Hey, it's nutball pseudoeconomics!
So, this recession's got everyone in an uproar. It's pretty severe, to the point where calling it a recession is pretty optimistic. Per capita, it's not particularly notable on most axes when compared to the various other recessions we've had, but there are some unique factors.
Chances are, if you're a big geek, you've seen some of these figures. I've got half a dozen blogs on my feed that like to wax poetic, and any time I see their figures, I feel sick. Not because their figures are disheartening, but because they're always so shallow.
For example, this recession shows an unusual characteristic (according to one feed): it's the first one where we've lost more private-sector service jobs than manufacturing jobs. This could be a sign that this recession is going to have a different kind of result than usual.
That may be true, but to imply that this recession is preferentially affecting service jobs is just a total fabrication. The simple truth is that we now have an order of magnitude more service jobs (technically, MY job is a service job!) than ever before and far fewer manufacturing jobs, both per capita and in absolute.
Understanding this is important, and it's important to realize that this is probably also a factor in the slower recovery times associated with more modern recessions: I could make the argument that the service industry recovers slower, adds jobs more slowly, than the manufacturing industry. So a weaker manufacturing industry would therefore slow recovery time.
But that's not a judgment. Even if I were to say that, I certainly wouldn't argue in favor of an increased manufacturing sector. I would instead argue that this trend is moving us rather unavoidably into an ever more info-heavy economy.
Our current economy isn't really built for that. It's definitely a manufacturing economy, and it served us fairly well when we were a manufacturing country. It's served us less well as we've transitioned to an "information-centric" country. Its instability and slowing recovery times may also be side effects of this transition.
When the pundits talk about the economy dipping and resetting, I think they're probably right... but I'm not sure I agree that the economy... well, is the economy.
Please take this pet theory into consideration. I am not arguing that we should put effort into transitioning into a new kind of economy. I am instead arguing that we will slide into a new kind of economy without trying. In fact, I expect we will try very hard to not slide.
I am not arguing for any particular market or any particular theory of economics. I am arguing that our technology has become so powerful that we will see - slowly, unless viewed through a historical record - a tipping.
Our economy currently views everything as if it were a manufactured good, whether it actually is a manufactured good or whether it's a music file or a news report. I think we'll see a slow transition to viewing everything as if it were information, whether it is information or a manufactured good.
You can already see it beginning. Apple is one of the kings of this. It's true that they sell computers of various kinds and purposes, but their company focuses on the design, branding, and market penetration aspects. The hardware is designed with these things in mind. The hardware is subservient to the information elements.
This is inherently a luxury economy, at least by the classic definition of "luxury". The whole point of this system is that information is more important and more prevalent than food. Or, at the very least, that food (and manufactured goods, etc) is somehow bound to information so tightly that it makes more sense to buy and sell that information instead of directly buying and selling food.
Banks already do this, obviously. I'm arguing it's going to become more common. It's already pretty common, actually: we waste a hell of a lot of cash on food that's been "info-ed up" for our easy consumption. McDonalds, Starbucks, "organic" produce, these are all things where the physical food is wholly subservient to what they mean, where they position themselves in culture, and how they sling information.
Despite how "bad" things are, the truth is that this is still a luxury economy. As blue-collar workers turn out their pockets to find the cash to pay for their cable bill, their car payments, their heating bill, we need to realize that those are all luxuries. Most people - even those who are out of work and gnawing on their fingers in stress - are living in luxury.
Luxury is strangely fragile in our new world. Today, a comfortable life either shatters completely, leaving you utterly destitute and with absolutely nothing, or it remains pretty comfortable. The issue at hand is that "luxury" is not significantly more expensive than "baseline survival". If you have a family, your monthly bill for your internet connection is less expensive than a day's food. Canceling it isn't make-or-break. Even if you did cancel it to save money, your life would still be full of books, food, heat, cars, and probably more TV than can possibly be healthy.
So, even though an information economy is inherently a luxury economy, we're still living in a luxury economy. Even if we stop being consumerist in terms of forking over cash, we're still consumerist in terms of watching TV, sending text messages, and reading some ivory-tower idiot blather about economics. That's not going to change, because these activities are so cheap, and they're only getting cheaper. Even if you're starving and have your gas cut off, you can still pop over to the library for free internet! Luxury is CHEAPER than survival!
I think it's inevitable that our economy, as it recovers, will begin to put its emphasis more on information, and less on manufacturing. I mean on a very fundamental level, not just in terms of percentages.
Well, I might be biased.
Did that make any sense to anyone?
Monday, February 09, 2009
Friday, February 06, 2009
A Linear Discussion
So, I got a comment on my post about linearization that brought up some issues I'd like to discuss. These are issues of flow and narrative.
Oldschool RPGs tended to have a very specific kind of play style, and that play style was "play for an hour, realize you built your party wrong, restart, play for two hours, realize you built your party wrong, restart, play for five hours, realize you built..."
Of course, during the play you also tended to do a lot of random wandering around, essentially meaning that there was some downtime.
These days, all those "dead ends" have been polished off.
I say that's a bad move.
I say those dead ends are part of the enjoyment of the game for a substantial number of games. A game designer can't think of a player restarting the game as failure, because the player isn't actually starting from the beginning. The player is starting with a lot more knowledge than they originally possessed.
They have, in essence, just cleared level one of the "party building" game, and are now moving on to level two.
Perhaps it can be taken too far, sure, but there's a lot to be said for it. The best ten hours of Oblivion are the first ten hours, and I've played them more than a dozen times. That's where all the play density is.
Now, Greg's comment pointed out that it is often in everyone's best interests to prevent the player from make bad narrative decisions (such as, say, wandering off into the middle of nowhere instead of doing something cool).
I say this thinking is what is wrong with so many of today's games. There is an inherent arrogance in this kind of narrativist thinking, a kind of "play the game like I tell you" vibe. It's become so common that it's hard to see because we're in the thick of it.
The essence of my argument is that if you have to limit a player in order to insure they have the best experience, you're not designing a game. You're designing a movie.
Games, by their nature, have limits. You can't create a game where the player can do anything, because it would be (A) boring very quickly and (B) impossible to program. But limits come in a lot of different varieties.
