tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82346202024-03-08T16:47:14.672-05:00Laundry SessionsConversations/brainstorms on issues in interactive entertainment designOrangeDecahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464052736525743795noreply@blogger.comBlogger98125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-29090201118675526532007-11-28T19:32:00.001-05:002007-11-28T19:41:06.449-05:00Musicians: Lay Off, its just a toy!Its been multiple years since I even read my own blog here, let alone post to it. But I need to rant.<br /><br />I love Rock Band. I love Guitar Hero.<br /><br />Do you know what I don't love right now? Musicians.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2177432/">Articles like this one on Slate</a> just dredge up all the issues that these games have created.<br /><br />The condescension that real-life musicians seem to bring to every RB/GH conversation is really getting on my nerves. I just want them to relax and let the rest of us pretend for a while. Its a toy, you know? Their base line assumption is that by playing these toy instruments, somehow we think we are playing the real ones. I guess this puts us in the category of posers in their mind. Many of us can't play instruments or arent musically talented.<br /><br />So please, musicians, let me have my pretend music. Let me enjoy a video game and my toy drum set. Let me be escapist. Stop complaining that Rock Band's songs aren't realistic. They are fun. Stop saying I should just learn to play on my own. I won't.<br /><br />And if you can't relax and enjoy yourselves, then you wont be invited to my next Rock Band party.OrangeDecahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464052736525743795noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-46329934853478913092007-02-28T23:58:00.000-05:002008-02-09T11:59:57.330-05:00Laundry Sessions Retired and Archived - UPDATEDUPDATE: I've decided that LS should just remain here. No point in archiving it at a different site... Plus OrangeDeca decided to continue posting here... so we ought to keep it active.<br /><br />Original post:<br /><br />Laundry Sessions has been retired and archived at <a href="http://laundrysessions.clubberjack.net/">laundrysessions.clubberjack.net</a>. LS could someday come out of retirement, but for now it will reside in stasis at <a href="http://www.clubberjack.net/">clubberjack.net</a>.Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1145477896634227472006-04-19T16:11:00.000-04:002006-04-19T16:18:16.846-04:00Anti-EpisodicI've got some deeper ruminations on episodic development/content and digital distribution coming, but in the meantime, <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060418/kraft_01.shtml">here's a link to an analyst's look at episodic development</a>. It's an interesting read, and the author comes to some different conclusions.Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1143918935052497082006-04-01T12:25:00.000-05:002006-04-01T14:15:35.113-05:00GDC 2006: AwardsThe awards show this year gave me a lot of hope for the future. As usual, the <a href="http://www.igf.com/">Independent Game Festival</a> provided much inspiration with <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8643">diverse designs and fierce creativity</a>.<br /><br />However, it was the more "mainstream" <a href="http://www.gamechoiceawards.com">Game Developers Choice Awards</a> that illustrated an expansion of our perception of what games can be. Four games swept the awards: Guitar Hero, Shadow of the Colossus, Nintendogs, and Psychonauts. Not coincidentally, three of those games (Guitar Hero, Colossus, and Nintendogs) were also honored for innovation.<br /><br />New designs, non-game play, beautiful atmosphere, (good) humorous writing, and so much more. Congratulations to the winners. As Chris Hecker said: "Games are f**king awesome!"Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1143106348211225462006-03-23T04:31:00.000-05:002006-03-23T04:35:19.020-05:00GDC 2006: Best Quote of the Day (March 22)"Some people excel at lunch."<br />-Harvey Smith in the <a href="http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2451">Creative Director Roundtable</a>Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1143017017918243872006-03-22T03:32:00.000-05:002006-03-22T03:43:38.336-05:00GDC 2006: Best Design Nuggets from the Serious Games SummitThe Serious Games Summit was reasonably interesting this year. I attended a mix of design, education, and business sessions. Here are a few of my favorite design nuggets from the past two days:<br /><ul><li>Fading between the surface depiction of the world and a representation (diagram?) of the underlying system dynamics. [John Black, Teachers College of Columbia University]</li><li>Leadership training and team building in MMOs. [Lisa Galarneau]</li><li>The concept of convexity mapped onto a flow graph. [Noah Falstein]</li><li>Clear goals = clear failure, which is not always good for a given player. [Jesper Juul]</li><li>Games as interfaces for real work (ie playing a game is your work). [?]</li><li>Overlaying grid lines on a world to teach coordinate plane concepts. [Tabula Digita]</li><li>Simple AI can be built to take advantage of human attribution. [Nigel Papworth]</li></ul><p>There are more, but I'm wiped out now. I'll revisit this post another day and see what I missed.