I thought I had posted about this, but I guess not.
Some time ago, I ran a Jedi game. This was not a polite "we buy the rules from the licensed sort of folks" Jedi game. This was one of my "Bastard Jedi" games, which generally share a few keywords with the Star Wars RPG and not much else.
My previous Bastard Jedi games were built on the words "Jedi", "Sith", "Force", and "Droid". Otherwise, they were made from whole cloth. This time I went the opposite direction, gathering in staggeringly huge amounts of canon and picking the lamest parts. To the point where the game could not be played without a laptop constantly connected to Wookieepedia. (Notice, it contains spoilers!...)
Still, the game mechanics were very, very unusual and interesting. It would take a long time to cover them all, so I'll simply cover the character creation system, which is really the only one that has any bearing on anything I've posted recently.
First, a note on setting: this was after "all" the Jedi were killed by Clone Troopers, but I varied the setting a bit as to exactly what had gone down with the whole Darth-Emperor-Mace Windu thing.
Now, the character creation.
I got myself a hundred blank index cards and split them into four vaguely equal piles, each of which was marked with a suit. The suits stood for real concepts: race, tendency, experience, and survival (all the Jedi are supposed to be dead, remember?). A character was made of one of each.
For example, your race might be Bith, your tendency might be that you've always been especially good with a saber, your experience might be that you spent several years on a diplomatic voyage, and you might have survived by having been cut up quite a bit by a dark Jedi and left for dead (but you recovered and now have some cybernetic bits).
That's not a terribly coherent character, but even with this kind of nonsense you can see that you could connect the dots. You could build a fairly interesting character by filling in the holes: maybe you were sent on the diplomatic mission by your master, who thought you were too physical. Maybe you were attacked by a dark Jedi while on that mission.
Anyway, all of the things on the cards were things that could be. There was no danger of someone going "off course" and inventing a backstory that didn't fit into the universe and, more importantly, no chance of players just staring blankly at an infinite canvas of options. If I wanted, I could have just as easily swapped out the deck for a non-Jedi deck set in the same universe, or a Sith deck, or even a lost-little-droid deck.
All of the cards were more or less balanced. Even the races, which I thought would be hard to balance, were easy. I mean, a Bith? The cantina guys? Who wants to be a Bith? They suck!
Except it turns out that they don't. They've got all sorts of wickedly advanced senses and technological aptitudes. They don't need sleep, either.
It seems that I could not find a race that hadn't been made cool at some point. Welcome to Star Wars.
Anyhow, picking four cards at random doesn't leave you with a whole lot of choice, does it? You end up with something like the character above. While he might grow on you, chances are good that he's not who you would pick for yourself if given the choice.
Even increasing the number of cards to choose from isn't ideal: I let people draw six cards (and spend a character point to draw more cards if they wanted). Even that wasn't going to be enough.
So the real solution was to get your players into a group - five, six people - and have them all draw cards. Then they can freely trade with each other.
This Bith guy would be happy to trade his diplomatic mission to someone in exchange for, say, advanced saber training or a mission to a doomed world. He's also probably happy to trade his race off for something a bit more combat-happy. Someone else might have the "forbidden love" experience card, and they might try to get that "maimed by a dark Jedi" card, so they can have their forbidden love fall and maim them...
This also lets the players fit their characters together interplayer. Not just in terms of "we should have a warrior, a healer..." but in terms of "oh, look, we both switched masters! What if we swapped masters?"
I had two teams of five, and until I moved to Seattle, the game was going pretty well. The characters were deeply interesting, their interactions very slick. More importantly for a Star Wars game, their detailed backstories gave me great hooks to tempt them towards the dark side.
Anyway, this is to show that this kind of partially-generative backstory system is perfectly plausible. Obviously, if you're going to do it on a computer, you need to change it a bit... but, fundamentally, this is not a difficult way to do things and it can serve to introduce your players to the setting in a completely painless way.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Monday, January 07, 2008
Classics
Recently I purchased the 50th anniversary edition of Forbidden Planet. It's held up so well! Every geek should have already seen it. If not, do it now!
I'm one of these guys who really loves the classics. I really enjoy watching old movies, reading classic sci-fi... anything "retro" is directed straight at me. Space pirates are a real weakness.
I got to thinking about games. I've been mining Gametap's RPG selection recently, with games like Baldur's Gate and Phantasy Star IV.
We certainly have "classic" games - games we feel nostalgic for. Games that fuel our retro movements. And, like classic movies, these games don't have the right pacing for new audiences. Anyone who watches Charlie Chaplin today will immediately notice that the pacing is old-fashioned. It's not just that it's in black and white, or that there's no voices, or even the classic topics: the speed of the progression, the nature of the camera work, and the level of repetition are all old-fashioned.
Old games have the same thing, of course: playing Baldur's Gate is often infuriating to me because, in the beginning, characters will die in a single hit. Similarly, the way the leveling system works, the kind of repetition, and the progression of the scenes are all noticeably "old fashioned".
Some modern games still have this "old-fashioned feel", like KotOR and whatever is coming out of Japan next week. Many have gone a different path, such as all of the FPS-RPGs.
I also feel something similar about classic tabletop games such as Battletech, Shadowrun and D&D. The new rulesets often change a few facets to try to make it more applicable to a modern audience without losing the oldschool feel.
But if you compare the original D&D to AD&D whatever.5, you'll find that there have been a lot of changes. Similarly, if you compare KotOR to Might and Magic, even though they attempt to have the same fundamental genre, KotOR has pulled in a new direction. And I'm not talking graphics.
One of the defining features of a classic game is the way it handles progression: instead of having a smooth progression, classic games have a mudflated progression. When you get something new in a classic game, it makes whatever you had before pretty useless. You get a sword+2, that old sword+1 is destined for the rubbish heap.
Modern games, on the other hand, progress more fluidly. Let me give an example.
