So, I'm gonna go ahead and talk about Bioshock: Infinite, just like everyone else. No significant spoilers.
I haven't finished even half of the game. Doubt I'll ever finish it. If that bothers you, stop reading.
Okay, now, the game.
To me, this critically acclaimed super-game simply shows how segregated things are. What? No, I mean story and gameplay segregation.
Or, more accurately, aesthetic and gameplay segregation. The story is shit, the writing is crap, but the aesthetic is fantastic. It's very immersive... if you ignore all the things the game actually wants you to do and instead just kind of wander around.
The gameplay is nonsense. It's not that the gameplay is bad. It's that the gameplay is nonsense. Total gamey-game nonsense. Booker eats so much stuff that he must be the fattest man alive. There's bullets everywhere - in a child's playroom, you open up their dresser and there's some bullets! Enemies have life bars and ignore basically all the damage you do until the last point. You have X health and Y mana and the door takes Z lockpicks - it's all very precise, very mechanical.
This is all stuff we've gotten used to. But it does't suit the world. Especially in conjunction with the onslaught of trophies and pre-trophies (OH MY GOD I'M 16/200 towards "change in the couch" trophy! HUHFUCKINZAH).
They try to paint a picture of this gritty turn-of-the-century world where a cult holds sway, but I'm running around stuffing my face with chips and bananas and popping off exactly two shots at every single cultist and searching every single trashcan with a click-click. The story is half contrivance, half inexplicable coincidence, and all badly-written dialog. The only person who talks like a person is the woman you rescue. Literally everyone else is written like a machine built to spout cliche.
So here I am, in this creepy world, all this lovely ambiance, and I see three boys hiding behind poles. Laughing and going "pew pew!" with their fingers at each other. And I realize:
That is what this game is. It's this deep, introspective play being put on by boys going "pew pew!"
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Mapmaking Gameplay
A fair number of kinds of gameplay have fallen out of fashion as technology and culture have advanced. One of these is the art of making maps as gameplay.
In the old days, most adventure games (especially text adventure games) would more or less require you to make a map. The act of making the map was a big part of the gameplay, and it was considered fun to map everything out. But these days nearly every game has automatic map creation. Just about the only games left where you actually make a map manually are Etrian Odysseys, and the map making there is not done very interestingly.
I was thinking to myself: can you bring this into the modern era? Can you make mapping fun again?
A big part of making maps in the old days was that it was extremely easy to get lost. These days, the threat of getting lost is basically nonexistent. Moreover, old maps were often combined with notes, where the player would jot down things that seemed like important resources or conditions. For example, you might write "weird machine" in the tile for one room, so you would later remember that there was a machine there. Or you might have a special mark for unspent torches, so you'd mark the rooms you could revisit for another torch when yours ran low. Mapmaking isn't just a matter of terrain, but also of choosing what to remember about every location. If you didn't note which rooms had torches, or that the room has a weird machine, later on you'll waste a lot of time re-exploring rooms trying to remember which ones had the stuff you needed.
That doesn't happen these days. Modern game design doesn't allow for that level of uncertainty. It'd be considered wasteful.
Another part of map-making that is often overlooked is the physicality of it. In the old days, you actually made your maps on paper, in pencil. This allowed you to write whatever the hell you wanted in whatever size you wanted. Of course, these days the game would give you an in-game mapping utility full of prefab elements. This is a lot more boring and a lot less easy to flip through, meaning that searching and scanning the maps is a lot harder. Therefore, the games usually embed searching and scanning into the game engine, simply highlighting where you go next.
To understand what I'm saying, imagine that you're looking over your maps for a game world. Now, imagine the heady exploration music for the game playing in the background, the kind of music you'd get when you're wandering the overworld. Say, FFIV's overworld music. Now, which scenario feels right: poring over a few large sheets of crinkly paper and flipping through them searching for a specific town, or using thumbsticks to pan your 3-inch screen across a digital map? Or, even worse, pulling up a list of towns and just pressing "down" until you reach the one you're looking for. Or, even even worse, just having that city automatically be flagged.
I'm not saying that mapmaking is something all games should do. I am saying that a big part of the joy in mapmaking is the fact that you use those maps. And a big part of using the maps is being able to label and highlight them with the things you think are important. If the game doesn't require you to use the map, or if your map is no different from another player's would be, the joy is sucked out of the exercise.
So, can a game use oldschool mapmaking joy?
Let's look into a little.
First, let's posit a sample game so we can get a concrete grip on the experience. This is a game where you pilot an airship as the scout for a flying city. So you're ranging far and wide, telling the city where it's safe to go, telling them where it's safe to send harvest crews, or even doing some high-risk harvesting of your own. Your airship is not a jet fighter - it's more like a clipper, with a crew and complex fire arcs.
As you explore you'll fight lots of enemies. If you fly low amidst the debris of this broken world, you're harder to detect and the debris serves as good cover. If you fly high, there's no debris to protect you, but you can see (and be seen from) much further. Combat really changes depending on whether you're flying low or high, and whether your enemies are flying low or high. Obviously, exploring while twenty meters up in the air is more effective, but also likely to get you spotted. Being low to the ground will keep you concealed and in cover, and is also where you'll need to be if you want to actually collect any resources.
This is a pretty simple game concept. The reason I'm breaking it into "low" and "high" is to give our mapmaking some texture.
The high-grain map is drawn automatically as you fly through the area. It only maps the "high" topology. It's up to you to map the low topology, if you want to, and to indicate things like tunnels, resources, nests, and other points of interest. However, that is optional.
