Game Design 2 Journal #7: The one about Game Design 2

Game Design 2 was, in my assumption, a more focused and intense version of Game Design I -or- "Let's Make Some Games."  Game Design I focused on principles of Game Design, balancing for players, playability, rule making, game theory...etc.  Enjoyable, extremely.  I loved working with real materials and making board games instead of video games.  The real meat and potatoes of Game Design to me is in the rules, the manipulation of terms and creation of persistent world inside such a limited medium.  No video, no electricity (usually), no discs, batteries, beeping, crashing or installing and the only screens are for Dungeon Masters.  Game Design relishes these things, rolls in them and cackles with glee.  And so I do.  Ha ha...visual.

Game Design 2 was going to be round two with this tantalizing vixen, and I was pumped.  However, Game Design 2 was about story.

At first this tickled my fancy.  To be honest I really relish story in my games.  Love a good one.  I watch the cutscenes, I play JRPGs, I re-play Mass Effect for new conversation choices.  I own "Heavy Rain" still.  It all adds up in the end.  Story to me can be a game's bread and butter. I'll forgive stale-bread game play for some juicy choice narrative.  The semester began with definitions of story, many of them and sub definitions of terms associated: story, plot, narrative, beat, event, scene, sequence, act...I soaked it up as much as I could really.  They were posed as our professor Stephen Dinehart's definitions, and as a result I could not accept them as my own.  As is with most creative mediums I needed to develop my own words but I liked his, even if they did seem a little systematic for me.

The class went on, and we did our first presentation   Jordan Booth and I examined "Heavy Rain" for elements of immersion.  It was a good time, we enjoyed the study and the work.  By this point I had the prof's number.  Story was king.  Interactive Narrative is his oxygen.  I got it.  And then I started to notice a pattern: I felt like we had done nothing but talk about narrative.  Sure we tied in games, we talked about narrative in terms of game design but we never designed anything.  We gave presentations, but we never really put together a project that involved coming up with our own ideas, or trying out some of the techniques and such we'd discussed in class.  Our "Game Design 2 Journals" became sort of amorphus to me.  As I found topics to discuss in gaming I just wrote about them. I don't journal well, but that's another story.  As the class went on we realized that we hadn't really moved farther than the first turn on this race-track.  I wanted to have added something to my portfolio after these 15 weeks, but these journals will probably not make it there.  I stored them online, I called them my blog because I like to make my inner machinations a shared event sometimes.  I don't edit for content, I more or less say what I please.

So the class starts to wind down.  Our second project is another presentation...the same assignment from earlier.  This does not sit well.  Where's the "Write a story for a multi-part game" or "Develop a game where the game play fully supports the story, and explain why?"  the "Work to create a prototype for a game that writes a story?"  We didn't ever connect what we were learning to the skills we were developing as game designers, and I felt the class ending on a low point overall.  Without tying in some honest hand-made work in the field we are being trained to be leaders in, we will not excel past the words on the page.  To me, training means getting bloody with paper cuts and tests of knowledge.  Not quizzes either.  REAL tests: application.

However.

I learned through taking this class that Narrative Designer is likely my future job title.  I want to be someone who considers questions posed by this course.  Questions of how to structure a story, what makes a good story, immersion, how to effectively manipulate literary structure.  I love to tell stories, I love to write stories and I am going to spend hours this summer working on a massive world creation project.  I really, really want to evolve into a master storyteller using video games.  The Mass Effect bible sounds like it needs my name on the cover.  Cept I want to change "Mass Effect" to something I make up, naturally.  I'm going to do this, to be sure.  With Level Zero most likely.  I don't want to climb the ladder, or sit and watch a chance to create what I want to see made pass me by even once.  Being exposed to anecdotes, lessons and ideas from someone directly connected to the exact job I would be doing was invigorating, inspiring even.  I was slightly envious to be honest, but I was more driven to work hard.  He'd worked on Cloud, a game by a company I just about revered.  Company of Heroes, an RTS I'd actually played.  It kinda clicked that I could do this job, that I wanted to do this job.  Ergo, when the work gets going in this class I needed to shine, and bust my chops.

