Goals of 2010: Part 2 – rounding up (already)

Here we have a good example of why you should think a few more times than one when starting a series of posts. In this case, I found out many of these points were half-finished, although they could be considered “finished” if you tweaked the goal a bit. So instead of writing one post for each, I’ll write this one post, and then be able to go on with other ideas.

The “Learn UDK or Unity” point was pretty much fulfilled. I did learn the UDK level editor with their BSPs (geometric shapes) and Terrain tool, Kismet (a “visual scripting language” i.e drag and connect boxes of conditions/actions and logic) and, towards the fall and winter, made a half-working HUD, menusystem in Scaleform and applying it to UDK, as well as a loading screen and splash screen.

The “Learn Photoshop” point was pretty much fulfilled. Although what I initially implied was “learn to draw”, what I did learn was how to use photoshop is used with pretty bad drawing skills to create something nice anyway. Sure, the menus and interface may not look amazingly super-good, but they do look quite alright. I suspect I should put a screenshot up to let you be the judge, but I’ll make do with simply looking back and give my own impression of the result.

The “Learn lua” point went beyond expectation. I initially wrote this point to make sure I finally took the time to learn this language so I could start scripting or perhaps do a UI-mod to World of Warcraft, but as summer came I stumbled upon the course “programming for World of Warcraft” which taught these very things and then some. I still got some complementary work before the course can be formally closed, but it totally meets this goal.

The “make some small games” point failed miserably, no matter how you bend it. I didn’t even start doing a first game. Booo! :(

The “build a map in Warcraft 3 or World in Conflict” point is sort of fulfilled. I drew some flow chart maps for the levels, and made a quick draft in the WC3-editor, but never iterated on it. Boo! However, and even better, I did make a map with UDK, and did so in an iterative manner. By “doing a map”, I’m only considering the geometry, spaces and connections between them, not any fancy shaders or special effects (or, sadly, scripting). I started out using geometric shapes to build as close to a final level as I could and when we were happy with that I used the terrain tool to build a height map for the level and placing out the major props of the level (the minor props weren’t made as far as I’m aware). This is, perhaps, for another post.

The “lead something well” point was part failed, part done way more than I could anticipate. When written, I only intended for the project that was currently going. However, just weeks into the year, I was elected chairman for the Skövde game dev student association known as AGES (“Academic Game Environment – Skövde”, for those who wished to know), a task I’ve put energy into and is fairly sure I’ve done well (I’ll have to ask the board and the members afterwards to be sure, though). Towards the spring, I got another leadership position in our school project “Wheelchair Racer”. Although the game became way less then we wanted it too, and didn’t at all take the direction I was initially wishing it for due to compromises in very early stages, I believe I did a fair enough job. The group had very little drama and we shared the vision (note: we were only two people when said compromise was made, the others joined later on), but I could’ve done more to know what the designers wanted personally and how they were doing during the project. So that project is at my minus-account for this point. However, just a few weeks after the project I got recruited on a new one to design and lead. Among this new team were some members of the old, and afterwards I learned the previous project had influenced that decision to pick me up. So I suppose I can’t have done as bad as I believe. This fall project went smooth, although shut down mostly due to lack of programmers on the team.

I could have written in length about this, but I decided not to. It didn’t go that well as to be worth writing ten posts publicly about, but it went well enough to write something about.

The development of a business card

Some may wish to say this story is way beyond the scope of what its story matter should entitle. I say this story is the end-point of a development where I get to speak about it, its intentions and results. It’s about a business card, but it’s just as much about design and development (note that there’s no “game” in those two words).

The problem I wanted to solve was this: Game Expo “GameX” was approaching, as well as the industry summit Nordic Game Stockholm Summit, and I wanted to gain new contacts and make an impression. I wanted the impression to be remembered and show that I was a clever designer. I also wanted it to have a professional quality.

Goals of 2010: Part 1 – introduction

Some people make promises for the new year, such as “I will start training” or “I will heat healthier”. Fun thing is they never seem to hold, and I’ve only taken one once (I was around 11 and decided to not use any bad language – it held until February when I thought a class-made had flushed my glove). I think it’s pretty silly, but after I decided to not continue with the Student Union-activity in December last year, I set up eight goals which I wished to fulfil with this new-found spare time to direct my efforts. Funnily, life sort of made me fulfil seven of those eight goals in perhaps not the way I intended, but still with acceptable interpretation.