In oldschool D&D, your mage gains spells. Each new level of spells contains spells that are fundamentally just plain cooler than the old spells, so the only reason to use the old spells is to conserve juice.
In KotOR, which is fundamentally D&D-based, your "spells" are Force powers. Instead of leaving you with scads of obsolete force powers, you upgrade a particular power to be more effective. So you never have more than one "Force heal" power, even though it's now level 3 or whatever.
Similarly, instead of replacing your sword+1 with a sword+2, in KotOR you replace a piece of your lightsaber or blaster with a new piece. There is no sword+1 left when you upgrade to a sword+2. Instead, there's a sword+2 and an oo'ooti'oo crystal.
Now, KotOR has an oldschool feel, and it does feature an awful lot of buying new stuff and selling the old. But even it has realized that abandoning old content is less efficient than upgrading old content.
This can even be seen in the characters. Modern RPGs have a few NPCs with full personalities that stay with you for the full game. Classic games have scads of NPCs with barely any personality that tend to die or be replaced on a whim.
To me, the big "classic" feel for an RPG has nothing to do with camera angle or turn-based combat. It has everything to do with scads of content that we burn through however we like.
And I like that.
I'm actually irritated by the kinds of things I see these days. You can upgrade your Jedi Push to Jedi Push II? But that doesn't do what I want it to! I want to be able to pick content that is more to my liking - pick from half a dozen available "Jedi Push II" variants that I happen to stumble across in dungeons and shops. And I want to keep Jedi Push I as a cheap alternative...
So I got to thinking: what if I take this thing that I like, and I polish it up to a mirror shine and design a... "deeply retro" game. A "post-retro" game, to be excruciatingly pompous.
The whole design is fundamentally about content: upgrading, replacing, finding. But instead of walking along a plot path and stumbling across combat content, let's make everything adaptable content.
Your plot is adaptable content. Your personality and history are adaptable content. You stumble across an "heir to the throne" fragment, pop it into a character, and suddenly they were always high-born. You find a "specializes in delicious pastries" fragment, and you can plug it into a village or part of a city and, bam, there have always been delicious pastry shops.
This can even be horrifyingly meta. The underlying plot is that the wizard captured the princess. You can plug new plot fragments in to change why, when, how, who... or add twists such as the princess and the wizard being in cahoots. You can even push it so far as to un-kidnap the princess such that she was never kidnapped in the first place.
It can also be very flat: you do find a sword upgrade, better armor, a new spell. It's not simply high-falutin' concepts.
This is not a game where you build your own plot/setting, not exactly. Because you only have access to the fragments you uncover as you journey. By controlling what kinds and levels of fragments are available in various places, you can dramatically influence the way the game develops.
For example, those ancient, menacing woods said to be inhabited by the undead? Instead of giving out generic combat rewards, they might give out primarily plot fragments. So if the plot is too difficult, too insurmountable or not fun enough, you spend some time killing ghouls and picking up new options.
Now, one further option is that we can make the NPCs - at least the major ones - also able to do this. This could lead to very interesting situations if handled correctly, where you and the evil wizard are vying for who has never been able to cast any magic...
What do you think? Would you enjoy such a game?
I'm one of these guys who really loves the classics. I really enjoy watching old movies, reading classic sci-fi... anything "retro" is directed straight at me. Space pirates are a real weakness.
I got to thinking about games. I've been mining Gametap's RPG selection recently, with games like Baldur's Gate and Phantasy Star IV.
We certainly have "classic" games - games we feel nostalgic for. Games that fuel our retro movements. And, like classic movies, these games don't have the right pacing for new audiences. Anyone who watches Charlie Chaplin today will immediately notice that the pacing is old-fashioned. It's not just that it's in black and white, or that there's no voices, or even the classic topics: the speed of the progression, the nature of the camera work, and the level of repetition are all old-fashioned.
Old games have the same thing, of course: playing Baldur's Gate is often infuriating to me because, in the beginning, characters will die in a single hit. Similarly, the way the leveling system works, the kind of repetition, and the progression of the scenes are all noticeably "old fashioned".
Some modern games still have this "old-fashioned feel", like KotOR and whatever is coming out of Japan next week. Many have gone a different path, such as all of the FPS-RPGs.
I also feel something similar about classic tabletop games such as Battletech, Shadowrun and D&D. The new rulesets often change a few facets to try to make it more applicable to a modern audience without losing the oldschool feel.
But if you compare the original D&D to AD&D whatever.5, you'll find that there have been a lot of changes. Similarly, if you compare KotOR to Might and Magic, even though they attempt to have the same fundamental genre, KotOR has pulled in a new direction. And I'm not talking graphics.
One of the defining features of a classic game is the way it handles progression: instead of having a smooth progression, classic games have a mudflated progression. When you get something new in a classic game, it makes whatever you had before pretty useless. You get a sword+2, that old sword+1 is destined for the rubbish heap.
Modern games, on the other hand, progress more fluidly. Let me give an example.
In oldschool D&D, your mage gains spells. Each new level of spells contains spells that are fundamentally just plain cooler than the old spells, so the only reason to use the old spells is to conserve juice.
In KotOR, which is fundamentally D&D-based, your "spells" are Force powers. Instead of leaving you with scads of obsolete force powers, you upgrade a particular power to be more effective. So you never have more than one "Force heal" power, even though it's now level 3 or whatever.
Similarly, instead of replacing your sword+1 with a sword+2, in KotOR you replace a piece of your lightsaber or blaster with a new piece. There is no sword+1 left when you upgrade to a sword+2. Instead, there's a sword+2 and an oo'ooti'oo crystal.
Now, KotOR has an oldschool feel, and it does feature an awful lot of buying new stuff and selling the old. But even it has realized that abandoning old content is less efficient than upgrading old content.
This can even be seen in the characters. Modern RPGs have a few NPCs with full personalities that stay with you for the full game. Classic games have scads of NPCs with barely any personality that tend to die or be replaced on a whim.
