There's an interesting post on SecondLife economics here.
The short version is: "we've got this big thing rolling where people donate money to a good cause, and we've noticed that now the money is worth more! That's good news, but why did it happen?"
Actually, it's bad news.
The reason that the relative value of the money went from 330 for a buck to 300 for a buck is because people are buying more money. Pretty simple, right? The alternative is that people are selling less money, which is functionally the same thing.
Why are they buying more money - or selling less?
Not to wager my life savings on this, but "because they're donating it to you" seems likely. SL is small enough that a few big charity drives or fundings can put a significant spin on the economy. This is a damn big spin: chances are, there's some other stuff going on, too. And I don't know precisely how large this particular charity drive is: big, but big enough to cause a 10% blip?
Anyhow, the basic truth is: the price of money will go up when a lot of money is going to these "savings accounts", and they aren't spending it.
Of course, then they do spend it, in a lump sum, for real cash that can be put to real use.
Okay, so the price of money rises when you store huge amounts of money in a particular account. Now, what happens when you release huge amounts of money?
This is a toughie...
That's right, the price drops!
Moreover, it drops dramatically more than it rose in the first place, because it came in as a sustained trickle and it's being returned as an instant flood.
So, when the "savings accounts" that are holding up a huge amount of capital decide to release it, you can expect a big-ass devaluation.
"Ohnoes! How can it be solvified?"
If you're a bastard, you can sell it in one lump some at peak market price. But who is going to buy that many lindens? Oh, yeah. Linden Labs' new RMT system. Frankly, if you can convince them to buy such a large number of lindens in a single lump, they deserve to take the damage.
Or you can release the money slowly - say, 10% a month. Or you can convince people to buy your Lindens for more than the going price of market lindens.
The last is pretty classy. First people donate the money. Then you sell it back to them at a mark-up over market price.
Anyhow, we'll see how it all works out.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Saturday, July 08, 2006
No Answers
Most depressing site of the week:
Yahoo! Answers highlights the aggressive stupidity of The Common Person. Just reading these "answers" depresses me.
Yahoo! Answers highlights the aggressive stupidity of The Common Person. Just reading these "answers" depresses me.
Why Parse?
This is mostly addressing Patrick's Parsing Problems, but anyone with an interest in UI might find it interesting.
When designing something, the most critical thing to know is what the thing has to do. Then you design it to do that task efficiently and beautifully.
The problem with UI design is that most people don't know what their UI is supposed to do. Not clearly. So they overdesign and go astray.
There are three kinds of UI: static, parsed, and reverse parsed. These are the only three kinds of UI anywhere in reality. There are no other options, although many UI are actually several UI wrapped together, often of multiple types.
Static UI are the most common in computer applications. These are usually an array of menus and icons. The user always has all the options, although they often have to dig deeply to find the particular one they are looking for. Static UI can be as opaque as a 3D toolkit or as transparent as a number pad on an ATM.
The primary joy of this system is that it is really easy to design, but at a more fundamental level, it is also very useful for complex systems in which you might be controlling several different aspects simultaneously - or need to be able to make new aspects immediately. It is also useful for systems which you use a lot, because you'll become very adept at navigating them. In a game design, however, this system is usually the most inefficient.
Reverse Parsed UI are essentially dolled up static UI. This interface only offers you the options that are directly applicable to the situation at hand. The most common reverse parsed interface is right-clicking on a Windows machine. Games also commonly use reverse-parsed interfaces - everything from the RTS game which shows you unit commands to the Sims, which uses a snazzy-looking right-click menu.
The primary strength in a reverse-parsed UI is ease and simplicity. It is exquisite for controlling diverse elements in a very easy and transparent manner. Because it typically wastes a click, it is slightly slower than static UI, but is easy for a beginner to use.
Parsed UI are more common than you might think. A parsed UI is any system which uses a complex multivariate input to conrol the situation. The most common parsed UI? A mouse. Of course, a mouse is a computer UI, and most programs use the mouse to interface with a static or reverse parsed program UI.
A parsed UI is useful for differentiating between at least a hundred nearly identical options. For example, which angle to fire a bullet at. Where to place a pit trap.
That is the only thing a parsed UI should be used for.
Now, that might sound zany. For example, a program is a parsed language. But when you build a program, you build something out of a million different, mostly identical pieces and aim them at each other very precisely. Functionally, a program is a set of objects which are picked and aimed carefully from a truly staggering number of options.
But the thing about a program is that you are actually using a static interface (plus a little reverse goodness with tab completion) to interface with this parsed UI!
How zany is that?
You're taking a parsed interface (your body), ignoring the other parsed interfaced (your mouse) in favor of a static interface (your keyboard) with which you use a parsed interface (the programming language).
Why? It's a matter of precision vs range.
A mouse doesn't work very precisely, or very quickly. But because it is a parsed system, it has excellent range, able to skip over huge numbers of identical options to pick roughly the option it wants. Buttons are large specifically because of the precision loss.
