I've been trying to design the economy for a specific theoretical not-so-massively multiplayer game - something to the tune of <5k players. It's actually quite difficult. If you don't want to read my thoughts, please skip to the last paragraph.
Difficult, yes. Not the faucets and drains - I won't claim those are easy, but they are, at least, straightforward and easy to put preliminaries in place. Adjustment during testing is critical for those, but they are well understood by me.
No, my difficulty is with the marketplace.
Games have a lot of different kinds of ways to handle this. It's not just what role NPCs play, or whether a player has to be on-line to hawk his goods. It goes deeper: what is the actual structure of the market?
Most games use geographical market location(s), such as auction houses or merchant districts. Some use a kind of world-spanning market communications array, allowing people from anywhere to market anything.
The first option is good in that locations are great. If you're selling something in a location, the thing is right there, the thing can be inspected, and, moreover, it causes interplayer interactions - and being social is good.
The second option, however, offers an ease and 'on-line shopping' type of slickness. Even the newest of newbies can sign on, find something to buy, and buy it. Sure, it might have to be shipped from location to location, but basically, it's point and buy. This also allows all people equal access to the market. You put it up, it gets put up with everyone else's stuff. Also, it is really easy to continue to sell stuff while you're off line. The downsides are, of course, the complexity of shipping and the lack of a social area. In addition, if the market takes off, you can end up swamping it and requiring all sorts of refinements and filters to get anything useful out of it.
My theoretical game is small user base, which suggests that a (mostly) universal market might be the way to go. But I'm looking for more info. I'm very happy for advice and/or links on the matter. Remember: being obsessed with emergent games, this theoretical game contains highly diverse (often unique) player content.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
The Fine Wine of Game Design
I love game design. And so do these guys. They look new. Consider me a fan, even if not 100% in agreement at all times.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Obsessions!
Yesterday, I bought The Incredibles DVD. May I offer heartfelt applause to Pixar? Yes, I may. Okay, that's enough applause.
But the distribution companies need to get over this strange obsession they have with packaging. I'm not sure if it turns them on or what, but I bought The Incredibles and brought it home.
At which point I proceeded to remove the nice box/cover thing. Damn, it was on there tight.
At which point I spent a minute and a half removing the outer plastic shrink-wrap.
At which point I spent three and a half minutes removing the MULTIPLE side-closing pieces of 'security' tape.
At which point I put my DVD in and got to watch an FBI warning telling me I shouldn't pirate movies!
It's not actually the WORST I've ever seen it. Once I bought a box set, and the box and EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL DVD was carefully shrink-wrapped and security-tape sealed.
I'm a little curious as to the reasons for this. It kind of boggles my mind. How the hell could I have gotten the DVD out of the case through a box, cellophane, and tape, all without them noticing? Are they MORE likely to notice if I take an extra two minutes on top of the first two minutes? I would think they would STILL not be paying any attention.
And if the main problem is shoplifting - ha ha - then why the hell do they have these long-winded mandatory (and often in French, too, because French people make up 48% of the world population) "don't copy this DVD or we'll find out in our magic 8-ball and put you in our subterrainian mole-man prison!"?
Given that copied movies usually leave off the FBI warning anyway... and copying a DVD is a hell of a lot easier than STEALING one...
Well, I'm flummoxed.
But, damn, Pixar. You did good.
But the distribution companies need to get over this strange obsession they have with packaging. I'm not sure if it turns them on or what, but I bought The Incredibles and brought it home.
At which point I proceeded to remove the nice box/cover thing. Damn, it was on there tight.
At which point I spent a minute and a half removing the outer plastic shrink-wrap.
At which point I spent three and a half minutes removing the MULTIPLE side-closing pieces of 'security' tape.
At which point I put my DVD in and got to watch an FBI warning telling me I shouldn't pirate movies!
It's not actually the WORST I've ever seen it. Once I bought a box set, and the box and EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL DVD was carefully shrink-wrapped and security-tape sealed.
I'm a little curious as to the reasons for this. It kind of boggles my mind. How the hell could I have gotten the DVD out of the case through a box, cellophane, and tape, all without them noticing? Are they MORE likely to notice if I take an extra two minutes on top of the first two minutes? I would think they would STILL not be paying any attention.