To me, the big "classic" feel for an RPG has nothing to do with camera angle or turn-based combat. It has everything to do with scads of content that we burn through however we like.
And I like that.
I'm actually irritated by the kinds of things I see these days. You can upgrade your Jedi Push to Jedi Push II? But that doesn't do what I want it to! I want to be able to pick content that is more to my liking - pick from half a dozen available "Jedi Push II" variants that I happen to stumble across in dungeons and shops. And I want to keep Jedi Push I as a cheap alternative...
So I got to thinking: what if I take this thing that I like, and I polish it up to a mirror shine and design a... "deeply retro" game. A "post-retro" game, to be excruciatingly pompous.
The whole design is fundamentally about content: upgrading, replacing, finding. But instead of walking along a plot path and stumbling across combat content, let's make everything adaptable content.
Your plot is adaptable content. Your personality and history are adaptable content. You stumble across an "heir to the throne" fragment, pop it into a character, and suddenly they were always high-born. You find a "specializes in delicious pastries" fragment, and you can plug it into a village or part of a city and, bam, there have always been delicious pastry shops.
This can even be horrifyingly meta. The underlying plot is that the wizard captured the princess. You can plug new plot fragments in to change why, when, how, who... or add twists such as the princess and the wizard being in cahoots. You can even push it so far as to un-kidnap the princess such that she was never kidnapped in the first place.
It can also be very flat: you do find a sword upgrade, better armor, a new spell. It's not simply high-falutin' concepts.
This is not a game where you build your own plot/setting, not exactly. Because you only have access to the fragments you uncover as you journey. By controlling what kinds and levels of fragments are available in various places, you can dramatically influence the way the game develops.
For example, those ancient, menacing woods said to be inhabited by the undead? Instead of giving out generic combat rewards, they might give out primarily plot fragments. So if the plot is too difficult, too insurmountable or not fun enough, you spend some time killing ghouls and picking up new options.
Now, one further option is that we can make the NPCs - at least the major ones - also able to do this. This could lead to very interesting situations if handled correctly, where you and the evil wizard are vying for who has never been able to cast any magic...
What do you think? Would you enjoy such a game?
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Information Handling
Raph had a post that got me thinking.
All of my games feature some kind of information system.
That's a bit misleading, though. All games are entirely about information processing. You see what information is available, then you try to figure out how to combine it so you can react to it.
If you have to decide which weapon to take, you call on your experience with earlier levels and similar games, then you extrapolate by what you expect later challenges to contain. If you're playing a shmup, you analyze the trajectories of everything on the screen, taking into account your ship's size and speed as well as what the various things are likely to do (change direction, explode, fire shots...)
Obviously, you're working with partial information on a complex system. There's a lot of room for leeway: some people are very good at collecting and analyzing specific kinds of information. For example, when I'm playing a shmup, I'm really good at analyzing a few very complex trajectories, but I'm bad at analyzing lots of simple trajectories. Some people are just the opposite.
Every kind of play I've ever seen is about collecting fragments of information and piecing them together as effectively as possible. In situations with time limits, more, simpler information tends to be the watchword rather than fewer, complex information.
Now, when we think about quests, information is usually simple window dressing. It's an excuse for the designer to make the player run through various challenges. Often, the information is partial. For example, telling you who to go to, but not what they will give you; or telling you what to get, but not where you can find it. This can be done either for narrative effect (getting you deep into a plot before twisting it into something nasty) or for play effect (making you spend time searching for the missing information).
In a MMORPG, using "static information" is a problem if you use partial information, because any player that's figured out the missing piece can share it instantly with everyone. Obviously, this short-circuits the whole purpose of using partial information.
To me, it is without question that static information is not a good idea in such a game. However, saying "use varying info" is not quite as simple as Raph has suggested. There are a lot of methods. Here are a few I love.
Game Chunks
You can get around the flaw with static info while still using static info if you make your game (or subsets of your game) have a definite end point. This is not always suitable in a MMORPG, but it is not unknown: Tale in the Desert is an example.
In this sort of situation the information is usually extremely fragmented, and the player(s) who assembles it first will have a big advantage. This is actually a fairly delicate system.
The problem with game chunks is fairly obvious: someone has to build them, and that can mean a huge amount of GM overhead. Fortunately, there are alternatives...
Player Affected
A lot of competitive games use player-affected data. For example, every time you play a level of Team Fortress, it's the same. Except that the other players radically affect how you play the game. Effectively, playing Team Fortress is less about the information from the designer, and more about the information from the other players.
This is really easy to design, but if you're aiming for persistence, extremely hard to balance. The core problem is that players participate at different levels, and the players who participate more (and are more skilled) will gain an advantage... and that advantage will continue to grow the more they play. If it doesn't, they'll get irritated and stop playing.
It's a very difficult challenge, but there are ways around it. One of the big ways around it is to partition levels apart from each other, and another is to add an outreach/mentor system where the powerful players are rewarded for helping weak players. For more information on this kind of thing, study WoW's level partitioning, City of Heroes' mentoring system, and Eve Online's corporation system. I can write more about those if I need to.
Fundamentally, player-generated content is simply a particularly feisty subset of this.
Player Adapted
One type of information generation system is slowly growing more popular, and that's when you generate information specifically for each player. Because of the amount of shared space most MMORPGs have, adapted information is generally very shallow so as not to disrupt the game for other players. But it's not shallow in and of itself: it's just a design restriction.
Examples of this abound and overlap with player-affected systems. For example, in many games NPCs won't give you quests until you are a certain level or unless you are a certain class. This is a mechanism for weakly enabling player-affected information by partitioning certain quests for certain kinds of players.
Of course, it's certainly possible to have much deeper algorithms. These almost require you to have a very dispersed player base, though: if the player density is as high as in most games, then players changing the NPCs or terrain of the game will radically change other players' play experience, which is generally a poor idea.
