Quick Update
Hello people!
Things been hectic for a while now and I'm going abroad for a short while in a few hours, so I'll make this super quick.
First of all, sorry for several downtimes that has lasted a couple of hours each. I've talked to my host and they're trouble shooting the machines to see what's causing it. Hopefully they're done and it won't happen again.
Secondly, Bob Came in Pieces, the well reviewed game in which I'm credited is now not only available on the developer Ludosity's site and Steam, but also on Gamersgate for both PC and Mac! If you haven't already; get it!
http://www.gamersgate.com/all?q=bob+came+in+pieces (31/3/2010)
Thirdly, my spare time project Iskall has grown since it started and is now made by a team of 13 people, so my work as a project manager (in addition to the game/level design) is increasing. It's both good and bad. It's not as fun as designing, but I still enjoy it and it's a great opportunity for me to increase my management and administration skills.
That's it for now. I gotta get moving!
Off I go then, Tally-Ho!
Consider the UI
I just got Wolfenstein RPG for my iPhone because I felt I wanted something RPG-ish to play and I hadn't yet played any of the Id FPS RPG-thingies, so I thought I'd give it a shot.
Anyhow, the thing I wanted to share with you was something that happened to me. Have a look at this first screen and look at the top of the screen and then in the center at the syringe that's referred to.
Evade Syringe
When I noticed the open hand icon and the text "Evade Syringe" I thought; "Whoah! That was close. I almost stepped on the syringe! I'd better avoid it.", so I left it alone and moved on.
STOP!
I read the open hand as "Stop!" and "Evade Syringe" as a warning. But lookie, lookie, what I noticed shortly thereafter:
9mm Rounds
The hand means to pick up and not to stop and the text was the name of the object. The "Evade Syringe" was a usable item that I could use to gain some evasion skill for a short duration.
It's not a huge deal, and I won't be making that mistake again. But the hand in combination with that name sure fooled me.
So lesson learned for me, when making user interface you have to think on how it's read.
This is more how a pick up hand looks in my head:
I actually made this pic. 
We’re Super-Empowered Hopeful Individuals
Since you're here I suppose you're a gamer of some sort. Maybe even one that plays online?
Either way; you play games.
And you know what? You're great! You can solve the worlds problems.
In a TED-talk by Jane McGonigal, a researcher and game designer, she explains how we're super people. Apparently, I'm a virtuoso. I like that. Someone who is dazzlingly skilled in any field. I wonder what my field is?
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html (25/3/2010)
Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.
- TED.com
Even if she might seem a bit "out there" and overly optimistic at times. I do agree with her as it has long been a fact that we do learn stuff from games.
Online player seems to have four super powers.
The clip is 20min long and it'll make you feel good about yourself. TED always beat random YouTube:ing.
Is asking for help cheating?
When you get a work assignment as a test from a company you've applied to work for, is it cheating if you ask someone else to help you?
I think not.
I've heard people saying that's it's not okay, because a test is to see what you, the individual know and what you can do by yourself. I think that's misleading.
Of course, if you get a level design test asking you to build a level, or a programming test asking you to actually code a small game, you can't let someone else do it. But I think it's only fair to ask for hints and tips from others. Heck, I'd even recommend it.
No one would complain if you looked at other finished products and get inspiration from them. Nor would anyone complain if you did a hefty amount of googling to get your job done. But it's so taboo to ask other for help.
What's the difference? It's all "extelligense". And even when I work "for real", I still often ask others what they think and want their feedback.
Example:
If the test is to list the five games that's most groundbreaking in its way to present the narrative and why, is it not okay to ask what other people think?!
I mean, it's still you and your response that's the final thing and I think it's great if you first ask people so you can think "Oh yeah, you're right! Why didn't I think of that.". That's a learned knowledge. You now know about that game, and you're really impressed on how it presented it's narrative and you'll look it up.
What you can't do however is ask someone to list their five favorite games and just use their answers.
Okay, just wanted to share.
Not cheating as in cheat-code or "loving" someone else.
And I just have to link to this really awesome game I found about 30 minutes ago, called Dragondot!
http://nmccoy.net/games/game06_dragondot/applet/index.html (22/3/2010)
I love it because of it's absolute simplicity and how it plays on our struggle and enjoyment of getting stronger in-game. I couldn't stop playing until I beat it.