</p>Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1143016317691964832006-03-22T03:30:00.000-05:002006-03-22T03:31:57.706-05:00GDC 2006I am currently at GDC 2006. This year, instead of promising to write up every session (we all saw how well that went for me last year), I'm just going to post whatever I feel like whenever I feel like it. Enjoy!Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1142467405421105002006-03-15T13:06:00.000-05:002006-03-16T01:41:58.776-05:00HUD-less HorsemenA couple of recent articles have debated the relative merits (and anti-merits) of heads-up displays (HUDs) in videogames.<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060203/wilson_pfv.htm">Greg Wilson's "Off with Their HUDs!" at Gamasutra</a></li><li><a href="http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70387-0.html">Clive Thompson's "Tunnel Vision" at Wired</a></li></ul>Wilson contends that HUDs get in the way of immersion by distracting from the "realistic" elements of the game. On the other hand, Thompson claims that well-designed HUDs make information accessible to the player in such as way as to keep focus on the main experience. Both are interesting perspectives. From a design perspective though, I think the most useful thing about dropping the HUD is the creativity it forces. Without a HUD to fall back on, designers have come up with some really ingenious ways to convey information to the player.<br /><br />On the other hand, arbitrarily dumping the HUD seems dangerous. Even Fumito Ueda, who famously went HUD-less with <strong>Ico</strong>, <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70286-0.html">brought some elements back onto the screen with his equally atmospheric <strong>Shadow of the Collossus</strong></a>. His comments are illuminating:<br /><blockquote>"When we said ... Ico is not a conventional video game title, we set limitations on ourselves for the development of the game. We had to eliminate everything that made it look like a video game. But for our next game, we wanted to remove those artificial limitations that we placed on ourselves. We wanted to just make a game that was fun. If a limitation made the game less fun, we weren't going to restrict ourselves."</blockquote>PS. People who write about games should agree to stop using bad HUD puns. I will if you will.Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1134968815892868682005-12-18T23:49:00.000-05:002005-12-19T00:06:55.916-05:00Hardcore Casual: A New Audience?It's funny, as I was playing some Shadow of the Colossus the other night, I was thinking about my play style and how it meshed with Shadow's design. The game affords real progress in short segments (ie, I can usually bring down a colossus in 30 min. or so). This fits nicely in my busy, adult schedule. On the other hand, the game is involved enough to really grab me. It presents interesting and deep challenges trimmed in wonderful art direction and truly cinematic camera work. Shadow of the Colossus seems to me to be simultaneously Casual and Hardcore.<br /><br />The very next day, I noticed <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/23/28">an article in the Escapist</a>, that addressed this issue from a demographic side. The author describes himself as "Hardcore Casual," a former hardcore gamer whose life has caught up and who can no longer devote himself to the hardcore gamer lifestyle (nor does he want to). He has the taste of a hardcore gamer, but not the time or patience (or funds). While I've never thought of myself as hardcore, I think that my tastes run beyond casual, and the term hardcore casual feels like a pretty accurate description of my approach to games. If a game doesn't grab me, I generally don't give it too much of a chance.<br /><br />The big question to my mind is this: Is hardcore casual a big enough market to design and produce games for? I would like to think the answer is yes. As the first generations of gamers hit so-called maturity, I think the hardcore casual market will grow. Likewise, as gaming becomes a more prominent part of pop culture, even casual gamers will move towards the hardcore, making the hardcore casual group a pretty sweet target for gamemakers. Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part (I guess it's natural to want more games for me).Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1133808381180976072005-12-05T13:38:00.000-05:002005-12-05T13:46:21.190-05:00Appropriate Levels of RealismClive Thompson brings his usual insight to bear on the topic of the Uncanny Valley in Xbox 360 launch titles <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,69739,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2">in this recent Wired News article</a>. What got me thinking is his reference to the manga/anime techique of juxtaposing realistic surroundings with iconic or even cartoonish characters. In <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006097625X/qid=1133808125/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-1617097-1201450?n=507846&s=books&v=glance">Understanding Comics</a></em>, Scott McCloud references this same style and even goes as far as to describe how it influences our empathy with the characters. The more iconic the depiction of a character, the easier it is for the reader (or player, in game terms) to identify with that character. The reverse is also true. The more realistic the rendering of a person, place, or object, the easier it is for the reader/player to objectify.