Still, assigning each player a chunk of game for himself is not going to be as rare as you might think. As computation and memory get cheaper, it will be more and more feasible to give each player his own little piece of reality in which deeper adaptive algorithms can run. Think of it as instancing gone mad.
Marching Information
Another variation is to have marching information. This is a situation where the information in the game is continuously in flux as it is replaced - every day or week - by new information which is somewhat different.
As an easy example, this could be that a merchant changes locations to another part of the city, or the Swamp of Boggyness stops producing Jewel Toads and starts producing Psychic Crocs.
This can be done with any level of automation. It can be done entirely by hand, entirely automatically, or some combination of the two, depending on the ratio of writers to players you're willing to pay for.
Many designers shy away from this idea because it denotes what feels like a lack of control. They may claim balance problems, but the fundamental problem is that it is more erratic than most designers really like. For some reasons, designers like the idea that what they design will still be in the game a year from now.
I think that's kind of silly, but my games are always studies in controlled chaos. Ask anyone who has played one.
Fundamentally, static writing is not the wave of the future. Designers may want the Palace of Peace to stay exactly as they have built it forever, but that's simply a poor idea in a MMORPG.
As to balance issues, it's certainly the case that the new bits will be out of balance. However, as they change every week or so, the unbalance is only so much. You can spend your time polishing the balancing algorithm instead of releasing ten thousand content patches.
...
What do you think?
All of my games feature some kind of information system.
That's a bit misleading, though. All games are entirely about information processing. You see what information is available, then you try to figure out how to combine it so you can react to it.
If you have to decide which weapon to take, you call on your experience with earlier levels and similar games, then you extrapolate by what you expect later challenges to contain. If you're playing a shmup, you analyze the trajectories of everything on the screen, taking into account your ship's size and speed as well as what the various things are likely to do (change direction, explode, fire shots...)
Obviously, you're working with partial information on a complex system. There's a lot of room for leeway: some people are very good at collecting and analyzing specific kinds of information. For example, when I'm playing a shmup, I'm really good at analyzing a few very complex trajectories, but I'm bad at analyzing lots of simple trajectories. Some people are just the opposite.
Every kind of play I've ever seen is about collecting fragments of information and piecing them together as effectively as possible. In situations with time limits, more, simpler information tends to be the watchword rather than fewer, complex information.
Now, when we think about quests, information is usually simple window dressing. It's an excuse for the designer to make the player run through various challenges. Often, the information is partial. For example, telling you who to go to, but not what they will give you; or telling you what to get, but not where you can find it. This can be done either for narrative effect (getting you deep into a plot before twisting it into something nasty) or for play effect (making you spend time searching for the missing information).
In a MMORPG, using "static information" is a problem if you use partial information, because any player that's figured out the missing piece can share it instantly with everyone. Obviously, this short-circuits the whole purpose of using partial information.
To me, it is without question that static information is not a good idea in such a game. However, saying "use varying info" is not quite as simple as Raph has suggested. There are a lot of methods. Here are a few I love.
Game Chunks
You can get around the flaw with static info while still using static info if you make your game (or subsets of your game) have a definite end point. This is not always suitable in a MMORPG, but it is not unknown: Tale in the Desert is an example.
In this sort of situation the information is usually extremely fragmented, and the player(s) who assembles it first will have a big advantage. This is actually a fairly delicate system.
The problem with game chunks is fairly obvious: someone has to build them, and that can mean a huge amount of GM overhead. Fortunately, there are alternatives...
Player Affected
A lot of competitive games use player-affected data. For example, every time you play a level of Team Fortress, it's the same. Except that the other players radically affect how you play the game. Effectively, playing Team Fortress is less about the information from the designer, and more about the information from the other players.
This is really easy to design, but if you're aiming for persistence, extremely hard to balance. The core problem is that players participate at different levels, and the players who participate more (and are more skilled) will gain an advantage... and that advantage will continue to grow the more they play. If it doesn't, they'll get irritated and stop playing.
It's a very difficult challenge, but there are ways around it. One of the big ways around it is to partition levels apart from each other, and another is to add an outreach/mentor system where the powerful players are rewarded for helping weak players. For more information on this kind of thing, study WoW's level partitioning, City of Heroes' mentoring system, and Eve Online's corporation system. I can write more about those if I need to.
Fundamentally, player-generated content is simply a particularly feisty subset of this.
Player Adapted
One type of information generation system is slowly growing more popular, and that's when you generate information specifically for each player. Because of the amount of shared space most MMORPGs have, adapted information is generally very shallow so as not to disrupt the game for other players. But it's not shallow in and of itself: it's just a design restriction.
Examples of this abound and overlap with player-affected systems. For example, in many games NPCs won't give you quests until you are a certain level or unless you are a certain class. This is a mechanism for weakly enabling player-affected information by partitioning certain quests for certain kinds of players.
Of course, it's certainly possible to have much deeper algorithms. These almost require you to have a very dispersed player base, though: if the player density is as high as in most games, then players changing the NPCs or terrain of the game will radically change other players' play experience, which is generally a poor idea.
Still, assigning each player a chunk of game for himself is not going to be as rare as you might think. As computation and memory get cheaper, it will be more and more feasible to give each player his own little piece of reality in which deeper adaptive algorithms can run. Think of it as instancing gone mad.
Marching Information
Another variation is to have marching information. This is a situation where the information in the game is continuously in flux as it is replaced - every day or week - by new information which is somewhat different.
As an easy example, this could be that a merchant changes locations to another part of the city, or the Swamp of Boggyness stops producing Jewel Toads and starts producing Psychic Crocs.
This can be done with any level of automation. It can be done entirely by hand, entirely automatically, or some combination of the two, depending on the ratio of writers to players you're willing to pay for.
Many designers shy away from this idea because it denotes what feels like a lack of control. They may claim balance problems, but the fundamental problem is that it is more erratic than most designers really like. For some reasons, designers like the idea that what they design will still be in the game a year from now.