A keyboard is very precise, but is "local" - since it's a static UI, there's no way to get far from where you are short of typing additional letters. The more identical options, the more letters. But once you get there, you are there exactly.
Of course, a mouse is intuitive and a keyboard is not, and there's something to be said for that, as well. You could make a keyboard "jump" to specific menu locations using mapped keys (some games do this), but it requires more memorization.
Fascinating stuff.
Anyhow, does your game require choosing from a hundred nearly identical options? If not, you do not need a parsed system. And if so, you only need a parsed system for that part of your game.
Understand what your UI needs to do, and give the user the most efficient UI for the task. Choosing a UI because you think it's a kewl koncept is silly, and will piss off your players unless it is specifically serving a game purpose efficiently.
When designing something, the most critical thing to know is what the thing has to do. Then you design it to do that task efficiently and beautifully.
The problem with UI design is that most people don't know what their UI is supposed to do. Not clearly. So they overdesign and go astray.
There are three kinds of UI: static, parsed, and reverse parsed. These are the only three kinds of UI anywhere in reality. There are no other options, although many UI are actually several UI wrapped together, often of multiple types.
Static UI are the most common in computer applications. These are usually an array of menus and icons. The user always has all the options, although they often have to dig deeply to find the particular one they are looking for. Static UI can be as opaque as a 3D toolkit or as transparent as a number pad on an ATM.
The primary joy of this system is that it is really easy to design, but at a more fundamental level, it is also very useful for complex systems in which you might be controlling several different aspects simultaneously - or need to be able to make new aspects immediately. It is also useful for systems which you use a lot, because you'll become very adept at navigating them. In a game design, however, this system is usually the most inefficient.
Reverse Parsed UI are essentially dolled up static UI. This interface only offers you the options that are directly applicable to the situation at hand. The most common reverse parsed interface is right-clicking on a Windows machine. Games also commonly use reverse-parsed interfaces - everything from the RTS game which shows you unit commands to the Sims, which uses a snazzy-looking right-click menu.
The primary strength in a reverse-parsed UI is ease and simplicity. It is exquisite for controlling diverse elements in a very easy and transparent manner. Because it typically wastes a click, it is slightly slower than static UI, but is easy for a beginner to use.
Parsed UI are more common than you might think. A parsed UI is any system which uses a complex multivariate input to conrol the situation. The most common parsed UI? A mouse. Of course, a mouse is a computer UI, and most programs use the mouse to interface with a static or reverse parsed program UI.
A parsed UI is useful for differentiating between at least a hundred nearly identical options. For example, which angle to fire a bullet at. Where to place a pit trap.
That is the only thing a parsed UI should be used for.
Now, that might sound zany. For example, a program is a parsed language. But when you build a program, you build something out of a million different, mostly identical pieces and aim them at each other very precisely. Functionally, a program is a set of objects which are picked and aimed carefully from a truly staggering number of options.
But the thing about a program is that you are actually using a static interface (plus a little reverse goodness with tab completion) to interface with this parsed UI!
How zany is that?
You're taking a parsed interface (your body), ignoring the other parsed interfaced (your mouse) in favor of a static interface (your keyboard) with which you use a parsed interface (the programming language).
Why? It's a matter of precision vs range.
A mouse doesn't work very precisely, or very quickly. But because it is a parsed system, it has excellent range, able to skip over huge numbers of identical options to pick roughly the option it wants. Buttons are large specifically because of the precision loss.
A keyboard is very precise, but is "local" - since it's a static UI, there's no way to get far from where you are short of typing additional letters. The more identical options, the more letters. But once you get there, you are there exactly.
Of course, a mouse is intuitive and a keyboard is not, and there's something to be said for that, as well. You could make a keyboard "jump" to specific menu locations using mapped keys (some games do this), but it requires more memorization.
Fascinating stuff.
Anyhow, does your game require choosing from a hundred nearly identical options? If not, you do not need a parsed system. And if so, you only need a parsed system for that part of your game.
Understand what your UI needs to do, and give the user the most efficient UI for the task. Choosing a UI because you think it's a kewl koncept is silly, and will piss off your players unless it is specifically serving a game purpose efficiently.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Tabletop 2
This is a continuation of the previous post.
After some thought, I've decided to change the dynamic slightly. Most of the rules are the same, but see how you like these dynamics:
The cards that are dealt to a player are not from a central deck: each player has his own deck of cards. When he uses a card in an action, it is set aside and not shuffled back into the deck. Much later - say, every time a character gets a significant rest - these cards are shuffled into the deck.
Also, emotion cards, while still having the same draw dynamic, don't follow the same "face cards/low cards win" dynamic. Instead, they win based on whether they are light side or dark side (red or black).
What this means is that there is an interesting dynamic for continued play, rather than simply being about an encounter.
