Alright, I haven't been here in forever. At least it would seem that way from my perspective. A lot had changed and the dawn of the new era is before us. And by us I mean me, my wife and my beautiful son born in August. He is also the reason why I didn't write a damned thing for past half a year. And now, I have a hell of a lot to write about. Not that I didn't have before but the time-out kind of pressed it all in the back of my mind and it is about ready to burst.
So, as you might expect, recent changes kind of shifted my perspective and priorities. So among other things, I will share the experience of being a stay-at-home dad. And it will be in my typical erratic ENTP alchemist kind of way. And starting point is right now.
Life and death responsibility
There is a lot written about the pregnancy and stuff around it. I'll just leave it to someone else to sketch it out fully. The entire experience is probably different for everyone. There are few moments that might come up that will surprise you and get you unprepared and you might not find anything about it anywhere.
The blood tests of my wife in first trimester came back and the values were off. We got a recommendation to visit the genetic specialist because we had a heightened probability of a developmental disorder. So, we went there because it is always better to know. The specialist had a line of questions about our families and diseases and when she went through it she proposed two methods of diagnosis - the amniocentesis and Chorionic villus sampling. The first one is more invasive and carries a higher risk of miscarriage and fetus damage (1:1600), the other on has a low reliability. One in sixteen hundred is a risk you don't want normally to take with your child's life, however the thing they would be looking for is T18 or Trisomy of 18th chromosome, also known as an Edwards syndrome. She gave us some basic info about the procedure and the disability we were in danger of, than sent us home to think about it. We looked it both up and were petrified. She said the EdS is serious but until we read up on it we didn't understand how bad it is.
It is one of the worst things that can happen. It means heavy body and mental retardation and it is considered a fatal condition. That means 92% of the children that actually make it to the birth will die before the first year, and less than 1% will survive to the age of 10. The median lifespan is 5-15 days. And chance for a less severe or partial variant is about 5%. The time for which the baby lives, it will suffer from pain caused by an organ malfunction and deformity and therefore will be kept under morphine until the failure of the vital functions.
The choice was clear. Amniocentesis is was. We had to wait for some time before the test result will be back so we could think. There wasn't really a decision to be made but it was still hard to come to terms with it. If the child was to be diagnosed with the T18, we would go for abortion. I would not watch my baby suffer before the slow but inevitable end. There would be no point in it and any other decision would be just a cowardice and trying to avoid making a decisive move. Nothing can make you aware of the depth of your responsibility for the child as standing in the face of a possible choice to kill him.
The results came back and said that the baby is alright. When my son was born we find out that the blood test oddities were caused by his right hand, which lacked a finger and had one immobile. If you get to a situation like that you will also find out what it means to be the pillar of the family. As my father-in-law said "you can tell who is a real man when they face a situation like that." You will be the one who has to act as the family needs. There is no-one else to shift responsibility to. There is no way to step away from it. So don't try, be a man and face it. Do what is necessary.
When I noticed his hand was malformed I realized that going emotional would serve no purpose and would only stress out the vulnerable - my hormones pumped-up volatile wife and newborn son. So I assessed the damage to his hand and thought about how much it will affect him. After it, I told my wife about it as calmly and casually as I could, and tried (and succeeded) to diminish the severity of the deformation. Noting that many people lose some fingers during life (like my grandfather) and have to adjust to that (which baby born that way will not have to) helped to put it into the perspective. As your own man you could have broke down over stuff, you could pity yourself and whatever. As a father you will always have to think of the family first. It is not hard actually. You just have to accept this and realize it so you wont hesitate when the time comes.
Becoming a father is one of the deepest and most fundamental changes in your life. At least becoming a father that is worth something is. And it is wonderful and scary. You are put through a real test that cannot be avoided. You either hold and stand your ground or get crushed. And if you win, you are stronger for it.
23 Mar 2014
6 Aug 2013
Game Design: making of a new game - a story you want to tell
I've seen quite a lot of people trying to make a game or planning to do one. Most of them start with the story they want to tell by the game.
"It will be the game of you becoming an ultimate bad-ass and killing dragons and yelling at stuff."
Unfortunately, they are usually talking about the story in the book kind of sense - more like a lore. Something about that kingdoms in trouble and this hero doing this and that, meeting this people... that is a great start if you want to write a book. If you have this kind of idea, the story you want to be told and it's deep meaning - stick to the making of a book. Books are still cool. You know - like a Game of Thrones. It is a different kind of medium and your story will be appreciated much more. Seriously, remember how almost all the game adaptations of movies are horrific? Yes, different kind of media can learn something from each other, but they engage people in a different way and we should take it into the consideration.
"Stay a while and listen! ...they never listen."
The great example of game that is trying to tell the story by literally telling the story is a Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale - watching streamer (itshafu) play through the first few minutes with a resigned sigh "there is waay too much text in this game" was everything I needed to see. Clicking through tons of dialog bubbles with little interaction was obviously boring and of course - she didn't read it. While extensive dialogs and other than main character actions are great in a book, it rarely work in games. After all, the games are about taking part in the story and living it - more than watching it happen.
So, you really want to make a game? Great, start with the experience you want to create. Not the lore, not specific mechanics, but what you want player to feel. Is he supposed to be the commander fighting for his country? The heroic saviour of the world? A survivor trying to get by? Or maybe you want the player to feel like a little kid exploring a whole new world? That is the core of the game. The story you want to tell. Mechanics are your first tools to deliver the narrative of the game. Choose a style of the game that will suit the best your core experience. Don't be limited by some idea of a genre, it doesn't really cut it, and game designers have (or should have) a discussion about what it really means anyway (check out "extra credits" great guyz).