Some limits make the game deeper. For example, in Daggerfall you can equip shoes, pants, a shirt, and a cloak (if I remember right). You can't equip eighteen pairs of shoes.
These limits make the gameplay denser, because they make you have to choose between the options you are faced with. If you have shoes that let you walk on water and shoes that give you an armor bonus, which will you wear? It really matters, unlike the choices between shoes that give you 2% better armor or shoes that give you 2% better mana regen. Why bother making a choice with such boring and inconsequential results?
These gameplay decisions allow (or prevent) you to express yourself as a player. I doubt any two people ever played Daggerfall and ended up with the same character. There are just so many ways to express your preferences and choose your path... even if the plot is linear. The limits on the gameplay are designed to make the gameplay deeper.
But there are other kinds of limits, and we're seeing them more and more these days. Every RPG these days features fewer components, fewer choices, more "carefully balanced" so that you can't possibly make a WRONG choice. We're seeing the glorification of time - your power level depends 99% on how long you spend grinding. Sure, you can spend all that time and end up with a shitty character, but only if you have the brain of an eight year old with severe head trauma. The path to normalcy is quite clear.
So the fact that old games had linear stories and some modern games don't is irrelevant. The amount of freedom and agency you get by being able to choose good or evil in the last ten minutes of the game pales in comparison to having to balance eight pieces of equipment for each of your four party members. That it can even be considered a step up shows that mainstream designers have a pathetic lack of understanding as to what a game is.
There is certainly room for games of physical skill, where you're jumping and aiming and so forth. In those games, it is less important to have this kind of deeper statistical gameplay.
But why is it that even Fallout 3 has shitty statistical gameplay? Even Fallout 3 is dumbed down to the point where you can't express yourself because the dominant strategies are so clear. This, the "paragon" of "open world games", with all the gameplay of a buried ET cartridge. Carefully dumbed down so you won't ever feel TOO challenged.
That's crap! It's crap! You don't PLAY modern games, you EXPERIENCE them. That's worthless! Why am I watching this 45-hour-long movie where I have to push buttons?
Is it any wonder that I've begun to hate RPGs in favor of action titles? Because action titles put that shitty complexity on top of a skill challenge, while RPGs just have the shitty complexity?
Give me back my paintbrush. Let me excel. Let me fail. I don't even care if your story is as linear and nonsensical as a marmoset fired from a cannon.
Oldschool RPGs tended to have a very specific kind of play style, and that play style was "play for an hour, realize you built your party wrong, restart, play for two hours, realize you built your party wrong, restart, play for five hours, realize you built..."
Of course, during the play you also tended to do a lot of random wandering around, essentially meaning that there was some downtime.
These days, all those "dead ends" have been polished off.
I say that's a bad move.
I say those dead ends are part of the enjoyment of the game for a substantial number of games. A game designer can't think of a player restarting the game as failure, because the player isn't actually starting from the beginning. The player is starting with a lot more knowledge than they originally possessed.
They have, in essence, just cleared level one of the "party building" game, and are now moving on to level two.
Perhaps it can be taken too far, sure, but there's a lot to be said for it. The best ten hours of Oblivion are the first ten hours, and I've played them more than a dozen times. That's where all the play density is.
Now, Greg's comment pointed out that it is often in everyone's best interests to prevent the player from make bad narrative decisions (such as, say, wandering off into the middle of nowhere instead of doing something cool).
I say this thinking is what is wrong with so many of today's games. There is an inherent arrogance in this kind of narrativist thinking, a kind of "play the game like I tell you" vibe. It's become so common that it's hard to see because we're in the thick of it.
The essence of my argument is that if you have to limit a player in order to insure they have the best experience, you're not designing a game. You're designing a movie.
Games, by their nature, have limits. You can't create a game where the player can do anything, because it would be (A) boring very quickly and (B) impossible to program. But limits come in a lot of different varieties.
Some limits make the game deeper. For example, in Daggerfall you can equip shoes, pants, a shirt, and a cloak (if I remember right). You can't equip eighteen pairs of shoes.
These limits make the gameplay denser, because they make you have to choose between the options you are faced with. If you have shoes that let you walk on water and shoes that give you an armor bonus, which will you wear? It really matters, unlike the choices between shoes that give you 2% better armor or shoes that give you 2% better mana regen. Why bother making a choice with such boring and inconsequential results?
These gameplay decisions allow (or prevent) you to express yourself as a player. I doubt any two people ever played Daggerfall and ended up with the same character. There are just so many ways to express your preferences and choose your path... even if the plot is linear. The limits on the gameplay are designed to make the gameplay deeper.
But there are other kinds of limits, and we're seeing them more and more these days. Every RPG these days features fewer components, fewer choices, more "carefully balanced" so that you can't possibly make a WRONG choice. We're seeing the glorification of time - your power level depends 99% on how long you spend grinding. Sure, you can spend all that time and end up with a shitty character, but only if you have the brain of an eight year old with severe head trauma. The path to normalcy is quite clear.
So the fact that old games had linear stories and some modern games don't is irrelevant. The amount of freedom and agency you get by being able to choose good or evil in the last ten minutes of the game pales in comparison to having to balance eight pieces of equipment for each of your four party members. That it can even be considered a step up shows that mainstream designers have a pathetic lack of understanding as to what a game is.
There is certainly room for games of physical skill, where you're jumping and aiming and so forth. In those games, it is less important to have this kind of deeper statistical gameplay.
But why is it that even Fallout 3 has shitty statistical gameplay? Even Fallout 3 is dumbed down to the point where you can't express yourself because the dominant strategies are so clear. This, the "paragon" of "open world games", with all the gameplay of a buried ET cartridge. Carefully dumbed down so you won't ever feel TOO challenged.
That's crap! It's crap! You don't PLAY modern games, you EXPERIENCE them. That's worthless! Why am I watching this 45-hour-long movie where I have to push buttons?
Is it any wonder that I've begun to hate RPGs in favor of action titles? Because action titles put that shitty complexity on top of a skill challenge, while RPGs just have the shitty complexity?
