Sorry, I'm busy moving and starting a new job. Or, as the song says,
Just moved to my new house today!
Movin' was hard but I got squared away...
'Till I seen something that give me the creep!
Had ah-one big eye and ah-two big feet!
Well, except that I'm in the middle of moving (about to kill the computer, actually) and I haven't yet seen anything with ah-two big feet recently except Darius.
I imagine that I'll give you some more of my ultra-high-end theorizing this weekend. Wouldn't want to miss it! I'll even use words like "disinclined" and "quiescence", just to make it worth the wait.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Rogue Galaxy Review
I wrote an eleven page Rogue Galaxy review.
It had a lot of interesting play decisions. And I'm a big geek.
Two more RPG reviews still in the works: FFXII and Granado Espada.
Rogue Galaxy Review (PDF)
It had a lot of interesting play decisions. And I'm a big geek.
Two more RPG reviews still in the works: FFXII and Granado Espada.
Rogue Galaxy Review (PDF)
Monday, March 26, 2007
Cluttered!
I've seen this idea half a dozen times over the past year or so. I just want to comment on it. I'd normally just comment on the post, but I don't have a WordPress account, so no dice.
The basic idea is that people with cluttered desks are more brilliant (or, at least, get more work done) than people with clear desks. Everyone who hears this thinks, "oh, because, uh, they don't care, or because geniuses are mad, or something."
The answer is much easier than that:
Brilliant people have more clutter to put on their desks.
Brilliant people tend to read fifty times more than the average person - books, papers, blog posts, etc. What then happens? Throw it out? Not if it has any conceivable use - you'll come back to it later. So it piles up. It piles up on the desk, on the floor (if possible), and definitely in the bookmarks section of FireFox.
It's not a natural tendency towards sloppiness. It's a natural tendency towards having too much goddamn stuff crossing our desks.
...
Their desks. I meant "their desks".
;)
The basic idea is that people with cluttered desks are more brilliant (or, at least, get more work done) than people with clear desks. Everyone who hears this thinks, "oh, because, uh, they don't care, or because geniuses are mad, or something."
The answer is much easier than that:
Brilliant people have more clutter to put on their desks.
Brilliant people tend to read fifty times more than the average person - books, papers, blog posts, etc. What then happens? Throw it out? Not if it has any conceivable use - you'll come back to it later. So it piles up. It piles up on the desk, on the floor (if possible), and definitely in the bookmarks section of FireFox.
It's not a natural tendency towards sloppiness. It's a natural tendency towards having too much goddamn stuff crossing our desks.
...
Their desks. I meant "their desks".
;)
Saturday, March 24, 2007
The Secret of Character Design
I've got some game reviews (of RPGs) in the works, but I'd like to comment on character designs.
As you may or may not know, I do a lot of idle character designing. My face-to-face games of whatever kind typically have a lot of characters in them, and I generally draw all of them. This has been especially true lately, so I have gotten to thinking about it in more detail.
In my opinion, the secret of character design is simple: look at your design. Would people draw fan art of that character? If no, redesign or scrap. If yes, what parts of the design draw in the fan artist? Tweak them up a notch.
That's what I'm going to be doing from here on in.
Of course, there are other concerns. For example, both FFXII and Rogue Galaxy use a set of totally generic Japanese love interests - young, uncertain, eager, irritating as hell. Their dialog is limited to variants on "Help!" and "Golly!". If the writer is really feeling his oats, they write a few lines where she feels an emotion.
Presumably, this boring design is because that kind of girl is romantically acceptable to the largest chunk of their target audience.
I don't know about Japan, but are there any Westerners who played FFXII who didn't think the game would have been better if you just wrote out Vaan, Penelo, and Ashe? Is there anyone who wouldn't like a Balthier and Fran romance ten times better? Do people actually get turned off by characters with personality?
(Vaan and Penelo did serve an important role, as they were the children of the party - always excited and eager. In that respect, they were good. But... the main character? No. I wanted to pull a Palom and Porom.)
This problem isn't as pronounced in a face to face game. Personalities and appearances can be tweaked, even entire characters dropped in response to what the players think of them. You put in Ashe and they don't like her? Have her get her throne back and stop adventuring, or tweak her character so she has some spark. Or kill her. Whichever.
This is more difficult in a computer game. It's not impossible by any means - if you let the player choose his party, you can assume that he likes the characters in his party. This would let you tweak things however you preferred. But you'd have to write in hundreds of lines of extra dialog, maybe even a method of permuting characters on the fly. It's expensive.
My guess? That's why there are so many boring boring boring boring mind-numbingly boring characters in RPGs in general. The other option is that the designers are such bad writers they think their characters are interesting. That would be depressing...
As you may or may not know, I do a lot of idle character designing. My face-to-face games of whatever kind typically have a lot of characters in them, and I generally draw all of them. This has been especially true lately, so I have gotten to thinking about it in more detail.