If you think you will make the experience of a war leader better in a close third person view rather than detached tactical view, go for it. Guys who made Mount & Blade did that and it works. Don't be afraid to explore the particular nuances of experience you wish to create.
If you, without a doubt, picked RPG as a way you want to go, maybe you should think again - is it a story or the experience I want to tell? Than go and write a book. If it is your first game, never go for an rpg. They don't get finished.
"It will be the game of you becoming an ultimate bad-ass and killing dragons and yelling at stuff."
Unfortunately, they are usually talking about the story in the book kind of sense - more like a lore. Something about that kingdoms in trouble and this hero doing this and that, meeting this people... that is a great start if you want to write a book. If you have this kind of idea, the story you want to be told and it's deep meaning - stick to the making of a book. Books are still cool. You know - like a Game of Thrones. It is a different kind of medium and your story will be appreciated much more. Seriously, remember how almost all the game adaptations of movies are horrific? Yes, different kind of media can learn something from each other, but they engage people in a different way and we should take it into the consideration.
"Stay a while and listen! ...they never listen."
The great example of game that is trying to tell the story by literally telling the story is a Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale - watching streamer (itshafu) play through the first few minutes with a resigned sigh "there is waay too much text in this game" was everything I needed to see. Clicking through tons of dialog bubbles with little interaction was obviously boring and of course - she didn't read it. While extensive dialogs and other than main character actions are great in a book, it rarely work in games. After all, the games are about taking part in the story and living it - more than watching it happen.
So, you really want to make a game? Great, start with the experience you want to create. Not the lore, not specific mechanics, but what you want player to feel. Is he supposed to be the commander fighting for his country? The heroic saviour of the world? A survivor trying to get by? Or maybe you want the player to feel like a little kid exploring a whole new world? That is the core of the game. The story you want to tell. Mechanics are your first tools to deliver the narrative of the game. Choose a style of the game that will suit the best your core experience. Don't be limited by some idea of a genre, it doesn't really cut it, and game designers have (or should have) a discussion about what it really means anyway (check out "extra credits" great guyz).
If you think you will make the experience of a war leader better in a close third person view rather than detached tactical view, go for it. Guys who made Mount & Blade did that and it works. Don't be afraid to explore the particular nuances of experience you wish to create.
If you, without a doubt, picked RPG as a way you want to go, maybe you should think again - is it a story or the experience I want to tell? Than go and write a book. If it is your first game, never go for an rpg. They don't get finished.
24 Jul 2013
Tools I use: PointOuts.com
I've been thinking about writing this for some time. Why? Because PointOuts is a project I am currently working on (we've just hit beta). I was worried how it might not be ready and stuff like that. But heck, I alone am using it since it was a work demo and it was one of the most effective tools in its own development. What is the stuff and why did we build it in the first place?
What is it - it is a widget or website for uploading a picture and adding markers and comments to it. Uploaded pictures can be shared by email or a simple link. The widget can be implemented into everything from a website to any bug tracking or support ticket system.
And now the hard question - why?
Well, the project started simply from need to have a good tool to communicate bugs and save time lost on writing and reading bug reports. Especially if those writing the bugs were not programmers themselves or didn't work on that particular project. Later on we realized the potential of the tool itself and decided to put more effort and time into the project and share it with the world.
First on the table was redesign to make it more accessible, more understandable and more looking like a real finished product. I was thinking about its use and how to make it more responsive, made a mock-up with Balsamiq, uploaded it into our working version, annotated to tell the idea behind every element and its functions and position, sent to the project manager and devs. They went through it, made comments on the concept, I adjusted and another round went around until the last one was just attached to the "do it" task for the developer...
That is where I realized that thinking about it entirely as bug / issue tracking add-on was kind of missing a lot of the potential and we should broaden the perspective. So right now we are preparing more functions and tools to made it much more effective feedback design tool (like to upload new version to the same document as a new page). However, even now it has great use as I can just send a client a link and only thing he needs to have is a browser - and he can write it right inside the doc.
To try it just check out: http://pointouts.com, its free, awesome and I will be totally happy for any feedback I'll get. Still a beta though, bugs can happen...
What is it - it is a widget or website for uploading a picture and adding markers and comments to it. Uploaded pictures can be shared by email or a simple link. The widget can be implemented into everything from a website to any bug tracking or support ticket system.
And now the hard question - why?
Well, the project started simply from need to have a good tool to communicate bugs and save time lost on writing and reading bug reports. Especially if those writing the bugs were not programmers themselves or didn't work on that particular project. Later on we realized the potential of the tool itself and decided to put more effort and time into the project and share it with the world.
First on the table was redesign to make it more accessible, more understandable and more looking like a real finished product. I was thinking about its use and how to make it more responsive, made a mock-up with Balsamiq, uploaded it into our working version, annotated to tell the idea behind every element and its functions and position, sent to the project manager and devs. They went through it, made comments on the concept, I adjusted and another round went around until the last one was just attached to the "do it" task for the developer...
That is where I realized that thinking about it entirely as bug / issue tracking add-on was kind of missing a lot of the potential and we should broaden the perspective. So right now we are preparing more functions and tools to made it much more effective feedback design tool (like to upload new version to the same document as a new page). However, even now it has great use as I can just send a client a link and only thing he needs to have is a browser - and he can write it right inside the doc.