I intend to list those ten goals and how life fulfilled them for me. It’s game related, but primarily it’s because there’s a few fun stories in there and it allows me to show off some actual work. However, listing the thinking behind each of these points would take an insane amount of text to deal with, and no-one would really bother reading it all. So I intend to split it into several parts.

Here’s the goals:

1. Learn UDK and/or Unity
2. Learn Google ScetchUp
3. Build a GUI, preferably in WoW
4. Draw something nice in Photoshop
5. Learn Lua
6. Make five “completed” games for portfolio, prefferably in Game Maker or Unity
7. Build a map in Warcraft 3/Starcraft 2 or World in Conflict
8. Lead a game project or the AGES-board well

I so far haven’t completed 6. There’s still 2 months to go, although it feels unlikely I’ll be able to make five games in two months when I’m already full-booked between 8 and, depending on the day, 17 to 19 or even 22 every working day. Unless I knock it up a notch and make all five during DreamHack (which is four days, but pretty much dedicated to gaming… or game-making). That’s unlikely, however.

Update: I actually haven’t completed 2 or 7 unless you sort of bend the goal a bit. But I’ll talk about that later.

So, with that said, there’s a lot of fun stuff to post about in the coming weeks!

Thinking: What is a video game?

When doing these “thinking”-posts, it’s usually about a thought that just arrived in my head and which I have to print down quickly. This one has gnawed on my head for awhile – education kind of does that to you. For those finding this via Google, this won’t be a definition rather than an exploration. This piece will cover what the game, in itself, is, and sometimes touch what the medium is, but I don’t intend to cover what play is or what gaming is.

A video game, as far as I’ve been thinking, is in a position in the middle of a Venn-diagram of four areas: Games, Culture, Technology and Business. I’ll explain them in that order, even though they all affect each another.

“Review”: Mass Effect 2

This “review” is more of an analysis, really. I’ll split the game’s design into a few parts and do some strange cross-breed between opinion, analysis and suggestions. This time yet another Bioware game – they tend to be fun, come out fairly frequent and be different enough to be interesting but similar enough to feel familiar.

Theme

Before describing the game in any way, some of the differences in theme between ME1 and ME2 should be noted. ME1 plays a lot with an optimistic theme, where “You’re a Spectre, you can do whatever you want” imbued the whole experience. ME2 has a theme more akin to “pretend to be free if you want, but you know who pulls the strings. And you know where you’ll be heading in the end”. I have a feeling many of my criticisms of this game boils down to this change of theme, and perhaps these changes are not technical restraints as much as concious steps to reinforce that theme.

Core Mechanics

For Mass Effect 2, Bioware has taken a few steps closer towards the “Action” in “Action RPG”. Because there’s a lot more action, and a bit less classic RPG stuff. The endless inventory-management of all your companions are gone in favour of buying pieces of equipment for Shepard and upgrades for Shepard and/or all companions. The “talent tree”-like mechanic from ME1 has been streamlined to a handful of trees with 1, 2, 3 and 4 “points” required for each upgrade (where you get 2 “points” per level). The fourth step takes an ability into one of two possible abilities.

Now, with the facts dealt with, let’s analyse a bit. Clearly, the game’s more action-oriented steps are intended to make the combat more fun and varied. These moves are, for instance, abilities that can fire around cover, which means a covered enemy is only a temporary problem. Cover is never destroyed, however – probably to not have you blow up the cover you’ll need later (more on that on Level Design). Enemies come in more combinations than before. For instance, where ME1 had the Citadel species+Human enemies the majority of the time, ME2 let’s you face three different gangs, each having their style. Apart from that, the Geth and Husk forces from ME1 demand their own styles to counter, as do the Collector-forces. This does make the game more varied, and more fun to play (especially if you play several times), although all three are a pain in the backside, so you’d rather just wish them gone. Which, luckily, is just what the game is about – having them gone!