But it never got in gear.  That was my only real criticism of this class.  That we never really took it the extra mile in our work, and our work never really challenged us.  Yes, college kids don't read.  Yes, we can make awkward power points like champions.  But no, we do just grow when planted.  We need watering and sunlight.

Game Design 2 was a good class.  It opened me up to the reality that I could get that exact title I was looking for but had given no name: Narrative Designer, and I could learn how to define stories and play with techniques of storytelling the pros mastered.  Now it just needs to involve some leg work.

PS:

Story: The story begins an uninterrupted section of time in which you, the lucky, are given a unique vision of another world.

Game Design 2 Journal #6: On how gaming works in Second Life

Most of you that know me well understand I spend a shitload of time in Second Life, the Virtual World.  I am a staff member of one of the largest, premiere simulators in Second Life, known as Insilico.  I take a great deal of pride in my developments in Second Life, and I often find it inspiring to reflect on how it's helped me grow to understand the nature of the new "community."

Insilico is primarily a role-playing simulator.  We allow players to come, join the group's social network on Ning.com, and create their own character to join in the joint story-writing adventure that is role-playing.  It's one hell of a good time.  My specific job as role-play Host is to promote a sense of cohesion.  I judge player disputes, answer role-playing related questions, help players define backstory that's compatible with the established rules of Insilico and generally try to be a sort of oracle for rp.  Roleplaying works best when players work together, and sometimes it takes a dedicated overseer to get the job done.

What needs overseeing, you ask? Maybe you don't.  If so, stop reading.

When two players have a scene together and begin to establish truths in a spongy reality, important keyframes in history are placed onto a hidden global timeline.  Now assume two other characters are plotting something that contradicts or overlaps a truth in the other character's story.  More keyframes, none get resolved until they meet though.  Now pretend a new player assumes a role high up in a faction's hierarchy. Do you let him play as the boss of a large group of people who already operate leaderless?  What if he assert's he's related to another player? Or perhaps pretends to have spoken to them?  And finally we have a lone furry, the evershunned, who has to be told that Insilico does not allow furry roleplayers, but they're more than welcome to shop the mall.

My job is to sit in the middle of all that, fingers firmly in the ether, reading and anticipating, smoothing and weaving as gently as I can.  It's incredibly fun to watch the stories unfold from the eye of the hurricane.  But this is only half the story.  This is just the written word, the agreed upon stories and plots.  Is this a game?

The game comes into play the same way it does in Dungeons and Dragons for us in Insilico.  When a conflict cannot be settled by merely talking it out, or an element of skill/chance needs to be involved to complete a certain objective, or gain a certain item...basically cross any conflict, that's when we use the game.  The game typically means the DCS combat system, a special game system that sits inside Second Life and allows players to use weapons like guns and swords, as well as activate powers and skills.  It's universal: Any sim owners can choose to have their Sim run that software, and theme it all for their sim.  It keeps leaderboards, emotes...the works.  We use it to play fight, usually in large group situations or just for fun.  But does it ever really solve disputes?  Not really.  DCS can't be used to solve disputes very effectively, because no real judging goes on in mortal combat, and the party better at playing video games will always prevail, which has nothing to do with reason.

Oh shit, I've devolved into the nature of human conflict resolution using Second Life role-playing as my lead in.  Let's see where this goes.

Humans have felt an increasing need to settle conflicts with words throughout our history.  Once it was discovered that reading and writing were of value, thanks to the strategic and tactical advantage it gave the leaders of communities, people have wanted to make sure they don't get fucked over by the bigger guy.  Makes sense, smart people who can prove their innocence or merit (circumstantially, of course) should get a proper chance.  Fast forwards to Insilico.  It's a world populated by people who have one major flaw: they need to be able to manipulate a world that relies on sending information over fiber optic cables with amazing precision and patience, in order to move at all.  Much less fight.  Second Life is slow compared to most MMOs due to its streaming nature, and generally high specs.  It can run very well, don't get me wrong.  Most of the time it runs like a dream, but it also has some major lag issues and yadda yadda it's not as fast or as intuitive as an interfaced designed to play a game.  If you're not good at video games, you're not going to win fights in Second Life.