<br /><br />Thompson references the Xbox 360 title Kameo as an example of this sort of thing in action. I wonder if other games (or perhaps all games to varying extents) consciously use this technique to enhance a player's immersion in the game.Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1133210127391498192005-11-28T13:56:00.000-05:002005-11-28T15:40:14.123-05:00The Real Control RevolutionA lot is being said about Nintendo's <a href="http://www.nintendo.com/newsarticle?articleid=TfyOgnUc7zB-ZlzdQvMhKJOgS5LsR2nK&page=newsmain">Revolution controller</a>. 1up.com has <a href="http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3145837&did=1">a nice piece in which they talk to third-party developers about the possibilities of moving beyond tech demos into real, fully-fleshed-out game designs</a>. As I was reading the ideas from Foundation 9's Chris Charla and the other interviewees, I realized that the kind of one-to-one interaction that most people are looking for from the Revolution controller is, in fact, the wrong way to approach this new control system. Everyone immediately thinks of sword fighting (or lightsaber duels) as the "killer app" for the new controller, imagining players swinging the controller to hack away at enemies. However, I believe that the real innovation is much more subtle.<br /><br />Though current controllers can be scary and off-putting in their complexity (at least to the mainstream "non-gamer"), I would argue that they do their job admirably. There's a reason that the Xbox 360 and the PS3 aren't making significant jumps in controller design. After some simple tutorials, most (good) games have their players performing amazing feats and managing complex systems, all mediated and manipulated through the controller. In the best games, the controller becomes transparent, and the player's desires are translated seamlessly into action. Ideally, it's like driving a car; at first, a new driver is aware (sometimes painfully) of the gas pedal, the brake pedal, the steering wheel, and all of the other controls. But with some practice, the car's interface becomes transparent, and the car becomes an extension of the driver's body. Likewise, most players begin a game conscious of the controller but soon become unaware of it as their bodies are extended into the gameworld.<br /><br />When I look at the Revolution controller, I don't see players jumping around their living rooms, slashing wildly; I see a more subtle shift towards a faster learning curve (ie, players will be getting to that transparency point faster). Players will still sit on the couch as they play most games. The big slashing motions that we're all imagining will probably be more like flicks of the wrist. It's a less flashy picture to be sure, but I think it's still a huge leap forward. Moving the controller is a much more natural and intuitive interface than a joystick (think about all the people who wave the controller around anyway even though they know it won't do anything), and that initial ease will help drop the learning period closer to zero. Even in established genres, this easier control system will help out. For instance, the issue of "look inversion" in first-person shooters will be basically solved.<br /><br />By making the interface easier to learn, Nintendo will certainly reduce the intimidation factor, opening up new potential audiences for games, which is, of course, their stated goal. In addition, the new controller will facilitate additional types of interactions that are more diffifcult to map to conventional controllers, such as orchestra conducting, surgery, and so on as shown in their promotional materials. I just don't think full-motion swordfighting will be the killer app.Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1128314982942506892005-11-09T02:22:00.000-05:002005-11-09T03:37:10.816-05:00Destiny of Heroes: Narrative Elements from LinearityI've often thought of non-linear and emergent stories as the true destiny of interactive narrative in games. However, there are some features of linear games such as God of War (and many, many others) that reinforce the narrative in a particularly pleasing way. Brett Douville has written <a href="http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2005/10/sacrifice_god_o.html">a thoughtful post about God of War</a>, which got me thinking...<br /><br />In God of War, the player character is actually defined through the atrocities that he is forced to commit in order to advance through the game. One puzzle (the one that Douville focuses on) includes a human sacrifice that must be perpetrated by the player in order to advance. I would argue that this actually helps the player to feel the simultaneous savagery and horror that define the character of Kratos.<br /><br />I wonder too if perhaps linearity might contribute to a sense of destiny or fate, elements often associated with heroes or antiheroes. In <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61572">an interview with Eurogamer</a>, Fumito Ueda has this to say about the idea of multiple endings (and therefore choice) in Shadow of the Colossus: "What I was trying to do, is each time you killed the colossi you can't escape from your own fate..." As the plot moves forward, the player cannot escape from destiny or fate.