Special Effects
I'm pretty much all about the gameplay, but I can't deny that it's all that matters in a game. There are many more aspects of a game that needs to be done right for a great gaming experience. Graphics, Audio, etc.
After all, what a game is, isn't a box of gameplay, but an experience to be had.
I played the Bayonetta demo yesterday. I had absolutely no expecations for it, but I must admit that I loved it. It's over the top in every way, estetic, extreme effects, blood, gore, extreme violence and japanese soft porn, all at once!
When I was checking up on the game earlier today online, I found a really interesting blog post from their effect designer; Kudo.
He makes a really good point on how important effects are for a game.
Bayonetta’s weapons, the impact of the hits, the enemy attacks, the smoke flowing out in the background, etc… When you have effects on, I think you can see that things seem more exhilarating, enemy attacks are easier to understand, and the atmosphere is played up more, amongst other things.
- Kudo, PlatinumGames
He also presents two videos with basically the same content, expect that one is with effects and one is without.
I'll embedd them here. The first one is without effects, the second one is with the effects included.
One cannot look at both videos and deny that there's more to a game than just gameplay. In fact, in the case with Bayonetta, I'd say the effect design is a huge part of the game. More so than in many other games.
If you want to read the original post, head over here:
http://blogs.ign.com/SEGA_Bayonetta/2009/12/15/134195/ (20/12/2009)
Heck, before playing the game I wasn't a fan of the character (visual) design at all, but after playing it, I even like that. It all fits together and the way she's extreme in everyway is just right. It all adds up to a gaming experience!
Girls are scary.
Handhelds… Bleh
I’m a big fan of handheld games. There are some games I really love on the Gameboy, Gameboy Advance and the Nintendo DS for example.
What I like are the games. The gameplay, the graphics and how incredible fun they are, proving that technical restrictions doesn’t have to mean less fun.
However, I don’t like them being “handheld”. Well… Rather; I don’t like having to hold the game in my hands.
Sure, it’s great that you can bring them along. I personally travel a few hours by train every other week and if I’m not using my laptop, it’s a pretty sure bet you’ll find me with my DS.
But when I’m home, I don’t wanna sit in a chair, looking at my own hands, having my arms and neck hurt. I wanna play on my big screen TV, leaning backwards in the sofa.
One of the best peripherals I’ve ever owned was the “Super Gameboy” for the Super Nintendo. It was a cartridge you put in the Super Nintendo console that you then inserted a Gameboy game into, and voila, you could play the games on the TV, using your SNES-controller. That’s how I played pretty much all of my Gameboy games.
I want to be able to do something like that today too. Okay, so the DS touch screen is required, then find a solution or just let me use the actual DS as the controller.
Okay, enough rage blogging. Time for me to go back to the Tales of Monkey Island!
Peculiar Art Style
I love it when developers try out alternative art styles. Even if they don't all suitable to my taste, I still appreciate them doing it, because diversity is needed.
There's finally some video of gameplay available on Deathspank from Ron Gilbert with a 2D/3D-mix.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/pax-09-deathspank/55826 (15/9/2009)
But the one game that has really caught my eye for its' art style alone is definitely 3D Dot Game Heroes.
What is this? Pixeled 3D-art? Well, it's different, hence you should have a looksie. As far as I know, there are no news about a US/European release.
Oh, and btw; I for one actually thinks the game looks like fun to play as well!
Wanting to make it harder than it is
When playing Scribblenauts I constantly find myself trying to make each and every scenario harder than it has to be. And it’s fun!
I’ve spent a few hours with Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS. A game that instantly became one of my all time favorite handheld games. It’s brilliant.
The game in itself is a designers dream, really. If you don’t know about it, I recommend reading up on it or checking some video review.
Summary, coming up:
You’re Maxwell and your mission is to get your hands on a Starite (a star) on every level. Either by simply reaching it, or by solving a puzzle; depending on if it’s an action level or a puzzle level.
The amazing mechanic however, is that you can bring up a keyboard and write any word in it, and it will spawn in the game world. And the crazy thing is, it has a huge amount of words hidden in there. I’ve spawned “laser sword”, “tranquilizer gun”, “wings”, “behemoth”, “ninja”, “shuriken”, “Kraken” and so on… And so on… And so on…
Each thing has a behavior, so you can attack with weapon, shoot with guns, drive vehicles, etc. If you write “hunter” and then “bear”, the hunter will kill the bear.