And if the main problem is shoplifting - ha ha - then why the hell do they have these long-winded mandatory (and often in French, too, because French people make up 48% of the world population) "don't copy this DVD or we'll find out in our magic 8-ball and put you in our subterrainian mole-man prison!"?
Given that copied movies usually leave off the FBI warning anyway... and copying a DVD is a hell of a lot easier than STEALING one...
Well, I'm flummoxed.
But, damn, Pixar. You did good.
Re: Player Vision in Respect to Multiple Players
Darius sort-of asked me if I'd given any thought as to player vision and how it affects multi-player games. The answer is: of course I have. But not in a long-term way - all my MP thinking has revolved around level design and how to prevent players from acheiving TOO MUCH of an advantage via player vision. IE how to stop excessive sniping.
What he is thinking of is how to get multiple players to each feel like 'the hero' - which is an extremely valid way of looking at player vision. Player vision isn't just tactical combat stuff - it also involves other game loops, such as social, economic, and plotty game loops.
One of the problems in 'extended-grain' player vision like this is that players can and will share information (or even straight-up screenshots) outside of game. If no communication is possible outside the game, you could easily make a MMORPG in which the Dungeons of Throggart are interesting to every player who goes through. However, the first person that goes through immediately goes and shares all of the puzzles and plot points on-line. That's why so many MMORPGs focus entirely on combat - combat isn't really made 'duller' by knowing the exactly what is coming.
So, you can't expect a static plot to be anything other than open to all player vision simultaneously. But you CAN do more than just sit around whining. How? SOCIAL/ECONOMIC PLAYER VISION, or RELATIVE EXPOSURE.
By controlling who a given player can talk to and what in-game information he can gather, you significantly change the dynamic of the game. I'm not talking about "oh, he's on the other continent, so you can't IM him." I'm talking about "variable obscurity", exposing them only as much as you want to, depending on their choices and power level.
What you do is give the players an environment where you have to know a location exists before you can visit it. Then you allow players to 'stumble across' locations - both new and in use - at random. They can sell these locations to others, or hide there and build an army, or whatever. Essentially, you're giving your players the ability to change the world AND REMAIN HIDDEN (if they want). Imagine a space game where the 'hyperspace coordinates' of any given star are impossible to guess and have to be punched in exactly.
This restricted outside access allows a player to be a much or as little involved with the world as a whole as he wants. You could make it so that multiple players could network all their locations together and create their own 'separate game', isolated from everyone else. You could even make it so that people who 'had' the location could not 'sell' that location - only an original discoverer can 'spread the knowledge', thus preventing a sudden 'outing'.
The key is that this is NOT an invulnerable barrier. Sometimes, a location gets 'close' or 'thin', and explorers tend to find it on occasion (at which point they have - and can spread - the location). An owner can tell when his system is wearing 'thin' - he's probably given a week's notice - so he can prepare his systems to deal with the matter as he sees fit. This adds an inevitability to the system that will always end up 'mixing up' the isolationists to keep them striving and interested.
This game would feel like a strange kind of secret war, with players vying for locations that many players don't know exist.
The problem is the high data cost of these systems, since chances are high there will be more systems than players. However, if you take a page from Will Wright's book, a bit of algorithmic generation can go a long way towards making a system data-affordable.
There are other ways to do this, of course. What I speak of is a locational isolation system. There are a LOT of other ways to implement this fundamental idea. The point is that, in order for people to think they are important/powerful, they have to be able to change the universe. Changing the universe is NOT something that can happen in a normal MMORPG. Even if the universe is not static, there's simply too many people.
However, if you make the 'universe' scale to the person - grow as he grows - then you can easily make the MMORPG endlessly engaging.
Wheee! Feel free to comment.
What he is thinking of is how to get multiple players to each feel like 'the hero' - which is an extremely valid way of looking at player vision. Player vision isn't just tactical combat stuff - it also involves other game loops, such as social, economic, and plotty game loops.
One of the problems in 'extended-grain' player vision like this is that players can and will share information (or even straight-up screenshots) outside of game. If no communication is possible outside the game, you could easily make a MMORPG in which the Dungeons of Throggart are interesting to every player who goes through. However, the first person that goes through immediately goes and shares all of the puzzles and plot points on-line. That's why so many MMORPGs focus entirely on combat - combat isn't really made 'duller' by knowing the exactly what is coming.