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bowenresearch.com/studies.php?id=3">Hugh Bowen's recently released study on the current state of emotion in games</a> indicates that players experience a range of emotions during games and that role-playing games are the most cited genre for emotional experience. Far-and-away, the most cited series of games was Final Fantasy, which is heavily linear. In fact, most of the emotional elements of Final Fantasy take place in the cutscenes, which are about as linear as you can get. Is linearity in fact the key to emotion in games?<br /><br />I don't buy that, but I do think that there are some interesting place to explore in this territory.<br /><br />Perhaps linearity helps us feel like heroes. We follow the path which destiny (the game designer) has laid out for us. We forge on, courageous with little choice. Perhaps, when we have more choice, our actions reflect more on ourselves, and it is harder to feel heroic. The more choice, the more the game is like real life, in which there is no clear destiny.Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1130348048287311892005-10-26T13:20:00.000-04:002005-10-26T13:34:08.333-04:00Killer 7: Art? Hard to SayAfter <a href="http://laundrysessions.blogspot.com/2005/07/killer-7-art.html">my initial post about Killer 7 and its relation to art</a>, I've actually played the game. Or rather, tried to play the game. If Killer 7 is art then it is analogous to a painting with a curtain over it.<br /><br />In short, the control scheme was so torturously difficult that I couldn't get through more than 15 or 20 minutes of the game. I gave it the old college try more than once. I kept thinking "maybe this time, the art of the game will overwhelm my urge to give up." But no, I couldn't hack it, and as a result, I have no way of experiencing what sounds like a wonderful and disturbing surrealist vision of gaming.<br /><br />I suppose that one could argue that the difficulty of the controls is an artistic statement in and of itself. However, it seems that the true artistic intent is located in the visuals and narrative. If this is the case than the developers have made their art largely inaccessible to me. Like I said, Killer 7 is a painting with a curtain in front of it, obscuring its beauty behind a prohibitive control scheme.<br /><br />There must be a lesson here...<br /><br />[see also <a href="http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/blog/index.php?p=41285">Robin Hunicke's thoughts</a>: "Detail wise, there are a ton of great little flourishes - but in the end, you have to wonder. Why didn’t they spend more time on the interface and level design?"]Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1127754321766677052005-09-26T12:56:00.000-04:002005-09-26T13:05:21.786-04:00Game Critics Hate the Third Act?While I was reading the reviews of <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps2/fahrenheit">Indigo Prophecy</a> over the weekend I was pretty surprised to read how most of them criticized the games ending. I havent played it yet but it was kind of shocking to see the strong feelings the game's third act engendered in the reviewers. Then I realized something: most of these reviews read much more like a movie or play review than a game one. In fact most critics spent less than a third of their column inches on the graphics and gameplay and concentrated on what they saw as <a href="http://penny-arcade.com/">tight writing in some places </a>and flawed writing in others. <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/fahrenheit/review.html?tag=boxcar_all_review_image">Gamespot</a> even went so far as to say they wished they had cut 30 minutes from the first act and added 90 minutes to the final act. I've never heard a game reviewer saying anything like it. It seems to be a testament to how compelling the games interactive story was. I'm interested in checking it out.<br /><br />To read some of the reviews, follow some of these links on the game's Metacritic page.OrangeDecahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464052736525743795noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1127503043267085752005-09-23T15:10:00.000-04:002005-09-23T15:19:54.363-04:00No Death for McGeeI just read <a href="http://idlethumbs.net/display.php?id=221">the interview with American McGee over at Idle Thumbs</a>. <em><em><a href="http://www.enlight.com/bdla/">Bad Day LA</a></em></em> sounds like a pretty cool project (fantastic concept art from <a href="http://www.kozyndan.com/">Kozyndan</a>), and McGee's business model is pretty interesting from an indie development perspective. However, the thing that really caught my eye was this little tidbit about a "no death" mechanic:<br /><blockquote>The "no death" mechanic is super simple. Basically it means that if you die, you hit the ground for 5 seconds, then jump back up. This isn't really a "feature" as a crutch for novices to use while playing the game. This idea came about as I watched non-gamers struggling with the idea of save games, load games, and death in general. While hard-core gamers aren't going to care for this feature, we've found that novice gamers really appreciate how straightforward and non-confusing it is. By the way, this mode is ONLY available on the Easy Difficultly setting. Don't worry, I'll add in a "punish me" difficulty level for those of you who think that games should be annoying and frustrating instead of fun.