The low-grain map is the one you're directly responsible for. This is a hex grid map, with your city occupying one of the hexes. This map doesn't automatically get filled out: it's up to you to define the hex as a specific terrain type, a specific name. Draw the connectivity of the various faces. Notes and resource markers you make on the high-grain map are automatically added to the low-grain map, but in the end the low-grain map is entirely defined by you - with the exception of denoting other flying cities.
This map is also the one you use to actually control your city and its task forces. Telling gatherers where to go, where to put outposts, where to move the whole city. As resources run dry or the earth begins to crumble or whatever, you'll steadily have to keep moving, exploring new areas with new enemies and resources.
...
This idea attempts to use most of the original joys of map-building while moving them digital. One of the digital difficulties is scanning maps with your eyeballs - easy on paper, especially since your notes tend to form a unique and memorable topology. Having two distinct map grains will help emulate that, and the fact that you have to draw the contents of the hexes (even in basic graph-connection lines) should result in you imprinting the same kind of unique topological memories. The high-grain map is mostly a means for making notes during the extended exploration within the tile, which then transfer up to the hex fluidly and easily, allowing you to add to the whole without constantly changing contexts.
The need to actually use your map for controlling city resources and establishing zones of control should make it compelling, rather than feeling like an exercise in annoying busywork. This is especially true because the "busywork" is kept to a minimum and scattered carefully throughout play rather than all lumped together in one nasty cluster of paperwork.
Time's passage will slowly change the world you live in, so you will sometimes receive reports from people on the city that the map is no longer accurate. Even without the need to move your city, the map continues to live and breath. Your needs and immediate objectives are all self-assigned, but they are strongly influenced - do you need to re-explore a region? Kill off a new hive? Fight a bandit incursion? Stabilize the landbridge?
The objectives are all relatively bite-sized and it should be possible to stop playing and then come back and not feel lost. Your map, even if you forgot all about it, is clean and marked up with all the things you need to know.
So... yes, I think you can make a modern game where map-building is a joy.
In the old days, most adventure games (especially text adventure games) would more or less require you to make a map. The act of making the map was a big part of the gameplay, and it was considered fun to map everything out. But these days nearly every game has automatic map creation. Just about the only games left where you actually make a map manually are Etrian Odysseys, and the map making there is not done very interestingly.
I was thinking to myself: can you bring this into the modern era? Can you make mapping fun again?
A big part of making maps in the old days was that it was extremely easy to get lost. These days, the threat of getting lost is basically nonexistent. Moreover, old maps were often combined with notes, where the player would jot down things that seemed like important resources or conditions. For example, you might write "weird machine" in the tile for one room, so you would later remember that there was a machine there. Or you might have a special mark for unspent torches, so you'd mark the rooms you could revisit for another torch when yours ran low. Mapmaking isn't just a matter of terrain, but also of choosing what to remember about every location. If you didn't note which rooms had torches, or that the room has a weird machine, later on you'll waste a lot of time re-exploring rooms trying to remember which ones had the stuff you needed.
That doesn't happen these days. Modern game design doesn't allow for that level of uncertainty. It'd be considered wasteful.
Another part of map-making that is often overlooked is the physicality of it. In the old days, you actually made your maps on paper, in pencil. This allowed you to write whatever the hell you wanted in whatever size you wanted. Of course, these days the game would give you an in-game mapping utility full of prefab elements. This is a lot more boring and a lot less easy to flip through, meaning that searching and scanning the maps is a lot harder. Therefore, the games usually embed searching and scanning into the game engine, simply highlighting where you go next.
To understand what I'm saying, imagine that you're looking over your maps for a game world. Now, imagine the heady exploration music for the game playing in the background, the kind of music you'd get when you're wandering the overworld. Say, FFIV's overworld music. Now, which scenario feels right: poring over a few large sheets of crinkly paper and flipping through them searching for a specific town, or using thumbsticks to pan your 3-inch screen across a digital map? Or, even worse, pulling up a list of towns and just pressing "down" until you reach the one you're looking for. Or, even even worse, just having that city automatically be flagged.
I'm not saying that mapmaking is something all games should do. I am saying that a big part of the joy in mapmaking is the fact that you use those maps. And a big part of using the maps is being able to label and highlight them with the things you think are important. If the game doesn't require you to use the map, or if your map is no different from another player's would be, the joy is sucked out of the exercise.
So, can a game use oldschool mapmaking joy?
Let's look into a little.
First, let's posit a sample game so we can get a concrete grip on the experience. This is a game where you pilot an airship as the scout for a flying city. So you're ranging far and wide, telling the city where it's safe to go, telling them where it's safe to send harvest crews, or even doing some high-risk harvesting of your own. Your airship is not a jet fighter - it's more like a clipper, with a crew and complex fire arcs.
As you explore you'll fight lots of enemies. If you fly low amidst the debris of this broken world, you're harder to detect and the debris serves as good cover. If you fly high, there's no debris to protect you, but you can see (and be seen from) much further. Combat really changes depending on whether you're flying low or high, and whether your enemies are flying low or high. Obviously, exploring while twenty meters up in the air is more effective, but also likely to get you spotted. Being low to the ground will keep you concealed and in cover, and is also where you'll need to be if you want to actually collect any resources.
This is a pretty simple game concept. The reason I'm breaking it into "low" and "high" is to give our mapmaking some texture.
The high-grain map is drawn automatically as you fly through the area. It only maps the "high" topology. It's up to you to map the low topology, if you want to, and to indicate things like tunnels, resources, nests, and other points of interest. However, that is optional.
