Looking back at 2009

Initially just a “I’m still alive”-post, I got a bit mad and wanted to do a short re-cap of my 2009. The blog hasn’t been active, and as such can’t really reflect what I’ve done this year (the fact that I want it detached from my life just strengthens it), but some – if not most – of it is related to games, game design and “hey, employers, look at this blog – ain’t I awesome?”.

The year of 2009 began with January, snow and a dawning game developing project. My first with a team, actually, and a first where a complete team intending to finishing a game within a time-limit. Only been doing stuff like writing down ideas, try to build maps (only to give up half-way through because there was neither plan nor vision behind it) and throwing together some not-so-good WoW GUI:s, it was an exciting period – at times. Obviously, game development is not all fun and games all the time. It can actually be rather dull, tiresome and draining at times. Such as when you enter the “office” in time and, when your meeting time passes by, needs to call everyone who’s late, only to raise annoyance on both parts. Or such as hearing good ideas thrown about, only to meet them with “can’t be done in time”, or such as coming with a suggestion which is must-have (in my case, written documentation and play-testing) only to have them met with “not necessary, can do without”, or needing to convince a unmotivated member because the game wasn’t fun, even though it was a play-test you then had to defend for “wasting play-testers”. Then there are moments when it was just wonderful, such as the first days the programmers and graphics guys sit down and start doing something like a game you’ve so far only seen on paper (note: we did prototype it, but that doesn’t give the same feeling of accomplishment). When the programmers after weeks of planning and learning the tools (causing you to worry about if this will ever get anywhere) finally gets something visible and interactive on the screen. When playing the game with the “real” graphics the first time or with the sound and music finally implemented. Or seeing spring arrive as you sit down late on the dead-line day burning the disc with the final build to give away, when everyone else are done with their work and the only thing left to do is up to you, and only you.

Developing the game, Alcheringa (it’s up on the Blog, I believe – dunno if it’s a working version, though), had some personally charged moments, as you can hear, and turned out both disastrous and amazingly well, depending on perspective. Within the university, the game quickly became forgotten, rarely played and the few who did disliked it (because, honestly, it started out arty, and stayed art-like even if toned down – and it wasn’t very fun) and got heavily criticised during the presentations. But, on the other hand, it got recognised by the jury of the Swedish Game Awards and we all went down there, put our game with games all which was cooler than ours (if you ask me, and I believe most of the team would agree), doing interviews and talking to people who thought it was somewhere between brilliant to a master-stroke. A completely surreal feeling, and – like a sudden flash – you understood all the successful people who thanked luck or thought themselves surprised. Even more surprisingly, I later ran into a guy a year above me who noted the game to be “one of the few of your year I’ve heard about” (not exact quote) – suddenly that success had spilled over back “home”.

Now, I’ve assembled a team for another game development project outside school. It started out in late may with me gathering people I considered talented with an insane idea (I still believe it can be build, but demands a far bigger scale then the handful of people and year I imagined). After a summer passing with no progress and fall with meetings with no work being done, we are building. Some say the project got saved, but I won’t say that until the game is done (on time).

But games-projects haven’t been all this year. Although seemingly the most related subject, I’ve done other things I’ve perhaps learned even more useful things through. Last december, I took a chance and volunteered to the board of a branch of the Student Union called “SkHum” (Skövde Humanitarian – true to student culture it is a play of words, its pronounced the same way as a Swedish word for “shady” or “weird”). But, as a cascade consequence of Swedish student politics, said branch was merged with two others to form a new branch. In the first two or three months, we not only had to get to know each other (9 strangers from very different educations), but also form a brand with colour-palette, name, logo/mascot, slogans, culture for more students but with fewer means (for instance, our right to do student-social, or “fun”, events and sell artefacts to build the culture, were stripped from us). I personally did a lot of the logo-building (designing said logo so all kinds of interests were happy), but also had a finger in a variety of stuff such as the introduction-blanket given to all new students after summer, organising the “buddies” (think older-student “mentors” for the new ones) when needed be and defending our choices from angry nostalgic students (although others did a lot more defending then I did). For the introduction-week, it was work from 10 in the morning to 6 or 8 in the evening with no breaks (I can’t recall any breaks, only calmer periods) for an 8-day period. And a myriad of other stuff so small I can’t remember them right now.

