Withstand the temptation
I'm back!
Finally, things are as they should again. I'm back home and the celebration of Easter is over and done with, even though I miss the food. And I'm finally working again. Six days without game development... Crazy!
Apart from professional work, I spend my time with Iskall as usual and the thing I wanted to discuss was a problem I'm having.
I'm constantly being very influenced by other games and I have to say "No!", to myself.
A big part of Iskall is it's fighting mechanics and the core has been set since last year. Yet, as soon as I play a game with a good fighting mechanics I think "Wow, our game should work more like this!", and the. I have to have an internal struggle with myself, convincing me it's not a good idea because it's not according to the set key points.
Some of the key points about the fighting in Iskall are:
- Uncomplicated controls
- Puzzle elements into it
- Require a lot of moving about with the avatar
There are a few more, but those are the ones relevant for this example. Even though I have these points, when I recently played BlazBlue which is an extremly fast paced and tremendously hardcore fighting game which in no way fits my key points, I can't help but think that since the game's fighting is great, it'd be swell to incorporate some of it into Iskall.
This has happened while playing a bunch of games, and not only regarding the fighting.
I definately think it's great to look at other games to isolate what's good and what's not but even more important than a "design" is to have a "vision" and a "goal" of what you're trying to achieve, so you always have something to work against when getting new ideas.
"Wouldn't it be cool if you could throw puppies into a meat grinder?". It would, but it's not a good idea if you're making a children's game.
I think this is true not only for game design, but every kind of creative work that requires many decisions to be made: Game Design, Level Design, Art, Concepts, etc.
Btw, crunching the Farcry 2 editor at the moment for a mini-mini-project. I'd never used it before tonight but it's actually quite simple. At least the stuff I've been doing so far. Maybe I'll upload some pictures of the level in a couple of days.
Back to work along with my great friend, the energy drink!
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. 
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.
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!
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.
Punish or Help the Weak?
I'm a bit busy now and during this weekend, so I'll use my old trick of doing a repost of a post I wrote for AboutGameDesign.com when the topic was:
Reward and Punishment
*******************************************************************
To get the really cool power ups in games, I usually have to be quite skilled to get them. If I'm skilled enough to get them, it's likely that I'm skilled enough to beat the game without them. If I'm not skilled enough to get them, it's likely that I'm not skilled enough to beat the game without them.
I want to discuss a common problem I see in games, to which I don't have a great solution; We often make the weak even weaker and the strong even stronger.
Shouldn't we encourage the weak to keep trying and give him some help? But then, if I get rewards for playing badly, why should I try to excel?
If I'm playing a game I'm good at, I feel that it's nothing short of damn right that I get to have the good stuff in the game. I've earned them. While playing Gradius and managing to keep level up my weapons, I'm on top of the world when I'm maxed up. But when I die, I lose my powers and the game gets a lot harder.
Now, in games like those Shoot 'em Ups it might be taken to the extreme, but the effect is most often there in games. If I'm a really good shot, I don't need as many bullets to kill my enemies, resulting in me having more bullets left to spend. If I'm a bad shot, I spend more bullets, making me have fewer left while I would need way more.
It's a natural way of things. Of course we want to create incentive for the player to play as well as he can and try and not to screw up. But some people just can't help themself from screwing up and what are we going to then? We could just say "Well, then you're not the right kind of person for this game." or we could give him a bigger gun and say "Okay, try again.".
I'm both pro and against the use of auto adjustment of the difficulty level. It's a great thing since, assuming it works, all players gets the "right" difficulty, but in a way, increased difficulty can be considered a punishment.
RPG's and other games where you can level up have a way of fixing this: Grinding. If you're beat, then just stay where you are in the game untill you're stronger and then continue. People complain about "grinding" but that's a topic on its own. Either way, it works.
But really, both the difficulty adjustments and the grinding aren't solutions for the problems with rewards and punishment, only whether or not the player can beat the game.
Some games, like Ninja Gaiden Sigma starts helping you out if you die too much (which I did...) where they basically say "Wow, you really suck. Do you want to admit your failure and play on the n00b-difficulty? We'll give you some health potions.", whereas I chose to accept.
So, in a way you get rewarded for not making it, but the reward isn't worth much. But at least it's something positive.