To try it just check out: http://pointouts.com, its free, awesome and I will be totally happy for any feedback I'll get. Still a beta though, bugs can happen...
10 Jul 2013
Game Design: Unnecessary stuffing
There are a lot of game types and environments you can design for. When you say "game design" a lot of people will imagine "video games" - a PC, console, handheld or another electronic device targeted games.
There is a lot more to the game design than that. Before the first electrons were fired in the laboratory, there were board games and life action games. They had grown up a lot lately and are actually heavily influencing each other - but that is a different story. The games and their stories are talking about the core of it all - as a game designer, you should listen.
For example: Did you ever heard of L.A.R.P. events? The name stands for Life Action Role Playing and it was basically invented with the table top RPG's like Dungeons and Dragons and Shadowrun - by the players who wanted to experience the setting in person. The LARP games are currently played by thousands of players over the world in events in range from a few people in a bar to a massive battles of thousands of people. Designers of those games ran into a lot of problems that could teach us a lot about the PC and other games as well. My personal experience is nothing short of fresh. Just a few weeks ago it was my second game in a role of a game designer for one of these LARP games...
The game "Zlenice" is well known in the community and has a 15 years of tradition. It is a "world" type of game where people can assume different professions and roles within a society, fight the monsters and complete (or fumble) different quests and uncover mysteries of the world. There are six professions within a game that players can pick from. Five years ago, I picked one that almost no-one ever played, an "alchemist". I wondered why. With the well prepared system, there were no potions or artifacts on the market and only person carrying its billy-can around was a person who was teaching the profession. I soon learned why.
In the three years as an alchemist player, I collected as much diverse resources as I could. I hunted every recipe that was available... It wasn't easy, especially if I didn't exactly had much money to begin with and as a non-combat character I had limited options of interaction. I got some money by selling information and providing people to solve someone else problems. My "shadow broker" business got me some real funds so I could amass more resources for desired potion business. With all my wealth I was actually able to make six of those potions and sold four of them (and a promise I wont make a cure, for the poison sold). At that point, I was one of the most influential persons in game. I had my own organization handling everything from trade and banking services to "accidents" and I was basically running the whole monetary system in the game. Just before my fourth year in the game (it was 2012), my master decided to leave the post and abandon her place among the organization team - and asked me to take her role. I accepted.
As I looked back and thought about those three wonderful years I realized I could have been a rogue, wizard or even warrior and it would not made any difference. I didn't played or used my role at all. Over the three years, I made six potions that had basically no effect on the environment of the game. Six! It was ridiculous when you consider, that it was pretty much all my profession could do. I recalled that there were others trying to play alchemist over those years - all of them gave up. I summed up all of my alchemist experience and decided to make radical changes.
The whole system was created by an enthusiast. The system was complicated and created a good simulation of what alchemist do. The formulas were exact and precise, the sources of the material diverse and there was a huge list of resources. All of those things weren't wrong. They wasn't even badly designed. The source of the problem was more concealed. The potions were weak for their price, the resources were extremely hard to get and with the complicated formulas - a lot of different resources was needed. Those were balance problems and kept the alchemist down. Right? No, not really. It was a concept problem.
I realized the whole focus of the rules and system of alchemy was on what happens before the potion is made. There was a whole world of gameplay there. I decided to change that. My base idea was that people came here to mix potions, sell them to people, give them to allies or use them themselves. i.e. to play with the results of their work. So I sat behind the desk, put the rules in front of me and thought - what was the most time consuming thing over preparing the potions?
It was clearly the gathering of different resources that allowed you to make those potions. So, I started to trim the system. From 4 energy types only one was left. From dozens of resources of different kinds and origins - only four was left. Now all of those different potions could be done by just mixing these four "elements" in different quantities and you could get these four from basically anywhere. I cancelled the exact step by step formulas (no longer mix two times clockwise, tap on the edge of the billy-can and add second ingredient) and more. I wasn't only cutting though. I wanted to focus on "what to do with a potion ready" so I made a lot of new potion types to make the range much broader and added a way to discover new hidden potion recipes and such.
It could be seen as a dumbification of the system. It was much easier to become an alchemist, to get resources you need and to actually make something. Truth is - it was a dumbification. A huge one. But on the part that was not essential, necessary and core element of the game. Wait what? Getting resources and mixing potions was non-essential for alchemist? Yes it was.
People did not come to spend their time wandering through the forests alone, looking for the plants, persuading dryads to give them some of their hair, and trying to locate the gem mines. Those people came to make potions and play with them. Their wish was to use those things. The old system not only made that a minor part of their game, but also cut them off from the rest of their party as picking flowers wasn't exactly something warriors wanted to watch for too long.
My old master would probably be worried if those poor people will actually have something to do.
I myself had the feeling that problem might be in the passive role of the alchemist more than the whole potions business - so I made a new archetype (every profession have several ways to build them called archetypes) that actually picked up a sword and went fighting with the rest of the professions. It was even profiled as wildly popular "witcher" - the most badass monster slayers the literature ever produced. This year I could see the results of my changes.
Over twenty alchemists registered and seventeen actually came. That is over three times more than my first year and twice as much as people who actually tried to be alchemist in the four years before that - combined. And here's the kicker - only three of them came to play the new active archetype! It was much more than I ever expected. They played the game, made dozens of potions and had a real impact on the game - and they all had fun (according to the feedback). Some of them even expressed the regret that this years game had already ended and wanted back. As I watched my alchemists play I realized that some of them are actually giving their potions away for free - even though they actually spend several hours getting those ready.