And, of course, stupid as I am, I’ve taken courses not in the real program, studying sketching parallel to the first game project (stupid idea), programming during the summer and studying some AI programming the following fall. I can’t say I’ve become good at any, but I’ve gained an understanding for it and have a better, and especially broader, knowledge base then many of my student peers (dare I even say that?). Sure, it’s specialist knowledge the industry is said to want, but I believe a broad base is needed if that specialist path is to arrive naturally. Next year will be used to trying out a bunch of different game-design related tasks and see where I really want to go (as well as much more studies). GUI-building, level-design and project management are high up on the list, as well as mechanics.

So 2009 have been an interesting, if hectic, year and I believe 2010 will be just the same.

What makes a “smart” AI?

For a few weeks now I’ve been studying about AI in computer games, wishing to know what makes it so difficult and perhaps learn what makes a “good” AI opponent/side-kick. Turns out the course was all about the programming of it (which I should’ve known, as it was a programmer course called “AI programming for computer games”), but after some scratch-the-surface research (ask people and ask google) I found no course (at least in Sweden) about the subject. So I started googling if there was anything released on the topic, and did find a few worthwhile sites to read. I’ll try to not make it another Link-Tips, even though it’s very tempting (and way easier and faster).

The first impression of this quick research is that computer games AI is a fairly programmer-dominated area. Most of the links appearing gives the impression of code-related tasks, such as techniques here and there and stuff. But just a few links away and I started to discover some really interesting things. First off a page I read a long time ago and been trying to find again ever since – a very design-oriented piece giving 7 ways to make the AI opponent smarter. Although it only scratches the surface, it gave a good overview. Use some scripting for entries and exits, make sure the player is aware of what the AI is doing, don’t make them shoot (if they shoot) really inaccurately, make it robust, design the levels to utilize the strengths of the AI and, lastly, if you have a good AI, increasing their health will make them seem smarter as they’re alive longer to show their smarts off.

Just a bit of searching later, I stumble over an old GDC session about the AI of Halo. It seems like they learned some of the things the former link mentioned, but they seemed to have a very methodical approach – design the characters so they map between visible character and AI in an obvious way (“if it’s not too obvious, it too subtle”), increasing toughness will give the illusion of smarter AI and play test, play test, play test to make sure the intention of the AI’s design gets across.

Another article that gives a good, although theoretical, picture of how it’s done is at bittech.net. Although not giving practical game design-lessons on AI, it says a lot about how the programmer-design of the AI affects the final outcome. And sheds good light about why AI can become so very complicated. Take this quote, for instance:

Chris Jurney, a senior programmer for Relic, offered the example of the state machines in its RTS, Dawn of War 2, to illustrate this. “The AI for Dawn of War 2 has roughly three main layers: the computer player, the squad and the entity,” says Jurney. “The squad and the entities are both hierarchal finite state machines, and we have roughly 20 states at the squad level and 20 at the entity level. The states at the squad level pretty much map directly to orders that can be issued by the user.”

The article then goes on to explain how much of what we percieve as AI is in the proper animations at the right place and how dynamic terrain makes it even more complex.

Then, when I’d started to think it’s all about animations, some links turns up which ties it in to game-play, as well. In their pre-panel discussion about AI and designers, Soren Johnson et al mentions that the strenghs of the AI should be taken into consideration when designing mechanics that would give players an unfair advantage (which they’ll already have by being humans, anyway). And on ai-blog.net, where the authur Paul Tozour argues for navigational meshes as replacement for waypoint graphs, the question appears why no FPS:es are mentioned in said article, with the following reply:

The problems are still there in many first-person shooters, but they’re harder to spot due to the nature of the gameplay.