One aspect of the game I find very interesting is their choice of switching ME1′s heat-based weaponry (shoot awhile, stay calm awhile, repeat) with a standard ammo-system. At first this didn’t make any sense – why would they replace a natural, automated re-load that gets longer the more you’ve shot with an old ammo-system which forces you to keep track of numbers and reloading? Why break up what feels like a fairly defensive game (run from cover to cover) with such an offensive mechanic (running forward picking up dropped ammo). The more I think about it, the clearer the answer becomes: ME2 is, at it’s heart, an offensive game which uses the cover to not become a brainless shooter á la Doom. The ammo-packs are dropped by enemies to force you out of cover (and, just as often, forces you forward), the cover-bending spells are there to avoid stalemates where both parts are behind cover, as well as forcing you to move and switch cover. And the reload is simply there to give you one more thing to do beside holding/smashing the fire button. In addition, it encourages you to switch weapons. In ME1, you could upgrade one weapon fully, stick to it and be fine. Ammo in ME2 forces you to change weapons. Ammo for a good, accurate, weapon will deplete fast, while picking up one ammo pack recharges ammo for all weapons. This way, you tend to never run out of real ammo (it’s been close, but it’s never been an actual deplete) – and even if you did, you’d have your abilities to give you something to fire.

Back to the inventory system. As mentioned, it’s gone from changing an armour set and four guns for every character with one to two improvement slots for armour and two-three slots for guns to a system of buying the parts you want (for Shepard) and then switch parts as you wish on the Normandy. This means that as you progress into the game, you’re gradually allowed to unlock customization options for Shepard. And only the parts you want, so you can pass something to buy something else (you’ll actually have to, as money is scarce compared to ME1). The customization also means you can get a Shepard that feels more like you, rather than “some dude/gal in the best piece of armour around”.

Sadly, the customization doesn’t apply to your companions. It could’ve been so “easy” (it probably wouldn’t) as to have them using the same colour palette and patterns as I’ve chosen for Shepard. Perhaps select items on a per-character basis to not equip a soldier in spell-caster gear. The point of this would be to make the team feel like one team, just like foot ball players or (19th century) armies were (or wore) uniforms to tell the world as well as each other which team they’re on. Yes, it would mean more time to customize, but some of us really like that bit (Hello APB!).

Level Design

My general impression with the level design of Mass Effect 2 is that it feels incredibly linear. This isn’t always a bad thing. Linearity makes it easier to pace a level and direct the experience. Besides, I never criticised ME1 for being linear (or Half Life 2, for that matter). But that’s because they didn’t feel linear. ME1 and HL2 uses certain tricks, such as sending you on a side-course to some place and back before progressing or splitting the level in two roads which merges ahead, which ME2 does perhaps once or twice throughout the game. (but if it does, I sure haven’t noticed it). But most of the time you’re headed “forward” in one linear corridor. There’s even an arrow on the mini map constantly pointing at the direction you’re intended to go rather than using maps as ME1 did. This all adds up to take away the feeling of freedom both ME1 and HL2 managed to fake pretty well.

This could just as well be a matter of reinforcing the theme.

Interaction Design

So, this bit is really bugging me. Playing on the PC, it’s painfully obvious the game has been intended for consoles – or at least for a game pad. You need to single-click an icon to select it and then single-click the “select”-button (Enter doesn’t work, double-click doesn’t work – heck, single-click the button should be enough!). Steering Normandy across the galaxy map requires the player to hold the left mouse button while navigating space, while a Diablo-esque click-to-move would’ve been easier and more intuitive (like how you click a desktop icon to select it rather than steering the pointer to it with another pointer). The “scan a planet” mini game requires a button to be held while moving the mouse in a repetitive and tiring pattern with one hand and not doing anything with the other. And the convenient hot keys to the squad, journal etc. ME1 had are gone in favour for accessing them through the main menu on Escape. And it’s not even (natively) playable on PC with a game pad!

One thing is better, however. The “space” button. It’s very contextual. It skips dialogue (like ME1), it sprints if you hold it, it takes you behind cover and it interacts with every item you can interact with. Which is very consistent and saves a few buttons. The only downside to this is that there’s no fail-safe for it, so you might by accident skip a dialogue while all you wanted was to pick up that med-kit and the dialogue started at just that same moment (that happened to me). A short locking-timer would’ve done the trick.

The Main Game HUD is also better than before, with a lot of elements fading out when not needed (such as the health bar while at full health) and presented in a way easy to understand (although I still haven’t figured out the companions’ health bars, which seem to fade from white to purple to red or something). The icons for doing  paragon/renegade interrupts is, strangely, not that obvious. They should be, as those icons for paragon and renegade has been used fairly frequently and are showing up in each corner as well as being colour coded and are consistent throughout the game, but it still takes a second to register whether the suggested action is a paragon or renegade move. Perhaps it there was an audio-alert when they show up, and different sound queues for paragon and renegade interrupts, it would go faster? These are things you’d rather do on reflex, and sudden sound cues are good at triggering the reflexes.