So, you can't expect a static plot to be anything other than open to all player vision simultaneously. But you CAN do more than just sit around whining. How? SOCIAL/ECONOMIC PLAYER VISION, or RELATIVE EXPOSURE.
By controlling who a given player can talk to and what in-game information he can gather, you significantly change the dynamic of the game. I'm not talking about "oh, he's on the other continent, so you can't IM him." I'm talking about "variable obscurity", exposing them only as much as you want to, depending on their choices and power level.
What you do is give the players an environment where you have to know a location exists before you can visit it. Then you allow players to 'stumble across' locations - both new and in use - at random. They can sell these locations to others, or hide there and build an army, or whatever. Essentially, you're giving your players the ability to change the world AND REMAIN HIDDEN (if they want). Imagine a space game where the 'hyperspace coordinates' of any given star are impossible to guess and have to be punched in exactly.
This restricted outside access allows a player to be a much or as little involved with the world as a whole as he wants. You could make it so that multiple players could network all their locations together and create their own 'separate game', isolated from everyone else. You could even make it so that people who 'had' the location could not 'sell' that location - only an original discoverer can 'spread the knowledge', thus preventing a sudden 'outing'.
The key is that this is NOT an invulnerable barrier. Sometimes, a location gets 'close' or 'thin', and explorers tend to find it on occasion (at which point they have - and can spread - the location). An owner can tell when his system is wearing 'thin' - he's probably given a week's notice - so he can prepare his systems to deal with the matter as he sees fit. This adds an inevitability to the system that will always end up 'mixing up' the isolationists to keep them striving and interested.
This game would feel like a strange kind of secret war, with players vying for locations that many players don't know exist.
The problem is the high data cost of these systems, since chances are high there will be more systems than players. However, if you take a page from Will Wright's book, a bit of algorithmic generation can go a long way towards making a system data-affordable.
There are other ways to do this, of course. What I speak of is a locational isolation system. There are a LOT of other ways to implement this fundamental idea. The point is that, in order for people to think they are important/powerful, they have to be able to change the universe. Changing the universe is NOT something that can happen in a normal MMORPG. Even if the universe is not static, there's simply too many people.
However, if you make the 'universe' scale to the person - grow as he grows - then you can easily make the MMORPG endlessly engaging.
Wheee! Feel free to comment.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
More memework.
Darren said:
Because I'm so incredibly knowledgeable on the subject, I'll inform you! And I'll use small words, because I think the longest one I know is 'knowledgeable'.
Memetics is at about the same stage as game design theory - that is, nobody can even really agree on what a meme is. To me, skepticism is a meme - it is a pattern which propagates from mind to mind. After all, my dad's a skeptic, I'm a skeptic, and I'll be damn sure to make my children skeptics. It's also the only clear example I can think of that gets stronger by destroying other memes.
The terms 'rhetorical framework', 'state of mind', and even 'filter on how one sees the world' all mean just about the same thing in meme-land. They all state, "there is a meme controlling what other memes you consider". Perhaps it would be easiest to call those three terms you used synonyms of a phrase I'll coin this very instant: "gatekeeper meme".
Skepticism, being a meme, is spread through normal memetic vectors. Shit. I used too many big words. Essentially, our friend skepti spreads by making itself appealing to the environment it wants into - our minds. However, skepticism's appeal is rather more limited than some other memes, such as Darth Vader in a tutu, because it is a dramatic overhaul to your mental framework. It's a gatekeeper meme, and it competes with other gatekeeper memes - it's competing with the thing that controls what memes get to compete. Rather a disadvantage.
Therefore, I don't know very many (if any) people who 'pick up' skepticism late in life. Usually, by the time they hit their teens, their gatekeeper memes are firmly in place (and, believe me, gatekeeper memes know how to defend themselves). So skepticism seems to spread in very early life, either through indoctrin... indoc... indoctrinnalination... being told about it or through synthesizing it to avoid the unhelpful ideas it protects against.
Memetics, as I mentioned, is very young. Although what I just spouted is Largely Based on Published Works, it is also very much my own creation, and may very well cover parts of memetics that have only been lightly touched upon in the past.
BTW - "memetics" seems to stand for "the study of memes", whereas "memetrics" would stand for "measurement of memes" which, as cool as it would be, we haven't really figured out how to do yet.
I'm curious when you quote skepticism as a meme. Skepticism often seems like a certain state of mind, or rather a filter on how one sees the world. Alternatively, you could see skepticism as a rhetorical framework of some sort.