So to wrap that thought into it all:  Even a virtual system of combat, one that in theory puts all players on the same level (due to the uniform nature of the program code), you cannot use combat to settle disputes without pissing off smart people.  Big "duh" moment, right?  Bears mentioning though.  Second Life, having no dedicated rule system to govern, allows its users to govern themselves.  Lord of the Flies situation, but instead of isolation there's a constant shifting/shuffling of "home" sims and players.  Does this mad mix allow the self-governed system to work by promoting the idea of longevity = authority?

*takes a deep breath*

That's enough for now on that.  Back to the game at hand.

As a game, Second Life functions great.  It's an MMO with no levels, no grinding.  A "free" fps (Second Life isn't free, you have to spend a little time or money in here to really get a foothold and start feeling true "ownership" of your virtual footprint.  Free online communities are largely empty space.).  Second Life players allow other players to judge them.  GMs make decisions to ban people from the simulator, or to hire on new staff.   The staff are volunteers, players themselves with a penchant for giving back.  It's conflict with rules to decide a winner.  Cept the game never ends, and people have to play fair.

The rules are amazingly strict in most role-playing settings, but at the same time allow for an equally or even doubly amazing breath of role play.  We don't allow flying, but we do allow cloning. We don't allow ears and tails, but we do allow robotic shapes and sizes of almost any kind.  We draw lines at certain limits:  Almost no Nanomachines are allowed in Insilico, no teleportation, no interstellar travel farther than Mars, no aliens. Sometimes there's conflict when a player starts fresh and decides to open with their alien lineage, or strap on their jet pack and fly away conveniently at the slightest provocation.  In comes a GM, me or my partner Ysanne Korpov (German girl, my EU RP Host counterpart) to lay down the fuckin' law.  And people listen, or they leave.  Sounds harsh? Over a thousand members on our Ning.  There needs to be balance, and since we cannot use a truly martial system to judge, there has to be judges.

So I play this game, and I judge this game.  Second Life has potential to evolve into something wholly other: a system that as it evolves the ability to handle user generated content could create some truly amazing.  I hope to be there when the internet and technology catch up to the creativity of the residents in Insilico and all of SL.  It's truly a building block, and a playground, for minds and games of all kinds.

Game Design 2 Journal #5: Dynasty Warriors

I love Dynasty Warriors. I love Samurai Warriors.

These games are repetetive, slow, button mashy, sometimes very shallow, poorly designed or otherwise confusing as hell. They change minor details from game to game, rearrange the process for skill acquisition, add in features that seem major ("Climbing a ladder", and "Swimming") only after four iterations of the game. Poor voice acting that you can't turn off or turn down, dumb as bricks enemy AI and tricky timing add up to sour its taste in the mouths of most.

However

It's a classic story, told using modern means. After a little work, your characters leap off the screen like the actual heroes of old, cutting swaths through enemy troops to find their leaders, sweeping across the battlefield. You can customise your build down to the tiniest degree, and spread the love across dozens of characters you can tailor into a mad fighting force. Coop play lets a friend join in, and in Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce, up to 4 can play in coop matches online as near gods, battling gigantic enemies and footsoldiers alike. And if that wasn't cool enough, there's a Gundam and Fist of the North Star version too.

I started playing Dynasty Warriors off and on with my PS2. I played 3, and a little 4. 4 was the first one I owned, at least. After that I didn't touch the series for a long time. But then about a year ago I bought Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires on a whim. I gave it a spin, and fell in love. For some reason it was then it clicked. The Empires sub-series offers a deeper level of strategy game play than its other versions (Dynasty warriors has Strikeforce, Extreme Legends, Samurai Warriors, Gundam, Fist of the North Star, Empires and the Numbered games, all as sub-series under the Dynasty Warriors model.)

