Difficulty Systems 101
Normally gaming sites like IGN and Gamespot aren't the most resourceful place to go to to learn game design but stranger things happens.
IGN recently posted a quite interesting read about different approaches to difficulty in games. You might want to disregard the lack of respect for production time and cost, etc. with comments like:
It's a wonder then, when so many titles can be finished in a week or less these days, that more developers don't simply implement a system like this.
- James O'Connor, IGN AU
But it's an overall nice text. I find it wonderful that these giant mainstream sites discuss topics like this.
Head over to IGN and their "Difficulty Systems 101" at:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/100/1003282p1.html (15/7/2009)
My Favorite 100 Games
I'm not sure it's right of me to say that I've been busy today.
I went to an job interview today before lunch and one question I got was "What was the last game you played that changed your life?". Quite the question, right?
Anyway, I answered Fable 2 but it got me thinking about all my favorites games, so I decided to write down a list of my 100 favorite games. It's quite interesting actually, since I can see how much of it is from the same publisher, etc.
Disclaimer: These are the first 100 that came to mind. The list is already over 100 and I haven't arranged them by rank. But they're all good games! Games that were/are incredibly fun for me to play as a gamer, not necessarily the games with best "game design".
- I've finished 78% of the games.
- The most commong genre tags are Platformer and RPG.
- The games are somewhat evenly spread over the years of release. (Cool!)
- I seem to like the games published by Nintendo, EA and Konami
- Most of the "retro"-games are for the SNES.
There you have it. My gamer's haven!
(Damn it... "Search and Replace" Platform with Platformer also took effect in the title of column 2....)
Casual Games != Easier Games
Sometimes I call myself a casual gamer. When I say that I mean that I don’t spend as many hours playing as I used to. However, I don’t think it’s right for me to call myself that. A casual gamer is someone who plays games within the “genre” of casual games.
I guess I’m a Hardcore Player Light.
Many people seem to make the mistake that a casual game is a game, any game but with an easy difficulty. I don’t agree with this. Now, I might be making a fool out of myself because some well respected source out there defines it just like that. But hopefully not…
Anyhow!
A casual game is a game which is easier to play (not to be confused with difficulty level) and understand. Fewer rules, simple controls and a straight forward objective. Tetris and Bejeweled are outstanding examples of this. Some call them games for girls, I call them brilliant.
Casual gamers still wants to be challenged, but not by not understanding how to play.
For me, what really defines a superb and accomplished casual game is for a casual gamer to have just as big a chance of being great at it as a hardcore gamer. Some developers don’t get this. If I can easily win against a casual gamer in a so called casual game per default thanks to my previous gaming experience, it’s a big failure.
Ever since I got together with my girlfriend several years ago, who basically has no interest in gaming what so ever; I’ve been ramming games down her throat for her to realize what a marvelous world we gamers live in.
She still hasn’t quite got it and mostly says: I don’t like it! I don’t wanna play anymore!
What’re you gonna do, right? So she stops playing and after a few days, when she least expects it I make her try something new again. Over the years, I’ve manage to score some real jackpots with her getting so stuck with a game that she can play for more than 5 hours straight!
Zoo Keeper, Zuma, Hexic, Peggle, Dapple, Piyotama and Flight Control for example. They’re all casual games! And guess what? I, the experienced gamer, have no chance what so ever to beat her highscores!
Okay, now, this girl doesn’t own any gaming system of her own except for a PC. She never plays with her friends. She simply doesn’t like hardcore games but back when she was playing Piyotama, she was ranked 21st in the world. 21st place in the friggin’ world! Do you think I can possibly beat her in the VS-mode? No!
Right now, she’s into stealing my iPhone and playing Flight Control. And guess what, top 1% on the online highscore-table! That’s insane, coming from a none-gamer!
But that’s the thing! That’s the beauty of a great casual game! Everyone has the same chance to perform greatly!
Duke Nukem Never(?) and a Poetry Game
Hi y'all!
First of all; still the bestest of friends with Evernote. Using it constantly and it works like a charm. My favorite elephant, ever!
Anyway, I guess most of you've heard the news. They're all over the web now. 3D Realms are shutting down. The company that brought THE game Duke Nukem 3D.
I was actually surprised to hear about it. I was, in all honesty, one of those who thought that Duke Nukem Forever was actually gonna be completed by them. Now, not to say that the game won't see the light of day. Some other dev-team might pick it up. The game still has the same publisher if it were to be finished.
It saddens me that they're shutting down. They've been in business for 22 years, so they're somewhat of an icon for me.
Some facts: http://duke.a-13.net/
There is only one duke
When things are looking down, you have think positive right? So even if I might not be getting Duke Nukem Forever any day soon, I'm still a very happy camper.
Two of my all time favorite games are getting remakes for the XBLA:
- TMNT: Turtles in Time
- Marvel Vs. Capcom 2
It looks AWESOME!
Awesomeness
Today I Die
URL's from 7/5/09.
Importance of QA
QA, Quality Assurance, ie. Game Testing. It's important!
I browsed through the new games in the Xbox Live Arcade and found that there was a trial of the new OutRun Online Arcade so I thought I'd give it a go.
I downloaded the game, started it:
Normal game, standard car, automatic transmission, default song and once all the choices were made the engine roared, while the timer counted down for the race to start. I was excited and curious, so the moment the race began I systematically started pressing all the buttons on the controller to see what they did and then; BOOM! The game crashed!
So there you have it, my very first test drive with a new game. It crashed...
I rebooted my 360 and tried it again. This time, it worked and the game was a lot of fun. But here's the problem. I liked the game. I think it might be worth the 1200 points it cost to buy, but how can I be sure the game won't keep crashing?
