesn’t fit most character concepts, unless your concept is a dirtbag thief who likes robbing the poor.  (From my perspective, anyone deserving of robbing is often deserving of killing, and since most games don’t throw me against enemies that are too tough to kill but safe to pickpocket, it’s of little value). Maybe I’ve just asked the wrong people, but I’ve never found anybody who has really put any effort into increasing pickpocketing in a skill-based game. And since nobody will use it, the designers don’t bother doing anything interesting with it. It’s a vicious cycle that really dictates that the skill should be removed from the game entirely. Exceptions exist, no doubt, but it’s a problem.

Players Tend to Stay Within Comfort Zones: With class-based games, the early choice(s) of class will dictate play-style for players, which may force them outside of their comfort zone to take on a different type of role than they are familiar with. But in skill-based games, there’s a tendency for players to simply build up the skills that allow them to most closely match a familiar play-style.  This is neither good nor bad, but I do find it refreshing to learn how to “grow into” a less familiar role in a new game system.

Skill-Based Adventure Design: Creating adventures focusing on role-playing and skill usage rather than roles can be a little trickier, but IMO more rewarding. It may force the designer to very deliberately allow multiple approaches to overcoming challenges to make sure players get rewarded for interesting but often less key skills. This is a more satisfying approach as a player, but it may also mean more work for the designer, and lead to balance issues – for example, when everything can be bypassed by a high level of stealth, or when boss encounters are created that demand a high level of combat proficiency from characters who may not have favored combat skills).

Expansion Challenges: Adding a new class to a game that provides a variation on an existing role is fairly easy. But adding a new skill to an existing CRPG as an expansion can be extremely problematic, as the entire previous game must be retro-fitted to allow players to use that skill. In the case of purely combat-oriented or competence-enhancing skills, this may not be a big deal. But going back and making sure the new “computer use” skill has value in the original campaign may be a major pain in the butt as a developer.  Then there’s the skill combo balance problem, revisited.

So there you go. No doubt I’ve missed some aspects… feel free to chime in here and suggest other considerations of class or skill based systems that I skipped.

I’ve found that these are good to review periodically as a game designer. Designers will mold a new system to fit their vision, and the aspects of class-based versus skill-based RPG systems shouldn’t be chosen haphazardly. They may be dictated by license or engine, but if so, the overall game should be structured appropriately. It’s an art, not a science, but there is no one “perfect” system. As either a player or a designer (or both!), it’s important to recognize the issues involved and not just assume that “bolting on” a variation from a favorite system will automatically work to improve things.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 8 Comments to Read



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