- Most AIs don’t live long enough to let you spot the flaws in their pathfinding.
- AIs will usually stop and shoot the moment they have line-of-sight to you, so their paths are a lot shorter.
- In many single-player FPS games, AIs don’t move very much, and will attempt to snipe you from a relatively fixed position.
- A lot of modern FPS games provide AI sidekicks who will kill the enemy AIs so quickly they don’t have time to move very far.

Conclusion

So, what’s the conclusion of all this? Well, pretty much that a “smart” AI isn’t supposed to be smart, but rather the dumb guy showing off all the smart things he does and makes a big scene of being defeated when you triumph him, so you felt you out-smarted someone smart. To create the illusion of smartness, the following can/should be done:

• Consider the AI’s ability when designing mechanics. What is the AI’s strength? How can the mechanic play at those? Will this mechanic make the AI seem dumb?
• Make everything the AI does give visual or audible feedback so that the player knows what the AI is doing and why it is doing that.
  • If the AI reacts to something, make an animation and/or make it shout something to say what its doing (“grenade!”, “suppressive fire!”, “cover me!”).
  • If there are different kinds of AI opponents, make it obvious which one is what. “If it’s not too obvious, it’s too subtle”.
  • What the game chooses to portray can affect how much is demanded to make the AI believable. We expect less of animals then of humans, and you can get away with more of aliens or robots or something then with humans.
• Adapt the level-design to play at the AI’s strengths, just like how you did with the mechanics.
• The longer an agent lives, the more visible its strenghs and weaknesses will become. If the AI isn’t that smart, it probably should be killed off pretty quickly by either the player or a side-kick (which then must feel smart). If the AI is smart as it is, making it live longer is more likely to give the player the impression of the AI being smarter.

Last, but not least, actually the most important of all: The AI isn’t there to be smart. It’s there to make the game more fun.

Thinking: What about a FPRPG?

Reading this gamasutra article, a thought suddenly struck me: Often the lack of immerssion, as I see it, is because the setting of the first person games are very unimmersive or, shall we say, doesn’t really suspend my disbelief. After all, how much sense does it make to be a super duper soldier running through a war and shooting people all over the place without getting a scratch (“game over”s not included)? How much does it help that there’s barely any physical “self” on your screen? I’d answer “Not much” on both of them.

Which makes me wonder “what could be a better situation to actually try what the first person perspective is capable of?” and about a few milliseconds after the first thought struck, the next one did: A non-combat oriented RPG! I don’t know what such a game might look like, apart from being a game where you run around, solve people’s troubles and the core isn’t about killing stuff. Sure, combat may be there (it does give a bit of reason to why the quest givers can’t do their own quests and adds some danger/tention when needed), but it wouldn’t be the verb everything else is build around, but instead is a verb building upon something else (say “infiltration”, “persuation”, “exploration” or something).

Another thought said article inspired was “can the barrier of entry to first person be lowered somehow?” and I believe it can, because FPS-controls are really strange and unintuitive. Let’s do a comparison: How do humans move around? Forward at different speeds and turning. Facing something, we tend to walk towards it, away from it or around it. How do a character in a first person move around? Forward and Backward at equal speeds, strafing left and right at the same speed. Being able to turn very quickly. Facing something, it’s the same thing. And, because of the quick shooting and demanding targeting, this demands really quick reflexes and sharp hand-eye coordination, something teenagers and young adults manage but gets worse with age. So, to make it more intuitive, let’s do a thought-experiment about controls:

Not facing anything

(tap) W: Jump

(hold) W: Forward.

(tap) S: Toggle through crouch, crawl, walk

(hold) S: Slowly walk backwards.