From my observations, it seems to be a bit of both.
The reason I'm curious here is that I often wonder why it is that skepticism seems to be so appealing to many of my peers at WPI.
At the very least, I'm sure that other viewpoints and the emotional backgrounds of my peers has something to do with it.
Does memetrics ever consider such perspectives? Is that what is sometimes meant by people being "more susceptible to the meme" or however you say that?
Because I'm so incredibly knowledgeable on the subject, I'll inform you! And I'll use small words, because I think the longest one I know is 'knowledgeable'.
Memetics is at about the same stage as game design theory - that is, nobody can even really agree on what a meme is. To me, skepticism is a meme - it is a pattern which propagates from mind to mind. After all, my dad's a skeptic, I'm a skeptic, and I'll be damn sure to make my children skeptics. It's also the only clear example I can think of that gets stronger by destroying other memes.
The terms 'rhetorical framework', 'state of mind', and even 'filter on how one sees the world' all mean just about the same thing in meme-land. They all state, "there is a meme controlling what other memes you consider". Perhaps it would be easiest to call those three terms you used synonyms of a phrase I'll coin this very instant: "gatekeeper meme".
Skepticism, being a meme, is spread through normal memetic vectors. Shit. I used too many big words. Essentially, our friend skepti spreads by making itself appealing to the environment it wants into - our minds. However, skepticism's appeal is rather more limited than some other memes, such as Darth Vader in a tutu, because it is a dramatic overhaul to your mental framework. It's a gatekeeper meme, and it competes with other gatekeeper memes - it's competing with the thing that controls what memes get to compete. Rather a disadvantage.
Therefore, I don't know very many (if any) people who 'pick up' skepticism late in life. Usually, by the time they hit their teens, their gatekeeper memes are firmly in place (and, believe me, gatekeeper memes know how to defend themselves). So skepticism seems to spread in very early life, either through indoctrin... indoc... indoctrinnalination... being told about it or through synthesizing it to avoid the unhelpful ideas it protects against.
Memetics, as I mentioned, is very young. Although what I just spouted is Largely Based on Published Works, it is also very much my own creation, and may very well cover parts of memetics that have only been lightly touched upon in the past.
BTW - "memetics" seems to stand for "the study of memes", whereas "memetrics" would stand for "measurement of memes" which, as cool as it would be, we haven't really figured out how to do yet.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Meh
I ain't got no scanner, my tablet is getting unpredictable and ratty, and the hard drive with my beloved art programs is now playing mumblety-peg with its magnetic disks.
So, behold the magic of MS Paint! From my cube! With a mouse!
Wow, I can see why people blog so much. The crushing boredom! Allow me to enthrall you with tales of how incredibly bored I am! Or maybe you could, I don't know, attach alligator clips to yourself and run around saying "augh! They've got me! Run for your lives!" before going into a 'death roll' on your boss' nice carpeted office.
As a side note, blogger.com is strangely greedy. It keeps redirecting my image HTML to 'blogger.com'.
-Craig
So, behold the magic of MS Paint! From my cube! With a mouse!
Wow, I can see why people blog so much. The crushing boredom! Allow me to enthrall you with tales of how incredibly bored I am! Or maybe you could, I don't know, attach alligator clips to yourself and run around saying "augh! They've got me! Run for your lives!" before going into a 'death roll' on your boss' nice carpeted office.
As a side note, blogger.com is strangely greedy. It keeps redirecting my image HTML to 'blogger.com'.
-Craig
Friday, April 01, 2005
Krazakh!
Anyone who's done much game design knows that game balance is a real pain. The more factors that are involved, the more difficult it is to balance.
Having accidentally resurrected an interesting game idea a few days back, I was thinking about this. I've learned so much about game design in the past two years that the old design seems like cave paintings. I spent a few hours updating it, this game of turn-based grand strategy and space-age combat, and did a bunch of tweaking and creation of play fields and all sorts of stuff that makes it exciting to consider, as opposed to 'just another tactical game'.
But I've run into a problem: the actual GAME BALANCING has grown SO incredibly complex it isn't even remotely CONCEIVABLE. It's totally MIND-BOGGLING. In the previous version of a game, it was essentially 'build troops, move troops to destination, fight'. In that sort of situation, it's fairly easy to determine the effectiveness of a space ship. It deals such a damage at such a range such a percentage of the time. It has a certain amount of ammo, certain armor, certain speed, and a certain difficulty to hit.