I think that's kind of silly, but my games are always studies in controlled chaos. Ask anyone who has played one.
Fundamentally, static writing is not the wave of the future. Designers may want the Palace of Peace to stay exactly as they have built it forever, but that's simply a poor idea in a MMORPG.
As to balance issues, it's certainly the case that the new bits will be out of balance. However, as they change every week or so, the unbalance is only so much. You can spend your time polishing the balancing algorithm instead of releasing ten thousand content patches.
...
What do you think?
Saturday, January 05, 2008
GameFly
I was going to write about fractured information in multiplayer settings, but instead I think I will share an email.
Recently, I got a GameFly account from a friend. I haven't received anything, yet, but this email... is an example of everything that is wrong with us.
From: GameFly
Date: Jan 5, 2008 11:34 AM
Subject: Attention: Important Xbox 360 Information
To: [me]
This e-mail was sent to you from GameFly.
To ensure delivery to your inbox, please add us to your address book.
Dear Craig,
Our records indicate that you recently rented your first Xbox 360 game from GameFly.
As you know, the Xbox 360 is a high-end gaming console that uses state-of-the-art technology. As stated in the user's manual, it is important that the console not be moved in any way while a disc is in the tray. The following movements, among others, may cause damage to the console and/or result in scratches to the disk:
Moving the console from the horizontal to the vertical position and vice versa
Picking the console up
Shifting the console in any way while a disc is in the tray
If you have further questions regarding usage of the Xbox 360 console, please contact Microsoft at 1-800-4MY-XBOX.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
GameFly Customer Service
Email: support@gamefly.com
Well, good. I was confused on that matter. Here I've been shaking my 360 to reboot it. Works with my laptop.
The worst part about this is that a lot of people won't see why it is such a fundamentally idiotic email. Our cultural idiocy is amazing.
Recently, I got a GameFly account from a friend. I haven't received anything, yet, but this email... is an example of everything that is wrong with us.
From: GameFly
Date: Jan 5, 2008 11:34 AM
Subject: Attention: Important Xbox 360 Information
To: [me]
This e-mail was sent to you from GameFly.
To ensure delivery to your inbox, please add us to your address book.
Dear Craig,
Our records indicate that you recently rented your first Xbox 360 game from GameFly.
As you know, the Xbox 360 is a high-end gaming console that uses state-of-the-art technology. As stated in the user's manual, it is important that the console not be moved in any way while a disc is in the tray. The following movements, among others, may cause damage to the console and/or result in scratches to the disk:
Moving the console from the horizontal to the vertical position and vice versa
Picking the console up
Shifting the console in any way while a disc is in the tray
If you have further questions regarding usage of the Xbox 360 console, please contact Microsoft at 1-800-4MY-XBOX.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
GameFly Customer Service
Email: support@gamefly.com
Well, good. I was confused on that matter. Here I've been shaking my 360 to reboot it. Works with my laptop.
The worst part about this is that a lot of people won't see why it is such a fundamentally idiotic email. Our cultural idiocy is amazing.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Politics!
Normally, I would be whining about politics by now. No choice, that's what Seattle forces you to do.
But, you know, I can't find anyone I do want as president. 95% of the candidates are people I would refuse to shake hands with, and the other 5% I wouldn't give authority over a candy bar.
Fortunately, not being in Seattle this year, I can safely keep my gob shut on the matter.
But, you know, I can't find anyone I do want as president. 95% of the candidates are people I would refuse to shake hands with, and the other 5% I wouldn't give authority over a candy bar.
Fortunately, not being in Seattle this year, I can safely keep my gob shut on the matter.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Reboot!
I'd like to talk a bit about a design concept that doesn't exist yet, as far as I know. It's vaguely related to my last essay, so you'll have a better idea of what I'm talking about if you read that first.
The concept is about restarting challenges in a specific way. I don't know what to call it, exactly - let's call it "reincarnation", unless someone has a better idea. As in "restart, reload, retry, or reincarnate".
...
In many western RPGs, you get to make your own character(s).
Further character development is functionally on rails. While you could technically give your character some weird new skill, that isn't a very effective use of your points.
Eastern RPGs take the opposite stance, giving you rote characters and allowing you to heavily specialize them over the course of the game.
Basically, these two approaches seem like the Big Two in virtually every kind of game. Decisions are either planning or execution. If your game is heavy on planning, then your important decisions are made outside the "heat of play" - what stats your character should have, which people to bring, what program to run. If your game is heavy on execution, the important decisions are made during play, small adjustments to your course that change the permanent state of the game. Such as what spells to get, or whether to help the biker gang or the nuns.
It's not quite that simple, because (A) it's an axis, not a toggle, and (B) "heat of play" is not a very exact thing to say. For example, buying and equipping armor is execution-level when you are thinking about the "combat stats" game, but it's planning-level when you are thinking about the "combat" game. Actually, the "combat stats" game is the planning level for the combat game.
It's also a little complicated because games offer so many un-choices. For example, classic RPG combat is not full of decisions. The decision as to whether to attack, use magic, block, etc... it's a fake decision. One of them is obviously right in any given situation. Even when a decision is a decision, it's not really important: a few minutes after combat is over, you'll be pretty much fully recovered again. So it's kind of vague.
BUT... overall, when you look at a game from any given angle, you can see that some parts of the game are about planning, and some parts are about execution. That's all there is, right? Planning and execution.
Well, sort of. I mentioned that a game often has "layers". One layer is frequently "planning" for another layer, although the edges might be blurry.
For example, making a character in a western RPG is definitely planning for the rest of the game.
Aaaaaand there's the glitch.
Most games think of this kind of thing in terms of "the rest of the game". Even execution-level decisions frequently affect you for the rest of the game. But "the rest of the game" is a very long time! You're asking the player to make a skill-based decision that will affect the rest of the game... when he has the least skill!