Give me back my paintbrush. Let me excel. Let me fail. I don't even care if your story is as linear and nonsensical as a marmoset fired from a cannon.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
The Body Politic
I have a fair number of blogs on my feed, and a lot of them are armchair activists on the side, political idealists of the least dangerous sort. My own views on politics tend to wander a bit more because I pride myself on at least TRYING to get my opinions to reflect the facts, rather than visa-versa.
The thing about CHANGE! is that people think of the government as some kind of... assortment of disconnected pieces. Like we can swap out our banking system for another as if plucking a lego off a stack and putting another one on.
The truth is that the government is more like a complex, living organism. Like, say, a human.
A patient walks into the emergency room complaining of dizziness and fatigue. Examinations reveal he has a weak heart. Perhaps not THE problem, but certainly a factor. What do you do?
Well, our armchair idealists chime in with "we should just replace the heart with a turbine. Increased, smoother bloodflow. It's way better."
Of course, this idea is just dumb. Even if increased, smoother bloodflow was actually a) what we wanted and b) could be created with the turbine, it doesn't take into account the fact that this is a very complicated system.
Where does the turbine get its energy? Where does the heat dissipate to? How long before it breaks, especially in the wet and nasty environment inside the body, and how do you fix it when it does? Will the body's immune system reject it? Is the turbine going to give off any toxins from its casing? Is the vibration going to cause detachments?
If it was as easy as simply popping in a machine, then we would all be cyborgs by now. The reason medical research takes so long is because the body works in very complex ways.
Well, a government is roughly the same. If our economy comes in complaining of dizziness and fatigue, we can't simply pop in a new heart. There's a lot of long-term, highly balanced, highly evolved systems that will suffer on every level, and that's assuming that the new heart actually works well for a long period of time without tying us to a wall socket.
That isn't to say you should ignore the weak heart. But it is to say that you need to be careful. You can run around willy-nilly, especially when the system is weakened. You need to consider the kinds of treatments that will help, and consider the factors that might affect both short and long term outcomes.
To do this well, it's important to understand how both the government and the economy function, which isn't something ANYONE can claim at the moment. But a decent substitute would be to study the various systems that have evolved over the lifetime of the government, why they evolved, and what they do. Something that none of the politically radical folks I've ever talked to have bothered to do.
See, the thing is that replacing the heart with a turbine pump could be good in many situations. If, for example, our economy already had a turbine pump heart, and we're just switching out for a better model. In order to know that sort of thing, you need to have, actually, you know, STUDIED THE ECONOMY.
Every government is somewhat unique, too. What works for England (or whoever) may not work for us. There are certain common trends: if arsenic is fatal to most creatures, we can rule out arsenic as an option pretty quick. But there are a lot of things that seem to work, or almost work, in other governments. Our government evolved differently. It has a different layout, a different immune system, a different everything. We need to take that into consideration.
Of course, this is just as pointless and idealistic as these silly idealists, because NOBODY EVER CHANGED A GOVERNMENT TO FIT THEORY OR FACT. Governments are always assembled and destroyed following the fads of the population and the drift of political sentiment. Ugh.
UGH.
The thing about CHANGE! is that people think of the government as some kind of... assortment of disconnected pieces. Like we can swap out our banking system for another as if plucking a lego off a stack and putting another one on.
The truth is that the government is more like a complex, living organism. Like, say, a human.
A patient walks into the emergency room complaining of dizziness and fatigue. Examinations reveal he has a weak heart. Perhaps not THE problem, but certainly a factor. What do you do?
Well, our armchair idealists chime in with "we should just replace the heart with a turbine. Increased, smoother bloodflow. It's way better."
Of course, this idea is just dumb. Even if increased, smoother bloodflow was actually a) what we wanted and b) could be created with the turbine, it doesn't take into account the fact that this is a very complicated system.
Where does the turbine get its energy? Where does the heat dissipate to? How long before it breaks, especially in the wet and nasty environment inside the body, and how do you fix it when it does? Will the body's immune system reject it? Is the turbine going to give off any toxins from its casing? Is the vibration going to cause detachments?
If it was as easy as simply popping in a machine, then we would all be cyborgs by now. The reason medical research takes so long is because the body works in very complex ways.
Well, a government is roughly the same. If our economy comes in complaining of dizziness and fatigue, we can't simply pop in a new heart. There's a lot of long-term, highly balanced, highly evolved systems that will suffer on every level, and that's assuming that the new heart actually works well for a long period of time without tying us to a wall socket.
That isn't to say you should ignore the weak heart. But it is to say that you need to be careful. You can run around willy-nilly, especially when the system is weakened. You need to consider the kinds of treatments that will help, and consider the factors that might affect both short and long term outcomes.
To do this well, it's important to understand how both the government and the economy function, which isn't something ANYONE can claim at the moment. But a decent substitute would be to study the various systems that have evolved over the lifetime of the government, why they evolved, and what they do. Something that none of the politically radical folks I've ever talked to have bothered to do.
See, the thing is that replacing the heart with a turbine pump could be good in many situations. If, for example, our economy already had a turbine pump heart, and we're just switching out for a better model. In order to know that sort of thing, you need to have, actually, you know, STUDIED THE ECONOMY.
Every government is somewhat unique, too. What works for England (or whoever) may not work for us. There are certain common trends: if arsenic is fatal to most creatures, we can rule out arsenic as an option pretty quick. But there are a lot of things that seem to work, or almost work, in other governments. Our government evolved differently. It has a different layout, a different immune system, a different everything. We need to take that into consideration.
Of course, this is just as pointless and idealistic as these silly idealists, because NOBODY EVER CHANGED A GOVERNMENT TO FIT THEORY OR FACT. Governments are always assembled and destroyed following the fads of the population and the drift of political sentiment. Ugh.
UGH.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Linearized Play
Today I saw some interesting posts that kind of gelled my thinking on a specific subject.
Trends in games are easy to spot. For example, you can clearly see the spread of wargamers, followed by the spread of dungeoncrawl RPGs (D&D and ilk), and so forth. On the computery side, you can see the spread and demise of adventure games, the spread of the first person shooter, the spread of the FPS RPG... sometimes, these fashions are caused by a cool new technology, sometimes they aren't, but they always follow more or less the same arcs.