See, at the beginning, your best bet is to use a lot of concentration to trade bad cards for good cards - slow, careful progress. But the thing is, the good cards are put aside after you use them, and the bad cards are shuffled back into the deck after you concentrate away from them.
As you start to wear on towards the end of the deck, you start getting fewer and fewer successes in your basic five card hand, because you've stacked the deck against yourself. This means that you have to start relying on emotion, since the emotion scoring dynamics are different, so those bad cards aren't bad.
Of course, some people will want to use emotions right from the start, and that's where a simple new rule comes in: you can either use an emotion or concentrate. If you concentrate, you can exchange one card per round, as explained in the previous post. If you use an emotion, you instantly get a bevvy of emotion cards, each of which has a 55% chance of being useful.
So, sure, you can use emotion right from the start. The benefit of this is twofold. First, you don't stack the deck. Second, you get instant results rather than waiting. Of course, you also burn through more cards.
Of course, a clever jedi could use his concentration skill to try to barely succeed in early confrontations, going for a maximum of failed cards while stacking the remaining deck in his favor. This careful, reserved approach will result in a powerful endgame, but will take time and be unimpressive at the beginning.
If you run out of cards? You're too exhausted to try anything. The result of starting to run low on cards should be very similar to RPed exhaustion: either you go out quick and then faint, or you carefully conserve your energy, performing poorly and not getting too excited.
I think it's a cool idea!
It does change the emotions-increased-by-jokers thing... but in RPs favor. People who are emotional right from the start are very likely to pull jokers in their emotion cards, increasing their emotions. However, people who are only emotional after half a deck of careful winnowing are less than half as likely to pull a joker in their emotion cards.
I honestly don't know whether such a mechanistic approach will work, but assigning it to the GM is a difficult proposition...
Anyhow, what do you think of the new mechanics?
After some thought, I've decided to change the dynamic slightly. Most of the rules are the same, but see how you like these dynamics:
The cards that are dealt to a player are not from a central deck: each player has his own deck of cards. When he uses a card in an action, it is set aside and not shuffled back into the deck. Much later - say, every time a character gets a significant rest - these cards are shuffled into the deck.
Also, emotion cards, while still having the same draw dynamic, don't follow the same "face cards/low cards win" dynamic. Instead, they win based on whether they are light side or dark side (red or black).
What this means is that there is an interesting dynamic for continued play, rather than simply being about an encounter.
See, at the beginning, your best bet is to use a lot of concentration to trade bad cards for good cards - slow, careful progress. But the thing is, the good cards are put aside after you use them, and the bad cards are shuffled back into the deck after you concentrate away from them.
As you start to wear on towards the end of the deck, you start getting fewer and fewer successes in your basic five card hand, because you've stacked the deck against yourself. This means that you have to start relying on emotion, since the emotion scoring dynamics are different, so those bad cards aren't bad.
Of course, some people will want to use emotions right from the start, and that's where a simple new rule comes in: you can either use an emotion or concentrate. If you concentrate, you can exchange one card per round, as explained in the previous post. If you use an emotion, you instantly get a bevvy of emotion cards, each of which has a 55% chance of being useful.
So, sure, you can use emotion right from the start. The benefit of this is twofold. First, you don't stack the deck. Second, you get instant results rather than waiting. Of course, you also burn through more cards.
Of course, a clever jedi could use his concentration skill to try to barely succeed in early confrontations, going for a maximum of failed cards while stacking the remaining deck in his favor. This careful, reserved approach will result in a powerful endgame, but will take time and be unimpressive at the beginning.
If you run out of cards? You're too exhausted to try anything. The result of starting to run low on cards should be very similar to RPed exhaustion: either you go out quick and then faint, or you carefully conserve your energy, performing poorly and not getting too excited.
I think it's a cool idea!
It does change the emotions-increased-by-jokers thing... but in RPs favor. People who are emotional right from the start are very likely to pull jokers in their emotion cards, increasing their emotions. However, people who are only emotional after half a deck of careful winnowing are less than half as likely to pull a joker in their emotion cards.
I honestly don't know whether such a mechanistic approach will work, but assigning it to the GM is a difficult proposition...
Anyhow, what do you think of the new mechanics?
Tabletop System
I'm going to hammer out a tabletop system - I plan to run a game in it during the upcoming school year. It will be a redux of my Bastard Jedi game, based in a universe vaguely similar to Star Wars.
But I'm redesigning it to (A) have a decent combat system, (B) use multimaps and (C) not be quite so irritating.
One of the things I'm going to do is drop the idea of dice. Instead, I'm going to use cards. Here's my basic idea for how any given challenge would go:
A player is dealt five cards, face down. He can simply reveal his cards. A joker counts as two points, a face card as one point. Any given card has a 3/13 chance of being a face card and a 1/26 chance of being a joker, so the average card is worth 4/13 points, or a 30% chance. This means that a player will, using this system, generally have a point or two out of five cards.