So what is the message of the story? The troubles of the old system made me re-evaluate what is important in the game. It helped me think about how to define what is the core and the source of fun and what is just a stuffing. It helped me to understand how players expectation will affect his experience.
Think on what is the core of the fun in your game, what people expect to do and what is keeping them from it. Than cut that stuff short.
For more examples on the systems and their shortcomings:
Cooperation with the other players or a conflict with them is a core mechanism of every multiplayer game. So things that keeps you away from them should be bonus objectives, never the base of your gameplay. For example SW: The old republic has great story line and single-player experience. Which is why people treat it as such. You play through the storyline and when you reach the end, you start a new character or stop playing the game. Bad model of behaviour for subscription and micro-transaction based games. What would help the TOR would be a real end game content. Players spend this whole time getting to know their characters and abilities and upgrading their gear just to find out they have nothing to do with it in the end. Adding new levels won't solve the base of the problem, just delay it for a tiny bit. In a story about huge war adding end game content would mean adding big pvp stuff to fight for - like guildwars2 or warhammer have.
In a game, it is super important on what player expects to do. If it is a war game, you might want to focus on the battle more than the economic part of the game. Making, maintaining and caring for units should not take more time than actually using them to kick each others butt. For example - in a Star Craft (and lot of other RTS), every multiplayer session starts with a farming session followed by a short battle. Units are expensive, the economics takes long to build and it is fragile. When you look at it, most modern RTS are actually economic simulators more, than battle simulators. Everyone is afraid to fight because picking a wrong time and target is a problem and replacing what was destroyed can be impossible - the game in a multiplayer session is unforgiving. Maybe a bit too much. The Riot games with their League of Legends is facing the same problem. It takes a lot of confidence to go aggressive and take a huge risks. Most people are afraid to fight because one mistake means they can loose the fight and snowball effect in the game can be super harsh creating for one side the spiral of doom (check out my previous blog post on that topic). And those are super frustrating. Riot decided to weaken the effect of potions because they felt that people don't fight because opponent can just heal up. As a result, players became even more passive as the fear of their own possible mistake and harder recovery was preventing them from engaging in. The fear of loss is stronger than desire for more as was proven by the Laurie Santos and her Comparative Cognition Laboratory (CapLab) at Yale...
Oh yes, those are big and successful games! However... there is always something you can do to make your game even better.
There is a lot more to the game design than that. Before the first electrons were fired in the laboratory, there were board games and life action games. They had grown up a lot lately and are actually heavily influencing each other - but that is a different story. The games and their stories are talking about the core of it all - as a game designer, you should listen.
For example: Did you ever heard of L.A.R.P. events? The name stands for Life Action Role Playing and it was basically invented with the table top RPG's like Dungeons and Dragons and Shadowrun - by the players who wanted to experience the setting in person. The LARP games are currently played by thousands of players over the world in events in range from a few people in a bar to a massive battles of thousands of people. Designers of those games ran into a lot of problems that could teach us a lot about the PC and other games as well. My personal experience is nothing short of fresh. Just a few weeks ago it was my second game in a role of a game designer for one of these LARP games...
The game "Zlenice" is well known in the community and has a 15 years of tradition. It is a "world" type of game where people can assume different professions and roles within a society, fight the monsters and complete (or fumble) different quests and uncover mysteries of the world. There are six professions within a game that players can pick from. Five years ago, I picked one that almost no-one ever played, an "alchemist". I wondered why. With the well prepared system, there were no potions or artifacts on the market and only person carrying its billy-can around was a person who was teaching the profession. I soon learned why.
In the three years as an alchemist player, I collected as much diverse resources as I could. I hunted every recipe that was available... It wasn't easy, especially if I didn't exactly had much money to begin with and as a non-combat character I had limited options of interaction. I got some money by selling information and providing people to solve someone else problems. My "shadow broker" business got me some real funds so I could amass more resources for desired potion business. With all my wealth I was actually able to make six of those potions and sold four of them (and a promise I wont make a cure, for the poison sold). At that point, I was one of the most influential persons in game. I had my own organization handling everything from trade and banking services to "accidents" and I was basically running the whole monetary system in the game. Just before my fourth year in the game (it was 2012), my master decided to leave the post and abandon her place among the organization team - and asked me to take her role. I accepted.
As I looked back and thought about those three wonderful years I realized I could have been a rogue, wizard or even warrior and it would not made any difference. I didn't played or used my role at all. Over the three years, I made six potions that had basically no effect on the environment of the game. Six! It was ridiculous when you consider, that it was pretty much all my profession could do. I recalled that there were others trying to play alchemist over those years - all of them gave up. I summed up all of my alchemist experience and decided to make radical changes.
The whole system was created by an enthusiast. The system was complicated and created a good simulation of what alchemist do. The formulas were exact and precise, the sources of the material diverse and there was a huge list of resources. All of those things weren't wrong. They wasn't even badly designed. The source of the problem was more concealed. The potions were weak for their price, the resources were extremely hard to get and with the complicated formulas - a lot of different resources was needed. Those were balance problems and kept the alchemist down. Right? No, not really. It was a concept problem.
The whole system was about what alchemist DO, not what he/she hopes to ACHIEVE.People playing the alchemist gave up, because they felt that their work has no purpose. Their effort was simply not worth the results. It did not matter that it was fun to do. So, first year I had it in my hands, I made a re-balance on the strength of the potions and cut the costs. Four new people tried to play, survived to the end and did not gave up. I watched them closely what are they doing, when and why and how it affect their experience. I talked to them in the evenings between the game days and started to have even more precise idea on what is the problem. After the game I had a year to think and redesign the system.