(tap) A/D: sidestep left/right

(hold) A/D: turn left/right

Shift: Run forward

Mouse: Look around

Left Click: Use item

Right Click: Inventory

Facing something nonthreatening (determined by a large circular checkbox far larger then the unit’s hitbox):

(hold) W: Close in

(hold) A/D: Circle left/right

(hold) S: Get distance

Shift: Charge into

Left Click: Default interaction

Right Click: More options

Facing something threatening (again determined by a large circular checkbox far larger then the unit’s hitbox):

Like nonthreatening, but with the following in addition:

(tap) W: Quick duck

(tap) A/D: Quickjump left/right

(tap) S: Toggle through crouch, crawl, walk

In all cases, the mouse behaves as usual, as it’s a natural way to control your head. A modifyer-button such as control or middle mouse-button plus let left/right movement with the mouse could tilt your head, though, as it’s more often used then one easily realizes.

I guess this would be *very* unconventional and perhaps a bit controversial, but the regular controls are made for quickly shooting at targets and presumes your only tools are weapons. This is made for moving a human being and presumes you may want to check your inventory and interact with things. And, yes, “default interaction” and “use item” for a weapon means “shoot”. If you wanted to know.

I see a few games have acted as subconscious inspiration here, as they’re in about the same domain, and as such they should get credit: Deus-Ex, (the hype version of) Heavy Rain and Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

“Review”: Mass Effect

Mass Effect is the best movie I’ve ever played.

Many would read that as insulting (still having the “interactive movies” in memory), and I would mean it as insulting due to lack of interactivity in many other cases, but this is only in a positive way. From camera angles during dialogue sessions and the dialogue itself to the scenery, level-design and art direction it all goes with a very movie-like feeling, but it never takes the power away from the player.

The Dessing

Story

The following section will contain spoilers, so skip it if you haven’t played the game.

The movie, considered as such, is perhaps not the best I’ve “seen” from a dramatic perspective, yet still very engaging. Act one starts out as a fetch-mission turned battleground, following to an investigation to convince the council (the board of the galaxy) to accept one of their top agents is the enemy, which then lets the player become such an agent. Act two then follows several clues of the enemy’s presence, cleaning up the chaos he’s caused. This ends up in a frontal assault on one of his bases, the big plot-twist and the first encounter with the enemy himself. Act three then starts with a chase with the enemy which leads to some surprising revelations and sort of goes full circle with act one as the citadel you’ve learned to be safe and out of harm’s way suddenly is the battle ground and the road up to the last boss (which I was surprised, and a little bit disappointed, to convince into suicide). It all ends with a massive save-the-world and I’m-so-heroic sequence.

Which, as you can hear, goes from a pretty interesting detective story to a pretty conventional save-the-world story. The marketing was talking about letting you choose to destroy it, as well, but with a sequel promising to use your save-files that sounds very unlikely. It does really have an interesting dramatic level where the acts goes into one another, but that really drops by the middle of the first and second acts. Oh, and the side-quests drops that interest close to a zero, as they’re more a “I want more XP”-thing then interesting drama.

Okey, spoilers are over, you can keep reading here.

World

For those who jumped the last paragraph, I mentioned the story to be pretty engaging, and a lot of that is thanks to its setting, scenery and characters. Mass Effects takes place in a futuristic future (now *that* must be the dumbest phrase I’ve ever written) where the humans during a trip to Mars found some spaced-out tech, reached for the stars and found a federation of alien species and joined them. Humans, still being new-comers to an order that’s existed for several hundreds or thousands of years, constantly have to prove themselves in the eyes of the others and work their butts off to do so. These species all have their histories, cultures, religions and such, all unlocked throughout the game in an in-game encyclopedia.

As the galaxy has a lot of planets, the scenery has to reflect this, but as a rule of thumb the main-plot planets are pretty linear but beautiful levels while the side-quests are what appears to be randomly generated rocks on a small squarish area with a few points-of-interests on. But it will be the main plot levels that will stay when you think about the game afterwards. I just have to mention, without spoiling anything, that the last level is just amazing in both scenery, feel and dramatic tension. If I’d allow myself to spoil, I would, but I won’t.