</blockquote>It's good to see someone questioning even the most basic tenets of game design.Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1127276506148838182005-09-20T23:17:00.000-04:002005-09-21T00:30:07.463-04:00Johnson, Koster, and Blizzard: Is WoW a Big Skinner box?I just finished reading Stephen Johnson's excellent book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1573223077/qid=1127273248/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0373782-4891866?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">Everything Bad Is Good for You</a> (<a href="http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/">Johnson's blog</a>), and I've restarted reading Raph Koster's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1932111972/qid=1127273405/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-0373782-4891866?v=glance&s=books">A Theory of Fun</a> (<a href="http://www.theoryoffun.com/">book site here</a>). Both books take a look at videogames (or in the case of Johnson, pop culture in general, including games) through the lens of learning and cognitive theory. Johnson posits that the increasing complexity of pop culture (especially as embodied in today's interactive media, ie. games and the internet) has contributed to an upward trend in general intelligence (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect">the Flynn Effect</a>). According to Johnson, games provide a cognitive workout that isn't really available elsewhere in pop culture.<br /><br />Koster comes at the same idea from the reverse direction, trying to explain why we like games. He comes up with the idea that our brains constantly hunger for patterns to decipher and understand ("<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok">grok</a>" is the word Koster prefers). Games satisfy this hunger with simplified patterns which the player groks through play. The "fun" of the game is in understanding the pattern. The best games, according to Koster, bounce between challenging and do-able, never getting impossibly hard but never becoming too easy. The joy of learning the pattern is balanced by the introduction of new patterns.<br /><br />These ideas were floating around in my head as I was playing <a href="http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/">World of Warcraft</a> the other night. WoW does a great job of introducing new patterns at a satisfying pace. Just as I get a handle on one system, another is introduced to keep things interesting. It is certainly a triumph of design in this regard, keeping players interested far beyond the lifespan of most other games. However, I was talking about this with a friend (who has some knowledge of cognitive theory), and her response was "it's just a big <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_box">Skinner box</a>." This got me thinking about some of the more insidious teaching that is going on in WoW, and the conclusions are a bit scary.<br /><br />My friend is not the first person to look at MMOGs as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning">operant conditioning</a> devices (<a href="http://www.joystick101.org/story/2005/3/1/223027/7141">this article at Joystick101.org</a> looks at Skinnerian theory in the design of <a href="http://www.cityofheroes.com/">City of Heroes</a>), but her comment got me thinking about what exactly is being conditioned. The conclusion I came to is this: MMOGs condition their players to grind. Even WoW, which seems to be the most popular (at least in the West) and certainly isn't unpleasant, essentially habituates players to the constant collection of xp through almost pointless means.<br /><br />In operant conditioning, one teaching technique is to sometimes give a reward for each exhibition of the desired behavior. Basically, you teach the subject to operate on the potential of a reward as opposed to the actual reward. In WoW, the further you advance, the longer it is between rewards, and the more pointless grinding you have to do in the interim. At the beginning, you are rewarded with a new item or skill or level almost everytime you kill something or complete a quest. Soon however, the items become commonplace and the skills and levels are fewer and farther between, but you're doing just as much killing and questing in between. And everytime you do level or gain a new skill, it reinforces that feeling of potential reward, and you go right back to the grind.<br /><br />Is this genius design at work? Or is WoW just a big Skinner box? Or are these options really one and the same?<br /><br />Am I really this predictable?<br /><br />PS. Both Johnson's and Koster's respective books are great. And also, WoW is pretty good.Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1126218161591806502005-09-08T17:41:00.000-04:002005-09-08T18:22:41.623-04:00Will Episodic Content Calcify Gameplay?As anyone who's read Laundry Sessions knows, we're big fans of episodic content (at least I am). SiN Episodes, Half-Life 2 expansions, Tell Tale's Bone, and others are all giving the episodic model a whirl, and a Half-Life mod team has recently <a href="http://www.edge-online.co.uk/archives/2005/09/halflife_2_mod.php">adopted an episodic distribution model</a> as well. With the episodic distribution of content gaining steam (pun intended), I have to raise one question:<br /><br />Will episodic content lead to stagnation in gameplay?