However, your skill rating will allow you to count numbers equal or below it as points, as well. So if you have a skill of five (very high), you'll also count ace - 5 as points, raising your chances to 9/13, or an average of three or four points per set of five cards.
To add some depth, there are three other things you can do.
1) You can "concentrate". Each round you spend concentrating allows you to reveal a card and choose either to keep it or trade it in for another random card (which is face-down, allowing you to concentrate and reveal/exchange it). If you draw a joker while concentrating, it counts as a blip in the Force, and you instantly reveal and apply all your hidden cards and the joker. The joker still counts as two points, so this isn't really bad.
2) You can put oomph into it. Oomph can be put in at the beginning, or added later. This allows you to draw more cards based on the level of the emotion you're using and how attuned you are, whichever is least.
For example, if you try to do something while angry, you draw extra cards for being angry. If you're only a little peeved, you get one card. If you're trying to kill someone out of anger, you get four cards... if you are at level four anger. Otherwise, you technically max out at whatever your current level is.
These cards are instantly revealed and cannot be traded. Otherwise, they are exactly like the normal cards. A joker counts as two points and moves your emotion level up a notch, permanently. So, if you have level two anger and draw the joker, you now have level three anger.
This makes using emotions very powerful AND self-adjusting. Because of the way the universe works, you can use emotion for a big boost even in things totally unrelated to the Force.
3) Assists. With the help of a useful assistant, you get an extra card. For a great assistant, you gain two extra cards. (They cannot do anything besides assist you, of course.)
--
Anyhow, that's how you rack up points. But this game isn't simply about racking up successes, and many times a fight will be between two force users. In this case, everything is done as per normal, but each player chooses a side - light or dark. They may both choose light, or they can go one light, one dark, or whatever. If they use an emotion to gain extra cards, they have to choose that side, obviously.
When cards are revealed, all cards bearing the color you didn't choose (red is light side, black is dark side) are given to your opponent. You keep jokers.
What this means is that, unless you concentrate for several rounds and carefully weed out black or red cards, you're likely to give half your cards to your enemy. The end result in this kind of match is that skill is far more important than emotion in a jedi-jedi match, whereas emotion is very important in an uncontested match. There's some in-game reasons for this.
But a clever jedi can swing the balance in his favor using a few simple tricks.
--
Holdouts:
You can choose not to use all your base five cards to do something. Instead, you can choose to use any number and simply hold on to the others. These others include revealed cards.
Lets say Anne is trying to sense whether there's another Force user in the city. She concentrates and reveals a king of hearts - worth a point! Obviously a keeper. However, instead of using that card to help her find another Force user, she pulls it aside and stores it. Then she uses the remaining four cards to find a Force user.
From then on, she only gets dealt four cards, but she can play the king of hearts whenever she wants to. This is useful because she knows it is a light-side point, no matter what her skill and opposition. Of course, every time she withholds it, she is working less effectively than she could be.
--
Force Affinities:
Places where the Force is strong in a given emotion do not split cards evenly red-black. An opposed check instead splits the suits 3-1. Dark siders using the right emotion lose only hearts to enemies, while light siders and other dark emotions still split evenly. A light sider using the right emotion loses only spades.
The inverse is also true: if you use the exact opposite emotion (such as trying to be harmonious in a long-angry environment) you lose all but hearts, or all but spades. But your points count double. This isn't quite enough to even it out statistically, but it does give you a fighting chance. This is also the only way to break (temporarily or permanently) the emotional charge of the Force - by using the opposite emotion and a specific Force power.
By choosing where they fight carefully, or by charging an area with their preferred emotion, Force users can make almost impossible stands by forcing their enemy to fork over half their cards while keeping 75% of their own cards.
--
Anyhow, those are my thoughts on the randomizing system. I might talk more about other stuff later, but I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on this.
But I'm redesigning it to (A) have a decent combat system, (B) use multimaps and (C) not be quite so irritating.
One of the things I'm going to do is drop the idea of dice. Instead, I'm going to use cards. Here's my basic idea for how any given challenge would go:
A player is dealt five cards, face down. He can simply reveal his cards. A joker counts as two points, a face card as one point. Any given card has a 3/13 chance of being a face card and a 1/26 chance of being a joker, so the average card is worth 4/13 points, or a 30% chance. This means that a player will, using this system, generally have a point or two out of five cards.
However, your skill rating will allow you to count numbers equal or below it as points, as well. So if you have a skill of five (very high), you'll also count ace - 5 as points, raising your chances to 9/13, or an average of three or four points per set of five cards.
To add some depth, there are three other things you can do.
1) You can "concentrate". Each round you spend concentrating allows you to reveal a card and choose either to keep it or trade it in for another random card (which is face-down, allowing you to concentrate and reveal/exchange it). If you draw a joker while concentrating, it counts as a blip in the Force, and you instantly reveal and apply all your hidden cards and the joker. The joker still counts as two points, so this isn't really bad.