And yes, you can write “maid” to have her clean up and then type “shotgun”, grab it and kill her. Amazing, isn’t it?
The game in itself is worth all the attention it is getting. I, like many other developers are thinking:
- Why didn’t I think of that! Daaaamn you, 5th Cell!
You could chop it down with an "axe", use a "chain saw" or why not tie it to a "helicopter" with a "rope"?
But(!) the thing that I find really interesting with this game is how I, and most other people play it.
For example, there is one level where the mission is to reunite a cat on a rooftop with a girl standing on the ground.
An obvious, working and easy way to do this would be to simply type “ladder”, climb up to the cat, pick it up and carry it down to the girl.
Did I do that? Of course not! I tried a ton of stuff, like using dynamite to simply destroy the house. Unfortunately, the cat died and I failed. I used a “fan”, placed it on the roof and had the cat blown down. You can use a “helicopter” to get there. Or why not a “jetpack”?
I know I’m not alone in pondering on how to finish the level in a cool, interesting, unnecessary complex or just not an “obvious” way. That’s what makes the game fun for us.
You can’t really “beat the game” (don’t confuse this with finishing it, which you can) because we’re encouraged to try out these mad ideas.
This shows that if you give the player a big enough playing field, there’s a good chance for him to have fun on his own without constant pampering from the game’s creator. This is also often the case with games including a lot of physics, where the player is likely to play around with that, finding different solutions for a given problem.
It’s a fantastic thing, when players start having fun in a game when it’s not just by progressing in it. It’s more of play than a game.
Scribblenauts isn’t the only game that empowers this behavior, but it’s the game that does it best in a very long time! To be completely honest, right now I can’t think of any other game that does it as well.
PS.
The two funniest words I’ve found out yet are:
- Longcat – If you’re a lolcatz-fan and is familiar with 4chan, this one will crack you up!
- Ninjashark – It’s a friggin’ Ninja Shark! That is just pure awesomenesss!
Luck in games
When I personally design games I usually try and stay as far away from luck as possible.
Luck is basically the opposite of skill, since it’s something you don’t have control over. For me, that’s the opposite of what the player wants to do. He wants to perform, to affect the outcome of the game, right?
But yes, I can’t deny that luck can be very efficient in game design as well, even if I’m not personally a fan. Like when picking up a Power Up and you don’t know what you’re gonna get.
For me, a rule of thumb when it comes to implementing luck into a game is to figure out where it lies in the scale from “just for fun” and “hardcore competition”.
If the game is used for competing with other players and perhaps even just with bots, luck shouldn’t be a big factor. Imagine playing Quake online and once you have the aim on an opponent and press Fire, a slot machine appears on screen. If you get three of the same icon in a row, he dies, if not, he is unaffected. That’s not really a way to excel.
But when it comes to games that you play “just for fun” (one could argue that’s the reason we play any game but think of it more as a play than a game) even if they are competitive, like Mario Kart with friends, luck can be great.
You never know what Power Up you’re gonna get but that’s just a part of the thrill.
I’m gonna tell you a little story about my time at GRIN and the power of luck.
At GRIN, we were a group of people that usually played LAN during lunch breaks and other spare time. We played GRID, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, some were playing Company of Heroes and there was some Battlefield 2 going on. But all the games had a lifespan of a couple of weeks, because after a while it was clear who was the better player and people started having less fun because they never won.
Then, brilliant as I am, I suggested we played Worms Armageddon.
A group of seven people, including me, started playing Worms Armageddon via LAN everyday. To make a long story short, we ended up playing 2-7 matches per day for about half a year. The only reason we stopped playing it was because… Well, our office was shut down. (I hope they’re unrelated…)
What was so amazing with Worms was the tremendous amount of luck and dumb fun involved. You never knew what kind of weapons you’d get your hands on, so even the “worst” gamer could get his hand on a Holy Hand grenade and wipe out an entire team.
The key here is that we never knew who would win the game. And everybody won now and again, even our sound guy Anders… If you’re reading this (I don’t think he is), I’m sorry.
Because of this, we could keep on playing. The game just never stopped being fun.
Skill mattered, but luck triumphed. We were just playing for fun.
If I have to reach a conclusion at the end of this post, I suppose it is that you should think long and hard about what the effect of having luck in your game will be and that it’s a two-edged sword.
