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.

My guess is that it's because of a Zerg rush.

I'm sorry about this, but hopefully it'll all work fine from now on.

Downtime

Reward and Punishment

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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.

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.

1. Our frontal lobe and the prefrontal cortex
2. 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.

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.

Not extraordinary in any way regarding my pshysique and I rarely (read: never) work out. If I did, how would I get the time to blog?

But the thing is, there's this iPhone App; "100 Pushups" that's an application you run every second day and it tells you how many push-ups to do (at least) for you to be able to 100 of them within six weeks. (There's also another version that's "200 Situps".)

Basically, it does:

The brilliant thing here is, it works! Well, I don't know if I'll be able to do 100 when it's all over, but it actually makes me wanna try and keep on doing it because of one simple thing:

The graphs.

It shows me how many I've been able to do each time and if I do well, it increases ever so slowly. It's a highscore table, damn it!

They've created a real world meta game for me to play. I want to really push it to be able to get the real high scores.

There's just one tiny problem. I haven't been able to try it more than once, because after my first day I got muscle inflammation because of over exertion. FAIL! And now I have to wait for it to go away before I can continue.

Let's just say that less than 100 was too much for my superior nerd-body.

So really, all we (I?) need to change my way of doing things is a highscore table? Looks like it.

This case is really a lot like what Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell talks about at DICE at one point. How "games" are reaching into the real world.

http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the-Box-Presentation (26/2/2010)

It's a great vid and I highly recommend it. He talks about several interesting things, some of which I'll discuss later here on my site as well. But in it, he talks about how Fords 's new hybrid cars have a field with leaves in the dashboard. Depending on how environmental friendly you drive, the leaves increase, increasing your "highscore".

It's absolutely fantastic! A simple display with some vegetation on it change how people drive!

Problem is... I wouldn't be looking at the speed, I would look at my highscore.

Pwetty! ^_^

It, in turn is just like "The Fun Theory", where they make people take the stairs instead of escalator and throw things in the trash instead of on the ground, by making it fun. It was initiated by Volkswagen.

Amazing power is to be had if making things fun.

Sometimes the "perfect" value when tweaking... Let's say the jump strength in a platformer is 4.56697. That's the value that makes the game feel just right, and if it's "hidden" as most variables are, then it's just fine.

But sometimes, in some games certain variables are shown to the player. Like the power of spells in a Role Playing Game or maybe the duration of a boost-skill?

Take Mass Effect 2 for example. In it you, the player, can read about the duration of skills for each level, the exact range and radius, the damage it does and even the percentage of another variable (weapon damage).

Right; 1.5 sec, 60%, 3.0 sec and 3 meters. Enough info for you, or do you need a chart?

When doing things like this, what I'm wondering about is how far should you go to make the variable values "pretty". How much of a compromise? Now, in many cases I'm sure we're only talking about rounding it to the closest decimal, but sometimes I think this can be a bother and something that's a pain for the designer.

The perfect duration for fantastic gameplay might be 57 seconds, but that's in no way as pretty as 60. But maybe 60 in reality is too much? Not worth arguing about some might say, but at the same time, isn't the micro tweaking what really makes a game great?

Also, when exposing the variables, you have to keep them simple enough for that particular audience to grasp. In Dungeon & Dragon-games for example, there's a lot more statistics than . can find in Mass Effect, and that's not a problem for the normal D&D-audience, because they're used to it and might in fact like it. Meanwhile, it scares me and I much more appreciate the Mass Effect 2 approach with "medium amount" of info.

But heck, you always have to cater to the specific audience regarding all subjects and not only numbers, I guess.

This post was finished at 22:54, but it might be wiser of me to say 23:00. Sounds better, don't ya think?

And as some of you might have noticed, I love trying out new tools and tell you about them if they can help you out in the design process.

http://arcadeberg.com/web/textflow/ (Textflow)

http://arcadeberg.com/causerie/office-live-workspace/ (Office Live Workspace)

http://arcadeberg.com/misc/my-new-best-friend/ (Evernote)

http://arcadeberg.com/causerie/organize-my-designs/ (DropBox)

The Suite I've stumbeled upon is "Zoho". They seem to got it all, writer, presentations, wiki, project management, you name it. And apparently, from what I've gathered so far, they're good! Their writing tool sure is prettier than Google's and if you're into formating your text, Zoho seems to be a better choice.

Zoho, sounds like a redneck town.

I've always been a Google fanboy so it'll be hard to like Zoho, but I'll give it a real chance and hopefully it's even better than what Google is offering. Although, I haven't found any drawing tools in Zoho yet.

There's nothing like always having your docs within reach!

http://www.zoho.com/ (22/2/2010)

But nowadays, isn't there an uncanny valley in gameplay?

The big studios spend a lot of resources on the writing, characters, dialogue, setting and environment, creating a very believable game world. And then when we encounter a very "video game:y" solution, like a very conveniently placed platform, lever or trigger we're smacked in the face.

It does at least ruin the experience somewhat for me. Overall I'm very good at accepting the premise in both movies and games, but I do often think "How convenient..." in games like Assassin's Creed and other realistic games. But I never think like that when I play Mario, because there it all makes perfect sense within the game world.

Reach the roof. Just climb the conveniently placed scaffold and jump to the conveniently placed sinks to finally reach the roof, on which you'll find a very conveniently positioned hang glider.

I think that when working with a believable setting, you have to think long and hard about the context for in which the gameplay takes place.

While being abroad I met with a game developer student, recently graduated. It was pretty much random that I met him and I didn't know who he was. We introduced each other and we talked about our diciplines of development. He told me that he was a character artist and I told him I'm a game designer. That's when he said to me:

- Game Designer? I do not know what that is.

I was totally in shock and didn't know what to do. I tried explaining it and I think he eventually understood it somewhat. But apparently, some game development schools have a long way to go....

But I've been thinking about a few things while being away. So tomorrow I'll make sure to write a couple of posts (published every other day) about:

• Uncanney Valley of Gameplay
• One hand games
• Beat Boxing