The low-grain map is the one you're directly responsible for. This is a hex grid map, with your city occupying one of the hexes. This map doesn't automatically get filled out: it's up to you to define the hex as a specific terrain type, a specific name. Draw the connectivity of the various faces. Notes and resource markers you make on the high-grain map are automatically added to the low-grain map, but in the end the low-grain map is entirely defined by you - with the exception of denoting other flying cities.
This map is also the one you use to actually control your city and its task forces. Telling gatherers where to go, where to put outposts, where to move the whole city. As resources run dry or the earth begins to crumble or whatever, you'll steadily have to keep moving, exploring new areas with new enemies and resources.
...
This idea attempts to use most of the original joys of map-building while moving them digital. One of the digital difficulties is scanning maps with your eyeballs - easy on paper, especially since your notes tend to form a unique and memorable topology. Having two distinct map grains will help emulate that, and the fact that you have to draw the contents of the hexes (even in basic graph-connection lines) should result in you imprinting the same kind of unique topological memories. The high-grain map is mostly a means for making notes during the extended exploration within the tile, which then transfer up to the hex fluidly and easily, allowing you to add to the whole without constantly changing contexts.
The need to actually use your map for controlling city resources and establishing zones of control should make it compelling, rather than feeling like an exercise in annoying busywork. This is especially true because the "busywork" is kept to a minimum and scattered carefully throughout play rather than all lumped together in one nasty cluster of paperwork.
Time's passage will slowly change the world you live in, so you will sometimes receive reports from people on the city that the map is no longer accurate. Even without the need to move your city, the map continues to live and breath. Your needs and immediate objectives are all self-assigned, but they are strongly influenced - do you need to re-explore a region? Kill off a new hive? Fight a bandit incursion? Stabilize the landbridge?
The objectives are all relatively bite-sized and it should be possible to stop playing and then come back and not feel lost. Your map, even if you forgot all about it, is clean and marked up with all the things you need to know.
So... yes, I think you can make a modern game where map-building is a joy.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Advanced Flow Techniques
So, I played through Fire Emblem: Awakening a few times, and now I've moved on to Etrian Odyssey IV.
In the past, I've always liked the Etrian Odyssey games better than the Fire Emblem games, but in this case it's the opposite. The Fire Emblem game still calls to me.
Obviously, this is largely the fact that this Fire Emblem game is probably the best Fire Emblem game in the series... but, on the other hand, it looks like this Etrian Odyssey game is probably quite good in its series, too. A lot of the boring stuff has been cut out and some interesting new stuff has been added in. Still, it feels... less interesting.
I think it's because Fire Emblem: Awakening has superb flow, while Etrian Odyssey actually has terrible flow.
What do I mean?
In Fire Emblem: Awakening, you always have one more thing that pops up. When you complete a battle, there's always another detail that appears. Did someone's vignettes advance? Does someone need a class change? Is there a new random monster or shop available? Did someone not quite make the vignette or level requirement you were aiming for, and therefore you just need a little more fight?
This gives the player a continuous stream of engagement without loading him down with easily-forgotten state variables. That means you can play and play and stop and pick it back up and play... The battles themselves are pretty small, so none of them get complex enough to make you completely lose track if you stop playing in the middle of a battle.
On the other hand, Etrian Odyssey IV doesn't have the strong flow. While each individual piece is entertaining enough, they don't chain together very well and they are high on state variables. So if you go exploring in your airship, it's fun... but then you're done and there's really no pull to the next thing. There's a payoff, but no clear next thing. Similarly, they've started to use mini-dungeons. When you finish with a mini-dungeon, there's no clear next thing.
Worse is that even in the full-sized dungeons, exploration is complex enough that you can easily forget where you were exploring. Unless you keep a very careful map (drawing walls), you're likely to forget which areas have unexplored branches. While there's always more to explore, the pull is state-heavy and, if you stop, when you come back you'll have completely lost track.
This combines the worst engagement practices. Poor segue for most parts of the game, and state-heavy flow for the rest of the game.
How would I try to improve the flow if I was designing Etrian Odyssey?
First off, I would make the leveling up and equipment management even chunkier and more modular, but only allow players to level up when they returned to town. So when you finished (airshipping/dungeoncrawling) there would be the urge to do that little bit of advancing. I would also include advancing/random character interactions, so that each time you return to town there are people waiting there with new things to say and ask for. These would combine to give the city a bit of gameplay that can "pump" the player from one exploration segment to another without being so state-heavy things get lost or confused.
Second off, I would make the airship thing different. Exploring the map is fun, but collecting food and selling it isn't. There's not really anything interesting about the airship aside from creating the base map, so I would want to make something interesting about it. Maybe your team doesn't fight airship-grade monsters as an adventuring team, but instead each class has different crew abilities on the airship, and you fight enemies in a customizable airship instead of as an adventuring team. Similarly, some sort of airship upgrade/maintenance system for when you land would create a good segue off of the flight mechanics.
Lastly, I would change the auto-map so that when you explore, it automatically paints walls. This way you won't forget where there aren't any walls.
Obviously, this is just a thought exercise. But I really do think that the reason I like Fire Emblem: Awakening more than Etrian Odyssey IV boils down to how well they keep the flow.
In the past, I've always liked the Etrian Odyssey games better than the Fire Emblem games, but in this case it's the opposite. The Fire Emblem game still calls to me.
Obviously, this is largely the fact that this Fire Emblem game is probably the best Fire Emblem game in the series... but, on the other hand, it looks like this Etrian Odyssey game is probably quite good in its series, too. A lot of the boring stuff has been cut out and some interesting new stuff has been added in. Still, it feels... less interesting.