Right now theres a hideous fashion spreading through the game design world, the bell-bottoms of game design. I hate it like I hate hearing rap when I want to listen to, you know, MUSIC music. It's horrible.
This fad I'm talking about is the linearization of gameplay.
I'm sure you're all familiar with the concept of linear gameplay. At first blush, it's largely just about how the levels proceed, right? If you have to go from level to level in a specific fashion and never get to change the plot, that's linear play.
Well, no, it's just a taste of linear play.
Because a lot more things can be linear.
Back in the good old days of yore, mighty RPGs were released to the computer. Like Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday. Like Eye of the Beholder. These featured "open worlds" to at least some extent, and although the plot was linear, you could do a lot of other things between and around the plot.
These RPGs had parties that were widely customizable - and each character often had dozens of skills, a dozen stats, and a sack full of special powers. The characters were not "balanced" - half of the gameplay was to work with the character system to try to get what you wanted out of them.
These games had "3D" like chickens can play the piano. Some had a bad fake of 3D ("90-degree-jump 3D"), but most didn't even bother going that far. This was so far before the era of polygons that it was almost before the era of the mouse.
Compare and contrast to today's RPGs.
Today's RPGs are... maybe 1/10 as free? The worlds are rarely very open, there's plenty of safety rails to keep you from ever getting in over your head EVER ANYWHERE, the enemies are carefully leveled to your level, and your character is carefully balanced so that no matter how you build him or her, they will be able to face leveled challenges at a specific difficulty.
No, seriously, today's games are actually less open and have less agency than those old computer games. Essentially, all the branches have been cut off and everything smoothed into one linear path. Even if there are multiple paths, they are carefully parallel and each is perfectly straight.
As far as I can tell, this is a result of the rise of consoles. By which I mean the NES and Atari, not the Wii and 360.
These consoles had much more restricted interfaces than their computer counterparts, but were very popular and able to display on your TV, a must for the time. Their restricted capabilities meant that instead of focusing on "spreadsheet play", they focused on "action play".
For some reason, this fad has continued and grown even until today. You can see it in MMORPGs, where early MMORPGs feel more like those oldschool RPGs and the current WoWified flock feel like Frogger the MMORPG.
See, WoW is a linearized game. All the branches and edges have been rubbed off, and players are carefully guided onto their paths. While it is technically open world, the fact is that no matter where you go in the world, you will not gain a significant advantage or disadvantage (although, obviously, you can just waste your time). No matter what equipment you get, it will be within the specific limits of their proscribed power curve, and no combinations of equipments or skills will give you a significant advantage above that curve. That's an ideal, of course: sometimes, people do break the power curve, but the team almost immediately "nerfs" them back down onto it.
This is not to say that the game is "dumb". It isn't dumb, it's simply linear. It's built so that you cannot spreadsheet your way to glory: being a spreadsheet whore will only get you a few extra points here and there, enough for a small advantage but not enough to change how you play the game.
There are nonlinear elements, such as guilds and socializing, but these are not part of the gameplay. Some of the plots are nonlinear, but it is just aesthetic: they don't actually change your long-term experience or power level in any kind of significant way. Everything happens incrementally, along a carefully designed curve.
I can understand that. MMORPG, lots of players, gotta keep it balanced. I don't LIKE it, but I can understand it as a drawback of the MMO as it exists today.
But it's spreading.
Single-player RPGs are gravitating towards this same linearized path. Tabletop RPGs, most notably D&D 4th ed, are also heading this direction. But there is no reason to do so. These sorts of games do not have to be linear and, in fact, that is their great strength. It is what sets them apart.
I hope this fad dies a horrible death ASAP. Now would be a good time. Because I'm pissed that every RPG and tactical RPG I find has been dumbed down to this linear system. I might as well be watching a movie: there's certainly nothing particularly creative I can do with this kind of on-the-rails gameplay.
Give me something juicy! Let me screw up! Let me do exceedingly well! Why do I always have to do precisely as the game designer imagined it? Give me a little freedom, you egocentric jerk!
Or something.
Has anyone else noticed this crap?
Trends in games are easy to spot. For example, you can clearly see the spread of wargamers, followed by the spread of dungeoncrawl RPGs (D&D and ilk), and so forth. On the computery side, you can see the spread and demise of adventure games, the spread of the first person shooter, the spread of the FPS RPG... sometimes, these fashions are caused by a cool new technology, sometimes they aren't, but they always follow more or less the same arcs.
Right now theres a hideous fashion spreading through the game design world, the bell-bottoms of game design. I hate it like I hate hearing rap when I want to listen to, you know, MUSIC music. It's horrible.
This fad I'm talking about is the linearization of gameplay.
I'm sure you're all familiar with the concept of linear gameplay. At first blush, it's largely just about how the levels proceed, right? If you have to go from level to level in a specific fashion and never get to change the plot, that's linear play.
Well, no, it's just a taste of linear play.
Because a lot more things can be linear.
Back in the good old days of yore, mighty RPGs were released to the computer. Like Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday. Like Eye of the Beholder. These featured "open worlds" to at least some extent, and although the plot was linear, you could do a lot of other things between and around the plot.
These RPGs had parties that were widely customizable - and each character often had dozens of skills, a dozen stats, and a sack full of special powers. The characters were not "balanced" - half of the gameplay was to work with the character system to try to get what you wanted out of them.
These games had "3D" like chickens can play the piano. Some had a bad fake of 3D ("90-degree-jump 3D"), but most didn't even bother going that far. This was so far before the era of polygons that it was almost before the era of the mouse.
Compare and contrast to today's RPGs.
Today's RPGs are... maybe 1/10 as free? The worlds are rarely very open, there's plenty of safety rails to keep you from ever getting in over your head EVER ANYWHERE, the enemies are carefully leveled to your level, and your character is carefully balanced so that no matter how you build him or her, they will be able to face leveled challenges at a specific difficulty.
No, seriously, today's games are actually less open and have less agency than those old computer games. Essentially, all the branches have been cut off and everything smoothed into one linear path. Even if there are multiple paths, they are carefully parallel and each is perfectly straight.
As far as I can tell, this is a result of the rise of consoles. By which I mean the NES and Atari, not the Wii and 360.