I'm not a fan of punishing the player as long as he's trying to play the game (cheaters, etc. deserve it). I think it's better to "not reward"
As I said, I don't have a great solution, but I think it's important to look at the situation and think long and hard about it. If the game is already hard enough, it shouldn't get even harder if you're a bad player.
Synthetic Happiness
I try to be a pretty organized guy, but sometimes it just doesn't work out. I just found a post-it note under my Wacom that's probably about six months old. It's a note saying I should post on this blog about Synthetic Happiness and the freedom of choice as discussed by Dan Gilbert over at TED.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html (2/3/2010)
Okay, so I'm a bit late, but it's time to do the post-it justice!
In this talk, Gilbert talks about two things of interest.
- Our frontal lobe and the prefrontal cortex
- Synthetic happiness
The prefrontal cortex makes it possible for us to simulate experiences in our head, so we don't actually have to carry them out. I won't put my head in a door opening and slam the door shut, because without even trying, I bet it'd hurt.
For a gamer, the prefrontal cortex gets to work a lot when we're playing RPG's and we have to place our skill points. In a way, I hate that part of RPG's because I always have such a hard time deciding on where to place my points, what skills to learn and even which class to play. I run every solution I can think of in my head to see what will result as the best/most fun way.
Because of that damn simulator in my head I can sit and stare at the character improvement screen for ages without making a decision. And I'm so scared of making the "wrong" choice.
And this is where the second point kicks into action, the Synthetic Happiness in relation to the freedom of choice.
Basically, the results of some research show that people feel happy even if they "shouldn't". After some time, a person winning the lottery and a person becoming handicapped are just as happy. And synthetic, the fake happiness is just as valid as the "real happiness".
But also, they show that people are much more satisfied with their choices if they were irreversible.
The example they give is a university hosting a photo course. At the end of the course, the students are only allowed to keep one out of two photos as a huge print. Half the group are told that they can always change which one to keep later, by just returning the old one. While the other half are told that they must make the decision now and they can't change it later on.
The numbers then show that most of the people that could change it afterwards weren't satisfied with their choice, while the people that got stuck with their choice were much more satisfied. The mind adapts to the current situation because it can't be changed, and they're experiencing synthetic happiness.
So if we then translate this into games; the way to make players feel best is by not letting them edit their choices during the game. Not allowing re-assignment of skill points and "unlearning of spells".
In a typical RPG you can't really make this bulletproof though, since you can always restart the game with a new character. As it should be, if you ask me.
But all in all, I think designers should really take the adaptation and synthetic happiness into consideration when designing.
It's been hiding for ages.
What am I doing?
Heavy Rain is doing really well in the reviews. I haven't actually read any of them, but Metacritic is my friend at times.
Nor have I played the entire game, only the demo but that's enough for me to discuss one thing.
The other day I was talking to a friend who'd just tried out the Heavy Rain demo on PSN and he said he really liked it. He said he liked that it seems like the game has a ton of story and that he really enjoyed the gameplay.
I agree about the story part, but the gameplay? Come on!?
During the entire demo, I rarely ever knew what I was doing untill afterwards, when it was already done.
Okay, I'm guessing and hoping this is something that has been discussed already in... Every review, but if it is, why is the game scoring so incredibly high? It's at 88/100 right now.
Let me explain. In the game, a bunch of different commands pop up on the screen. A normal situation in the game might offer you these options:
- Pull your right stick right.
- Pull your right stick in a semi circle counter clockwise.
- Press R1.
But the thing is; they don't tell you what each of the commands does. I don't know, maybe you're just supposed to "get it" naturally, but I sure didn't. They try and make them somewhat understandable since pulling the stick right will likely do something towards the right, like reaching out an arm, but I can't be sure.
So... If I press down I'll... Crouch? Go down on someone? Reach into my pocket?
For me, personally, that's completely crazy and I wouldn't dream of doing such a control scheme. However, that being said; I'm not saying it's a bad game. Everyone seems to love it, so maybe it's just me not getting it, and maybe it all becomes crystal clear if I get the entire game.
It's just that I can't let go of this weird design choice. Sure, maybe it's immersive for most, but for me it just breaks my suspension of disbelief.
When I told another friend about my frustration, he sent me a link to one of the comics over at Ctrl-Alt-Delete and really, they nailed it.
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20100212 (28/2/2010)
Despite all this, maybe it really is an amazing adventure to be had? I'm not saying it isn't.
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