NMcCoy's Games, Game 06: Dragondot
The fight for wanting to help out
I got a key for the StarCraft 2 Beta today from a friend. (Thanks Jonas.)
I suck at it. There, I said it.
But enough about my tremendous RTS-suckiness.
People envy the people having SC2-keys. And people are now screaming their lungs out, because some people have been getting invites they can use to invite other people into the game. "Everybody" wants one.
When you get access to a beta, you get the privilege to play the game before everyone else, right?
Sometimes you have to buy one game to get the beta key to another. Sometimes you have to sign up for a newsletter or register on a site. Sometimes, it's something completely different. But you usually have to put some effort into getting one, no matter the game, if it's a closed beta.
This is for me fascinating.
What a beta is, is for the developers GETTING help to find and iron out the bugs, test servers and see how well the tweaking works. The goal is to use it to be able to finish the game and do it well. It is not about giving something to the player. Yet, it's treated as a divine gift from the developers. They're so kind to let us try the game, even though it's not even done yet.
I don't like this attitude.
I'm gonna play some more StarCraft 2 now, because I can play it before everyone else. Thanks Blizzard!
What a privilege...
Make It A Bonus
There's a short article at Gamasutra about some of Blizzard's Design Concepts that I think is definately worth a read.
Blizzard
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27640/GDC_Blizzards_Core_Game_Design_Concepts_.php (18/3/2010)
Many of the things they talk about are "common stuff" and maybe even quite obvious, but as noted:
Some may seem obvious, but often it is the obvious advice that we tend to forget about first.
- Frank Cifaldi, Gamasutra
But the main reason I wanted all of you to see this was because of the very last of them, which i think is brilliant in its simplicity. It refers to reward and punishment as I'm a big fan of exploring.
Make It A Bonus
As designers, say Pardo, there is a natural tendency to worry about punishing the player rather than rewarding them, but a clever designer can play with a player's psychology and turn it into a bonus.
Pardo related an example of World of Warcraft's rest system: when the game launched, players were punished for playing too long by having their experience gain percentage drop from 100 to 50 percent after a couple hours of play.
Beta players universally hated this idea and were screaming bloody murder," said Pardo.
The fix? Turning this into a bonus scenario instead. Players now start at 200 percent experience and drop down to 100 percent. It's the exact same mechanic, but now it's a bonus instead of a punishment.
It's nothing new that the guys over at Blizzard often makes the right design decisions but this is easily amongst my favorites!
Sucker Punch
And while I'm linking to Gamasutra articles and trying to sound clever anyway, I might as well give you this one too:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27638/GDC_Infamous_Open_World_Trickery.php (18/3/2010)
It's about how a small team managed to create the huge environment you see in Infamous (Sucker Punch). They're using a hexagon-system and making sure to limit the line of sight.
In Infamous, all of the street intersections are "Y" shaped -- this is a natural effect of the hex-based layout, but it also means players can't look straight down a long street. "If we provide really long sightlines, you get bored running down the street," Fox said.
Not only does it help with the gameplay, it's a lifesaver performance-wise as well. It's common to do it like that. We (GRIN) did it for Terminator Salvation as well.
Happy reading! Now I gotta finish the "Hitting and Getting Hit"-chapter in the Iskall GDD.
Five books about games
One of the good things from back while studying game design at the University 2005, was that we got some good tips of books to read. Some which were not so very helpful and some that were really great!
One of the books was "Theory of Fun" by Raph Koster, and whenever there's talk about game design and books, this book is mentioned.
There's a site called FiveBooks which choose an expert within a topic and then lets him pick the best five books regarding the subject. Their tagline is "The best five books on everything."
They've now published a list of five books about games, and guess what; The first book is Theory of Fun. Regardless, there are four more books on the list and while I haven't read any of the other four I would really like to recommend them, as they seem to hold great information and lots for you (and me) to learn.
http://five-books.com/interviews/tom-chatfield (16/3/2010)
The books are:
- A Theory of Fun - Raph Koster
- Homo Ludens - Johan Huizinga
- Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot - Julian Dibbell
- Playbooks and Checkbooks - Stefan Szymanski
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
I'll personally try and get my hands on the one about Flow first.
Books. Five of them.
All your base are belong to us, says the company.