Many players will replay the first five or ten hours of a game over and over, making new characters, trying new approaches. I've played Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion for over a hundred hours EACH, but I've never even gotten halfway through the main plot because I tend to play the first ten hours dozens of times instead.
Even when you are executing rather than planning, it is frequently in terms of "the rest of the game". When you level up a Final Fantasy character and give them the "summon monkey" spell, that's what they have. You can't change it, you can't take back those points and re-allocate them.
That is, in many ways, part of the charm. If your character is overspecialized in fire magic, he'll have a great time exploring the North Pole, but the marshlands will bury him without a problem. Dealing with weaknesses and strengths is a big part of the game: if you make a stealthy character, you'll have a hard time doing combat even when combat would be easier than stealth.
But this means that the game needs to contain a LOT of polish and deep content for every aspect, because someone who chooses stealth needs to have as much to do as someone who chooses combat! Since the choice is forever, there needs to be alternate content forever. If it ever gets boring, the player will get upset because his character has become boring... and he can't change it.
...
Let's talk about building houses.
In The Sims, you build a house for your little simmies. Basically, once a house is built, it's prohibitively expensive to significantly change the house (unless you're a cheating bastard). You'll change it here and there, maybe even buy a new house once or twice, but overall, when you build a house, your architectural choices last close to forever.
On the other hand, in Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius, you build a "house". Okay, a lair. But it serves fundamentally the same purpose, right? Keep your goons happy. Plus, well, killing anything that comes in, preferably in a hilarious fashion.
But these kinds of games do something very unusual. Something that RPGs don't do. They... well, their house-building reincarnates.
Every time you beat a level, your lair is gone. The next level has a new layout, and you have to build a new lair.
The lair-building is very complicated, the very definition of "easy to learn, hard to master". Even after dozens or hundreds of bases, you're never settled into a rut, because each level presents a new set of restrictions. This level has a lot of lava, that level is going to be attacked by dragons, the third level has lawyers that tax you based on your monster levels...
This creates a game that is a lot of fun, even when it isn't perfect. It's like learning to walk, and then being asked to navigate a wide variety of obstacle courses in any way you please.
I choose the term "reincarnation" because this is not simply restarting the game! Every new level is improved not only by your own prior experiences, but also by the new abilities that the game gives you. Now you have access to a new kind of trap, now you can build a helipad...
In its way, it's a bit like playing a good FPS or platformer: every level builds on the previous levels, even though you aren't really stuck with the decisions you made in those previous levels. However, this is not an execution-level thing. This is a planning thing.
When you build a lair, you are building a system that the game will toss challenges at.
In an RPG, the equivalent would be if the game contained 20 five-hour adventures, and you created a new character at the beginning of each... but you got access to different options at each new adventure. So, in the beginning maybe you can be a warrior or a thief. The second level, you learn to be a cleric and a barbarian. Third level, ranger and mage... third level's the ranged challenge, you see.
Obviously, the levels wouldn't be completely separate. The easy way would be to make each new adventure the next generation in the same family. Anything that happens to the village, any treasures you bring home, any NPCs you help or hinder affect the next generation of adventurer.
This "reincarnation" system of design allows you to design a core game, but then allow players to explore it in a way that encourages them to learn and try many different approaches. It allows you to get the best planning-style play... over and over and over!
Fundamentally, this kind of design is the same as classic level-based design... except that you focus on the planning elements rather than the execution elements that are classically central. People have done this kind of thing before, especially in in tactical games. But, as far as I know, nobody's really thought about it explicitly.
What do you think?
The concept is about restarting challenges in a specific way. I don't know what to call it, exactly - let's call it "reincarnation", unless someone has a better idea. As in "restart, reload, retry, or reincarnate".
...
In many western RPGs, you get to make your own character(s).
Further character development is functionally on rails. While you could technically give your character some weird new skill, that isn't a very effective use of your points.
Eastern RPGs take the opposite stance, giving you rote characters and allowing you to heavily specialize them over the course of the game.
Basically, these two approaches seem like the Big Two in virtually every kind of game. Decisions are either planning or execution. If your game is heavy on planning, then your important decisions are made outside the "heat of play" - what stats your character should have, which people to bring, what program to run. If your game is heavy on execution, the important decisions are made during play, small adjustments to your course that change the permanent state of the game. Such as what spells to get, or whether to help the biker gang or the nuns.
It's not quite that simple, because (A) it's an axis, not a toggle, and (B) "heat of play" is not a very exact thing to say. For example, buying and equipping armor is execution-level when you are thinking about the "combat stats" game, but it's planning-level when you are thinking about the "combat" game. Actually, the "combat stats" game is the planning level for the combat game.
It's also a little complicated because games offer so many un-choices. For example, classic RPG combat is not full of decisions. The decision as to whether to attack, use magic, block, etc... it's a fake decision. One of them is obviously right in any given situation. Even when a decision is a decision, it's not really important: a few minutes after combat is over, you'll be pretty much fully recovered again. So it's kind of vague.
BUT... overall, when you look at a game from any given angle, you can see that some parts of the game are about planning, and some parts are about execution. That's all there is, right? Planning and execution.
Well, sort of. I mentioned that a game often has "layers". One layer is frequently "planning" for another layer, although the edges might be blurry.
For example, making a character in a western RPG is definitely planning for the rest of the game.
Aaaaaand there's the glitch.
Most games think of this kind of thing in terms of "the rest of the game". Even execution-level decisions frequently affect you for the rest of the game. But "the rest of the game" is a very long time! You're asking the player to make a skill-based decision that will affect the rest of the game... when he has the least skill!
Many players will replay the first five or ten hours of a game over and over, making new characters, trying new approaches. I've played Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion for over a hundred hours EACH, but I've never even gotten halfway through the main plot because I tend to play the first ten hours dozens of times instead.