I realized the whole focus of the rules and system of alchemy was on what happens before the potion is made. There was a whole world of gameplay there. I decided to change that. My base idea was that people came here to mix potions, sell them to people, give them to allies or use them themselves. i.e. to play with the results of their work. So I sat behind the desk, put the rules in front of me and thought - what was the most time consuming thing over preparing the potions?
It was clearly the gathering of different resources that allowed you to make those potions. So, I started to trim the system. From 4 energy types only one was left. From dozens of resources of different kinds and origins - only four was left. Now all of those different potions could be done by just mixing these four "elements" in different quantities and you could get these four from basically anywhere. I cancelled the exact step by step formulas (no longer mix two times clockwise, tap on the edge of the billy-can and add second ingredient) and more. I wasn't only cutting though. I wanted to focus on "what to do with a potion ready" so I made a lot of new potion types to make the range much broader and added a way to discover new hidden potion recipes and such.
It could be seen as a dumbification of the system. It was much easier to become an alchemist, to get resources you need and to actually make something. Truth is - it was a dumbification. A huge one. But on the part that was not essential, necessary and core element of the game. Wait what? Getting resources and mixing potions was non-essential for alchemist? Yes it was.
People did not come to spend their time wandering through the forests alone, looking for the plants, persuading dryads to give them some of their hair, and trying to locate the gem mines. Those people came to make potions and play with them. Their wish was to use those things. The old system not only made that a minor part of their game, but also cut them off from the rest of their party as picking flowers wasn't exactly something warriors wanted to watch for too long.
My old master would probably be worried if those poor people will actually have something to do.
I myself had the feeling that problem might be in the passive role of the alchemist more than the whole potions business - so I made a new archetype (every profession have several ways to build them called archetypes) that actually picked up a sword and went fighting with the rest of the professions. It was even profiled as wildly popular "witcher" - the most badass monster slayers the literature ever produced. This year I could see the results of my changes.
Over twenty alchemists registered and seventeen actually came. That is over three times more than my first year and twice as much as people who actually tried to be alchemist in the four years before that - combined. And here's the kicker - only three of them came to play the new active archetype! It was much more than I ever expected. They played the game, made dozens of potions and had a real impact on the game - and they all had fun (according to the feedback). Some of them even expressed the regret that this years game had already ended and wanted back. As I watched my alchemists play I realized that some of them are actually giving their potions away for free - even though they actually spend several hours getting those ready.
So what is the message of the story? The troubles of the old system made me re-evaluate what is important in the game. It helped me think about how to define what is the core and the source of fun and what is just a stuffing. It helped me to understand how players expectation will affect his experience.
Think on what is the core of the fun in your game, what people expect to do and what is keeping them from it. Than cut that stuff short.
For more examples on the systems and their shortcomings:
Cooperation with the other players or a conflict with them is a core mechanism of every multiplayer game. So things that keeps you away from them should be bonus objectives, never the base of your gameplay. For example SW: The old republic has great story line and single-player experience. Which is why people treat it as such. You play through the storyline and when you reach the end, you start a new character or stop playing the game. Bad model of behaviour for subscription and micro-transaction based games. What would help the TOR would be a real end game content. Players spend this whole time getting to know their characters and abilities and upgrading their gear just to find out they have nothing to do with it in the end. Adding new levels won't solve the base of the problem, just delay it for a tiny bit. In a story about huge war adding end game content would mean adding big pvp stuff to fight for - like guildwars2 or warhammer have.
In a game, it is super important on what player expects to do. If it is a war game, you might want to focus on the battle more than the economic part of the game. Making, maintaining and caring for units should not take more time than actually using them to kick each others butt. For example - in a Star Craft (and lot of other RTS), every multiplayer session starts with a farming session followed by a short battle. Units are expensive, the economics takes long to build and it is fragile. When you look at it, most modern RTS are actually economic simulators more, than battle simulators. Everyone is afraid to fight because picking a wrong time and target is a problem and replacing what was destroyed can be impossible - the game in a multiplayer session is unforgiving. Maybe a bit too much. The Riot games with their League of Legends is facing the same problem. It takes a lot of confidence to go aggressive and take a huge risks. Most people are afraid to fight because one mistake means they can loose the fight and snowball effect in the game can be super harsh creating for one side the spiral of doom (check out my previous blog post on that topic). And those are super frustrating. Riot decided to weaken the effect of potions because they felt that people don't fight because opponent can just heal up. As a result, players became even more passive as the fear of their own possible mistake and harder recovery was preventing them from engaging in. The fear of loss is stronger than desire for more as was proven by the Laurie Santos and her Comparative Cognition Laboratory (CapLab) at Yale...
Oh yes, those are big and successful games! However... there is always something you can do to make your game even better.
4 Jul 2013
Game design: reality simulation and the Spirals of doom
A lot of game designers (including me) make and obvious and understandable mistake on their first real projects. One of the common assumptions is that if some game mechanism will simulate the behaviour of a real life situation, it will be intuitive and easily understandable.
This assumption is of course far from truth. Real life is not exactly intuitive and understandable in the first place. If you create in a complex economic war game a value of happiness that will affect a key elements and make it a variable with several different inputs you can guarantee it is going to be a lot of trouble. I know because I did exactly that.
It was designed as a mechanism to contain and limit players expansion in a limited multiplayer world.