These consoles had much more restricted interfaces than their computer counterparts, but were very popular and able to display on your TV, a must for the time. Their restricted capabilities meant that instead of focusing on "spreadsheet play", they focused on "action play".
For some reason, this fad has continued and grown even until today. You can see it in MMORPGs, where early MMORPGs feel more like those oldschool RPGs and the current WoWified flock feel like Frogger the MMORPG.
See, WoW is a linearized game. All the branches and edges have been rubbed off, and players are carefully guided onto their paths. While it is technically open world, the fact is that no matter where you go in the world, you will not gain a significant advantage or disadvantage (although, obviously, you can just waste your time). No matter what equipment you get, it will be within the specific limits of their proscribed power curve, and no combinations of equipments or skills will give you a significant advantage above that curve. That's an ideal, of course: sometimes, people do break the power curve, but the team almost immediately "nerfs" them back down onto it.
This is not to say that the game is "dumb". It isn't dumb, it's simply linear. It's built so that you cannot spreadsheet your way to glory: being a spreadsheet whore will only get you a few extra points here and there, enough for a small advantage but not enough to change how you play the game.
There are nonlinear elements, such as guilds and socializing, but these are not part of the gameplay. Some of the plots are nonlinear, but it is just aesthetic: they don't actually change your long-term experience or power level in any kind of significant way. Everything happens incrementally, along a carefully designed curve.
I can understand that. MMORPG, lots of players, gotta keep it balanced. I don't LIKE it, but I can understand it as a drawback of the MMO as it exists today.
But it's spreading.
Single-player RPGs are gravitating towards this same linearized path. Tabletop RPGs, most notably D&D 4th ed, are also heading this direction. But there is no reason to do so. These sorts of games do not have to be linear and, in fact, that is their great strength. It is what sets them apart.
I hope this fad dies a horrible death ASAP. Now would be a good time. Because I'm pissed that every RPG and tactical RPG I find has been dumbed down to this linear system. I might as well be watching a movie: there's certainly nothing particularly creative I can do with this kind of on-the-rails gameplay.
Give me something juicy! Let me screw up! Let me do exceedingly well! Why do I always have to do precisely as the game designer imagined it? Give me a little freedom, you egocentric jerk!
Or something.
Has anyone else noticed this crap?
Saturday, January 24, 2009
The Outer Ring
Game design RAMBLEAMBLERAMBLERAMBLE
So, I'm the only person on the planet who doesn't much like Spelunky. I've actually gotten requests for a post about Spelunky. Since I don't often get requests, I guess I should probably, you know, listen.
Spelunky obviously isn't a bad game. But I'm ambivalent while a huge number of my friends and game-designer-sorts like it quite a lot. So... why don't I like it? It's not that it's too hard, or outside my area of expertise, or anything like that. It's just... not compelling to me.
There are only a few games that I don't like that everyone else does. It's not a matter of genres, either. It's something else.
For example, I don't like GTA. And I don't much like Rock Band. Obviously not bad games, and I'm not bad at them for the amount of time I've spent on them. But... just in no way compelling. Playing dress-the-rock-star was the most compelling part of Rock Band to me.
I've thought about it, and I think I know what connects every single one of the games I don't like and everyone else does.
...
If you've been reading me for a while, you're familiar with the idea of nested gameplay loops. The idea is that the innermost loop is your control over the character, then there's a loop for your character interacting with the level, and a loop for the level interacting with the plot and so on and so forth.
It's an easy way to look at game design, especially if you want to think in terms of giving the player the most juicy agency. It's never as clear-cut as the demo makes it sound, though, because it's less of gameplay loops and more of a gameplay whirlpool: there's no clear divisions between one loop and another, and each loop drags and urges on the others in a way more like water than like a clockwork engine.
But, anyway, what's missing in the games I'm not fond of is an outermost ring. Or, rather, there is an outermost ring, but it spins freely, uninterestingly.
In GTA, doing whatever you want on the city map is clearly the main thrust of the game. Stealing cars, shooting people... hiring hookers... stealing cars... um... shooting people... it's clearly the major point of simulation.
But that outermost ring just spins. It has no texture. Stealing cars and shooting people has no long-term effect at all, and the short-term effects are painfully predictable and shallow.
Now, obviously, there are missions and a plot. And, to be honest, I might like the game if I focused on them instead of screwing around with the city. But the city is the point of densest simulation. So obviously that's where my attention falls. If the game was structured a bit differently - for example, if the city play was less open - I would probably actually like the game better because the outer ring would be the plot events rather than the city's emergent response my crime sprees.
Rock Band is the same way. The outer loop just spins. To me there is no feeling of texture in trying to get good scores on certain songs. The feeling of mastery isn't terribly important to me. Rock Band does have a "band" mode, which is a more textured outer loop than its predecessors, but the band mode is still a very limited, very boring play loop and it holds no lasting interest for me.
That doesn't make these games bad by any stretch. But I can't think of many games I like where the outer loop is so flat!
Spelunky is the same way. Everyone else is admiring the textures of the inner rings. But I can't get over the fact that there's no real point to it. The next randomly generated level offers nothing new, no kind of interesting progression, aside from the occasional introduction of a new tile set or a nastier version of an older enemy.
The outer ring basically just spins, it has no texture, no bumpiness, no interesting pattern.
...
This can be contrasted with games that I like and everyone else hates, by the way.
For example, I really like the Wii game "Ghost Squad". It's a rails shooter that is maybe two hours long at longest. It has only three stages.
Every time you play through it, you not only unlock new features, you also unlock new pieces of the level for next time you play through. In this case, the inner play loops are not terribly amazing (and quite short), but there is an additional outer play loop above and beyond what other games offer.
...
So that's my reasoning. Do you see what I mean? What are your opinions?
So, I'm the only person on the planet who doesn't much like Spelunky. I've actually gotten requests for a post about Spelunky. Since I don't often get requests, I guess I should probably, you know, listen.
Spelunky obviously isn't a bad game. But I'm ambivalent while a huge number of my friends and game-designer-sorts like it quite a lot. So... why don't I like it? It's not that it's too hard, or outside my area of expertise, or anything like that. It's just... not compelling to me.