In my opinion, the secret of character design is simple: look at your design. Would people draw fan art of that character? If no, redesign or scrap. If yes, what parts of the design draw in the fan artist? Tweak them up a notch.
That's what I'm going to be doing from here on in.
Of course, there are other concerns. For example, both FFXII and Rogue Galaxy use a set of totally generic Japanese love interests - young, uncertain, eager, irritating as hell. Their dialog is limited to variants on "Help!" and "Golly!". If the writer is really feeling his oats, they write a few lines where she feels an emotion.
Presumably, this boring design is because that kind of girl is romantically acceptable to the largest chunk of their target audience.
I don't know about Japan, but are there any Westerners who played FFXII who didn't think the game would have been better if you just wrote out Vaan, Penelo, and Ashe? Is there anyone who wouldn't like a Balthier and Fran romance ten times better? Do people actually get turned off by characters with personality?
(Vaan and Penelo did serve an important role, as they were the children of the party - always excited and eager. In that respect, they were good. But... the main character? No. I wanted to pull a Palom and Porom.)
This problem isn't as pronounced in a face to face game. Personalities and appearances can be tweaked, even entire characters dropped in response to what the players think of them. You put in Ashe and they don't like her? Have her get her throne back and stop adventuring, or tweak her character so she has some spark. Or kill her. Whichever.
This is more difficult in a computer game. It's not impossible by any means - if you let the player choose his party, you can assume that he likes the characters in his party. This would let you tweak things however you preferred. But you'd have to write in hundreds of lines of extra dialog, maybe even a method of permuting characters on the fly. It's expensive.
My guess? That's why there are so many boring boring boring boring mind-numbingly boring characters in RPGs in general. The other option is that the designers are such bad writers they think their characters are interesting. That would be depressing...
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Test Report: Myths and Legends
This essay will only interest people who want to know more about narrative-building games.
I ran a game this weekend called "Myths and Legends". It was half LARP and half card game, like all of these. The game was intended to reverse this game's test - seeing if a game could exist almost entirely on that "second tier" of immersion. The "subquest" level. I knew from experience that the gameplay in these games was minimal, so that didn't need adjusting. I simply got rid of the "overarching plot", so that there were only subquest-level hooks.
The result was pretty predictable. The game, intended to run in the background over a forty-eight hour stretch (gaming weekend) ran in about thirty. At that point, too many of the players were sleep-depped out of coherence, spelling the end of the game. As expected, honestly: there was what amounted to a tiny con running in the background the whole time.
The game progressed fairly well. It was built on the idea of constructing and completing sidequest-style events. I made the "terrain" complex by using multiple eras you could visit and using some gating methods to mix up which players could be in which events. I let them use their "powers" to resolve events with each other in various story-riffic ways, and the resolution of the events allowed them to make more cards - both powers and new sidequest hooks.
Even with that level of complexity, the game's mechanics were too shallow to really hold the player: only the sidequests really drove the game.
The interesting thing is that although the game was exceptionally good at starting sidequests and directing aimless players into sidequests of their choosing, at some point the players formed a third layer - an overarching plot. The game was actually a hindrance to completing overarching plots, which is probably the reason the game died a little early.
But... but... the players formed third layer plots!
That's really important. I've been whining for ages about how I can't get players to form long-term plots. Sure, one or two players out of ten will come up with some kind of long term goal... but about 90% of these players formed extensive, complex, and frankly clever, well-done, long-term plots.
These plots weren't really suitable to long-term play, unfortunately, because they were "this is how it will happen!" plots rather than a "this is what we want" plot which has some slack built in. I tried to introduce the latter kinds of plots, and it probably would have worked if I had introduced them earlier... but they would have been my plots, and I would never have seen the rather astonishing synthesis the players did.
Because the plots were of the "this is how it will happen!" variety, trying to get the player to "play through them" is basically just torture, and kills the game. So, I either need to have a method of allowing players to finalize the plot without playing, or I have to find a way to make them construct "this is what we want" plots.
If I go with the former, I'm going to have to use some kind of "rebirth" method. Once you've done a plot, you have to change your whole outlook. A new character, or the same character in a new stage of his life, or something. That way the game can be kept fresh. Keeping these fresh, unattached characters from being sucked into the whirlpool of a more advanced plot might be necessary... and any way I run it there will have to be some kind of carryover...
If I go with the latter method, I have to isolate more exactly what caused the players to generate plot in this game so much more frequently than in the earlier games I ran. Something about the terrain having more dimensions of complexity allowed the players to twist in fun ways until they bumped into something that clicked. I think I increased the cohesion of the chunks that the players could try to assemble...
Anyway, it's still an irritatingly-paced game, so I may have to change the pacing, which will throw all my data off.
Hrm.