The Living World

You know how I mentioned not being able to customize your team’s outfits? Well, being able to in the first game had a neat advantage in building a believable world. Because any companion could be wearing a lot of different suits, the team was equipped with a “casual uniform” on board of your ship. Perhaps it was to speed up loading times within the Normandy, but whatever it was, it gave an impression that these guys are not on a planet-side mission right now, and neither are you. In ME2, they wear the same outfit on the ship as well as on missions (Shepard can choose between a few pre-made “casual outfits”, though – perhaps to speed up loading), which make the companions feel more like tools than a ship full of casual soldiers. Adding to this is the fact that they’re in one room each, never leaves it and only once has an interaction with another team member (when you’ve completed both their loyalty missions). If you look at Kotor 2, you’ll see a much more believable team, which played politics against each other behind your back.

The game, in contrast with Mass Effect 1, feels a lot more like a series of unconnected rooms. You’re no longer exiting the doors to leave the ship for wherever you are, but always go to the map and press “Dock”. This makes sense most of the time, since you dock with a shuttle, but you stay docked at a handful of planets, and there it would be nice to look outside, see the planet and walk out the doors. The transition after the following loading-screen could’ve been better (like ME1), as well. The short clip when the Mako lands on a planet may be short, and repetitive after awhile, but it does bring the impression of being connected to the planet. The post-release DLC Firewalker for ME2 also showed off that a small sequence before the mission where Shepard and chaps enter the shuttle can tie it together with the Ship-scene. It’s costly, yes, but it’s not like this game has a tight budget (or that my other suggestions would make it cheaper).

The missions themselves also reflect this. Going solely on the primary missions of ME1, they often began calmly with you landing on the planet and finding the mission objective step by step (Noveria is a great example of this, so is Feros). After the mission reached its climatic end, you headed back to the Normandy for a debriefing with all collected companions. ME2 has this once. It’s the briefing with your whole crew before the last mission – and it’s great! Because, with the exception of that scene, you almost always know the mission objective from the start of the mission, pull it off, and then you’re done with it as if nothing happened!

Yet another thing. In wishing to be an action game rather than a living world, every completed mission ends with a “Mission Complete” splash screen. Sure, you know the mission’s over, but did you have to break the immersion to tell me that? (non-MMO) Role-playing games are usually pretty good at this, simply talking to someone (often the mission dealer) to receive a reward and that’s it. Instead, the same info is displayed alongside a summary of stuff I’ve picked up during the mission – information I don’t mind having but have already been told when I picked it up and thus don’t need to be pulled out of the world to know again.

Story and Characters

I’d prefer not to write about this part, as I’m not as well-versed on dramaturgy and character design as many other seem to be. That, and it would be interesting to review a Bioware game without mentioning their biggest strength. However, I guess I’ll have to. Potential spoilers, or hints at spoilers, ahead!

The story – or, rather, the play-structure – in ME2 is a bit different than other games, especially earlier Bioware games. You can divide the game into acts if you want, where the first act would end after Freedom’s Progress (where you first hear about the collectors) and the third act begin when you enter the Omega 4 relay, which takes you to the “suicide mission” the whole game prepares you for. That means Act 2 is pretty much the whole game, where you recruit your companions and once-in-awhile encounter the Collectors. This part, however, can become a bit tedious. Because it’s very, very long. There’s 8 (possibly 10, counting current DLC) characters to first recruit, and then do a loyalty mission for. That’s 16 (or 18, as the DLC characters doesn’t have a recruitment mission) primary missions to do! After recruiting 4 and 6 of these characters, a special mission with the collectors are required, whereby new recruits and loyalty missions are unlocked.

There’s good bits and bad bits about this. Good bit is that the developer dares take a few steps away from their formula. The bad bits are that the Collectors feels like a shoe-in to get some attention once in awhile before being blasted to hell. Sort of like Team Rocket in the Pokémon animated series. Another bad bit is that I usually want to recruit my team before taking on the main quest and then explore the characters throughout the plot of the game. That way I get to know my companions pretty well before the culmination of the plot. Now the recruitment is the main quest, and when recruitment is over, the game goes on to its grand finale!