I think it's because Fire Emblem: Awakening has superb flow, while Etrian Odyssey actually has terrible flow.
What do I mean?
In Fire Emblem: Awakening, you always have one more thing that pops up. When you complete a battle, there's always another detail that appears. Did someone's vignettes advance? Does someone need a class change? Is there a new random monster or shop available? Did someone not quite make the vignette or level requirement you were aiming for, and therefore you just need a little more fight?
This gives the player a continuous stream of engagement without loading him down with easily-forgotten state variables. That means you can play and play and stop and pick it back up and play... The battles themselves are pretty small, so none of them get complex enough to make you completely lose track if you stop playing in the middle of a battle.
On the other hand, Etrian Odyssey IV doesn't have the strong flow. While each individual piece is entertaining enough, they don't chain together very well and they are high on state variables. So if you go exploring in your airship, it's fun... but then you're done and there's really no pull to the next thing. There's a payoff, but no clear next thing. Similarly, they've started to use mini-dungeons. When you finish with a mini-dungeon, there's no clear next thing.
Worse is that even in the full-sized dungeons, exploration is complex enough that you can easily forget where you were exploring. Unless you keep a very careful map (drawing walls), you're likely to forget which areas have unexplored branches. While there's always more to explore, the pull is state-heavy and, if you stop, when you come back you'll have completely lost track.
This combines the worst engagement practices. Poor segue for most parts of the game, and state-heavy flow for the rest of the game.
How would I try to improve the flow if I was designing Etrian Odyssey?
First off, I would make the leveling up and equipment management even chunkier and more modular, but only allow players to level up when they returned to town. So when you finished (airshipping/dungeoncrawling) there would be the urge to do that little bit of advancing. I would also include advancing/random character interactions, so that each time you return to town there are people waiting there with new things to say and ask for. These would combine to give the city a bit of gameplay that can "pump" the player from one exploration segment to another without being so state-heavy things get lost or confused.
Second off, I would make the airship thing different. Exploring the map is fun, but collecting food and selling it isn't. There's not really anything interesting about the airship aside from creating the base map, so I would want to make something interesting about it. Maybe your team doesn't fight airship-grade monsters as an adventuring team, but instead each class has different crew abilities on the airship, and you fight enemies in a customizable airship instead of as an adventuring team. Similarly, some sort of airship upgrade/maintenance system for when you land would create a good segue off of the flight mechanics.
Lastly, I would change the auto-map so that when you explore, it automatically paints walls. This way you won't forget where there aren't any walls.
Obviously, this is just a thought exercise. But I really do think that the reason I like Fire Emblem: Awakening more than Etrian Odyssey IV boils down to how well they keep the flow.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Communifree
My stream has been slowly burbling with people talking about the morality of requesting free work. Lots of people and teams request free work - not just newspapers, but also Amanda Palmer.
I thought I would take a moment and talk about free work, about why people have such weird opinions about it.
A lot of people seem to be annoyed by Amanda Palmer. She's pretty well off, and she's married to a wealthy superstar. Despite that, she still asks for a lot of free stuff. She asks for free crash space, free musicians, free word of mouth, whatever she can get away with. A lot of people consider this to be disrespectful. If she's rich, she should be paying for stuff, right?
I don't really think so. It's not as cut and dried as "I support Amanda Palmer" - she has a lot of really awkward habits and economic advice that only pan out if you're already successful and/or married to a superstar. But I don't think, fundamentally, there's anything wrong with asking for free stuff. It's not a matter of how rich you are, it's a matter of the level in which you are attempting to engage.
That is, asking for free stuff is a good way to engage with your community. It's rarely a good way to try and make a living.
Amanda Palmer asks her fanbase if any of them want to play trumpet for her. Fine. Newspaper asks famous blogger to write a free article "for exposure"? Not immoral, but pretty insulting and unlikely to succeed.
Amanda Palmer does have an audience of fans, and she's reasonably good at engaging them. But her machinations are child's play compared to specialists.
Oprah was a community management specialist, but she's from the old era before the internet really caught on. Her techniques were limited by her limited ability to actually interact with people. In order to interact with people, Oprah had to be with them or talking on the phone with them. Also, due to the restrictions of television, she couldn't easily provide links or interactive commentary. So her interactions were therefore somewhat restricted... but within that framework, she was very, very good. Her show wasn't popular because it had any particular merit: she basically showed her audience bullshit and asked them to buy it. It was popular because she talked to and for her audience. She would act as a window for her audience, showing them things in ways they could easily grasp... and she was equally adept at talking to her audience, treating them as people worth knowing (even if she could never know them because there were so many).
Now, if you want a modern example of Oprah, try Game Grumps. While they aren't as universally recognized, they have a hell of an audience and they built it without much advertising or corporate support. They succeed because they, like Oprah, are a talk show that speaks to and for their audience.
Unlike Oprah, they don't have to rely on leverage. They don't need corporate sponsors. They don't need an endless parade of guests. They don't need to facet their show such that they appeal to a different subaudience every week to keep all the subaudiences interested. Instead, all they need is to manage their community.
Before I continue, let me be clear. While they don't have a Wikipedia page, the Game Grumps have hundreds of animations about them, dozens of music videos and songs, and hundreds of donated games. I would say that their fan base is far healthier than either Palmer's or Oprah's, at least measured in terms of minutes of animation. It's extremely impressive just how much of this stuff is floating around the internet: they have an extremely active community.