The graphics were sharp looking, and the create a character mode sold me. I made a badass chick with a huge ass sword, and got to work. My roommate Ross and I played Coop quite a good deal, and we got very good at the game. By the time we were steamrolling most of China on Normal difficulty, our characters were unto deities. I beat the game one night, and it played a badass cutscene, using my custom character, showing how I unified China. It was awesome. Downloadable Content for the game was all free, including packs of music and create-a-character parts. I was amazed, and I became a die-hard fan.

Since then I've played some stinky Dynasty Warriors games: Warriors Orochi and Orochi 2 I didn't like. Samurai Warriors 2 I didn't like. Dynasty Warriors Gundam 1 I didn't like either, but I loved 2. They're still largely a hit and miss series, but it feels like with every iteration I see they're getting closer to the point: the players want to feel awesome. I feel like I can see the direction they need to go to satisfy more American fans, too. More action, more control, more challenging (in the right ways) AI, persistent character creation. But the fan base for Dynasty Warriors keeps'em coming. Keeps churning out the dollars for the games. And Koei/W-Force keeps releasing free DLC too? Impressive, to say the least. They see a model that works and they're rolling with it. The prolific pariah of action games.

One of the things I personally strive for is engaging game play. I really like the game play of Dynasty Warriors. That's right. I like the game play of Dynasty Warriors. It's not so bad once you get used to what it's implying. I want to see someone create the ultimate "cut swaths through enemies" game, no, fuck that, I want to be the person creating that game.

I'm on it.

Game Design 2 Journal #4: Writing the hero in the sequel

Recently I was talking to my boss at the nerd hole about the character Kratos.

We were discussing how, allegedly, the story of God of War III has a massive letdown ending. A few of my classmates gave a pretty well thought presentation on the subject, and I wanted my boss' opinion. Sadly, I had forgotten how ill informed he typically is about most everything.

We talked on, though. He said that the ending was in fact a purposeful let down, citing that the true epilogue will be made available once enough players achieve a platinum trophy in the game. The epilogue has promise, ergo, stop whining about the story having a bad end, is his argument.

I followed that up with my rationalization of the whole thing. You see, spoiler fans, Kratos aces himself at the end of God of War III in order to prevent Athena 2 from getting her hands on "Hope", the last item in Pandora's box. This, according to my classmates, is out of line for the man who just spent the last three games whuppin' the asses of everything that moved. I think it's perfectly in character, seeing how the gods (throughout the trilogy's epic story) constantly fuck over Kratos, for him to want to withhold from them anything he can guarantee the safety of. I don't blame him! But that kind of reading doesn't really fly well in the face of the game's actions (apart from the climax of the first game, a battle to save Kratos' family). You spend most of the game tearing things in half, living things, and punching gods. To suddenly punch your own ticket? Doesn't add up.

This raises my question: how do you successfully write a character into a trilogy of games?

Trilogy, sequel, roman-numeral epic...it's all the same. You need to follow the basic rules though. Always the same:

• Your hero must have a great beginning, and great end to his story. Something complete, something cyclic, that feels well considered and thoughtful. Too much today we see cliffhanger endings in the second act of a game, hinting at the next game in the series. Such advertisements are unwelcome sights, subtle hints that the developers got us this far, they have us by the stones.
• Once something is promised to be a series, don't feel obligated to leave the story hanging just because you know the next one's on its way. Final Fantasy doesn't do this, Dragon Quest doesn't do this, Grand Theft Auto and Kings Quest don't use much continuity. Some great games do though, such the Half-Life series, but even that bit it in the ass thanks to their long spans between games. Gamers were left hanging, no true ending to Half Life 2: Episode 2 existed aside from the not announced, not even rumored just kind of expected Episode 3. End your story with a bang.

The talk went on for a short while, but ultimately it made me realize that so many companies handle new iterations of franchises differently. I personally do not like when a good stand alone game gets green lit to trilogy status just cause of projected sales/mystery means. It feels shoehorned and forced.

My two cents.

Game Design 2 Journal #3: "It's like an interactive movie?"