A note worth mentioning is the elevators. The elevators of Mass Effect is basically a cleverly hidden loading-screen, but thanks to being an elevator,the side-kicks may start to talk to one another or a radio message may announce things that may or may not be related to the player’s adventures in the galaxy (although often it is related). Some people have complained that the elevators take so long to get where they’re going, but it’s a great way of not showing a loading screen that ads depth and believability to the world.

Characters

The characters of the game is a step forward since Kotor and Jade Empire, although not with as much incentive to explore and “get to know them” as Kotor 2. They all become involved in the story before you get them in your party (unlike, say, Jolee Bindo in Kotor that just joined up in the middle of the jungle), and you can choose how far you want to follow their story-lines. But this story-line is pretty much given to you if you only play the game, and that’s what feels like a step back from Kotor 2’s characters (which, I know, was developed by Obsidian) which damanded you to get to understand them to really get their full story and character,which had quite a few depths. Mass Effects characters do have their histories, but they’re too quick to spill it out, and engaging in them gives no real reward in the end (the sex-scene is infamous by now, but what I mean is game-play related).

Aestethics

The aesthetics of the game is another part which makes it interesting in the noise of sci-fi universes, blending clean and futuristic designs with modern-age uses for them. Although this is typical for all science fiction, there is all too often a wish to make spaced-out things that doesn’t make sense, and although Mass Effect has a few of those (such as “Virtual Intelligence”, which is basically a computer terminal you talk to), next to everything feels like something you’d expect civilization to have a few hundred years down the road. The human designs also has an iconic mixture of squares and curved lines to really nail a unique visual style.

Game Mechanics

So, to the bones of the game, the Mechanics. I’m going to write several paragraphs on this, in order of Combat System, Leveling and Experience and the Morality System.

Combat System

Combat in Mass Effect is a combination of a Third Person squad-game and a RPG. You aim and shoot like a Third Person Shooter, direct squad mates like a squad game and you have a bunch of spells and weapon proficiencies depending on your class (“weapon”, “psyonic” and “tech” plus hybrids). This all builds a very direct combat where you’re very much an active part of a battle rather then just picking abilities and waiting. Here’s the nice bit, though: You direct and shoot like a shooter, but then damage is evaluated based on stats in the background. There’s no accuracy-modifyer or anything, but items still has stats to improve along the way, which makes a really fun blend of skills and stats.

On the downside, it’s a bit of a shame the game throws the same enemies at you the whole game instead of demanding more co-ordination and ability-usage towards the end, as you can pretty much carve through them like a hot knife through butter at the end, but it’s great fun to fight, something I’m rarely saying of either FPS:es or RPG:s. It’s also a tid bit confusing to know what ability does what and how they work in practice.

Dialogue system

When you start talking to an NPC, you enter the dialogue mode, where your character and the NPC stands and chat. As the NPC is about to say its last line before yours, your coming dialogue-options become visible. All options are shortened to the core of what they mean to make them easy to read and Shepard’s reading more interesting to hear. The options are also placed in a very logical manner – they all fit into a circle of six choices, three to the left and three to the right. The left-most side is reserved for investigation to get more information about things, the right side to bring the dialogue towards its conclusion. The upper choices leans towards Paragon, or are Charm-options, and the lower toward Renegade, or are Intimidate-options. Charm and Intimidate are two special kind of answers unlocked by the player’s skill-points put into them (more in the next paragraph about that system). Being very special, they are colored – charm in a light blue and intimidate in red. This order makes it very easy to start picking choices based on desired result instead of figuring out what the lines might mean. For instance, if I want to know more, I make sure to hover on the left. If I wanna be a good guy, I’m almost clicking the top-right before even reading it. This all makes for very fluid dialogue that only stops when you have to think (for, like, important decisions) or are away from keyboard (which happens a lot in these games). So even if a timer would make the dialogue more fluid, it would take away a lot of breaks (but could cause impulse-decisions, which are as close to the player’s True Character as it gets).