If you listen to the Game Grumps, many of their episodes are around half community management. Even on the episodes which feature almost no community management, the community management is typically the "loudest" part, either because their editor spams text effects to give it punch, or because when they do something funny they immediately link it back to their audience. Also, outside of their episodes, they continue to manage their community.
I don't think that Arin, Jon, and Barry actually think of it like this. I think they actually are the sort of people who just naturally think of their audience. They obviously have some particular community management standards (always mention who sent the game, etc), but they also do a lot of off-the-cuff community management such as talking about an awesome video their community created, or saying how they wish someone would remix this segment, or discussing whether there's a less assumptive word than "fan". They act to keep their community moving and chatting, rather than just keeping them fat and happy.
This is the kind of interactivity Oprah wished she could do.
Game Grumps aren't likely to ever be as famous as Oprah. Hell, they don't even have a Wikipedia page for some reason. But they really show that there is a new way to manage your community. The stumbling methods used by Amanda Palmer are child's play. They're only effective because she built up an audience well ahead of time using classic means. This isn't an insult to her abilities as an artist: it's a statement about the way she engages with her audience. She's struggling to do small versions of the things that Game Grumps does effortlessly.
I guess what I mean is that Amanda Palmer has an audience, but Game Grumps has a community. And the newspaper that asks for a free article has neither.
Now, there are a lot of complex details hidden behind this kind of general chatter. The Game Grumps have a fair number of detractors, probably more than Palmer does. This may be because of their show... or maybe it's because of their community management. It's hard to say. But their detractors don't get angry because the Game Grumps ask for free stuff - they get angry because they don't like the quality of the show/hosts. Palmer's detractors are often the other way around.
Also, the music scene has a lot of complex culture built up around the nature of money and success, while the gaming culture doesn't. So Game Grumps asking for free stuff is less offensive because gamer culture isn't built around how hard it is to get paid.
And Palmer asks for specific resources at specific times, while Game Grumps makes pressure-free general appeals.
And and and and...
But, even with all those factors floating around, I think it all boils down to the nature of your community management.
What do you think?
(See what I did there? AMAZING community engagement, yeah? Sigh.)
I thought I would take a moment and talk about free work, about why people have such weird opinions about it.
A lot of people seem to be annoyed by Amanda Palmer. She's pretty well off, and she's married to a wealthy superstar. Despite that, she still asks for a lot of free stuff. She asks for free crash space, free musicians, free word of mouth, whatever she can get away with. A lot of people consider this to be disrespectful. If she's rich, she should be paying for stuff, right?
I don't really think so. It's not as cut and dried as "I support Amanda Palmer" - she has a lot of really awkward habits and economic advice that only pan out if you're already successful and/or married to a superstar. But I don't think, fundamentally, there's anything wrong with asking for free stuff. It's not a matter of how rich you are, it's a matter of the level in which you are attempting to engage.
That is, asking for free stuff is a good way to engage with your community. It's rarely a good way to try and make a living.
Amanda Palmer asks her fanbase if any of them want to play trumpet for her. Fine. Newspaper asks famous blogger to write a free article "for exposure"? Not immoral, but pretty insulting and unlikely to succeed.
Amanda Palmer does have an audience of fans, and she's reasonably good at engaging them. But her machinations are child's play compared to specialists.
Oprah was a community management specialist, but she's from the old era before the internet really caught on. Her techniques were limited by her limited ability to actually interact with people. In order to interact with people, Oprah had to be with them or talking on the phone with them. Also, due to the restrictions of television, she couldn't easily provide links or interactive commentary. So her interactions were therefore somewhat restricted... but within that framework, she was very, very good. Her show wasn't popular because it had any particular merit: she basically showed her audience bullshit and asked them to buy it. It was popular because she talked to and for her audience. She would act as a window for her audience, showing them things in ways they could easily grasp... and she was equally adept at talking to her audience, treating them as people worth knowing (even if she could never know them because there were so many).
Now, if you want a modern example of Oprah, try Game Grumps. While they aren't as universally recognized, they have a hell of an audience and they built it without much advertising or corporate support. They succeed because they, like Oprah, are a talk show that speaks to and for their audience.
Unlike Oprah, they don't have to rely on leverage. They don't need corporate sponsors. They don't need an endless parade of guests. They don't need to facet their show such that they appeal to a different subaudience every week to keep all the subaudiences interested. Instead, all they need is to manage their community.
Before I continue, let me be clear. While they don't have a Wikipedia page, the Game Grumps have hundreds of animations about them, dozens of music videos and songs, and hundreds of donated games. I would say that their fan base is far healthier than either Palmer's or Oprah's, at least measured in terms of minutes of animation. It's extremely impressive just how much of this stuff is floating around the internet: they have an extremely active community.
If you listen to the Game Grumps, many of their episodes are around half community management. Even on the episodes which feature almost no community management, the community management is typically the "loudest" part, either because their editor spams text effects to give it punch, or because when they do something funny they immediately link it back to their audience. Also, outside of their episodes, they continue to manage their community.
I don't think that Arin, Jon, and Barry actually think of it like this. I think they actually are the sort of people who just naturally think of their audience. They obviously have some particular community management standards (always mention who sent the game, etc), but they also do a lot of off-the-cuff community management such as talking about an awesome video their community created, or saying how they wish someone would remix this segment, or discussing whether there's a less assumptive word than "fan". They act to keep their community moving and chatting, rather than just keeping them fat and happy.
This is the kind of interactivity Oprah wished she could do.