Even when you are executing rather than planning, it is frequently in terms of "the rest of the game". When you level up a Final Fantasy character and give them the "summon monkey" spell, that's what they have. You can't change it, you can't take back those points and re-allocate them.
That is, in many ways, part of the charm. If your character is overspecialized in fire magic, he'll have a great time exploring the North Pole, but the marshlands will bury him without a problem. Dealing with weaknesses and strengths is a big part of the game: if you make a stealthy character, you'll have a hard time doing combat even when combat would be easier than stealth.
But this means that the game needs to contain a LOT of polish and deep content for every aspect, because someone who chooses stealth needs to have as much to do as someone who chooses combat! Since the choice is forever, there needs to be alternate content forever. If it ever gets boring, the player will get upset because his character has become boring... and he can't change it.
...
Let's talk about building houses.
In The Sims, you build a house for your little simmies. Basically, once a house is built, it's prohibitively expensive to significantly change the house (unless you're a cheating bastard). You'll change it here and there, maybe even buy a new house once or twice, but overall, when you build a house, your architectural choices last close to forever.
On the other hand, in Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius, you build a "house". Okay, a lair. But it serves fundamentally the same purpose, right? Keep your goons happy. Plus, well, killing anything that comes in, preferably in a hilarious fashion.
But these kinds of games do something very unusual. Something that RPGs don't do. They... well, their house-building reincarnates.
Every time you beat a level, your lair is gone. The next level has a new layout, and you have to build a new lair.
The lair-building is very complicated, the very definition of "easy to learn, hard to master". Even after dozens or hundreds of bases, you're never settled into a rut, because each level presents a new set of restrictions. This level has a lot of lava, that level is going to be attacked by dragons, the third level has lawyers that tax you based on your monster levels...
This creates a game that is a lot of fun, even when it isn't perfect. It's like learning to walk, and then being asked to navigate a wide variety of obstacle courses in any way you please.
I choose the term "reincarnation" because this is not simply restarting the game! Every new level is improved not only by your own prior experiences, but also by the new abilities that the game gives you. Now you have access to a new kind of trap, now you can build a helipad...
In its way, it's a bit like playing a good FPS or platformer: every level builds on the previous levels, even though you aren't really stuck with the decisions you made in those previous levels. However, this is not an execution-level thing. This is a planning thing.
When you build a lair, you are building a system that the game will toss challenges at.
In an RPG, the equivalent would be if the game contained 20 five-hour adventures, and you created a new character at the beginning of each... but you got access to different options at each new adventure. So, in the beginning maybe you can be a warrior or a thief. The second level, you learn to be a cleric and a barbarian. Third level, ranger and mage... third level's the ranged challenge, you see.
Obviously, the levels wouldn't be completely separate. The easy way would be to make each new adventure the next generation in the same family. Anything that happens to the village, any treasures you bring home, any NPCs you help or hinder affect the next generation of adventurer.
This "reincarnation" system of design allows you to design a core game, but then allow players to explore it in a way that encourages them to learn and try many different approaches. It allows you to get the best planning-style play... over and over and over!
Fundamentally, this kind of design is the same as classic level-based design... except that you focus on the planning elements rather than the execution elements that are classically central. People have done this kind of thing before, especially in in tactical games. But, as far as I know, nobody's really thought about it explicitly.
What do you think?
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
The Case for Boring Games...
I've been thinking about RPGs.
Everyone who plays them can point to an RPG and say, "That's one of my favorites". Whether you point to Planescape: Torment, FFVI, or something that's a bit of a stretch like System Shock II or FFVII, you don't have any problem pointing.
I've been thinking about the stuff I like in an RPG, and I've come to the conclusion that I like the boring stuff.
The primary gameplay of an RPG - killing monsters, exploring dungeons, leveling up - doesn't interest me much. I actually find those parts of the game very boring.
On the other hand, the boring parts of the game... I love. I love wandering around the village talking to everyone, I love mixing potions and enchanting weapons, I love building a character, I love flying around in my airship.
But I hate the same things in non-RPGs. I can't stand Animal Crossing or The Sims, even though they feature my favorite stuff.
Why?
As far as I can tell, the big reason is that the parts of the RPG that I like are set within a much larger framework. The point of the game isn't to enchant weapons or talk to peasants: it's to kill shit, explore, and level up. This means that when I spend time enchanting or chatting, I can measure it against an overall world, see it doing something.
Talking to peasants isn't the point of the game, but talking to peasants allows me to explore the world in more detail. Building a new spell isn't the point of the game, but doing so allows me to interact with the world (usually, kill shit) in a more personalized way.
In things like The Sims and Animal Crossing, these activities feel completely pointless. Sure, I can talk to everyone in town... but why bother? The world is a tiny, shallow place and exploring it is awfully pointless. Sure, I can build a classy house, but what does it matter? My sims are equally pleased by two rooms with a lot of corners. Having a nice house is actually bad, since it takes the sims twenty minutes to walk ten feet.
On the other side of the spectrum, I don't like these activities in MMORPGs, because they do not allow you to approach the world in more detail or from new perspectives. Exploring the world of the World of Warcraft is largely futile, because it's pretty well explored already. It's like "exploring" your local strip mall. There are no surprises, unless you count a 10% off sale on stuff you don't need.
Similarly, crafting weapons or potions is pointless because they have been carefully crippled down to a level of non-uniqueness that a fast food restaurant would be embarrassed about.
These all have the same problem: the creation doesn't let you interact with the world in a meaningful, seemingly unique way. Making potions doesn't give you any real new way of exploring the game, and building a house doesn't matter when there's really no world to explore with it.
Compare these to the examples I do like.
Evil Genius is about creating a house of a sort. I know a lot of people played The Sims like it was Evil Genius...
Evil Genius' house creation system was a lot weaker than The Sims, but to me it was a lot juicier. Every kind of room had a real purpose, every piece of furniture meant something. The layout wasn't just for kicks or to minimize travel time: it was continually tested by hapless tourists and not-so-hapless secret agents.