2) You can put oomph into it. Oomph can be put in at the beginning, or added later. This allows you to draw more cards based on the level of the emotion you're using and how attuned you are, whichever is least.
For example, if you try to do something while angry, you draw extra cards for being angry. If you're only a little peeved, you get one card. If you're trying to kill someone out of anger, you get four cards... if you are at level four anger. Otherwise, you technically max out at whatever your current level is.
These cards are instantly revealed and cannot be traded. Otherwise, they are exactly like the normal cards. A joker counts as two points and moves your emotion level up a notch, permanently. So, if you have level two anger and draw the joker, you now have level three anger.
This makes using emotions very powerful AND self-adjusting. Because of the way the universe works, you can use emotion for a big boost even in things totally unrelated to the Force.
3) Assists. With the help of a useful assistant, you get an extra card. For a great assistant, you gain two extra cards. (They cannot do anything besides assist you, of course.)
--
Anyhow, that's how you rack up points. But this game isn't simply about racking up successes, and many times a fight will be between two force users. In this case, everything is done as per normal, but each player chooses a side - light or dark. They may both choose light, or they can go one light, one dark, or whatever. If they use an emotion to gain extra cards, they have to choose that side, obviously.
When cards are revealed, all cards bearing the color you didn't choose (red is light side, black is dark side) are given to your opponent. You keep jokers.
What this means is that, unless you concentrate for several rounds and carefully weed out black or red cards, you're likely to give half your cards to your enemy. The end result in this kind of match is that skill is far more important than emotion in a jedi-jedi match, whereas emotion is very important in an uncontested match. There's some in-game reasons for this.
But a clever jedi can swing the balance in his favor using a few simple tricks.
--
Holdouts:
You can choose not to use all your base five cards to do something. Instead, you can choose to use any number and simply hold on to the others. These others include revealed cards.
Lets say Anne is trying to sense whether there's another Force user in the city. She concentrates and reveals a king of hearts - worth a point! Obviously a keeper. However, instead of using that card to help her find another Force user, she pulls it aside and stores it. Then she uses the remaining four cards to find a Force user.
From then on, she only gets dealt four cards, but she can play the king of hearts whenever she wants to. This is useful because she knows it is a light-side point, no matter what her skill and opposition. Of course, every time she withholds it, she is working less effectively than she could be.
--
Force Affinities:
Places where the Force is strong in a given emotion do not split cards evenly red-black. An opposed check instead splits the suits 3-1. Dark siders using the right emotion lose only hearts to enemies, while light siders and other dark emotions still split evenly. A light sider using the right emotion loses only spades.
The inverse is also true: if you use the exact opposite emotion (such as trying to be harmonious in a long-angry environment) you lose all but hearts, or all but spades. But your points count double. This isn't quite enough to even it out statistically, but it does give you a fighting chance. This is also the only way to break (temporarily or permanently) the emotional charge of the Force - by using the opposite emotion and a specific Force power.
By choosing where they fight carefully, or by charging an area with their preferred emotion, Force users can make almost impossible stands by forcing their enemy to fork over half their cards while keeping 75% of their own cards.
--
Anyhow, those are my thoughts on the randomizing system. I might talk more about other stuff later, but I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on this.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Games with a "message"
These days, there's a lot of games that send a "message". You can't really call them "serious games", because that's been co-opted to mean "training games". Instead, we can call them "bad games".
I'm all for messages. For example, Third World Farmer sends a message. That message is "it's hard being a farmer in Africa".
That's fine, but to show you how unfair it is on these people, they make the game extremely irritating. Every five or six turns, you get to lose everything! Oh joy! Playing the game is pointless, because there is no useful choice you can make.
You can look in the forums - people have posted "best choices". The truth is that no choices matter: nearly any method works as well as any other method. Sure, some will reap more profit, but profit doesn't matter, because it is taken away every few years. Moreover, the better you do, the more of a bastard the game is.
Yeah, maybe it's "realistic". It's certainly "telling a message". But it makes the game "suck horribly". Other than a primitive slot-machine draw, there's absolutely nothing interesting after the first ten minutes of this game.
I totally and in every way disagree with the fundamental assumption these "games with a message" designers are making. That assumption isn't their message. That assumption is that it's okay to make a bad game if it tells their message.
A bad game is a bad game. Whether its intentions are pure and noble or not, there's no gripping power to a bad game.
Sure, today I'm thinking about African farmers. But tomorrow? I'll be thinking about space stations and that new "attaching metal rods directly to bones" technique that promises to radically reinvent the idea of a prosthetic.
Wouldn't a better game design draw players back over days or weeks? How about making it a multiplayer persistant world? After all, Africa is. Imagine thousands of players coming back every week, often every day, to manage their African scenario.
Sure, it's a more expensive game. But each step is relatively inexpensive. Imagine that every turn took twelve hours - so you pressed the button, and have to come back at least twelve hours later to make your next turn. It sends an email reminding you and giving you a readout.