I ran a game this weekend called "Myths and Legends". It was half LARP and half card game, like all of these. The game was intended to reverse this game's test - seeing if a game could exist almost entirely on that "second tier" of immersion. The "subquest" level. I knew from experience that the gameplay in these games was minimal, so that didn't need adjusting. I simply got rid of the "overarching plot", so that there were only subquest-level hooks.
The result was pretty predictable. The game, intended to run in the background over a forty-eight hour stretch (gaming weekend) ran in about thirty. At that point, too many of the players were sleep-depped out of coherence, spelling the end of the game. As expected, honestly: there was what amounted to a tiny con running in the background the whole time.
The game progressed fairly well. It was built on the idea of constructing and completing sidequest-style events. I made the "terrain" complex by using multiple eras you could visit and using some gating methods to mix up which players could be in which events. I let them use their "powers" to resolve events with each other in various story-riffic ways, and the resolution of the events allowed them to make more cards - both powers and new sidequest hooks.
Even with that level of complexity, the game's mechanics were too shallow to really hold the player: only the sidequests really drove the game.
The interesting thing is that although the game was exceptionally good at starting sidequests and directing aimless players into sidequests of their choosing, at some point the players formed a third layer - an overarching plot. The game was actually a hindrance to completing overarching plots, which is probably the reason the game died a little early.
But... but... the players formed third layer plots!
That's really important. I've been whining for ages about how I can't get players to form long-term plots. Sure, one or two players out of ten will come up with some kind of long term goal... but about 90% of these players formed extensive, complex, and frankly clever, well-done, long-term plots.
These plots weren't really suitable to long-term play, unfortunately, because they were "this is how it will happen!" plots rather than a "this is what we want" plot which has some slack built in. I tried to introduce the latter kinds of plots, and it probably would have worked if I had introduced them earlier... but they would have been my plots, and I would never have seen the rather astonishing synthesis the players did.
Because the plots were of the "this is how it will happen!" variety, trying to get the player to "play through them" is basically just torture, and kills the game. So, I either need to have a method of allowing players to finalize the plot without playing, or I have to find a way to make them construct "this is what we want" plots.
If I go with the former, I'm going to have to use some kind of "rebirth" method. Once you've done a plot, you have to change your whole outlook. A new character, or the same character in a new stage of his life, or something. That way the game can be kept fresh. Keeping these fresh, unattached characters from being sucked into the whirlpool of a more advanced plot might be necessary... and any way I run it there will have to be some kind of carryover...
If I go with the latter method, I have to isolate more exactly what caused the players to generate plot in this game so much more frequently than in the earlier games I ran. Something about the terrain having more dimensions of complexity allowed the players to twist in fun ways until they bumped into something that clicked. I think I increased the cohesion of the chunks that the players could try to assemble...
Anyway, it's still an irritatingly-paced game, so I may have to change the pacing, which will throw all my data off.
Hrm.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Working with Games
Darren insists I have something to say about why I want to work with games.
The answer is: I don't! Want to work with games, that is. I have lots to say. But games? Not so much.
I just like dopamine.
Therefore, I have to build. I haven't really found any other way to get my dopamine fix. I have to build, and I have to build things that give me that "new" sparkle.
I love writing, drawing, games, and software tools. They seem to be the most efficient way to a dopamine fix. I actually don't prefer building one over another. But I seem to be best at (live) games.
And to maximize my rush, they have to be as fresh and interesting as possible. So I never stand still, and repeating myself is painfully boring.
That's why I do games.
The answer is: I don't! Want to work with games, that is. I have lots to say. But games? Not so much.
I just like dopamine.
Therefore, I have to build. I haven't really found any other way to get my dopamine fix. I have to build, and I have to build things that give me that "new" sparkle.
I love writing, drawing, games, and software tools. They seem to be the most efficient way to a dopamine fix. I actually don't prefer building one over another. But I seem to be best at (live) games.
And to maximize my rush, they have to be as fresh and interesting as possible. So I never stand still, and repeating myself is painfully boring.
That's why I do games.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Play Acting
Perhaps the biggest difference between computer games and real-world games is that in a computer game, the player doesn't usually feel compelled to play a certain role.
Thanks to a variety of issues - saves, no respect for NPCs, no ability to improvise or express yourself - computer game players don't really like to stick to their role. Real world games use competitive goals, time pressures, and social pressure to get people to stick to their roles, and even that is often fairly shaky. Some games use these methods (most notably competitive goals), but that frequently makes them unsuitable for the general public.
...
I guess that's really all I have to say on the subject.
Thanks to a variety of issues - saves, no respect for NPCs, no ability to improvise or express yourself - computer game players don't really like to stick to their role. Real world games use competitive goals, time pressures, and social pressure to get people to stick to their roles, and even that is often fairly shaky. Some games use these methods (most notably competitive goals), but that frequently makes them unsuitable for the general public.
...
I guess that's really all I have to say on the subject.
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