Game Grumps aren't likely to ever be as famous as Oprah. Hell, they don't even have a Wikipedia page for some reason. But they really show that there is a new way to manage your community. The stumbling methods used by Amanda Palmer are child's play. They're only effective because she built up an audience well ahead of time using classic means. This isn't an insult to her abilities as an artist: it's a statement about the way she engages with her audience. She's struggling to do small versions of the things that Game Grumps does effortlessly.
I guess what I mean is that Amanda Palmer has an audience, but Game Grumps has a community. And the newspaper that asks for a free article has neither.
Now, there are a lot of complex details hidden behind this kind of general chatter. The Game Grumps have a fair number of detractors, probably more than Palmer does. This may be because of their show... or maybe it's because of their community management. It's hard to say. But their detractors don't get angry because the Game Grumps ask for free stuff - they get angry because they don't like the quality of the show/hosts. Palmer's detractors are often the other way around.
Also, the music scene has a lot of complex culture built up around the nature of money and success, while the gaming culture doesn't. So Game Grumps asking for free stuff is less offensive because gamer culture isn't built around how hard it is to get paid.
And Palmer asks for specific resources at specific times, while Game Grumps makes pressure-free general appeals.
And and and and...
But, even with all those factors floating around, I think it all boils down to the nature of your community management.
What do you think?
(See what I did there? AMAZING community engagement, yeah? Sigh.)
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Simplest Mechanics
I've been thinking about really, really simple mechanics that can communicate a particular... cultural feel.
For example, let's say you want to do a post-apocalyptic eighties' biker gang sort of thing. What mechanics would you use?
My first thought is a brawler, Double Dragon style, or maybe a violent vehicle game (rather than a racer). But those are somewhat complex. What is a simpler mechanic you could use?
The reason I started to think of simpler mechanics is because I created a "dungeon push" prototype. This uses a simple mechanic - the idea of pushing your luck - and it's actually fairly compelling. But there is a little bit of a mismatch between the mechanic and the presentation. So I'm kind of interested in the idea of matching simpler mechanics to good themes.
Can you create simple mechanics for, say, the feeling of a Japanese samurai as seasons pass? Or the feeling of discovery and accomplishment of leading a team of engineers and scientists to build the first manned missions to outer space? Or the shaky, ethereal feeling of walking around a city when you haven't slept in three days?
See, the mechanic isn't about trying to simulate the core of the experience. Instead, the mechanic needs to pull the player into the core of the experience. The difference sounds semantic, but it's not.
For example, if we're trying to make a "samurai as seasons pass" game, we probably need a fighting mechanic. But the fighting mechanic needs to exemplify the feeling we're aiming for, the feeling of stillness and the transience of life and death. For this, we need to have some kind of persistence from season to season. Defending a town against bandits seems best. Each battle is one season. The better you do in combat, the more hale and whole your samurai is for the next battle, and the better off the village is. Depending on the exact feel, we have a dynastic system where if you die your son or daughter takes over, but for now I think we can presume you only have one life. So the goal of the game is to stay healthy through each battle. Injuries take a permanent toll, and even if you play perfectly, so will age.
What remains is the mechanic. You could do something like Karateka, where it's all about simple timing. But in addition to already having been done, I don't think it represents the feel of a samurai conflict. For kung-fu, it works pretty well, but not for samurai.
I think of samurai as less about reaction speed and more about timing and control of distance. Especially if we're talking about killing bandits. But distance and timing is a difficult mechanic to make feel meaty - most games that try end up being about memorization and reaction speed, which is what I want to avoid. So it may be better to go with a chi system that kind of feels the same if you squint. So we'll have two buttons: an advance button and a strike button.
When you do neither, you gain chi (and sheath your sword). When you advance on an enemy you will change the range and also change their mode - everyone fights differently when being threatened. And the strike is, of course, how you dispatch your enemy. The game can be made slightly more complex by starting you off with the spear, and if you screw up, it breaks and you move on to the sword. If you screw up, it is cast aside and you move down to a knife. This way you get a little more complexity out of the same basic mechanic. The different seasons can also subtly change your foot speed and whether you slide around after an attack. And, of course, how much chi you built up changes what kind of strike you do.
I think it would be able to represent the right feel.
I think it would be fun to try this kind of experiment with a lot of different themes. The simplest mechanics you can think of, and how they layer to draw the player into the theme.
For example, let's say you want to do a post-apocalyptic eighties' biker gang sort of thing. What mechanics would you use?
My first thought is a brawler, Double Dragon style, or maybe a violent vehicle game (rather than a racer). But those are somewhat complex. What is a simpler mechanic you could use?
The reason I started to think of simpler mechanics is because I created a "dungeon push" prototype. This uses a simple mechanic - the idea of pushing your luck - and it's actually fairly compelling. But there is a little bit of a mismatch between the mechanic and the presentation. So I'm kind of interested in the idea of matching simpler mechanics to good themes.
Can you create simple mechanics for, say, the feeling of a Japanese samurai as seasons pass? Or the feeling of discovery and accomplishment of leading a team of engineers and scientists to build the first manned missions to outer space? Or the shaky, ethereal feeling of walking around a city when you haven't slept in three days?
See, the mechanic isn't about trying to simulate the core of the experience. Instead, the mechanic needs to pull the player into the core of the experience. The difference sounds semantic, but it's not.
For example, if we're trying to make a "samurai as seasons pass" game, we probably need a fighting mechanic. But the fighting mechanic needs to exemplify the feeling we're aiming for, the feeling of stillness and the transience of life and death. For this, we need to have some kind of persistence from season to season. Defending a town against bandits seems best. Each battle is one season. The better you do in combat, the more hale and whole your samurai is for the next battle, and the better off the village is. Depending on the exact feel, we have a dynastic system where if you die your son or daughter takes over, but for now I think we can presume you only have one life. So the goal of the game is to stay healthy through each battle. Injuries take a permanent toll, and even if you play perfectly, so will age.