There are only a few games that I don't like that everyone else does. It's not a matter of genres, either. It's something else.
For example, I don't like GTA. And I don't much like Rock Band. Obviously not bad games, and I'm not bad at them for the amount of time I've spent on them. But... just in no way compelling. Playing dress-the-rock-star was the most compelling part of Rock Band to me.
I've thought about it, and I think I know what connects every single one of the games I don't like and everyone else does.
...
If you've been reading me for a while, you're familiar with the idea of nested gameplay loops. The idea is that the innermost loop is your control over the character, then there's a loop for your character interacting with the level, and a loop for the level interacting with the plot and so on and so forth.
It's an easy way to look at game design, especially if you want to think in terms of giving the player the most juicy agency. It's never as clear-cut as the demo makes it sound, though, because it's less of gameplay loops and more of a gameplay whirlpool: there's no clear divisions between one loop and another, and each loop drags and urges on the others in a way more like water than like a clockwork engine.
But, anyway, what's missing in the games I'm not fond of is an outermost ring. Or, rather, there is an outermost ring, but it spins freely, uninterestingly.
In GTA, doing whatever you want on the city map is clearly the main thrust of the game. Stealing cars, shooting people... hiring hookers... stealing cars... um... shooting people... it's clearly the major point of simulation.
But that outermost ring just spins. It has no texture. Stealing cars and shooting people has no long-term effect at all, and the short-term effects are painfully predictable and shallow.
Now, obviously, there are missions and a plot. And, to be honest, I might like the game if I focused on them instead of screwing around with the city. But the city is the point of densest simulation. So obviously that's where my attention falls. If the game was structured a bit differently - for example, if the city play was less open - I would probably actually like the game better because the outer ring would be the plot events rather than the city's emergent response my crime sprees.
Rock Band is the same way. The outer loop just spins. To me there is no feeling of texture in trying to get good scores on certain songs. The feeling of mastery isn't terribly important to me. Rock Band does have a "band" mode, which is a more textured outer loop than its predecessors, but the band mode is still a very limited, very boring play loop and it holds no lasting interest for me.
That doesn't make these games bad by any stretch. But I can't think of many games I like where the outer loop is so flat!
Spelunky is the same way. Everyone else is admiring the textures of the inner rings. But I can't get over the fact that there's no real point to it. The next randomly generated level offers nothing new, no kind of interesting progression, aside from the occasional introduction of a new tile set or a nastier version of an older enemy.
The outer ring basically just spins, it has no texture, no bumpiness, no interesting pattern.
...
This can be contrasted with games that I like and everyone else hates, by the way.
For example, I really like the Wii game "Ghost Squad". It's a rails shooter that is maybe two hours long at longest. It has only three stages.
Every time you play through it, you not only unlock new features, you also unlock new pieces of the level for next time you play through. In this case, the inner play loops are not terribly amazing (and quite short), but there is an additional outer play loop above and beyond what other games offer.
...
So that's my reasoning. Do you see what I mean? What are your opinions?
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Extending the Human Mind
Yeah, this one's all futurism. Try to ignore the political tone if it grates on you. It's not the central theme, it's just setting the stage.
Today I was not listening to the inauguration. To be specific, it wasn't that I simply wasn't listening, it was that I didn't want to listen. Political speeches are, by their very nature, almost completely devoid of anything resembling meaning. I didn't want to hear the speech and definitely didn't want to weather the teeth-grittingly obvious televangelist-adapted speaking techniques. Memetic infection vectors, if you want to be suitably super-nerdy.
But I was interested in understanding what the speech meant and, perhaps more importantly, how people were reacting to it. So I watched the Twittering. I got my piecemeal analysis of the speech. And then, just to verify, I read a transcription and verified that, in fact, the analysis was correct.
There were some parts I cared about. Not a fan of letting an ancient death cult with a coat of paint determine my future, still not much actual separation of church and state going on there. But his paragraph about science was most promising. If he means it.
But the speech was more or less unimportant. The Twitter feed was more important. Because those people are pretty good indicators of the pulse of the nation, and I'm hoping are pretty good predictors of future trends.
For example, after he said "and non-believers", virtually every post for thirty seconds was about how great it was that he gave "us" a "shout out". We'll politely ignore the paragraphs where he talks about following god's will and being guided by scripture, since that sort of crap is mandatory for US politicians and we are easily quieted by table scraps. But it means that, at least for a while, the nonbelievers - who outnumber the American Jewish and Muslim contingents combined - are going to be very happy with our new president. That's probably not an analysis you'll see much in more mainstream news sources, and it's not something you could get just from reading the speech.
The point is that the analysis was more important than the content. So instead of doing the analysis myself, I allowed thousands of people to do the analysis and then picked out the best bits I could find. Open source analysis, I guess.
Things come to light when you do this. Correlations and details not in the actual event but brought up in the analysis. Trends that may predict future political activities... for example, based on the Twitters I saw, I would predict that African aid is going to be an extremely low priority in the upcoming four years. I'm not saying that because I've analyzed the variables or made any logical connections, I'm saying it because it was the only part of his speech that I didn't see one Twitter about. It's possible they were just lost in the staggering number of posts, but it's statistically unlikely that there were very many.
But it's possible. There were a staggering number of posts. They might have been out of synch with my rabid refresh-clicking. What I would have preferred to do is to read all the twitters, but as they were coming at roughly 100/second, that wasn't going to happen.
What I really needed, you see, was an analysis of the Twitter posts in the same way that the Twitter posts were an analysis of the speech. With the goal of reducing the posts down to a reasonable number, either by displaying only the most trend-representative posts or by simply describing the trends in the posts.
Humans couldn't do it: even if we put ten thousand more people on analyzing the first ten thousand people's posts, there's too many posts, too quickly. It requires software.
A software agent. A piece of personal software that reads all the Twitter posts and tells me what to think about them.
... what? ...
"Wait! You want software to think for you?"
Well, DUH. There's a lot of information analysis scut-work. I don't have time to keep up with all the information, even if I wanted to. It's going to require us to outsource our thinking, to create a layer of abstraction between us and the original data.