The simulation was so believable that just like in the real world, no-one had really any idea why their people hate them and refuse to multiply. So remember:
And here we come back to the simulations of reality. They are great, they tend to generate an interesting gameplay and increase difficulty in a good way. However, you should be wary on how and when to use them. If you want it, use it for the key element of the game. In a war game - make combat vibrant, punishing and rewarding by simulating the real combat units with their weaknesses and strong points. But keep it off the supply lines. My first officially published game had such a weakness. It was a complete simulation of war of nations. Perfect and lifelike so much it should be used for schools to make kids understand how you can't really win a war only loose less than your opponents and hate everything about it in the end. Wars were short, brutal and left the one side scarred and the other one destroyed without chance to recover. A lot like you know it from the multiplayer sessions of the Heroes of Might and Magic.
Which leads me to an another mistake fairly common among the game designers of the online strategy and survival games. The offline gameplay. A friend of mine working on a new project came to me with the concept of game, where in rpg multiplayer survival game, their characters would be permanently present in the world without ultimate protection - with the death having strong impact on the game. I was truly alarmed because I understood that there is one really important problem.
Some game designers and companies simply doesn't allow the players to really affect each other. Games like that are a fake multiplayer and suffer with one specific problem - people usually find out pretty quickly that there is no real goal within the game and that they can't touch their opponents... and leave the game. This is one of the reasons why can you see a myriad of identical games just with different names and pictures on the Facebook. While game play is the reason people start to play the game, the end goal is the reason why many of them will stay.
How to solve it than? Oh well that is a difficult question. The base rule for strategy games should be that to undo what someone else built, should take at least half the time he needed to set it up. It is fun to lose a game if it is an epic battle where at the end, I as a player, have the feeling that I didn't go without a fight. It is also a much more fun if I feel like I actually had to fight for my victory. If it can be a few minutes walkover than it is not fun for either side. It is o.k. for a player to be a completely eliminated from a game, all his cities burned or taken and he actually kicked off - if he felt like fighting. That is the moment, where "challenge accepted" attitude tends to kick in and he might be all fired up for another round.
How do you ensure the epic last stand moment? Limit the range of power. Unlimited fighting units tends to hold the game in a stage where everyone is just amassing the mega armies and wait for the moment when they can easily wipe out the enemy target without considerable losses and swipe their empires in one swift strike. If you limit the maximum fighting power than you can guarantee that even very strong player will not be able to just crush the new ones like an unlucky bugs. The strength of players empire should be the ability to replenish his losses, and how hard it will be to take everything he has.
In a real-time system without any army power limit, it is possible to easily one shot anything. All you need is army big enough. It is basically impossible to make an epic lose moment when you can go with an army of 10.000 against 10. The fight is resolved instantly. The 100 against 10 means the small ones will most likely lose, but fight will take some time. The real difference between "power = army size" and "power = ability to replenish army" is that in the first case the bug splatting scenario is very likely to happen, while in the second one... the feeling of fighting off wave after wave and loosing a bit of ground every time is something entirely different. Not to mention that help can actually come in time.
A prime example of this? EVE online. Every player can pilot one ship at maximum. The ship can only by so big and strong and the empires are wast. In this game, the war rages on for weeks or months as to defeat the enemy you have to actually deplete his money accounts because he will be just coming back over and over again with new ships until he has no ships to use and no money to buy new ones. And the result? Watch this to see how the ones who lost their empire felt:
Those guys were beaten. Their empire was taken from them, their ships destroyed, planets occupied... but they didn't immediately left the game as it would most likely be if they were simply squashed. The fight was epic and the experience awesome. They stayed and several years(!) later they actually came back and reclaimed what was once theirs.
So now you know why power limit is the better way to go from the view of player war experience. And now we are getting back to the simulation and complexity problem. What we tried to do, is to create a power limit through the upkeep costs. It was complex, it was hard, it created a spiral of doom and it ultimately failed in its purpose. The worst of all, it was unnecessary.
The limit of power is here to amplify and affect the other gameplay mechanics. If you make it an interactive mechanism, than there will be players who are good at managing it and players who are bad at it, widening the effective difference between the weak and the strong player - which is the exact opposite of why you included this mechanism in the first place.
While need to feed your soldiers and machines and manage the happiness of workers might seem like a good idea, it is not. Especially if you have a complex battle system and a complex economic system. More mechanisms in the game means bigger possible differences between the players and higher chance of bug squashing in opposition to an epic last stand. If we simply added a stable max. limit like it was in the Star Craft, people would less focus on the economic side and more on the battles - which are important in an environment where you can actually hurt each other - and battles themselves would be much more fun as it would be much more balanced.
I am not a fan of dumbification which is a common way that is pushed by the big developers, but it is as important to not go overcomplicated. The multiplayer game should be challenging and offer some depth, but players should fight the other players not the game itself.
This assumption is of course far from truth. Real life is not exactly intuitive and understandable in the first place. If you create in a complex economic war game a value of happiness that will affect a key elements and make it a variable with several different inputs you can guarantee it is going to be a lot of trouble. I know because I did exactly that.
It was designed as a mechanism to contain and limit players expansion in a limited multiplayer world.