Leveling and Experience

Like all RPGs, you gain experience for killing enemies and completing missions. Enough experience gives you a level-up. We all know that stuff. When you level up, you gain a few “feat”-points which you can place in lanes, each representing a weapon, ability or other class-feature. These lanes improves stats and unlocks improved version of these abilities, and often another feat-tree. As I’m quick to compare to recent MMOs I’ve played, it gives a pretty shallow impression. In theory, it shouldn’t, but it felt like you could get pretty much everything you used maxed out and leave the rest be. This might be related to me playing a hybrid class and not understanding most of my spells, though, which filtered it out to what I did understand. Perhaps I change my mind after a few more play-throughs.

Morality system

The morality system of Mass Effect has one major difference from earlier games – getting “good” points doesn’t negate the “bad” points and vice versa. Although this sounds like a reasonable step on paper, it doesn’t quite work out in practice. As both meters are visible as something you can fill up, you’re initially tempted to balance it to fill them up evenly. You may later realize that it doesn’t matter, and just pick something as you find funny. Another difference is that the point of your morality doesn’t seem to have any gameplay-implications. The KotOR-games both gave you a penalty/bonus on your spells’ force-cost, all visible in a neat table-like form, but if there’s any such implications from Paragon/Renegade it’s implicit and as such not very much used as incentive. Either way the morality doesn’t feel like the central feature it was in kotor. But it does deserve credit for not using obvious “good” and “evil” terms, instead picking “be diplomatic” and “use brute force”.

User Interface

It’s worth noting on this segment that I’ve played the PC-port of the game. Thus some things may be different then the console-versions has.

The Heads-up Display of the UI is really nice, in a minimalistic way always showing me what I want and nothing more. I just wished I could hide the action-bar for weapons and abilities hidden when unused, as I paused and used stuff manually anyway. As with targeting, the PC version behaves a bit wierdly as it doesn’t always select what you look at but something behind or beside it, most likely a result from the console way of changing targets through a given order.

As with menues, the Galaxy map works greatly, and the world map works great with just one exception. When you hover an elevator or gateway to another part of the map (most notable in the citadel), it is displayed where it leads. Clicking on it takes you to the journal instead of the map the icon refers to. The quest journal is nice with all quest having a root-tree with every objective branching from it, but for some reason only down in one level. Several levels would be a great way to show parallel objectives on. Also, it often mention clusters and locations without a link to hint you in the right direction. With a game with so many systems with strange names and loading times for every system you enter, it would be a great time-saver to not needing to remember “[cluser x][system y]” for the quests you wanted to play.

Lastly, the encyclopedia makes the game world very believable. Perhaps because a lot of people takes a lot of unknown information from Wikipedia, which this has a lot of similarities to. I think it the encyclopedia could have gained even more believability to the game if you could search everything from the get-go. I believe this is a consequence of learning-curve and a wish to keep some exploration-awards, but for such an optional-to-use system as this I don’t understand that thinking. This is a bit be like me having to visit, say, France to browse France on wikipedia.

Conclusion

I’ll end the review the same way I started it. This is a game that combines the fun and interactivity from games with the dramatic interest and feel from movies. Which is a great combo. Give it a try if you like movies, RPGs, squad games or shooters, and you might get curious about the others. If you like all those… well, where’s your closest store?

Link Tips #6

Back from another Stockholm-visit, so this article got a bit late. And it doesn’t have many links, which is a shame.

The must-haves: Article and Papers.

On gamecareerguide, a thesis about Adaptive Audio

On Gamasutra, an article about.. I think it’s supposed to be learning stuff from games, but it took a while to get to the point. And an article about expressing a mechanic with graphs.