Of course, I'm not interested in letting just any old program do my thinking for me. It has to be software that I can trust and that I can dive into and make sure it really is thinking like me. I'm not going to buy "MS Brain Replacement", but I might get "Neuralinux" or whatever. Properly understood and under my control, this software would be able to parse the high-volume information streams, understanding what my personal values are. It would also be able to leverage other infomorphs' analysis: for trend analysis, for saving computation, and for trusted analysis on restricted information.
This method of extending the human mind has been talked about a lot in the more futuristic segment of geekhood. Some people talk about outrigger brains that will directly interface with our own, but at least in the forseeable future, it's more likely to be this kind of software agent. I can see, looking further ahead, that the line would become blurred - where our mind ends and the software begins. I don't see that as a problem, as long as our software is our software.
After all, we trust our cars. We trust airplanes. We trust our banks. We do a lot of trusting of external agencies, and these agencies radically enhance our capabilities. Our brain is no different, except that we're only now starting to take hold of the reins. Until recently, we've been forced to trust news agencies, politicians, and other rather questionable sources of analysis. But connectivity works in our favor: our personal software agents will be able to "see" a huge number of sources and get millions of opinions.
I look forward to it, personally.
I look forward to being in the voting booth and seeing names I don't recognize. Pull up my infomorph. It tells me what I think of their politics, their scandals, and so on. No reason to blind-vote or go the party line.
I look forward to posting an essay like this one and suddenly getting a rash of highly educated specialists poking holes in it.
I look forward to the capabilities I can't even imagine.
How about you?
Today I was not listening to the inauguration. To be specific, it wasn't that I simply wasn't listening, it was that I didn't want to listen. Political speeches are, by their very nature, almost completely devoid of anything resembling meaning. I didn't want to hear the speech and definitely didn't want to weather the teeth-grittingly obvious televangelist-adapted speaking techniques. Memetic infection vectors, if you want to be suitably super-nerdy.
But I was interested in understanding what the speech meant and, perhaps more importantly, how people were reacting to it. So I watched the Twittering. I got my piecemeal analysis of the speech. And then, just to verify, I read a transcription and verified that, in fact, the analysis was correct.
There were some parts I cared about. Not a fan of letting an ancient death cult with a coat of paint determine my future, still not much actual separation of church and state going on there. But his paragraph about science was most promising. If he means it.
But the speech was more or less unimportant. The Twitter feed was more important. Because those people are pretty good indicators of the pulse of the nation, and I'm hoping are pretty good predictors of future trends.
For example, after he said "and non-believers", virtually every post for thirty seconds was about how great it was that he gave "us" a "shout out". We'll politely ignore the paragraphs where he talks about following god's will and being guided by scripture, since that sort of crap is mandatory for US politicians and we are easily quieted by table scraps. But it means that, at least for a while, the nonbelievers - who outnumber the American Jewish and Muslim contingents combined - are going to be very happy with our new president. That's probably not an analysis you'll see much in more mainstream news sources, and it's not something you could get just from reading the speech.
The point is that the analysis was more important than the content. So instead of doing the analysis myself, I allowed thousands of people to do the analysis and then picked out the best bits I could find. Open source analysis, I guess.
Things come to light when you do this. Correlations and details not in the actual event but brought up in the analysis. Trends that may predict future political activities... for example, based on the Twitters I saw, I would predict that African aid is going to be an extremely low priority in the upcoming four years. I'm not saying that because I've analyzed the variables or made any logical connections, I'm saying it because it was the only part of his speech that I didn't see one Twitter about. It's possible they were just lost in the staggering number of posts, but it's statistically unlikely that there were very many.
But it's possible. There were a staggering number of posts. They might have been out of synch with my rabid refresh-clicking. What I would have preferred to do is to read all the twitters, but as they were coming at roughly 100/second, that wasn't going to happen.
What I really needed, you see, was an analysis of the Twitter posts in the same way that the Twitter posts were an analysis of the speech. With the goal of reducing the posts down to a reasonable number, either by displaying only the most trend-representative posts or by simply describing the trends in the posts.
Humans couldn't do it: even if we put ten thousand more people on analyzing the first ten thousand people's posts, there's too many posts, too quickly. It requires software.
A software agent. A piece of personal software that reads all the Twitter posts and tells me what to think about them.
... what? ...
"Wait! You want software to think for you?"
Well, DUH. There's a lot of information analysis scut-work. I don't have time to keep up with all the information, even if I wanted to. It's going to require us to outsource our thinking, to create a layer of abstraction between us and the original data.
Of course, I'm not interested in letting just any old program do my thinking for me. It has to be software that I can trust and that I can dive into and make sure it really is thinking like me. I'm not going to buy "MS Brain Replacement", but I might get "Neuralinux" or whatever. Properly understood and under my control, this software would be able to parse the high-volume information streams, understanding what my personal values are. It would also be able to leverage other infomorphs' analysis: for trend analysis, for saving computation, and for trusted analysis on restricted information.
This method of extending the human mind has been talked about a lot in the more futuristic segment of geekhood. Some people talk about outrigger brains that will directly interface with our own, but at least in the forseeable future, it's more likely to be this kind of software agent. I can see, looking further ahead, that the line would become blurred - where our mind ends and the software begins. I don't see that as a problem, as long as our software is our software.
After all, we trust our cars. We trust airplanes. We trust our banks. We do a lot of trusting of external agencies, and these agencies radically enhance our capabilities. Our brain is no different, except that we're only now starting to take hold of the reins. Until recently, we've been forced to trust news agencies, politicians, and other rather questionable sources of analysis. But connectivity works in our favor: our personal software agents will be able to "see" a huge number of sources and get millions of opinions.
I look forward to it, personally.
I look forward to being in the voting booth and seeing names I don't recognize. Pull up my infomorph. It tells me what I think of their politics, their scandals, and so on. No reason to blind-vote or go the party line.
I look forward to posting an essay like this one and suddenly getting a rash of highly educated specialists poking holes in it.
I look forward to the capabilities I can't even imagine.
How about you?
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Landscaping for Nonlinear Play
I thought I'd bring up this idea and see if it holds up in the light.