And don’t drink and drive!
Disney buys Marvel – Give me a game!
It's announced that Marvel has agreed to sell their souls to Disney for about 4 billion dollars. It's not a typo; billions.
I'm a big Marvel fan and Disney is fine I guess. But regardless of what I think I can't help to wonder what kind of game this will spawn?
We've previously seen a cooperation with Disney and Square Enix with the Kingdom Hearts games where stars from both the Walt Disney Universe as well as characters from Square Enix's games are present and playable. I'm wondering if we'll see:
A) Disney + Marvel game with character from both universes.
B) Marvel in an upcoming Kingdom Hearts game. Disney + Marvel + Square Enix.
I'm just thinking out loud here, but it could prove to be an interesting mix!
As a fan of Marvel and gaming, I'll follow this one closely. Ooh, btw, can't wait for the new Ultimate Alliance game!
Stolen from random image board on the Internet. Sorry copyright owner, but it stole it from a thief.
Persona 4 – Brilliant!
*Phew*!
I meant to do so some blogging a couple of days ago but it got postponed. I then meant to do it yesterday, but yet again, I didn't have the time.
But I have a really good reason. I was crunching Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4!
I bought Batman: Arkham Asylum last friday but I decided not to play it untill I was done with Persona, as I felt I was closing in on the end after about 60h of play-time. Man... Was I wrong? For yet another 30h I felt like I was so close to the ending I could smell it. I was wrong.
91 hours and 51 minutes is what it took me to finish that beast of a game! And to be honst, the last 20h or so felt a tad annoying as I was longing for Batman.
Enough about me and more about the game. If you don't know the fundamentals I recommend doing a google about it. Rating over 9/10 on Metacritic and being the best JRPG I've played in many, many years it's something every designer with a huge amount of time to spend should look into.
How can 92h fit on one disc?
I've never spent this much time with a Single Player Game before, and I don't see if happening again anytime soon. But what is the magic that holds the player for so long? Why can't you just say enough is enough and never look at the game again.
I think there are two main reasons for this:
- The constant passing of time making the player's progress in the game automatic.
- The continuing feeling of things progressing thanks to constant leveling and introduction of skills and Personas.
In short. Stuff always happens!
Just a little disclaimber-thingy. The game also has an exciting story, fun combat and fantastic characters. Of course just the two above mentioned reasons will not make for a great game by themself, but are indeed parts of a whole.
1.
Persona 4 is played by making choices of what to do each day. There's the daytime, after school and evening. This may vary depending on special circumstances.
Anyway, you then get to do one thing each part of the day. Some things doesn't affect time, like shopping. But stuff like increasing stats, progressing the story and increasing your Social Links (part of the stat-system in Persona) will use up one "time slot".
Once the evening is over, the game progresses into the next day on the calendar. Special events related to the game's story happens on specific dates so it's impossible to stand still in the game, just increasing stats or whatever. The game will progress, wether you want it to or not.
This is brilliant! Because of this I know that for each and every choice I make, even if it's something as simple as to eat at a restaurant I get closer and closer to the end. It's impossible to get stuck in the game, similar to a movie if you wish.
2.
In Persona you use magical powers with the help of "Personas". Think of them like Pokémons, because really, they're quite alike. You collect them by defeating enemies and by fusing together the ones you have. Each and everyone has different skills and looks. They each have their own level as well, just like your character.
The personas gain XP when used.
So when walking in a dungeon with four characters, three of which has one persona each and you, the main character with more than 10 personas. That's 8 enteties gaining XP per battle (4+4).
This means that there are not many fights apart when someone of them levels up, increasing stats and perhaps gaining a new ability.
In one hour, there's probably 5-10 level ups. This is a bit different from many games where you level up once every few hour. It makes you feel that you're constantly getting stronger in one way or another, increasing your chances in combat.
This along with the time that progress by itself, it's a race for you to "keep up", making a very interesting balance.
Fin.
There's a million other things the developers have made very wise decisions about as well, especially when it comes to context. But I'll leave that for another post perhaps. Right now, after beating it, I don't want anything more to do with it for a while.
Persona 4 is one of the most cleverly designed games I've played, ever.
Blizzard’s new Editor
A thing that really caught my eye as a very interesting thing is Blizzard's new Editor in Starcraft 2.