What remains is the mechanic. You could do something like Karateka, where it's all about simple timing. But in addition to already having been done, I don't think it represents the feel of a samurai conflict. For kung-fu, it works pretty well, but not for samurai.
I think of samurai as less about reaction speed and more about timing and control of distance. Especially if we're talking about killing bandits. But distance and timing is a difficult mechanic to make feel meaty - most games that try end up being about memorization and reaction speed, which is what I want to avoid. So it may be better to go with a chi system that kind of feels the same if you squint. So we'll have two buttons: an advance button and a strike button.
When you do neither, you gain chi (and sheath your sword). When you advance on an enemy you will change the range and also change their mode - everyone fights differently when being threatened. And the strike is, of course, how you dispatch your enemy. The game can be made slightly more complex by starting you off with the spear, and if you screw up, it breaks and you move on to the sword. If you screw up, it is cast aside and you move down to a knife. This way you get a little more complexity out of the same basic mechanic. The different seasons can also subtly change your foot speed and whether you slide around after an attack. And, of course, how much chi you built up changes what kind of strike you do.
I think it would be able to represent the right feel.
I think it would be fun to try this kind of experiment with a lot of different themes. The simplest mechanics you can think of, and how they layer to draw the player into the theme.
Monday, March 18, 2013
The Buddy System
I've always thought that what sets Fire Emblem apart isn't the perma-death, it's the buddy system.
I don't care at all about the actual plot of these games. All I care about are the personal vignettes and, in the most recent one, coordinating skill sets for child inheritance. Let's ignore that bit, it's complex. Let's focus on the chatting.
I think there is a whole game hiding here. I think it's quite possible to make a game which is entirely about these vignettes and relationships. Like an RPG is about leveling up, there would be some kind of play on top of the buddy system but the buddy system would be the meat. It'd need to be more adaptable than Fire Emblem's simple linear system, but probably not a whole lot. Just enough to give the player a little bit of control.
So, this game would have to be set around a team activity of some kind, one where even though there might be a dozen people working towards the same goal, two or three would form tight and ongoing knots of cooperation. Between the various events, there would be the social section, where you can manage various aspects of your characters and have them advance their various interpersonal vignettes.
Here are some ideas:
A sports game. It probably couldn't be any modern sport - I can't think of any that allow for ongoing knots of cooperation. But it should be possible to build one. The various sports stars have offscreen lives like a bad sports manga, and learn similarly silly super-moves as a result of becoming friends with each other. Plusses to this idea: it has a tight and transparent play loop. It allows allied characters to fight each other on any given day.
A melodrama game. The various characters are actors in a melodrama, and you cast various arcs and episodes with various characters. As they spend scenes together they eventually get to know each other and can have their vignettes introduced as the B-plot in the next episode. Plusses to this idea: the vignettes play out in the same "battlefield" as the main play does.
A comedy show/improv game. Move the characters around on a stage as they make up stupid humor. Balance slapstick, drama, talents, and puns to have a perfect show. Offstage friendships develop and allow characters to work together better and gain new talents. More similar to the sports game than the melodrama game. Plusses: much more lightweight, casual play.
Away team/safari game. Send a batch of crew members down to a weird new location. They work together, split up, get things done. Same exact mechanics could be used for a safari/vacation game, if you're feeling no-sci-fi-ish. Plusses: task-based rather than tactics-based. Widely varied. Lots of opportunity to asynch cooperate with other players.
Anyway, what are your ideas?
I don't care at all about the actual plot of these games. All I care about are the personal vignettes and, in the most recent one, coordinating skill sets for child inheritance. Let's ignore that bit, it's complex. Let's focus on the chatting.
I think there is a whole game hiding here. I think it's quite possible to make a game which is entirely about these vignettes and relationships. Like an RPG is about leveling up, there would be some kind of play on top of the buddy system but the buddy system would be the meat. It'd need to be more adaptable than Fire Emblem's simple linear system, but probably not a whole lot. Just enough to give the player a little bit of control.
So, this game would have to be set around a team activity of some kind, one where even though there might be a dozen people working towards the same goal, two or three would form tight and ongoing knots of cooperation. Between the various events, there would be the social section, where you can manage various aspects of your characters and have them advance their various interpersonal vignettes.
Here are some ideas:
A sports game. It probably couldn't be any modern sport - I can't think of any that allow for ongoing knots of cooperation. But it should be possible to build one. The various sports stars have offscreen lives like a bad sports manga, and learn similarly silly super-moves as a result of becoming friends with each other. Plusses to this idea: it has a tight and transparent play loop. It allows allied characters to fight each other on any given day.
A melodrama game. The various characters are actors in a melodrama, and you cast various arcs and episodes with various characters. As they spend scenes together they eventually get to know each other and can have their vignettes introduced as the B-plot in the next episode. Plusses to this idea: the vignettes play out in the same "battlefield" as the main play does.
A comedy show/improv game. Move the characters around on a stage as they make up stupid humor. Balance slapstick, drama, talents, and puns to have a perfect show. Offstage friendships develop and allow characters to work together better and gain new talents. More similar to the sports game than the melodrama game. Plusses: much more lightweight, casual play.
Away team/safari game. Send a batch of crew members down to a weird new location. They work together, split up, get things done. Same exact mechanics could be used for a safari/vacation game, if you're feeling no-sci-fi-ish. Plusses: task-based rather than tactics-based. Widely varied. Lots of opportunity to asynch cooperate with other players.