<br /><br />Here's why this comes to mind: If individual game experiences are only a couple hours long, there isn't really time for players to learn complicated interfaces. I suspect that interfaces and control schemes will become even more standarized than they already are in order to afford quick "pick-up-and-play" experiences. In general, I think this sort of standardization will be good, making games more accessible and saving developers time. However, will the need to conform to some adhoc standard interface prevent developers from trying something new?<br /><br />Film formats were standardized around the time that film became a mass medium. Generally, this is seen as a good thing and even a contributing factor in the maturation of film as an artform. However, it also cut out a lot of experimentation. On the other hand, I guess the constraints of standardized formats also provide a fertile ground for experimentation. Plus, people will always find places to experiment outside the standards of the mainstream.<br /><br />Now that I think about it, I remember that gameplay isn't really the same thing as interface/control scheme. The gravity gun in HL2 is a good example of a gameplay innovation within a standard control scheme.<br /><br />So anyway, I don't think episodic content will kill innovation, but I just had to raise the question.Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1125612130752304922005-09-01T17:23:00.000-04:002005-09-01T18:02:10.790-04:00The Future of OnlineI've been quoted as saying that the future of online gaming is on the console. I firmly believe that the PC , which is now the major player in online, will become less relevant. This is one reason why I am so interested what the next gen's online offerings will be like.<br /><br />In that spirit here are two interesting updates:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050831/carless_01.shtml">The XBox 360 will be very restrictive.</a> Microsoft is including a laundry list of requirements for developers who want to make a game for the new console. Included in this list are things like keeping enough memory available for one-on-one chat between games, having their UI available to slide in from the side in every game, making all the background music replaceable by player's own soundtracks, etc.<br /><br />On the flip side, while PS3 hasn't announced much, Sony's Phil Harrison did hint that they would not have a central service comparable to Live. <a href="http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=928&Itemid=2">In fact, they probably will have a more laissez-faire system</a>:<br /><br /><ul><li>"We want to provide an open platform wherever possible," he said. "We want to create a platform on which publishers can exploit their services. We are happy for publishers to form their own commercial relationships directly with the consumer."</li></ul>My opinion? I love Live and I think the central, consistent interface will help casual gamers. Sony is making a mistake by leaving up to developers. The player will get very uneven experiences as developers begin to skimp on "standard" features.<br /><br />On the flip side, as a developer, I am worried that Microsoft will go overboard with their requirements and soak the precious few development resources I have, leaving very little left for gameplay innovation.OrangeDecahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464052736525743795noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1124988989267621702005-08-25T12:48:00.000-04:002005-08-25T12:56:29.283-04:00I've Spent Lots of Money on HaloI've got some more substantive posts brewing, but in the meantime, here's <a href="http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=10402">a link to an interesting story over at GameDaily breaking down the money-making powerhouse that is the Halo franchise</a>. Reading this, I realize that I've spent a crapload of money on Halo products. I have both Halo and Halo 2, all the map packs, the Official Halo 2 Guide, and a Halo Live headset. That's a lot considering that I'm only a casual player.<br /><br />My big question is this: Can a game designer do anything to try to design this sort of fanatic product loyalty into the game itself (beyond just making a great product)? Is there anything about the game design of Halo 2 that lead to this or is it all due to good marketing for a solid product?Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1122526224996368302005-07-28T00:23:00.000-04:002005-07-28T00:50:25.016-04:00Curveball DesignOver at <a href="http://www.zenofdesign.com/">Zen of Design</a>, Damion Schubert <a href="http://www.zenofdesign.com/?p=398">muses about all the bad endings in games</a>. Of course, as a designer, he focuses on the badly designed endings (as opposed to poorly written endings to the stories). When you think about it, it does seem like an awful lot of great games end with curveball design elements.<br /><ul><li>The jumping puzzle at the end of Half-Life</li><li>The jumping puzzle at the end of God of War</li><li>The jumping puzzle at the end of Psychonauts</li><li>The jumping puzzle at... wait a minute...