It was the worst possible first experience I had with the game. Who knows, maybe I'm the only one it has crashed for and maybe it'll never crash for me again either. But I'm sure this could have been avoided, had the developeres only been aware of the problem.
So don't ever underestimate the value of thorough game testing.
Dare I buy it?
Less is More
This guy called Colin Ferris, Product Marketing Manager at Capcom brags about the game Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, coming to the US (and Europe I suppose) to the PSP.
While reading SONY's Playstation blog located at,
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/04/06/monster-hunter-coming-to-psp/ (Available 7/4/09)
I notice this part:
With thousands of different types of weapons and armor, as well as over 500 hours of gameplay, this is the most engrossing action/RPG title for the PSP ever created.
I say: Woaaah! Hold it! Hold it! That's just... awful! I know I'm not alone in feeling this way, but the supposedly 500 hours of gameplay is for me not a selling point. It's dreadful! I don't want to invest that much time into a game, I especially don't want to invest it in a handheld. Don't get me wrong, I love handheld games. But 500 hours?
Sure, 500 hours is probably an exaggeration to say the least, but heck, I don't want to spend more than 30 hours on one game.
I'd much prefer 6-12 finely crafted hours.
500 hours... Eeew!
Resident Evil 4 finished, just in time!
Okay, so maybe I'm four years behind, but I finally finished Resident Evil 4 just now. Just in time for the release of numeric entry number 5.
Anyhow, I have some stuff I wanna discuss about the game but I'll save that for another day, it's 2:44am here at the moment.
Before I go; two things:
1. Great game! Some really smart game design decisions.
2. To my friend who said it takes about 22 hours to finish if you're a slow player who likes to explore, like me. Screw you! ...
22 hours?
I now qualify to play Resident Evil 5.
Group rape mentality
The other day me and three friends were out in the forest, having fun. It was very dark there and there. After a while we found a girl, seemingly lost and alone in the forest wandering about.
Me and my friends thought that since she was all by herself, we could have some fun. So I snuck up on her from behind and jumped her, causing her to fall to the ground, back down, with me sitting on top of her! She started screaming and waving her arms around. I started hitting her repeatedly in the face while my friends were running towards us.
I kept on holding her down against the ground, while me and the guys had our fun with her. No one came to her rescue.
This is a true story, but what some of you might not have realized is that I'm talking about when I was playing a game of VS. in Left 4 Dead (Valve, 2007).
What happened was that one of the players on the opposite team got seperated from the team, so we could easily take her out with me jumping her and the others helping me cause damage untill she died.
Now, I might be way of base here and appear to be a total fucko in the head. But while we were overpowering her by far, I thought that maybe that feeling of excitement, power, control and thrill is somewhat like what group rapists feels?
I'm not saying that "hey, this was fun, maybe I'll rape an innocent girl tomorrow" but I can't help to wonder if there are similarities in the sense of acclompishment.
Bad Design – Blue Dragon
I started playing Blue Dragon for the 360 by Mistwalker today. I've played it just a bit over four hours and right now I'm not sure I'll ever dedicate enough time to finish it. I've encountered two major problems.
1. Absence of story
After four hours I've still only encountered one "story part" of the game and that was right in the beginning. It set things in motion but didn't deliver more than it absolutely had to. I've yet to find any long term goal for the characters in the game. Just to clarify, I'm a fan of JRPG-games and I don't demand constant narrative but after over three hours just running around in dull and empty environments killing foes, I get bored and question my motives.
2. Constant
Here's the big one. See, almost everywhere in the environment there are rocks and threes and you can interact with pretty much everyone of them, searching for treasures such as items, XP, gold, attritube points like Agility and "Nothing". Yes, the player CAN ignore this but I, as many other I assume, run around and search almost all of them. Almost all of them got something of value inside too, so it's not a waste of time.
This is BORING. There is no joy whatsoever in running around, pressing A and getting another "Medecine". It halts the games flow, forcing me to run around along every edge of the terrain and makes me wait for the "searching animation" to finish.
It's just like destroying every single barrel, searching every chest and turning over every stone in Diablo (Blizzard) but much, much, much slower.
Personally I think this feature should be cut completely and limit finding stuff to treasure chests and such.
I heard from someone, sometime, somewhere that in Fable 2 (Lionhead) you can destroy barrels etc. in search of items but the game explicitly tells the player "Go ahead, but you won't find anything of value there". I can't say for sure that this is true, but if it is; I applaude them! That way I won't bother when I play Fable 2.
The shadows are quite dull to look at to be honest.
These two things might very well be deciding factors on whether to try and finish the game or not. Silly of me? Perhaps. But if a game hasn't got me hooked after four hours, we have a problem.
Save-file location
I'm guessing a lot of you won't agree with me on this one, but when I play a game on the PC I would like to set the save-file destination. Most games have a "save"-folder in the installation catalogue or they create one My Documents. I don't like either one of the solutions.
The first time I run a PC-game, I would like to set the destination and if I want to change it afterwards I should be able to do so via the Options.
Why? Because making back-ups for Save-games are a hassle. Making back-ups, why would you do that, you ask? For example, if you're gonna format the computer or if you're getting a new computer all together, then I want to keep my saves, of course.
However, that is not the reason right now. I've been playing Resident Evil 4 on my laptop during last week and I want to be able to play it on my laptop and stationary PC whenever, without having to bother to move my save-file around using an USB-stick and stuff. I want to keep my save-file in my synchronized folder that's shared on my laptop, stationary and work computer, so no matter where I choose to play it, I can.
And let me make one thing clear. I hate it when some stupid 360-games ask what storage-device I want to use for my data every single time I start the game!
Note: I use DropBox to have my data synced. http://www.getdropbox.com/ (available 4/1-09)
Let me decide where!
[Btw, if you've missed it. I'm giving away a Spotify-account in an older post here on this blog.]
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