So "Heavy Rain" came out yesterday, and I got my copy naturally.
I expected something, I had a clear thought as to what I was getting into.
More "Indigo Prophecy," I said.
"Quick Time Event: The Game," I said.

Well I was right.
Mostly.

"Heavy Rain" is very engaging. An adventurous camera aside, I found myself engrossed in otherwise menial tasks at the beginning of the game. Feed myself, do work, be a dad. For an hour I slogged through a painstakingly slow section of the game, getting familiar with the controls and the flow of the game. I drank some orange juice, twice. I checked the clock, and sat watching my kid watch TV. Brought him some cold medicine. It was benign. It was "boring."

But sitting within me was a tremendous fear of every action. I wanted to make sure I did things right. What is right? Right in this case means most favorable outcome. I subconsciously do this every day, but when forced to focus on the life of another person I suddenly worry about every thing. Especially when that interaction is limited to very specific actions. I felt compelled to do specific things. If I worked in the garden, but not on my artwork, would that affect me later in the game? I was tense and ready for anything to happen, any symbol to appear on the screen.

Somehow even the most basic actions became interesting when presented by "Heavy Rain," and this made more complex actions into roller coasters. There was a fight scene I played out, crashing through an apartment. It was ungraceful and ugly. I sat, quite literally, on the edge of my seat during it. My roommates cheered me on, calling for me to "Watch out!" or "Press the button! Press it!" They were just as engaged as me, humor aside, despite not playing the easy to play game.

By presenting the story as a straight shot, with no "lives" and no re-doing certain scenes to do them better, "Heavy Rain" feels pertinent at all times. Even when I was doing the menial actions, I felt like every decision had weight to it. It was exhausting, and addicting. I wanted to start over ten times and try different a combination of actions, different failures. I purposefully put in minor failures into part of the game, worried about characters reactions to certain actions. Example: There's a scene where you have a play fight with your son, with foam swords. I didn't want to soundly thrash him, so I let him get some shots in. But I wondered if that meant I'd get a lower score over all, or was the goal to always win? It was intense.

I can't really knock "Heavy Rain"'s model here. The QTEs work. A little janky, sure. But it works just fine. "Indigo Prophecy" may have missed the mark for me, but so far I get the sense that Quantic Dream has more to say and do with "Heavy Rain." It's really got me interested in where it is going.

Game Design 2 Journal #2: Don't fix what isn't broken

Bioshock 2. 2k Marin had a chance to take a ball and run with it.

Some say they didn't.

Some say they did.

Why the disparity? Bioshock 2 looks great, plays great. What's the problem?

Some would quote it lacks the twisty plot of the first game, some would argue the underpowered main character. We're playing as a Big Daddy so..ergo...shouldn't we be BADASSES? I agree. The depiction of every other Big Daddy is, despite their lack of plasmids, terrifyingly violent and destructive. Not even the end of the first game conveyed the true presence of these behemoths and Bioshock 2 fails as well. Louder footsteps. Sure. The drill? Perfect. But my health is impossibly low, I don't have a sense of weight...there's some inconsistencies. It feels like they got close enough.

Those criticisms were the cake. The icing is this argument: It was bad that the game play was too much like the first game.

I call mega bullshit on this. Let's look at a VERY recent example of an excellent sequel. Mass Effect 2.

Mass Effect 2 had a glaring flaw. The world and story was excellent, perfect even. But the battle system had some major hiccups in it, as well as the elevators, inventory and the powers you could rank up in. These problems had a souring effect on an otherwise perfect game. The sequel addressed those issues expertly, and left the rest of the game alone. It played out like a Bioware symphony. The stories, the lore and the world was consistent and beautiful once again, and the issues were smoothed. Bioshock 2 did the exact same thing. There was nothing to really "fix" with most of the combat. It was fluid, adapting, challenging and fun in the first game, despite the lack of dual-wielding plasmids and weapons. They fixed the hacking, the harvesting, the...aha...they messed with the story.