</li></ul><p>Ok... so maybe we should just expect a jumping puzzle at the end of every game. Seriously though, the thing that's so jarring about these jumping puzzles is that they come at the end of games that aren't about jumping (except maybe Psychonauts, but I hear that that puzzle is insanely hard compared to the rest of the game). I can imagine that these design choices are made to provide challenge and perhaps urgency to the end of the game, but having to adjust to a new mode of play can kill any momentum that the player has going, which can destroy immersion and cause frustration.</p><p>Schubert suggests that twists in the design might be more elegant. Adding a new layer or wrinkle to existing mechanics would challenge the player without breaking immersion or causing unnecessary frustration. Since the player has spent the entire game learning and mastering a set of mechanics, it makes sense to maintain that learning curve (or even reward it) with additional variations rather than completely new challenges. You don't want to make the player feel like a beginner after they've played your game for 12 hours.</p><p>That said, is there any time when a complete curveball game mechanic actually works near the end of a game? Any examples (I haven't come up with one yet)?</p>Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1121209442249513922005-07-12T18:37:00.000-04:002005-07-12T19:04:02.256-04:00Things to Do Better<a href="http://idlethumbs.net/display.php?id=185">Idle Thumbs has a provocative piece on attracting the female demographic to games</a>. I can't say I like the overall tone, but one thing I noticed is that every item the author mentioned is something I would like to see in games myself (not being female). Here's the list:<br /><ul><li>Fashionable hardware</li><li>Shorter games</li><li>More transparency</li><li>Multiplayer, but not cutthroat</li><li>Originality</li><li>More diverse settings</li><li>Better characters</li><li>Art, not graphics</li></ul><p>One particular point got my attention. Under "Shorter games," the author notes that "most games now reward you for completion." The whole game experience is geared toward finishing something (a fight, a quest, a level, the whole game). "The reward should be in the gameplay itself, every moment enjoyable." This got me thinking about what games put less focus on completion and more focus on the experience of play. So far, I've got The Sims, and maybe some MMOGs (when played a certain way). Any others?</p><p>And is a game that focuses on play rather than completion still a game?</p>Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1121180667170877172005-07-12T10:41:00.000-04:002005-07-12T18:37:28.843-04:00Killer 7: Art?Over at Penny-Arcade, <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php?date=2005-07-12">Tycho muses about Art</a> in the context of <a href="http://www.killer7.com/">Capcom's Killer 7</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>I think it's rare that we as players truly think about what it would mean for a game to be "art," straight up, with no qualifications. I'm not even sure the two terms can abide without rancor in the same sentence. Games are products, we buy them, and like other things we buy we have a reasonable expectation that it will produce a certain quantity of "amusement" before we have exhausted its supply. This definition is not sufficient to describe art. Art can be illegible. It can be exhausting. It can be maddening, offensive, and revelatory. Sometimes, it is literally Our Savior in a jar of pee. There is certainly no guarantee that you may be amused consistently, we take it for granted when we play a game that such was their intention, even if they have failed in it. Art can and will elude you. I'm fairly certain these themes are incompatible with the entire anatomy of consumerism.</blockquote>It's worth reading the rest of his post. The tricky part here is that Art usually results in a transformative experience, especially if it's difficult/exhausting/maddening/etc. When a game is difficult/exhausting/maddening/etc, it just sucks. Unless...<br /><br />Tycho holds up Killer 7 as something that isn't a good game but just might be Art. I haven't played it, but I'm rather intrigued now. Anyone have any thoughts?Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1120851930944986172005-07-08T15:37:00.000-04:002005-07-08T15:45:30.946-04:00LondonOur best wishes for recovery and healing go out to the people of London. Dave McCarthy, former writer for Edge Magazine, <a href="http://www.thetriforce.com/newblog/?p=244">shares his account of the harrowing experience of the Tube yesterday morning</a>. A snippet:<br /><blockquote><p>"I found it oddly poignant that I discovered my GBA was still turned on at 2:30 in the afternoon."</p></blockquote>Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1120851465539855982005-07-08T15:25:00.000-04:002005-07-08T15:37:45.546-04:00Episodes<a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=59893">And so it begins...</a> It seems that Ritual Entertainment will be releasing its next SiN game in episode form over Valve's Steam content delivery network. Salient features:<br /><ul><li>6 hour episodes</li><li>$20 a pop</li><li>Released every 3 to 4 months</li></ul><p>Interesting. This seems a bit expensive to me, although on second thought, I realize I happily pay $50 for a 12-15 hour game like Prince of Persia. Maybe $20 for 6 hours isn't bad. 3 to 4 months also seems like a long stretch between episodes. Will that be too long to maintain interest in storylines? If the game is good and the episodes each offer something new (gameplay- or story-wise), then I think it might work.