So, while Evil Genius didn't allow for many of the advanced options that The Sims allowed, it had a strong backbone that actually rewarded you for doing well.
Similarly, in Oblivion potion-making was generally quite rewarding. You could make potions of healing, sure. But it wasn't a matter of combining a rabbit foot and green herb: there were a lot of different ingredients you could use, a lot of side effects you needed to manage, and your skill played a huge part - not in simple pass/fail terms, but in what you could wring out of the ingredients.
Of course, potion making in Oblivion is well known for being one of the most broken systems on the face of the planet... that's something you have to manage, I suppose.
Evil Genius wasn't a spectacularly good game, but it's a great game to learn from. It was certainly the case that some players would be better at building bases than other players! It was definitely a long learning experience, each base slightly better as you learn the basics.
But it never came off as "unbalanced". (Actually, the unbalanced part of the game was personnel, not base construction.) The more successful you were, the more attention you drew.
This kind of adaptive feedback is the only thing I can think of that I predict will be in a lot more games. It allows you to play fast and loose with balance, favoring depth over fairness. And that's what I like.
...
A lot of people love The Sims, and I'm not saying it's bad. Instead, what I think is that these people impose their own world - their own value - onto the people and houses they create. Instead of having a feedback system like Oblivion's potions or Evil Genius' secret bases, the players substitute their own imagination and judgment. It seems to work well, but that's not something I need a game for.
On the other hand, the shallow 1+1=potion of MMORPGs is basically unforgivably bad...
What do you think? Do you like the "boring" parts? Can you think of a game design where crafting combines with massively multiplayer without being infuriating?
Everyone who plays them can point to an RPG and say, "That's one of my favorites". Whether you point to Planescape: Torment, FFVI, or something that's a bit of a stretch like System Shock II or FFVII, you don't have any problem pointing.
I've been thinking about the stuff I like in an RPG, and I've come to the conclusion that I like the boring stuff.
The primary gameplay of an RPG - killing monsters, exploring dungeons, leveling up - doesn't interest me much. I actually find those parts of the game very boring.
On the other hand, the boring parts of the game... I love. I love wandering around the village talking to everyone, I love mixing potions and enchanting weapons, I love building a character, I love flying around in my airship.
But I hate the same things in non-RPGs. I can't stand Animal Crossing or The Sims, even though they feature my favorite stuff.
Why?
As far as I can tell, the big reason is that the parts of the RPG that I like are set within a much larger framework. The point of the game isn't to enchant weapons or talk to peasants: it's to kill shit, explore, and level up. This means that when I spend time enchanting or chatting, I can measure it against an overall world, see it doing something.
Talking to peasants isn't the point of the game, but talking to peasants allows me to explore the world in more detail. Building a new spell isn't the point of the game, but doing so allows me to interact with the world (usually, kill shit) in a more personalized way.
In things like The Sims and Animal Crossing, these activities feel completely pointless. Sure, I can talk to everyone in town... but why bother? The world is a tiny, shallow place and exploring it is awfully pointless. Sure, I can build a classy house, but what does it matter? My sims are equally pleased by two rooms with a lot of corners. Having a nice house is actually bad, since it takes the sims twenty minutes to walk ten feet.
On the other side of the spectrum, I don't like these activities in MMORPGs, because they do not allow you to approach the world in more detail or from new perspectives. Exploring the world of the World of Warcraft is largely futile, because it's pretty well explored already. It's like "exploring" your local strip mall. There are no surprises, unless you count a 10% off sale on stuff you don't need.
Similarly, crafting weapons or potions is pointless because they have been carefully crippled down to a level of non-uniqueness that a fast food restaurant would be embarrassed about.
These all have the same problem: the creation doesn't let you interact with the world in a meaningful, seemingly unique way. Making potions doesn't give you any real new way of exploring the game, and building a house doesn't matter when there's really no world to explore with it.
Compare these to the examples I do like.
Evil Genius is about creating a house of a sort. I know a lot of people played The Sims like it was Evil Genius...
Evil Genius' house creation system was a lot weaker than The Sims, but to me it was a lot juicier. Every kind of room had a real purpose, every piece of furniture meant something. The layout wasn't just for kicks or to minimize travel time: it was continually tested by hapless tourists and not-so-hapless secret agents.
So, while Evil Genius didn't allow for many of the advanced options that The Sims allowed, it had a strong backbone that actually rewarded you for doing well.
Similarly, in Oblivion potion-making was generally quite rewarding. You could make potions of healing, sure. But it wasn't a matter of combining a rabbit foot and green herb: there were a lot of different ingredients you could use, a lot of side effects you needed to manage, and your skill played a huge part - not in simple pass/fail terms, but in what you could wring out of the ingredients.
Of course, potion making in Oblivion is well known for being one of the most broken systems on the face of the planet... that's something you have to manage, I suppose.
Evil Genius wasn't a spectacularly good game, but it's a great game to learn from. It was certainly the case that some players would be better at building bases than other players! It was definitely a long learning experience, each base slightly better as you learn the basics.
But it never came off as "unbalanced". (Actually, the unbalanced part of the game was personnel, not base construction.) The more successful you were, the more attention you drew.
This kind of adaptive feedback is the only thing I can think of that I predict will be in a lot more games. It allows you to play fast and loose with balance, favoring depth over fairness. And that's what I like.
...
A lot of people love The Sims, and I'm not saying it's bad. Instead, what I think is that these people impose their own world - their own value - onto the people and houses they create. Instead of having a feedback system like Oblivion's potions or Evil Genius' secret bases, the players substitute their own imagination and judgment. It seems to work well, but that's not something I need a game for.
On the other hand, the shallow 1+1=potion of MMORPGs is basically unforgivably bad...
What do you think? Do you like the "boring" parts? Can you think of a game design where crafting combines with massively multiplayer without being infuriating?
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