The simulation was so believable that just like in the real world, no-one had really any idea why their people hate them and refuse to multiply. So remember:
If you have to make a guidebook to explain an in-game mechanics, than it probably won't workYou can use a complicated game ecosystems of course but if something is complex - it should be the core gameplay element and everything should wrap around it. Having multiple complex structures having effect on each other tends to create what I begun to call the "Spirals of doom". It is an intimately known problem to anyone who played the early Settlers or the original Ufo defense. If a mechanics is designed to be a weak point that can hinder the goals of your player, than it shouldn't affect the ways to solve the problem. For example:
In the old UFO: defense (enemy unknown) - when mission went bad, your soldiers died, their equipment was lost and the anger of your supporters had risen. That meant you had for the next mission worse soldiers, with worse equipment and your funding could drop lower which left you in a situation where your next mission would be much more difficult and failing at it would only make your troubles go worse, while your only solution - money - were getting depleted because you failed in the mission...This spirals make the difficulty of the game unbalanced because failure at a basic task made the difficulty gradually harder, up to the extreme where the game became unplayable. While the game may be, to that point, fairly ballanced, one mishandling could make the player's experience a hell ride. So beware, the solution of any problem shouldn't be dependent on the source of the problem itself.
And here we come back to the simulations of reality. They are great, they tend to generate an interesting gameplay and increase difficulty in a good way. However, you should be wary on how and when to use them. If you want it, use it for the key element of the game. In a war game - make combat vibrant, punishing and rewarding by simulating the real combat units with their weaknesses and strong points. But keep it off the supply lines. My first officially published game had such a weakness. It was a complete simulation of war of nations. Perfect and lifelike so much it should be used for schools to make kids understand how you can't really win a war only loose less than your opponents and hate everything about it in the end. Wars were short, brutal and left the one side scarred and the other one destroyed without chance to recover. A lot like you know it from the multiplayer sessions of the Heroes of Might and Magic.
Which leads me to an another mistake fairly common among the game designers of the online strategy and survival games. The offline gameplay. A friend of mine working on a new project came to me with the concept of game, where in rpg multiplayer survival game, their characters would be permanently present in the world without ultimate protection - with the death having strong impact on the game. I was truly alarmed because I understood that there is one really important problem.
The important and game changing actions should be made, when player is present to see and is able to affect them.If player may leave for the moment just to find out his character died or his empire had been burned to ashes it should be because he failed at some fundamental and easy steps to prevent it. Not because he was unlucky enough to be attacked when he wasn't looking. Any "game over" moment should never be outside players control. Why? Simply because it is extremely frustrating for him, while not creating any fun challenge for the opposing side. This is where most turn based mmo web strategies have advantage as what happens in the night is the result of the whole day's preparations - so if player got destroyed by his neighbor, he underestimated his power or simply wasn't as good. The real time ones have it a lot harder as you have to find balance between offline protection and meaningful impact on the enemy - simply because player can't be online for the most of the time no matter how big "no-lifer" he is.
Some game designers and companies simply doesn't allow the players to really affect each other. Games like that are a fake multiplayer and suffer with one specific problem - people usually find out pretty quickly that there is no real goal within the game and that they can't touch their opponents... and leave the game. This is one of the reasons why can you see a myriad of identical games just with different names and pictures on the Facebook. While game play is the reason people start to play the game, the end goal is the reason why many of them will stay.
How to solve it than? Oh well that is a difficult question. The base rule for strategy games should be that to undo what someone else built, should take at least half the time he needed to set it up. It is fun to lose a game if it is an epic battle where at the end, I as a player, have the feeling that I didn't go without a fight. It is also a much more fun if I feel like I actually had to fight for my victory. If it can be a few minutes walkover than it is not fun for either side. It is o.k. for a player to be a completely eliminated from a game, all his cities burned or taken and he actually kicked off - if he felt like fighting. That is the moment, where "challenge accepted" attitude tends to kick in and he might be all fired up for another round.
How do you ensure the epic last stand moment? Limit the range of power. Unlimited fighting units tends to hold the game in a stage where everyone is just amassing the mega armies and wait for the moment when they can easily wipe out the enemy target without considerable losses and swipe their empires in one swift strike. If you limit the maximum fighting power than you can guarantee that even very strong player will not be able to just crush the new ones like an unlucky bugs. The strength of players empire should be the ability to replenish his losses, and how hard it will be to take everything he has.
In a real-time system without any army power limit, it is possible to easily one shot anything. All you need is army big enough. It is basically impossible to make an epic lose moment when you can go with an army of 10.000 against 10. The fight is resolved instantly. The 100 against 10 means the small ones will most likely lose, but fight will take some time. The real difference between "power = army size" and "power = ability to replenish army" is that in the first case the bug splatting scenario is very likely to happen, while in the second one... the feeling of fighting off wave after wave and loosing a bit of ground every time is something entirely different. Not to mention that help can actually come in time.
A prime example of this? EVE online. Every player can pilot one ship at maximum. The ship can only by so big and strong and the empires are wast. In this game, the war rages on for weeks or months as to defeat the enemy you have to actually deplete his money accounts because he will be just coming back over and over again with new ships until he has no ships to use and no money to buy new ones. And the result? Watch this to see how the ones who lost their empire felt:
Those guys were beaten. Their empire was taken from them, their ships destroyed, planets occupied... but they didn't immediately left the game as it would most likely be if they were simply squashed. The fight was epic and the experience awesome. They stayed and several years(!) later they actually came back and reclaimed what was once theirs.
So now you know why power limit is the better way to go from the view of player war experience. And now we are getting back to the simulation and complexity problem. What we tried to do, is to create a power limit through the upkeep costs. It was complex, it was hard, it created a spiral of doom and it ultimately failed in its purpose. The worst of all, it was unnecessary.