Each level tends to be a story in itself. You enter the level, and the circumstances are established. You enter a key plot detail, which marks the beginning of the second, longer, act. Then there’s a plot twist beginning act three of the level, which is usually a boss fight. Then the plot is resolved. In either the twist and/or the resolution, there is a moral choice. There are many variations to the structure, which keeps them feel fresh, but it becomes easier to figure out you’re reaching the end of the level when you can feel there’s a boss nearby.

I guess I’ll have to finish this “review” with the strongest bit of the game, and sadly the part I’m worst at analysing: The characters. They’re good. Some are great, even. They often seem to follow an archetype with a twist attached. Jack is “the scared girl who does everything to hide it”, Tali is “the quarrian” (seriously, the races of the Mass Effect universe, and most fantasy/sci-fi worlds, are often narrow enough to be stereotypic) with political influence. Garrus is “turian” plus “dirty harry in space”. They’ve all had a story build supporting, giving nuance to and explaining the character, and then written a few shields of privacy they’ll let you through as you progress in the game. Or something. I really don’t know enough of this to be analysing it.

Conclusions

Mass Effect 2 is a really good game, make no mistake about it. I’d just like it to have been a little more Mass Effect than “look, we can do action games, too”.

Thoughts About Death in Games

Reading Richard Clark’s opinion piece “Is Death In Games Cheap?”, I got thinking about death in games. Some of the comments gave more stuff for thought, and my imagination ran wild. How can games emulate death meaningfully, why do we care about death – and what is death, anyway?

Let’s start by defining death. When defining something, wikipedia is often helpful, so let’s ask them:

“Death is the termination of the biological functions that define a living organism.” From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death

Death, in English, is that a living being is gone.

So why would we care? Based on nothing but my own experiences, it seems like when we humans start to care about something, we’re crushed when its damaged or gone. Its clearly the case with other people. As we get to know people, we start to care. As we start to care, we will mourn the loss of him/her. And the longer you’ve known them, the closer they’ve been, the worse it gets. Compare a far-away relative with an old friend, for example. Interestingly, the same thing seems to account for non-living items. Remember that new CD, watch, phone, vase? Or perhaps an old gift? Surely, it’s frustrating when it gets its first scratch, its sad to see it become old and its absolutely crushing when it breaks or is gone. And the closer your ties has been to it, the worse it gets. The suddenness also seem to account. Something that in one second is brand-new and the next one gone (such as the newly-bought ice-cream you stood in line for a half hour a hot summer day, only to drop it on sand the second after you’ve paid for it – before you even got to taste it!) is more emotionally charged than something you could see coming (like, a computer that gets old and one day doesn’t work any more).

But this sorrow seems to not be permanent. Humans have an amazing ability to adapt to current circumstances. Just as the emotional value of something brand new or novel discharges with time (say, a new, or newly cleaned, house or apartment) it also seems to discharge when something bad has happened. As it’s usually called, you get used to it. This seems to be the case with the loss of people or items: Although paralysed with grief initially, it wears off and becomes nostalgia. But the more emotional value invested in the thing lost, the longer this process seem to take. Compare that ice-cream you stood in line for to someone, perhaps you, who’ve lost a close friend or relative. The ice-cream will be an incident of the past within the hour, but the lost friend or relative will take weeks, if not months, to get over.

So why am I throwing people together with items? Am I so cold-hearted and emotionless to not distinguish the two? Well, perhaps, but there’s a really good reason for it. Game characters are a bit of both. They’re people in a fictional way, as people we can (sometimes) relate two. They’re also items in a mechanical way, if they fill a function. So it’s very convenient that the same rules apply to both. And this could be the key to be playing with life-and-death in a meaningful way.

Games are slowly getting to the point where characters are believable enough the invest some emotions in. I’ve written a lot about Bioware’s games on this blog, and the fact that you can have some kind of interaction with and explore the characters are an important way to make that connection. Another example is Heavy Rain, which instead relies on the characters relationships and interactions with another to make that believability. One of my favourite examples is still Knights of the Old Republic II, where the characters of your crew not only interact with you, but pretend to interact with one another when you’re not there. In other words, you have emotional investment in each of them, but they pretend to have so with one another, as well. Another incentive for emotional investment is the game’s “influence”-system, where you by doing and saying things the characters like start to influence them more, progressing their character arcs. Although it shuts you out from people you do wrong things with (unless it’s a cut-scene or important story moment, which is some flaw), they’re so much more rewarding when you get to know them, because you really have to know them to get forward.