Anyway, what are your ideas?
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Balancing Tactical RPGs
Fire Emblem: Awakening has some interesting balance choices. All such games do, but let's go ahead and use Awakening as an example.
The weird thing about tactical RPGs is that they are balanced very similarly to fighting games. That is, there's often characters who are easy to pick up and play well, but those characters frequently start to have a rough time in a more competitive environment. It's not that they're simply weaker: it's that strength and weakness varies depending on the level of difficulty you're facing, or the level of your enemies.
For example, in Awakening there is a character named "Donnel". Like all the Fire Emblem characters, he's a 90s stereotype, in this case of a pig farming hick. Literally, he wears a pot on his head and talks about pig farming all the time. His special characteristic is that his stat growth is significantly better than the other characters.
It only takes a few levels for him to catch up to the others, and then he basically leaps ahead and becomes an invulnerable killing machine. He's so strong he can effortlessly solo basically any story map. Which, of course, means he gets experience faster than others and gets further ahead.
However, to "balance" him, the devs gave him low stat caps. In the beginning of the game, you can be forgiven for not even realizing stat caps exist. And to an ordinary player at ordinary difficulty, stat caps are unlikely to matter much. They only matter when you start to take on challenge maps, or play on Lunatic mode.
In Lunatic+ mode, the ultra mode beyond Lunatic, Donnel is restricted to more or less the role of "wall", and even then he's easily outclassed by defense specialists. This is because Donnel's class choices are primarily melee assault classes, so he doesn't get any of the advanced defense or ranged offence options that are so critical in Lunatic+ mode. Even if he did get them, his skill stat cap is dangerously low, so they won't fire as often as you'd like.
The classes themselves actually have different usefulness depending on difficulty. Below Lunatic mode, archers and snipers aren't really very useful. You can use them, they're not worthless, but a mage can easily do all the things they can. They have a few small advantages - they can have an extra tile of range, they can learn "bow slayer"... but those advantages aren't really very important compared to their disadvantages.
In Lunatic+ mode, it's probably not possible to beat the game without relying heavily on long-range snipers with bow slayer. The enemies have too many cheeseball, cheaty counters, and melee combatants will get annihilated if they engage. There are some ways to make dark mages useful as well... but default mages? In Lunatic+ mode, they have a rough time of it.
I don't know how much of this is choice and how much is circumstance. When the developers created the game, they obviously created Donnel to be an early peaking character... but his peak is quite high and I'm reasonably sure he could solo the last level in normal story mode difficulty. So his "early peak" is the same as most other character's end of game state - they could theoretically keep climbing, but the game is over. Did the designers intend to leave his peak so high?
Did the developers intend for archers to be slightly underpowered in normal play? It seems likely, because the main archer is a prancing ladies' man who doesn't feel like he'd be very effective on the battlefield.
Balancing is hard, I guess.
The weird thing about tactical RPGs is that they are balanced very similarly to fighting games. That is, there's often characters who are easy to pick up and play well, but those characters frequently start to have a rough time in a more competitive environment. It's not that they're simply weaker: it's that strength and weakness varies depending on the level of difficulty you're facing, or the level of your enemies.
For example, in Awakening there is a character named "Donnel". Like all the Fire Emblem characters, he's a 90s stereotype, in this case of a pig farming hick. Literally, he wears a pot on his head and talks about pig farming all the time. His special characteristic is that his stat growth is significantly better than the other characters.
It only takes a few levels for him to catch up to the others, and then he basically leaps ahead and becomes an invulnerable killing machine. He's so strong he can effortlessly solo basically any story map. Which, of course, means he gets experience faster than others and gets further ahead.
However, to "balance" him, the devs gave him low stat caps. In the beginning of the game, you can be forgiven for not even realizing stat caps exist. And to an ordinary player at ordinary difficulty, stat caps are unlikely to matter much. They only matter when you start to take on challenge maps, or play on Lunatic mode.
In Lunatic+ mode, the ultra mode beyond Lunatic, Donnel is restricted to more or less the role of "wall", and even then he's easily outclassed by defense specialists. This is because Donnel's class choices are primarily melee assault classes, so he doesn't get any of the advanced defense or ranged offence options that are so critical in Lunatic+ mode. Even if he did get them, his skill stat cap is dangerously low, so they won't fire as often as you'd like.
The classes themselves actually have different usefulness depending on difficulty. Below Lunatic mode, archers and snipers aren't really very useful. You can use them, they're not worthless, but a mage can easily do all the things they can. They have a few small advantages - they can have an extra tile of range, they can learn "bow slayer"... but those advantages aren't really very important compared to their disadvantages.
In Lunatic+ mode, it's probably not possible to beat the game without relying heavily on long-range snipers with bow slayer. The enemies have too many cheeseball, cheaty counters, and melee combatants will get annihilated if they engage. There are some ways to make dark mages useful as well... but default mages? In Lunatic+ mode, they have a rough time of it.
I don't know how much of this is choice and how much is circumstance. When the developers created the game, they obviously created Donnel to be an early peaking character... but his peak is quite high and I'm reasonably sure he could solo the last level in normal story mode difficulty. So his "early peak" is the same as most other character's end of game state - they could theoretically keep climbing, but the game is over. Did the designers intend to leave his peak so high?
Did the developers intend for archers to be slightly underpowered in normal play? It seems likely, because the main archer is a prancing ladies' man who doesn't feel like he'd be very effective on the battlefield.
Balancing is hard, I guess.
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