Now, however, it's dramatically more difficult because of the introduction of strategic play. That unit - it's weak, but stealthy. It tends not to show up on scanners. But that depends on what scanners the enemy has, now doesn't it? How good is stealthy, then? How close can you get while you're being 'stealthy'?
That unit, it's a carrier. Okay, so what's the balance for a carrier? How fast can it launch other starships? How much space does that take up? Well, hell, this means that a carrier can have the interstellar drives, so the fighters don't have to. That totally messes up the balance of the fighters, since now they have a bunch of space they can stick more guns in.
Given this plus my natural predeliction towards HIGHLY EMERGENT gameplay, it is mentally impossible to try to get this to be balanced ahead of time. Obviously, it's intended to be a computer game - so what I really need is a kind of alpha test...
Then a happy thought hit me. I'm used to worrying about 'dominant strategies'. A player finds out 'the best' way to do things. But that's not a problem in this game. Every gameplay facet is opposed by an enemy with access to a countermeasure.
Stealth? The enemy might be forced to have scanner units. If they skimp, they'll be vulnerable to stealth. If they splurge, even people who are stealth masters will be detected at some point. If stealth is too powerful, players would adjust by investing in anti-stealth units.
More powerful fighters? Well, duh, I'll do the same, and we're even again. We might be more fighter-centric due to their increase in strength relative to, say, frigates, but the balance of power is not upset.
So long as I make sure there are counter-plays available, the game will - to some extent - balance itself. I'll have to make sure the counter-plays are feasible, and I'll have to make sure that you can't get CRUSHED INSTANTLY by a play you aren't prepared for... but I won't have to try to carefully squeek everything into the same exact effectiveness.
I hope.
Having accidentally resurrected an interesting game idea a few days back, I was thinking about this. I've learned so much about game design in the past two years that the old design seems like cave paintings. I spent a few hours updating it, this game of turn-based grand strategy and space-age combat, and did a bunch of tweaking and creation of play fields and all sorts of stuff that makes it exciting to consider, as opposed to 'just another tactical game'.
But I've run into a problem: the actual GAME BALANCING has grown SO incredibly complex it isn't even remotely CONCEIVABLE. It's totally MIND-BOGGLING. In the previous version of a game, it was essentially 'build troops, move troops to destination, fight'. In that sort of situation, it's fairly easy to determine the effectiveness of a space ship. It deals such a damage at such a range such a percentage of the time. It has a certain amount of ammo, certain armor, certain speed, and a certain difficulty to hit.
Now, however, it's dramatically more difficult because of the introduction of strategic play. That unit - it's weak, but stealthy. It tends not to show up on scanners. But that depends on what scanners the enemy has, now doesn't it? How good is stealthy, then? How close can you get while you're being 'stealthy'?
That unit, it's a carrier. Okay, so what's the balance for a carrier? How fast can it launch other starships? How much space does that take up? Well, hell, this means that a carrier can have the interstellar drives, so the fighters don't have to. That totally messes up the balance of the fighters, since now they have a bunch of space they can stick more guns in.
Given this plus my natural predeliction towards HIGHLY EMERGENT gameplay, it is mentally impossible to try to get this to be balanced ahead of time. Obviously, it's intended to be a computer game - so what I really need is a kind of alpha test...
Then a happy thought hit me. I'm used to worrying about 'dominant strategies'. A player finds out 'the best' way to do things. But that's not a problem in this game. Every gameplay facet is opposed by an enemy with access to a countermeasure.
Stealth? The enemy might be forced to have scanner units. If they skimp, they'll be vulnerable to stealth. If they splurge, even people who are stealth masters will be detected at some point. If stealth is too powerful, players would adjust by investing in anti-stealth units.
More powerful fighters? Well, duh, I'll do the same, and we're even again. We might be more fighter-centric due to their increase in strength relative to, say, frigates, but the balance of power is not upset.
So long as I make sure there are counter-plays available, the game will - to some extent - balance itself. I'll have to make sure the counter-plays are feasible, and I'll have to make sure that you can't get CRUSHED INSTANTLY by a play you aren't prepared for... but I won't have to try to carefully squeek everything into the same exact effectiveness.
I hope.
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