Imagine multiplayer - you can talk with other players about migrating disasters and prepare for them, or beg money off your friends when any of the irritatingly common total disasters hit. Imagine that players could work together to mitigate some of the effects. Is this "diluting the message"? Not as much as letting me forget your game even exists. This is also not an expensive upgrade.
Do you have a message you desperately want to tell?
Tell it in a good game. Don't sacrifice your game design to the message, because I'll forget it exists by tomorrow. A slightly weaker message which makes a long-term impact is better than a stronger message which vanishes into smoke.
I wouldn't mention it if I had seen even one "game with a message" that was worth more than an hour of play. But I've never seen one. They are universally BAD.
I'm all for messages. For example, Third World Farmer sends a message. That message is "it's hard being a farmer in Africa".
That's fine, but to show you how unfair it is on these people, they make the game extremely irritating. Every five or six turns, you get to lose everything! Oh joy! Playing the game is pointless, because there is no useful choice you can make.
You can look in the forums - people have posted "best choices". The truth is that no choices matter: nearly any method works as well as any other method. Sure, some will reap more profit, but profit doesn't matter, because it is taken away every few years. Moreover, the better you do, the more of a bastard the game is.
Yeah, maybe it's "realistic". It's certainly "telling a message". But it makes the game "suck horribly". Other than a primitive slot-machine draw, there's absolutely nothing interesting after the first ten minutes of this game.
I totally and in every way disagree with the fundamental assumption these "games with a message" designers are making. That assumption isn't their message. That assumption is that it's okay to make a bad game if it tells their message.
A bad game is a bad game. Whether its intentions are pure and noble or not, there's no gripping power to a bad game.
Sure, today I'm thinking about African farmers. But tomorrow? I'll be thinking about space stations and that new "attaching metal rods directly to bones" technique that promises to radically reinvent the idea of a prosthetic.
Wouldn't a better game design draw players back over days or weeks? How about making it a multiplayer persistant world? After all, Africa is. Imagine thousands of players coming back every week, often every day, to manage their African scenario.
Sure, it's a more expensive game. But each step is relatively inexpensive. Imagine that every turn took twelve hours - so you pressed the button, and have to come back at least twelve hours later to make your next turn. It sends an email reminding you and giving you a readout.
Imagine multiplayer - you can talk with other players about migrating disasters and prepare for them, or beg money off your friends when any of the irritatingly common total disasters hit. Imagine that players could work together to mitigate some of the effects. Is this "diluting the message"? Not as much as letting me forget your game even exists. This is also not an expensive upgrade.
Do you have a message you desperately want to tell?
Tell it in a good game. Don't sacrifice your game design to the message, because I'll forget it exists by tomorrow. A slightly weaker message which makes a long-term impact is better than a stronger message which vanishes into smoke.
I wouldn't mention it if I had seen even one "game with a message" that was worth more than an hour of play. But I've never seen one. They are universally BAD.
Introducing: My Johnson!
Sorry about the week of no-posts: I'm hard at work on Gun Shy, five out of 7-9 levels complete...
A few posts ago I talked about what makes simple, fast, but deep combat. I'd like to take a moment to focus on one particular aspect: Objectives.
Objectives make any combat better, not just fast-paced ones. But the trick is actually getting them into your game.
Depending on whether it's a tabletop or a computer game, there's two problems. For computer games, the problem is creating an objective which doesn't make the player throw his monitor out the window in fury. "Protect the civilian" always does this, because the civilian's AI is almost always geared specifically to do something hugely incompetant without warning.
For a computer game, the key is to show what your objective is going to do several "turns" ahead of time, to give the player enough room to adapt his technique. Preferably, you let the player determine when the next phase begins. For example, the civvie says "I'm going to make a run for the gas canister!" and either counts down, or waits for you to give him the "go!" signal. The more the objective allows the player to make intelligent moves before doing something, the more the player will come to like it.
A tabletop game doesn't have that problem because the GM is a pretty good AI. A tabletop has something of the opposite problem: giving out objectives in the first place. (This is also a problem in tabletop emulations such as Baldur's Gate.)
Think about it. Your party enters a dungeon and stumbles across a troop of gnaws. You kill them, take their treasure, and repeat.
There's very little room for "battle our way over to the switch which closes the gate" in these kinds of situations. Even if such an option exists, how do you gracefully let the players know?
Enter the Johnson.
Shadowrun's most powerful feature is one which few people even really notice: the Johnson. The Johnson gives you the mission, the parameters, and the objectives. The GM can say, "your mission is to capture Yaugh Smockinov," and then the players will be in any given battle specifically to capture Yaugh, rather than to kill a million guards.
Sure, a GM can flub it, but the option for objectives is there. Honestly, I think that's just about the only thing Shadowrun does really well, and it's part of the setting rather than the system.
Any NPC can serve this purpose, which is sometimes called "the voice of the GM". The party's NPC cleric just happens to always notice the best way to do something, if the player's don't. And he offers "helpful suggestions" as to how to tackle any situation. IE, he provides objectives.