A pretty default section of a contract you sign with a game developing company is that the company owns whatever you do within the area of video games, on and off working hours. And some companies doesn't like you doing anything at all regarding video game development other than what you do at work.
I know a horror story about a guy working at company X (I shouldn't mention which one here) but did modding and level designing using another rival company's engine/editor during his spare time. He got fired for working with the enemy.
Of course, you can always try and negotiate your contract. When I signed with Hello There we made it perfectly clear that they only own the stuff I do for their project in their office. They leave my site, my own designs and every spare time project alone. It wasn't a problem.
I understand why companies do this:
- The risk of people taking explicit things they learn at work and implementing it in their own projects.
- The risk of people working very hard on projects in their own time, affecting their performance at work.
- Etc.
But me, personally, I'm still not entirely convinced it's the way to go, because I think it's choking peoples' creativity and blowing our their fire.
If I hire a level designer, I would be thrilled if she's so passionate about level design that after she goes home, she keeps doing it, even if it's not for me. She's still practicing her craft and makes for a better resource for my company. Maybe she learnt something amazing while playing around at home?
Look at things from different perspectives.
Take me for example, I run this site where I write about game design, right? Because of, or thanks to this site, I keep focusing my thoughts and try to communicate different ways of thinking, problems, solutions and ways of doing things. If I didn't "practice" at home, I would be much less of a designer than I am today. (Not saying I'm anything special.)
And besides, if I wasn't able to, or allowed to do what I love during my own time as well, I would be less of a happy guy. And a sad person is a bad worker.
I say: Let people keep doing what they're doing!
Sporadic Play
Today I found a really interesting text about Sporadic Play on Raph Koster's blog. Raph is a persistent world game guru and has made games like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies.
http://www.raphkoster.com/2010/03/10/gdc10-sporadic-play/ (11/3/2010)
In it, there's a lot to learn about how sporadic play works, some pro and cons and even some tips about how to make it better.
It's a lot about how we can make players feel attracted to the game because they don't have to spend a lot of time with it per session. Heck, they can't spend a lot of time with it.
I don't think it's a bad thing to spoil the ending, instead I think it's a good tease to make you read the entire thing:
Sporadic play has been around for hundreds of years. It can be integrated into many types of games. It can be used to create companion experiences for existing games. It can help small developers extend their content, and it respects the players’ time.
Another thing. Since the movie "The Hurt Locker" won a bunch of Oscar's, I watched it yesterday and maybe it's just me... It's probably just me, but I think Jeremy Renner, the guy playing the main character looked just like David Jaffe (creator of God of War) and that thought stuck with me during the entire movie.
The cheeks? I don't know why I think they're so alike...
Merging Story (Context) with optimal Gameplay?
At the moment, I'm working on some design for my spare time project I've been talking about earlier; Iskall.
The challenge I'm currently working on is to have the story, its events and the introduction of new gameplay elements to work together.
The game's overall story is set. There are a few scenarios in it, not dependent on being in a particular order to work. And all the themes for the levels are set. Right now, they're all listed in the order that makes most sense and creates the best narrative, experience and allows for some nice transitions between the levels. That is, if you only look at the story.
But here's the catch. Many of the events are directly intertwined with the introduction of new gameplay mechanics. For me, gameplay always comes first, but sometimes you have to compromise since a game is not only mechanics, it's an experience to be had by the player.
Let's draw a parallel to Super Mario Bros.. Nintendo could have introduced the Mushroom that turns Mario into Super Mario during the last levels, but it was better for the game to introduce it in the very first level. I can introduce some of Iskall's stuff very late, but it'll be better if it's early and vice versa.
True Story
And also, some events are directly tied to a specific level. Some events I can move freely between the levels, while some must be at specific theme.
Meaning, different story sections have different dependencies like theme, level and gameplay mechanic.
I have a chart showing in what order and when I want each new gameplay element to be introduced. Stuff like new enemies, new abilities, etc. But just cutting and pasting in the story to accomodate that chart doesn't result in a tight presentation context-wise. So what I'm doing right now is to find that balance.
I don't have a sure solution for this, and I don't know how it'll end since I'm not done yet. But the way I'm approaching it is to try and constantly look at the big picture and I'm trying to spread it out, so all the good stuff isn't too close together.
There will have to be some editing from both ends to make it feel just right.
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