Games has also started to explore the importance of death as of late. How do you create a game where the player must be able to succeed and still make death permanent and emotional? Some games, such as Passage, simply doesn’t throw any challenges at you which doesn’t mean any risk of replaying, thus re-living death. Not that there’s much of characters in the game – it’s a pixelated boy and girl growing older – but just because you invest the whole game together the death is strangely meaningful. Mass Effect 2 tries it out with building your connections with each character through the whole game and all that time foreshadow that people can die in the last mission. Which works, if you’re strong enough to accept that the character died and play on instead of reloading and see if you can fix it. Then you’ll have to live with these characters being gone for any post-story play you do (if you do any). Far Cry 2 deals with it in a good way, I’ve heard, but I haven’t had the pleasure to play it. Heavy Rain deals with it the best way I’ve seen so far, however. It follows multiple characters, each could die at any time and the story would go on without them. But you can’t load any auto-saves, because it only has one save-file which saves after every plot-directing decision or action you’ve made. Which means what’s done is done. And if someone dies half-way through, you’ll have to live with it.

I believe that last path is the best way to go. Auto-save often, only allow the player to load the latest save or rewrite their one save file and let characters die half-way through. Allow players to fail, and to live with their failures. This might work well in an 8-hour “linear” experience such as Heavy Rain, but would it work in a more classic game?

Enter: A single-player epic with permanent deaths. Imagine a long game like Half Life 2 or Mass Effect (the first one). You’re on an epic journey to yadda yadda and gather a team of allies. They interact with each other, form relationships with you and with one another, the KotOR2 influence-system and all. You bring a few allies in your fire-team. And any mission could be that character’s last one. Clearly, you can’t have a proper “protagonist” Mass Effect-style, but would have to rely on all these characters being playable Heavy Rain-style or KotOR-style. And if that’s character’s gone, the crew will react. Group dynamics in your crew will change. And you can’t reverse it.

However, the most important question still needs to be answered. Why? Death seldom brings anything but sadness, and we want games to be all about fun, right? Right? No. Games should perhaps be enjoyable to play, but that doesn’t mean all games must be Mario Kart all the time and must never explore the different parts of being human in an interactive environment. Besides, humans have an amazing ability to adapt. You’d get used to it. And the fun would die.

Thinking: When 3D printers become commonplace…

I should really go to bed (I’m actually just off), but I’ve been thinking lately and suddenly this really big insight crashed down upon me and I just have to write about it. Not just a small Facebook update. That won’t do, this is bigger than that. The head-line gives half of it away.

As 3D-printers become more advanced, they’ll be able to do more things. They’ll also likely become more wide-spread. Let’s play with the thought they’ll follow the route of the computers. As they’re basically for physical objects what computers are for information and data.

When 3D-printers become commonplace, a physical object of printable material will be about as valuable as information. Because it will be information. And here’s where it gets fun.

When physical objects become information, everyone can create them. The programs for doing these things virtually are partially already there – Autodesk’s Maya and 3D Studio Max, Mudbox and the Open-source Blender and similar already lets you create 3D-objects. Or, rather, they can create a nice shell. This is enough to cause a real uproar. Porcelain and simple furniture doesn’t need much more than that to be digitally constructed. Tools for creating hollow objects, or objects with interacting parts, such as a watch, will have more time before the interfaces and programs become advanced enough to recreate these things.  This means everyone able to build something in 3d can create new objects! It will be many times easier to build something to try out. An “open-source” movement might take off for physical items to improve its design (“this new box is more robust than the old box”).

When physical objects become information, people will be sharing it. Imagine the piracy-problem entertainment and software media has been fighting the last decade, but move it to every other industry producing items. That’s a lot of people. In fact, it’s pretty much all the industry in the world. The intellectual property rights/integrity fight that’s been going on the last few years might seem like a slight breeze.This will pose a problem

When physical objects become information, industry will forever change. As “file sharing” gets an entire new level of meaning, industry will have to seek proven solutions, which so happens to be where entertainment and software-industries in general, and gaming in particular, happen to be today. But although they’ll be able to take some ideas (such as Digital Distribution, Freemium/Free 2 play/subscription fees), they’ll have new questions that are unanswered. Gaming has managed to decrease appeal by doing peripherals or merchandise. What happens when this, too, can be downloaded?