</p><p>Also of note, Ritual will be developing SiN Episodes on Valve's Source engine. Could this be a small step in the direction of standardized tools? If this works, it could be a good demonstration of the benefits of reusing tools (rather than reinventing the wheel each time around). I'll be watching this closely as it develops.</p><p>In other downloadable content news, the new Halo 2 maps are pretty sweet. I haven't played them with other people yet, but even just exploring them by myself was entertaining.</p>Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8234620.post-1118788686764902762005-06-14T17:58:00.000-04:002005-06-14T18:42:17.993-04:00The HD Era: Not Entirely Bogus?When J Allard gave the Microsoft keynote at GDC this year, he spoke about the HD Era, which is basically Microsoft's strategy for the next generation consoles. Though he defined "HD" as covering more than just the "better" visuals of HDTV, the hi-def future certainly seemed to start with more resolution, greater color range, and the ever-popular widescreen. Microsoft put its money where its mouth is and gave away 1,000 Samsung HDTVs at the end of the talk, which, in my mind, was probably a worthwhile endeavor.<br /><br />You see, I happened to win one of those TVs. I wouldn't bring it up except that, as a PR move, it seems to have worked. I've finally got my TV set up with PS2 and Xbox running through component cables, and all my audio is piped by fiber optic to my 5.1 surround system. I'm not an A/V nut by any stretch of the imagination, so experiencing this sort of rig is pretty cool for me.<br /><br />The thing is, I probably would have been one of the last people to get an HDTV. I'm one of the naysayers who always figured that the difference couldn't be that big a deal. How much better could HD look over a regular TV? And given the durability of old school TVs, I wouldn't have had to replace mine for a good long time. In essense, I'm exactly the kind of person that Microsoft is trying to convince.<br /><br />And, to be honest, I'm pretty impressed. Playing God of War in progressive scan widescreen on a big, bright LCD tv is pretty cool.<br /><br />However, there are problems with the HD Era strategy. The main one being that in some ways HDTV is a fairly important evolutionary step for the medium of video. It's all still video, but <a href="http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2005/06/the_brutal_gaze.html">as Clive Thompson points out</a>, hi-def gives us a lot more detail, so much so that some live action stars actually look worse as a result. "Watching a show in high definition is thus rather like being Gulliver in the land of Brobdingnag -- where every pore on the giants' faces looms like a shell-blasted crater."<br /><br />What does that mean for videogames? Well, as many have pointed out, art assets are going to have to be much more hi-fidelity. I tried playing Halo 2 on the new HDTV, and although it was much crisper, it also looked a lot chunkier. All the imperfections that were hidden on a low-def TV became much more evident. More detailed art not only means more work (and more money) but also pushes game visuals farther into <a href="http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/nonfiction/uncanny-valley.html">Uncanny Valley</a> territory. The animation will need to be much more naturalistic, and behavior will have to have a certain level of plausibility to match.<br /><br />Playing Breakdown last night, I was struck by the inability of my NPC partner to maintain eye contact. She would deliver a line, stop, turn to face me, and then deliver another line. Often she looked like she was looking over my shoulder or away to one side. Sometimes this was ok; she looked like she was gazing off in thought. Other times it was irritatingly distracting, as it was obvious she was supposed to be looking me in the eye. These sorts of situations will be even more evident in next-gen games, as the characters look more and more real.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.intelligent-artifice.com/2005/06/ea_previews_nex.html">Jurie over at Intelligent Artifice thinks</a> that this "will be the first generation shift where the diminishing returns [of better graphics] should become pretty obvious to everyone." The shift to 3D was a huge jump, but the shift to hi-def won't have the same impact, especially in terms of gameplay. I'm hoping that the better visual quality will force developers to confront issues of behavior. Work in animation and AI could certainly have a huge effect on gameplay. So perhaps HDTV could have an indirect impact on game design.<br /><br />So what about the HD Era? I don't think it's all it's cracked up to be, but I also don't think it's completely without merit. The pressures that HD will put on developers will be enormous, but at the same time, develops who rise to the challenge may innovate in unexpected ways. HD may turn out to be a revolution, but if it does, it will probably be a different kind of revolution that most people expected. We'll just have to see.Clubberjackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09471251775342262945noreply@blogger.com1