The limit of power is here to amplify and affect the other gameplay mechanics. If you make it an interactive mechanism, than there will be players who are good at managing it and players who are bad at it, widening the effective difference between the weak and the strong player - which is the exact opposite of why you included this mechanism in the first place.
While need to feed your soldiers and machines and manage the happiness of workers might seem like a good idea, it is not. Especially if you have a complex battle system and a complex economic system. More mechanisms in the game means bigger possible differences between the players and higher chance of bug squashing in opposition to an epic last stand. If we simply added a stable max. limit like it was in the Star Craft, people would less focus on the economic side and more on the battles - which are important in an environment where you can actually hurt each other - and battles themselves would be much more fun as it would be much more balanced.
I am not a fan of dumbification which is a common way that is pushed by the big developers, but it is as important to not go overcomplicated. The multiplayer game should be challenging and offer some depth, but players should fight the other players not the game itself.
3 Jul 2013
Tools I use: SmartDraw mind maps
I don't believe in brainstorming and mapping ideas and stuff like that. I consider it a huge waste of time as (at least mine) a brain works better when you actually give him a task to solve. However... mind mapping software has a lot of uses beyond what the name suggests...
If you are building a complicated structure or environment where you need to keep track of what is interacting with what and how and when... system allowing you to draw the lines and create an actual object/project map can be very useful. To keep track in user-server interactions and in the big data structures I started to use mind mapping software. First it was freemind - which was great free tool but had a lot of pretty harsh limitations - but then I found out about Smartdraw. It was prepared for the cases I needed to use it for, it had great range of tools and possibilities and the new versions have everything from classic tree structure to graphs, process structures and myriad of other tools including even a floor plans (not that I ever needed the last one). I was using this tool the most as a game designer when I was working on a strategic game Infinitum where complicated economics, the interconnection of war units and a lot more was too complex to follow through text to be understandable. Which was, of course, one of the mistakes we made when designing the game in the first place. But I'll leave that story to some other time.
The tool is in a lot of ways automated, the good part is that it is not done the dumb way. Not every time you will be a fan of the solution but most of the time it will save you effort and it will mostly not act like it know better what you want to do than you.
To check the SmartDraw out follow to the: http://www.smartdraw.com/
P.S.: Avoid the "guided tour" video, that thing is just a lot of marketing bollocks that will tell you nothing.
If you are building a complicated structure or environment where you need to keep track of what is interacting with what and how and when... system allowing you to draw the lines and create an actual object/project map can be very useful. To keep track in user-server interactions and in the big data structures I started to use mind mapping software. First it was freemind - which was great free tool but had a lot of pretty harsh limitations - but then I found out about Smartdraw. It was prepared for the cases I needed to use it for, it had great range of tools and possibilities and the new versions have everything from classic tree structure to graphs, process structures and myriad of other tools including even a floor plans (not that I ever needed the last one). I was using this tool the most as a game designer when I was working on a strategic game Infinitum where complicated economics, the interconnection of war units and a lot more was too complex to follow through text to be understandable. Which was, of course, one of the mistakes we made when designing the game in the first place. But I'll leave that story to some other time.
The tool is in a lot of ways automated, the good part is that it is not done the dumb way. Not every time you will be a fan of the solution but most of the time it will save you effort and it will mostly not act like it know better what you want to do than you.
To check the SmartDraw out follow to the: http://www.smartdraw.com/
P.S.: Avoid the "guided tour" video, that thing is just a lot of marketing bollocks that will tell you nothing.
2 Jul 2013
Tools I use: Balsamiq Mockups
When you take on the shoes of a designer, you need a rapid wire-framing tool. Unless you want to make a ton of useless work that is going to be remade again, again and again of course.
The first steps in design for someone else is to get an idea, present it and get it approved. As things rarely go as smoothly between step two and three you need to rework the idea and refit it to the needs of the project.
Just like anyone else I start with a simple sketch. This part becomes complicated when you and your client, or people who will make it happen, are not in one building or even the same continent. That is when Balsamiq's tool comes in. It is basically a vector drawing tool with a myriad of small customizable tools like "web page" or "button" or "video". It helps me throw the idea on the "paper" in a few minutes in a presentable way where I can just "print" out the .png, mail it to the client and get a feedback.
When the feedback comes I will just load up the original .xml and rearrange it the way it is needed. After few rounds of this I will end up with an approved model and can actually make it happen. Using the xml is one of the things that really won me - I can just save up the text on the google drive and when I am on the device that doesn't have the tool, I can just simply fire up their web demo, import the xml and work as usual. This tool does a lot of work for me. Definitely recommended.
Check out on the http://www.balsamiq.com
The first steps in design for someone else is to get an idea, present it and get it approved. As things rarely go as smoothly between step two and three you need to rework the idea and refit it to the needs of the project.
Just like anyone else I start with a simple sketch. This part becomes complicated when you and your client, or people who will make it happen, are not in one building or even the same continent. That is when Balsamiq's tool comes in. It is basically a vector drawing tool with a myriad of small customizable tools like "web page" or "button" or "video". It helps me throw the idea on the "paper" in a few minutes in a presentable way where I can just "print" out the .png, mail it to the client and get a feedback.
When the feedback comes I will just load up the original .xml and rearrange it the way it is needed. After few rounds of this I will end up with an approved model and can actually make it happen. Using the xml is one of the things that really won me - I can just save up the text on the google drive and when I am on the device that doesn't have the tool, I can just simply fire up their web demo, import the xml and work as usual. This tool does a lot of work for me. Definitely recommended.
Check out on the http://www.balsamiq.com
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