My point is, we involved with entertainment or software – or, with gaming, both – are the pioneers of how the world might spin in the future. And that’s a responsibility we shouldn’t take lightly.

Marketing, Indie development and other various links

I recently stumbled upon a handful of links about marketing/PR and indie development, so I thought I’d sort of bookmark them here for future and public access.

It all started with this article from Gamasutra: The Real Cost Of Marketing Your Game With Social Media. It turned up to be a follow-up article to the article Listening Is Your First Step: An Online Game Marketing Audit Primer. Both are really worth reading if you’re interested in social media marketing.

If you’re not, then maybe Haunted Temple Studios’ First Indie PR Tour – Lessons Learned will be of interest. It might be a new trip, but it deals with issues such as “how much work is selling a game to webzines, anyway?” and “how much does it cost to park a car in San Fransisco?”. And that’s just some anecdotes!

Really, a key to marketing – and a bit of everything, really – is about knowing the right people. So how do you get to know the right people? Well, there seems to be guides for pretty much everything these days, and I happened to come across one for this topic! It’s called Effective Networking in the Game Industry and could be great. No promise, though – I haven’t read it myself yet (I told you these were bookmarks).

This is on the “Indie dev”-side of the article. From Develop 2010, “5 Things Big Publishers Don’t Understand About Small Games”. It’s an interesting piece, especially if you have interest in independent development and wouldn’t like a publisher minding your business (that weird pun wasn’t intended).

And it really would be unforgivable to miss Wolfire’s GDC-speech about internet marketing in a context like this. Thankfully, I didn’t miss it, it’s right there <—.

Happy reading! :)

Thoughts on Heavy Rain

I’ll just write down off the top of my mind a “review”-like thing for Heavy Rain. I happened to play it all – in one play-though – with a friend last evening, and really feel I should write it down while memory’s still fresh and not yet affected from “better” thinkers then me.

I’d love to start off with the story, but I’ll save that to last. It’s a very, very, story-focused game, and I’ll prefer to use plenty of spoilers (of what happened to me and my friend, at least). So I’ll start off with my thoughts on the controls of the game. You see, Heavy Rain has been accused both before and after to be “a series of Quick Time Events” (QTE). That’s only half true, and the true half is gravely misleading. Let’s just give a quick description of what I consider a “Quick Time Event”, just to remove any confusion. A Quick Time Event is a series of prompts asking you to press, hold or smash a specific button within a short lapse of time that does something a regular move would not. Atop of that, it usually have grave consequences if you fail and doesn’t have much with regular game play to do. With that said, the accusation of Rain only being QTE:s falls completely. Rain uses prompts with button commands such as press, hold, smash or steer a stick or the controller in a certain direction or move, but it does so consequently and in a logical manner. Want to turn on the ignition of a car? Sure, just make a turning move on the stick. Have to throw something? “Throw” the controller (just don’t actually throw it, or you’re in trouble). And this will be the move every time you want to do this action. In other words, it works wonderfully! The system allows the game to do so many things regular game’s cannot. I’ve never played, or seen, a game where you change a baby’s diaper, put on make-up in a club’s toilet, cooked dinner or started a car before – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what this game does.

These prompts are displayed with white squares with stylized icons on them, which usually follows the object in the game world its associated with. This means the icons are always visible, most often clearly say what their action does (although we had a few tragic miss-clicks). Sadly, the design of the commands they want you leaves room for interpretation sometimes. The “mash this button”-prompt looks obvious in theory (it’s a button that pulses inwards), but sadly can be confused by the “hold”-prompt (a white arrow-head on the top quarter of the square) in the heat of action, something that caused us to fail one of the game’s tasks. The icons of the face-buttons (X, Square, Triangle, O) were a bit difficult to read, which usually caused half a second of lag in my mind just figuring out the right button. They could be slightly colour-coded to increase visibility. At least you’d had two things (colour and shape) to go on. The shoulder-buttons (L1, L2, R1, R2) could also be a bit more visible by displaying the label more to it’s corresponding side (so [L1] and[R1] would be [L1  ] and [  R1]) and having a slightly different shape for the 1-buttons and 2-buttons. That’s another thing that caused some response lag in my brain and could easily be fixed. The brain is fast at reading semantic relationships and shapes, but not that fast at reading. A natural mapping makes it quicker.