I'm a big fan of strategy games, especially strategy RPGs, but the most fun I have is when I can conquer the world in the order I choose. This is actually pretty rare: you could do it in Dune, in one of the Dynasty Warriors, Brigandine, and a few other games, but overall it's very, very rare to be given a map and told to get to it.
It's not the same as a space-conquest game like Masters of Orion! I'm not talking about a game where the main complexity is in the landscape. I'm talking about a game where the main complexity is in the game part, and the landscape simply gives you... an outer play loop. Control over your vector. You play the main game because of your strategic choices, rather than the strategic choices being the main game. And these games are rare.
I can understand that to some extent. While it's not particularly difficult to program, it does make the game flow hard to control. That means both difficulty balancing and difficulty making meaningful plot arcs. So these games tend to have a wonky, unbalanced feel at times, and they never have a plot more complex than "oh, hey, you're the new king of the world!"
Well, let's think about how we could potentially overcome those problems and give our players as meaningful a plot experience as in any linear game.
...
One method would be to divorce the plot from the strategic game. Brigandine does this to some extent: the various knights often have plot arcs which progress regardless of your tactical choices, although they sometimes halt until you accomplish a major strategic victory such as destroying a specific kingdom.
This is a simple idea where there are linear plots tossed into the nonlinear game, and they progress pretty much independently of the nonlinear part. This is simple, but it isn't very tightly connected to the choices the player makes, so I'm not a big fan of leaving it like this.
There are a few kinds of events we can use as "anchors" or "linchpins" for the character arcs instead of having them simply progress linearly. A few are obvious: taking or losing specific zones, killing or acquiring specific heroes, finding specific unique items, etc. However, perhaps the more interesting ones are ones which are not linked to unique game events but are instead linked to general game events.
For example, if your character arc goes one way if you're on the main team most of the time, or another way if you're usually relegated to the back. How about if it changes based on whether you're badly injured in combat, or after you make a certain number of kills? A certain number of consecutive victories or losses? And, of course, whether your buddy is on the same team as you most of the time, and whether your buddy gets injured.
Now the difficulty is the large amount of scripting required per character. It would be very difficult to script up the usual two-dozen cast, because each character would have dozens of pages of branching script!
You could use some of the cheap tricks I tend to use, such as making it so no characters actually speak at any point. That cuts the amount of work by about 90%. But, of course, how to make it interesting and comprehendable without dialog?
Another choice would be to try to create "landscaped" characters instead of scripted characters. This is basically just writing the main dialog sequences, then writing much more generic "connective" sequences (often not even character-unique) to allow the player to get from one scripted event to the next via any valid means.
Your savings won't be nearly as much, but you'll get a lot more nonlinearity for the same amount of effort.
As an example, you could write the love interest scene. But to reach the scene, maybe the player visits a romantic spot with her. Or maybe he gets critically injured in combat. Or maybe he rescues her from certain doom in combat. Or maybe he does something unspeakably nice. All of these things are nonunique, and the point is that the player can progress through the characters' arcs without adhering to a script.
Basically, we're abstracting out most of the linchpin/anchor events.
Hmmm.
I guess that's it.
I'm done!
I'm a big fan of strategy games, especially strategy RPGs, but the most fun I have is when I can conquer the world in the order I choose. This is actually pretty rare: you could do it in Dune, in one of the Dynasty Warriors, Brigandine, and a few other games, but overall it's very, very rare to be given a map and told to get to it.
It's not the same as a space-conquest game like Masters of Orion! I'm not talking about a game where the main complexity is in the landscape. I'm talking about a game where the main complexity is in the game part, and the landscape simply gives you... an outer play loop. Control over your vector. You play the main game because of your strategic choices, rather than the strategic choices being the main game. And these games are rare.
I can understand that to some extent. While it's not particularly difficult to program, it does make the game flow hard to control. That means both difficulty balancing and difficulty making meaningful plot arcs. So these games tend to have a wonky, unbalanced feel at times, and they never have a plot more complex than "oh, hey, you're the new king of the world!"
Well, let's think about how we could potentially overcome those problems and give our players as meaningful a plot experience as in any linear game.
...
One method would be to divorce the plot from the strategic game. Brigandine does this to some extent: the various knights often have plot arcs which progress regardless of your tactical choices, although they sometimes halt until you accomplish a major strategic victory such as destroying a specific kingdom.
This is a simple idea where there are linear plots tossed into the nonlinear game, and they progress pretty much independently of the nonlinear part. This is simple, but it isn't very tightly connected to the choices the player makes, so I'm not a big fan of leaving it like this.
There are a few kinds of events we can use as "anchors" or "linchpins" for the character arcs instead of having them simply progress linearly. A few are obvious: taking or losing specific zones, killing or acquiring specific heroes, finding specific unique items, etc. However, perhaps the more interesting ones are ones which are not linked to unique game events but are instead linked to general game events.
For example, if your character arc goes one way if you're on the main team most of the time, or another way if you're usually relegated to the back. How about if it changes based on whether you're badly injured in combat, or after you make a certain number of kills? A certain number of consecutive victories or losses? And, of course, whether your buddy is on the same team as you most of the time, and whether your buddy gets injured.
Now the difficulty is the large amount of scripting required per character. It would be very difficult to script up the usual two-dozen cast, because each character would have dozens of pages of branching script!
You could use some of the cheap tricks I tend to use, such as making it so no characters actually speak at any point. That cuts the amount of work by about 90%. But, of course, how to make it interesting and comprehendable without dialog?
Another choice would be to try to create "landscaped" characters instead of scripted characters. This is basically just writing the main dialog sequences, then writing much more generic "connective" sequences (often not even character-unique) to allow the player to get from one scripted event to the next via any valid means.
Your savings won't be nearly as much, but you'll get a lot more nonlinearity for the same amount of effort.
As an example, you could write the love interest scene. But to reach the scene, maybe the player visits a romantic spot with her. Or maybe he gets critically injured in combat. Or maybe he rescues her from certain doom in combat. Or maybe he does something unspeakably nice. All of these things are nonunique, and the point is that the player can progress through the characters' arcs without adhering to a script.
Basically, we're abstracting out most of the linchpin/anchor events.
Hmmm.
I guess that's it.
I'm done!
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