Bioshock 2 has a far more linear feeling than Bioshock 1. The story is less about twists and turns, or shadows. You see the plot glaring at you like a bright light and you wonder why they're telling you this now. Why aren't they hiding this for later? But the world of Rapture is so rich with lore (the audio logs, the locations themselves and their inhabitants) that the main story starts to fade away. I found myself not really caring what new Rapture dictator Sophia Lamb had to say. I could predict it, see it coming. It didn't feel like the story of Andrew Ryan's Rapture. And that was a little saddening. I felt like I was playing a game that wasn't Bioshock: System Shock 2 in the Sea anymore.

Did that afford Bioshock 2 a sneer? A little bit. But no less a stellar score. The game delivered what I wanted, exactly what I wanted in most cases. When a good sequel comes out, the good changes are visible right away. They're big. However, the most important thing to remember is consistency of experience. If the player launches into a sequel and the experience feels...off...it's going to hurt the stride of the franchise big time. Mass Effect 2 did just that half step better than Bioshock 2. Mass Effect 2 COMMANDED my attention. Bioshock 2 I have a desire to play.

Sequels. Fuckin' tough.

Game Design 2 Journal #1: Games are not Art

I know we've had this discussion a lot, it's driven into the freaking ground. Are video games art? Roger Ebert has famously been quoted on the issue, originally denying video games as Art with an argument about "Authorial control," then in 2007 changing stances only slightly, comparing all games to sports and saying they cannot be "high art." Even Hideo Kojima, famously lauded for creating what some would call a work of art, Metal Gear Solid, admits games are not art. From Kotaku:

Hideo Kojima said: "The thing is, art is something that radiates the artist, the person who creates that piece of art. If 100 people walk by and a single person is captivated by whatever that piece radiates, it's art. But videogames aren't trying to capture one person. A videogame should make sure that all 100 people that play that game should enjoy the service provided by that videogame. It's something of a service. It's not art. But I guess the way of providing service with that videogame is an artistic style, a form of art."

I agree. But that's not the end of the discussion.

Art takes on many forms, from sculpture to the fine brush strokes of Van Gogh. It can be installation art, spanning many weeks or hours of time, or performance art that only exists while the performers deem it. You can Google "art" and get pictures, pictures of sculptures, videos of those performance art shows. Museums are, by and large, public and available for the viewing of great art. You don't pay to see the art, you pay to upkeep the building it is in. Now we get into the real meat: art can be bought and sold, value is placed on it by the artist and then a patron who finds it to their liking comes and picks it up. Art is unique. Even an artist that's made 1000 handpainted toilet seat covers uses a unique stroke or two each time. There is a sense of ownership. Art, though given value, has worth that can be assessed before it is bought, and exists as a singularity. There can be only one!

Video Games are mass produced, cannot be judged before being paid for (we hire people to review games for us, playing advanced copies so we can decide if we want to take the risk on spending 65 bucks), and is not unique. We all have (barring defects) the same game. Unlike art, the inability to judge and critique a game before it is purchased makes buying games risky. We wouldn't consider buying a painting a risk, when we can see and appreciate the whole thing before it is purchased. Video Games also lack that personal sense of "mine", like Kojima said "...A videogame should make sure that all 100 people that play that game should enjoy the service provided by that videogame."

From that, we also glean the purpose for making games: to make money. Games are designed to sell like hotcakes, they're intention is to make money. Sure, you can make artwork for money, but video games are implicitly designed to make money. They have careful, government regulated prices, can be taxed and returned...etc. There is nothing personal in buying a video game that the GAME is providing. If Halo 4 comes out, and you're the biggest Halo fan in the world, Halo 4 has meaning to you. But Halo 4 doesn't know you, and doesn't care about you...the single. Halo 4 has a community, a large group of people with expectations ready to dive down the throats of the developers and rip their hearts out if Halo 4 isn't awesome.

There's a far higher stigma of "Must be successful" placed over video games. "Indie" games, games that are available for free or have no publisher, could be considered art. But it's not possible to call "Shadow of the Colossus", "Rez HD" or "Modern Warfare 2" art, when we examine them against my statements above. The bottom line is: if your game is art, it had better be either free, or there better only be one copy.