Anyway, summer’s almost over, and I’ve got a few things to do so these won’t be as regular – perhaps I’ll actually post some of those things I said I should, then! That is, unless I’m working my butt off doing what I’m supposed to, which I bet I will be.

Link Tips #5

There weren’t any Link Tips last weekend, as I was away. As I have decided to not talk about my life in this blog (unless the extreme cases), I won’t delve further into the why. To compensate, I’ll add last week’s Sunday papers and GI.biz article.

I’m not entierly sure, but I suppose this is the GI.biz article (here called “editorial” to my confusion) about The Free Trade. And last weeks Sunday Papers. And also this week’s article and papers.

I was just about to think this post would only be the articles and papers – I haven’t found much this week worth linking – but just in the nick of time I find this: An article on edge-online about Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

That was… short. And I’ve still got a bunch of games to write about – why don’t I?! (Answer: I dunno, there’s no good reason)

Link Tips #4

Yay, another week of link-tips! And this week I actually posted an opinion in-between. I might actually have the momentum I want from the blog now… although I could do more (but now I *want* to, last year I felt I *had* to due to self-demand). Anyway, you’re not here to hear my ramble about my blog, but to get some nice links – and here are some!

As always, gamesindustry.biz’s weekly article and Rock Paper Shotgun’s Sunday Papers (the latter is actually the only link I put here *before* I read it myself. There’s just always something good in there).

On Gamasutra, there’s an opinion about Infusing Games with a Moral Premise. and a cute poem called Gameplay and Story: An Ode To The American Junior High School Dance.

Another on gamasutra, a piece on satirical games. And then two such satirical games: Upgrade Complete and Steamshovel Harry. Not to forget Achievement Unlocked! And, no, I won’t describe them: It would ruin the point. Besides, two of three are self-describing. And, just before posting, I found this through the Onion.

Yet another on gamasutra – damn, if I keep up like this I’ll have to call it “gamasutra links” – Designing games that don’t suck. Describes the way a user or player goes from saying “I should do this” to when s/he consider him/herself successful or not, and what designers have to do along the way to make the transition go as smoothly (and, in most cases, quickly) as possible.

From edge-online, a fine piece about Eternal Darkness. If I would’ve had more time on my hands to plan my old “review” a bit, it would probably be closer to this (but not just like it – me mention things I didn’t even notice!).

This is a source to keep a hold of: Sloperama’s advice section. It’s for anyone who have thought about working in the games-business, with sharp, witty and funny comments along the way. You learn a bunch and have a good laugh doing it (why can’t all teaching be that way?).

There they are! For those who worry I post everything I get my hand on: Don’t. I do read a lot more then this, and I do think “is this something worth hinting about” when reading things. These *are* tips, not “what I’ve read this week”.

Let those movies go!

For a very long time, game developers (and in particular, I guess, game designers and game writers) have worked to get games as close to movies as it’s possible. And, although I understand as well as support the idea behind a cinematic presentation of story elements, the comparison in my opinion breaks completely when you use it on interest curves. Some have used television series as an example, and although this works fairly well, it’s still a bit flawed. The comparison that should be made is to a medium so taken for granted we barely think about them: Books. And, more specific, novels.

“What?” you may ask. “But books are only a mass of text. Interactive fiction might fit, but not audiovisual games”. And this is the same logical trap that makes the comparison to movies appear over and over again. Because, as audiovisual as games are, they tend to be 10 to 40 hours long. A movie is for most considered too long for most if it reaches four, a length considered short for a game. This length demands of a movie to quickly get to the intrigue and get on with the story to reach the end quickly and then be over with. A TV-series demands on their cliff-hangers and plot-twists to make their viewers return after the advertisement break or next episode, and such as a peak every 15 minutes or so. And although the full length of such a series can reach 20 hours, about the length of a game, those 15-minutes frequence of peaks would make the interesting curve terrible for a game (just imagine you ran into a pack of monsters every fifteen minutes just to get a black screen a few minutes before the fight began).