Here's the thing, though: there's a better way to do it.
Build interplayer objectives using radically different player capabilities.
Let's go back to Shadowrun, and show how you could turn it into an even more objective-driven game:
In Shadowrun, most GMs don't like to run with hackers, and scout mages are often just as irritating. However, these character types offer some very interesting possibilities. From their unique vantage point, they effectively navigate a different map than the normal players. That other map connects up to the "main" map in various ways - doors which can be hacked to open, security cams which can relay information, disks which need to be inserted into computers. This doesn't have to be so clear-cut, of course. Just having places where their abilities need to be used (powering down a summoner's circle, for example) is still quite solid.
The basic idea is that these players "echo" back and forth off the other players, giving and requiring objectives. For example, if the main party encounters a locked door, what do they do? Well, they can knock it down. Or the hacker can make some roll to unlock it.
Or the party could need to rewire the lock mechanism. This takes some time, varying depending on how well the hacker rolls while he's in the wires. In the meantime, the others have to defeat waves of enemies, or distract guards to keep them from coming down this way, or whatever else needs to be done.
They have an objective: protect the geek.
Let me clarify what I consider the options to be:
1) Multimap
A multimap situation is where the characters exist largely or partially on alternative maps. They have objectives to trigger specific elements of the other maps (such as unlocking doors), and those other maps have triggers for their maps (such as hooking up a data relay on an unconnected system). They generally share a physical map with everyone, which is often a hook for objectives on its own: they enter other maps in specific ways and at specific points.
Multimaps are time-intensive, and it may be necessary to have a GM for each map, or heavy automation. Otherwise, the GM has to split his attention too far, explaining each situation on each map to each player.
However, this is a graceful way of creating objectives player-to-player, with completely minimal live-time GM intervention. Obviously, the GM needs to create the maps (at least in rough idea) beforehand.
This is not easy for a computer game unless it is multiplayer and high-bandwidth (IE, voice chat). However, it works good for tabletops, given a few assistant GMs. It can easily support group sizes of 9-15 players.
2) Uneven Maps
In this situation, all players share the same map, but there are "triggers" which require a given party member or members to do something. These are not simply empty skill rolls - in fact, it is almost certain the player will succeed. How well and taking how much time is the question. Also, the triggers can be passive, such as keycards on the other side of the hall, but you have to give the players enough info to know they need to get it.
The other half of the situation is for the rest of the party. They have to defend or massage the worker to allow him to succeed and move the whole party forward.
At first, it seems as if this would be pretty limited: someone is doing something and taking his sweet time, so you defend him. Woo.
There are other options, though. You can have a race condition: there's an enemy hacker. The players have to split their attention between screwing up the enemy hacker and defending their own hacker.
Or a magician needs souls, so the players collect the souls for their magician, and the more they collect, the faster he can accomplish his task.
The idea is that simple "defense" is rarely as interesting as something with some feedback. Let the rest of the party influence the situation clearly, directly helping or hindering the worker.
This is pretty easy for a computer game or a tabletop.
3) Exclusive Maps
This is like multimap, but taken to an extreme. In multimap the hacker is physically present, hooking into a system and accessing an alternative map at various physical points.
Exclusive maps mean that the hacker never even enters the building. There is no need to defend his ass or worry about getting him killed. (It could just as easily be two teams invading two related but physically seperated facilities.)
This means extremely simple and clear-cut communications, because there's no complex tactical dancing. Each team simply gives another team an objective, and they go out to accomplish it on their own.
This is a good thing for computer games, but not for tabletops. In a tabletop, each map would need its own GM, and they would need to be astonishingly synchronized. In a computer game, the computer handles that.
Furthermore, in a computer game it could be done multiplayer or single player with simulated teams on the other maps - an option not available with the two other basic options.
Anyhow, that's my summary on how to inject objectives. Of course, choosing which objectives... well, that's a whole other story.
Comments?
A few posts ago I talked about what makes simple, fast, but deep combat. I'd like to take a moment to focus on one particular aspect: Objectives.
Objectives make any combat better, not just fast-paced ones. But the trick is actually getting them into your game.
Depending on whether it's a tabletop or a computer game, there's two problems. For computer games, the problem is creating an objective which doesn't make the player throw his monitor out the window in fury. "Protect the civilian" always does this, because the civilian's AI is almost always geared specifically to do something hugely incompetant without warning.
For a computer game, the key is to show what your objective is going to do several "turns" ahead of time, to give the player enough room to adapt his technique. Preferably, you let the player determine when the next phase begins. For example, the civvie says "I'm going to make a run for the gas canister!" and either counts down, or waits for you to give him the "go!" signal. The more the objective allows the player to make intelligent moves before doing something, the more the player will come to like it.
A tabletop game doesn't have that problem because the GM is a pretty good AI. A tabletop has something of the opposite problem: giving out objectives in the first place. (This is also a problem in tabletop emulations such as Baldur's Gate.)