And quickness is highly valuable. Although the game always gives you time to press every prompt (about a second, I think), the game in its more hectic moments can stir up a lot of panic and similar. You’ve ever been to an exiting movie where your stomach is practically twisting itself in anxiety or something? This game is like that, times ten, every ten minutes. Or that’s what it feels like. The knowledge that the outcome is based on your performance, and that you can fail, is the tip of the scales here. In films, you usually know the outcome before the exiting part even begins. Here, you can’t know until the next chapter begins.

One more thing about the interaction that I don’t want to forget. Movement. Movement in this game is really unconventional, and takes awhile to get used to, but it’s really smart. To move, you hold R2. The left stick only adjusts the direction. Which means walking a long time isn’t that annoying (and you will walk a lot, because you don’t half-run like all the FPS:es out there). It also means you can keep going the same way if the camera angle should switch, which happens from time to time. The game controls the camera, and although it most often only follows you around, it often jump to more dramatic places, as well. This blurs the edges between different game play modes and cut-scenes, and it often feels like one single entity.

Oh, yeah, and there’s dialogue options, which fits right into the current character’s situation and, in a Mass Effect-fashion, gives a key word for what they then say. If you don’t select any within a specific time, they start to fade out and select one for you. This makes them options, but doesn’t halt the flow of the game. Besides, they’re done in a really smart aesthetic manner, circling around your head as thoughts do (you can “hear” what your character think from time to time).

So, the story. Spoilers from here now on (and now I’m filing anything slightly revealing or supposed-revealing in the “spoilers”-folder), so don’t read on unless you’ve played it or never intend to. I’m not a buyers-guide, nor do I intend to, but a quick analysis, so I can do this. So, the game starts off with Ethan Mars sleeping on his bed, with a nice view and a fantastic house. He walks around the upper floor, showers and gets dressed, and you start to really connect with him. I went off to his desk and got him working. Turns out he’s an architect. He probably drew this house! Then his wife and two kids shows up, and you sort of feel like I suppose parents feels, the “wow, how life turned out well! I’m so lucky!”-feeling. Which serves dual purposes of tutorial, planting the Mars families into the “regular” state, and soon makes the rest of the story so much stronger. Because, frankly, you care. A game-hour later, Ethan’s life is but a shadow of what it once was. Where his home was clean, modern and beautiful before, it’s now a worn-down place from mid-20th century. Instead of two happy sons, he’s got one depressed one. Instead of a lovely wife, he’s got an ex-wife who blames him for the son who’s no longer with them. And so does he. And it’s such a tragic mess. And then the story kicks off, and it’s just worse.

Along the course of the story, you switch between four characters who’s stories intersect with one another from time to time. This is both a good and a bad move. The good move is that you get plenty of perspectives on the drama, and the moments the characters meets and interact become so much stronger. The bad part is that you somewhere along the way lose that connection to Ethan. He becomes just a character, although one you hope for will succeed, instead of that tight feeling with being someone who could be you. But, really, the gain is so much bigger than the loss that it doesn’t really do anything.

The plot gives the impression of being semi-linear. That is, it’s not like a completely linear and pre-defined story, but it won’t branch into very different endings, either. Now, I’ve just played it once, so maybe I’m wrong, but the story felt like it was going from A to B, and the circumstances of the main plot would depend on my choices. I dunno, maybe that’s praise I first didn’t intend it would be. Perhaps the story can go wherever it want, but it so well put together that I don’t notice it. If that’s the case, then the game is truly amazing.

End of Spoilers. Anyway, it’s a great game, and I hope other developers takes inspiration from it. Now I’m off to see what the “better thinkers” have thought on the matter.

Level Design Articles

I just read a feature series on Gamasutra about pre-producing level design (and, as a consequence, atmosphere, presentation of story etc.) The first part deals with the layout of a level and how the character’s motivations can align with the player’s to create a strong motivator to achieve the intended objective. The second part emphasizes the importance of research and giving all the space within a level an in-world reason. The third parts puts all these levels in perspective to see how levels can be chained together. Well worth a read!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

On the topic of pacing, which is sort-of-the-same as the third part of the articles above, a former student at the University of Skövde’s game development program got an article features on Game Career Guide with what I believe was his thesis. It’s about how to pace a level.

Link

These articles really complement an old article series I know I’ve linked before, but it was a good read (I should read it again some time). It’s about multiplayer level design, and frankly I can’t remember much more than that.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Yes, it’s a lot to read – good thing you’ve got all the links right here, no? :)