Because of this need to get on with it, movies (and, although not to the fully degree, TV-series) can only scratch the surface of the world they portray, one reason to why they so often takes place in present-day reality (and, well, it’s cheaper, easier to find actors, more relevant to the general reader and a bunch of other reasons). A game, and a book, can go deeper, behind the surface, and make the world so much more believable (compare the Lord of the Rings-films with the books, or the Star Wars trilogy to Knights of the Old Republic).

So, what about books makes them so good? No, it’s not about that it’s only text. Look at how they’re structured instead. They’re divided into chapters, often ending in small hooks of curiosity (or cliff-hangers, of course) to keep your interest to the next chapter. More importantly, they’ve got the same kind of interactivity as a game in that you can quit anytime you want, insert a bookmark (“save”) and come back to the same place you were anytime you want (“load”) and keep on. And where you can return a bit in the book to regain the context, you can often check quest logs or mission objectives to remember where you are. And, perhaps most important of all: When you leave a book or a game in the middle of a storyline, don’t you often imagine ways you would want the plot to develop? I sure do, and I hope I’m not alone. This never, ever, happens in movies (or, it has, but that’s been while it was still running), because it never takes any breaks. Although that goes with TV-series, as well, you don’t get to find out until the series next episode goes, instead of whenever you want with a book or game.

Of course, with episodic games and the like, such games comes closer to TV-series, but for now the “buy and play”-model is still widely used. However if that remains for long, with digital distribution and piracy on the rise, is up for speculation. Something history have taught us all is that things can change more suddenly then anyone can guess until its happened.

Link Tips #3

I see I haven’t made any real updates this week. Which is strange, because I’ve been reading and playing more stuff then usual. I guess I should start making myself some opinions and get writing! Anyway, I made sure to make the Link Tips-posts less a sad thing then they’ve been before, and took a new strategy to build them (that is, throwing all links in and edit a draft during the week). And, lo and behold, it seems to have worked!

As always, Rock Paper Shotgun’s Sunday Papers and Gamesindustry.biz’s article Depth Changes – and a Eurogamer-blog article about Gaikai turned up while I was searching.

On Gamasutra, an opinion called Can Games Become “Virtual Murders”?. I’ve always had a worrying feeling about the “shoot people in the face”-focuc of gaming (as some earlier posts goes through), so this is really refreshing to read – but it seems like the post gets the same sort of opposition I tend to get while speaking about it aloud. I hope it’s the first step in realizing things, denial, but it could just as well be a defense of the established, home-blindness or plain “I want my guns!”. Anyway, great article.

Eurogamer has an interview with Rob Pardo, talking a lot about Blizzard’s design philosophy. There’s a quite a bit of good stuff to remember in there.

A gamasutra compilation of Expert Blogs posts, including weapon balance, questioning if frustration is all bad, what makes a good game story and more. These Link-tips are starting to become a compilation-compilation!

From Edge-online, an article series about making “Non Fun”-games. Here’s the last of four linked, the earlier three is up to you.

From MMORPG.com, a column about accessibility. Not much that should be new to anybody, but still worth reminding yourself of once in awhile.

Link Tips #2

Yes, I know I didn’t post any last week. But here’s one!

First off, the returning Sunday Papers and Gamesindustry.biz article.

Also, a gamasutra feature about Dramatic Play. And another gamasutra article on Infamous’ pacing.

Some marketing-posts: First off Dev.Mag’s Zero budget indie marketing guide, which links to Kieron Gillen’s How to Use and Abuse the Gaming Press and How the Gaming Press Wants to Use and Abuse You (and, yes, I do think I found that thanks to RPS). Finally a edge-online post by Introversion’s Thomas Arundel called Selling to Customers.

I think that’s enough for this time. Embedded links makes these posts seem shorter then they are, or if it’s “not longer then they are”…