Think about it. Your party enters a dungeon and stumbles across a troop of gnaws. You kill them, take their treasure, and repeat.
There's very little room for "battle our way over to the switch which closes the gate" in these kinds of situations. Even if such an option exists, how do you gracefully let the players know?
Enter the Johnson.
Shadowrun's most powerful feature is one which few people even really notice: the Johnson. The Johnson gives you the mission, the parameters, and the objectives. The GM can say, "your mission is to capture Yaugh Smockinov," and then the players will be in any given battle specifically to capture Yaugh, rather than to kill a million guards.
Sure, a GM can flub it, but the option for objectives is there. Honestly, I think that's just about the only thing Shadowrun does really well, and it's part of the setting rather than the system.
Any NPC can serve this purpose, which is sometimes called "the voice of the GM". The party's NPC cleric just happens to always notice the best way to do something, if the player's don't. And he offers "helpful suggestions" as to how to tackle any situation. IE, he provides objectives.
Here's the thing, though: there's a better way to do it.
Build interplayer objectives using radically different player capabilities.
Let's go back to Shadowrun, and show how you could turn it into an even more objective-driven game:
In Shadowrun, most GMs don't like to run with hackers, and scout mages are often just as irritating. However, these character types offer some very interesting possibilities. From their unique vantage point, they effectively navigate a different map than the normal players. That other map connects up to the "main" map in various ways - doors which can be hacked to open, security cams which can relay information, disks which need to be inserted into computers. This doesn't have to be so clear-cut, of course. Just having places where their abilities need to be used (powering down a summoner's circle, for example) is still quite solid.
The basic idea is that these players "echo" back and forth off the other players, giving and requiring objectives. For example, if the main party encounters a locked door, what do they do? Well, they can knock it down. Or the hacker can make some roll to unlock it.
Or the party could need to rewire the lock mechanism. This takes some time, varying depending on how well the hacker rolls while he's in the wires. In the meantime, the others have to defeat waves of enemies, or distract guards to keep them from coming down this way, or whatever else needs to be done.
They have an objective: protect the geek.
Let me clarify what I consider the options to be:
1) Multimap
A multimap situation is where the characters exist largely or partially on alternative maps. They have objectives to trigger specific elements of the other maps (such as unlocking doors), and those other maps have triggers for their maps (such as hooking up a data relay on an unconnected system). They generally share a physical map with everyone, which is often a hook for objectives on its own: they enter other maps in specific ways and at specific points.
Multimaps are time-intensive, and it may be necessary to have a GM for each map, or heavy automation. Otherwise, the GM has to split his attention too far, explaining each situation on each map to each player.
However, this is a graceful way of creating objectives player-to-player, with completely minimal live-time GM intervention. Obviously, the GM needs to create the maps (at least in rough idea) beforehand.
This is not easy for a computer game unless it is multiplayer and high-bandwidth (IE, voice chat). However, it works good for tabletops, given a few assistant GMs. It can easily support group sizes of 9-15 players.
2) Uneven Maps
In this situation, all players share the same map, but there are "triggers" which require a given party member or members to do something. These are not simply empty skill rolls - in fact, it is almost certain the player will succeed. How well and taking how much time is the question. Also, the triggers can be passive, such as keycards on the other side of the hall, but you have to give the players enough info to know they need to get it.
The other half of the situation is for the rest of the party. They have to defend or massage the worker to allow him to succeed and move the whole party forward.
At first, it seems as if this would be pretty limited: someone is doing something and taking his sweet time, so you defend him. Woo.
There are other options, though. You can have a race condition: there's an enemy hacker. The players have to split their attention between screwing up the enemy hacker and defending their own hacker.
Or a magician needs souls, so the players collect the souls for their magician, and the more they collect, the faster he can accomplish his task.
The idea is that simple "defense" is rarely as interesting as something with some feedback. Let the rest of the party influence the situation clearly, directly helping or hindering the worker.
This is pretty easy for a computer game or a tabletop.
3) Exclusive Maps
This is like multimap, but taken to an extreme. In multimap the hacker is physically present, hooking into a system and accessing an alternative map at various physical points.
Exclusive maps mean that the hacker never even enters the building. There is no need to defend his ass or worry about getting him killed. (It could just as easily be two teams invading two related but physically seperated facilities.)
This means extremely simple and clear-cut communications, because there's no complex tactical dancing. Each team simply gives another team an objective, and they go out to accomplish it on their own.
This is a good thing for computer games, but not for tabletops. In a tabletop, each map would need its own GM, and they would need to be astonishingly synchronized. In a computer game, the computer handles that.
Furthermore, in a computer game it could be done multiplayer or single player with simulated teams on the other maps - an option not available with the two other basic options.
Anyhow, that's my summary on how to inject objectives. Of course, choosing which objectives... well, that's a whole other story.
Comments?
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