It seems extremly powerful! Just think of all the great and creative stuff created for Warcraft 3 with a mediocre editor. It seems as if they'd really taken this into heart and created a truly wonderful tool.
I think it's a safe bet to say that there will be a lot of users out there as well. Which is not the case for, for example, Unreal Tournament 3. Ued is great and really powerful, but no one bought the game.
And apparently there's supposed to be some kind of store on Battle.net similar to Apple's AppStore where people can buy and sell mods/maps. Don't know much about it though.
Anyway, of course I don't know anything about using the new editor yet, but hopefully it won't be all that difficult.
Keep an eye out!
They show off more than just simple RTS-maps. A must see!
I want to turn off achievements
Back in October last year I wrote a post about what I think about achivements in games.
http://arcadeberg.com/causerie/achievements/ (24/8/09)
I was thinking about it today, don't ask me why, 'cause I don't know.
Anyway, in addition to what I wrote then, I'm thinking that I want to be able to turn off Achievements for the 360 and the Trophies for the PS3. They keep updating the Dashboard with Rating and stuff, so just add me the feature to turn off public display of my Achievements.
If I don't want to be part of this incredibly silly competition, I shouldn't have to. The problem is, as stated earlier, that if I'm in the competition (even if not by choice) it's hard not to compete.
So a really simple solution, give the option not to participate. Please Mr. Microsoft.
Subscribing to Indie Games
Indie Games are usually released for free. It's not about making money but about the love for creating games, or maybe more often it wouldn't sell anyway and once an indie developer is approached by a publisher; heck yes, they'll sell it!
Anyway, I think it would be nice for people to be able to subscribe to Indie Game releases. Imagine a client similar to Steam, adding perhaps one game per week chosen by a Indie gaming community. Maybe by voting or perhaps by a knowledgable jury?
Personally I don't play as much Indie Games as I want to, and a lot of what I play honestly isn't all that good but if there was a service for me to easily get my hands on free quality Indie Games, I would definately sign up! It would be a good opportunity for more people to experience this kind of games; people that don't normally visit Indie Communities to download games. I might be wrong here but I don't think it's easy for just anyone to get "into" the Indie scene.
There aren't all that many distribution channels for indies to "normal people", except for the biggest and most succesful games.
http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Indie/ (19/7/2009)
This is just me thinking out lout again. Over and out.
I’ve designed for
 |
 |
 |
Follow me online
Tweets
- http://hills-and-valley-messenger.whereilive.com.au/news/story/small-children-look-at-big-issues/ Jayden is awesome!
- @essell2 When I log onto Gmail it starts playing music, and everytime I click something (like a new mail) a "funny" sound effect is played!
- @tanyajessen I know another thing people will want to do after starring at "Trishka's hot self"...
- I liked a YouTube video -- Bulletstorm Gamescom Presentation with Dev Commentary http://youtu.be/ElgC9HJUDks?a
- Our Lead Project Manager tells another producer to hop onto a cart with wheels and then he pushes her around in the office! Welcome to PCF.
Posts
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « May | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |||
Fresh out of the oven
- Game Over
- The “Designing Producer”
- PowerPoint Games
- Bulletstorm Videos
- The Humble Indie Bundle
- Are we allowed to skew the trailers?
- The acceptance of Video Games
- Teh importance of spelling
- Cleaning Game?
- When Epic met PCF
- I’m gonna be an Epic Game Designer
- Looks the same, plays different
- Spectator Game?
- Play while installing
- “Outside the game”-expectations
Categories
- Causerie (138)
- Game specific (30)
- Misc. (52)
- projects (27)
- web (29)
Latest comments
- 10 Die Hard Gaming Fans showing their Killer Tattoos on Sonic Poem
- Mary Griffin on Norse Mythology
- PowerPoint Symphony on PowerPoint Games
- PowerPoint Symphony on PowerPoint Games
- Makayla Gonzalez on An Actual Level Design Test
Tags
Archives
- May 2010 (7)
- April 2010 (10)
- March 2010 (13)
- February 2010 (10)
- January 2010 (11)
- December 2009 (10)
- November 2009 (12)
- October 2009 (15)
- September 2009 (16)
- August 2009 (12)
- July 2009 (14)
- June 2009 (16)
- May 2009 (10)
- April 2009 (16)
- March 2009 (13)
- February 2009 (3)
- January 2009 (11)
- December 2008 (19)
- November 2008 (14)
- October 2008 (8)