Subjective Space

Expanding on what was written at the Artful Gamer on the subject, I wanted to bring up the difficulty of manipulating a player's perception of a spatial environment. It's a bit of a ramble, as I'm just now getting back into the hang of this writing thing.

The first thing that comes to mind is how effective straight up text can be at describing a scene. Right now I'm writing an Interactive Fiction, and it's very apparent how a game needs to balance pacing and information in order to give the player the best experience. In such a personal medium like Interactive Fiction, the player automatically fills in a lot of holes with their own imagination. At least for me, this is akin to how pixelated graphics can still portray emotion and style. They only represent spatial positioning in the game, and allow for the player's subjective description to stay on the surface of their thoughts.

Generally when something interesting is happening, there's a lot involved with it. Hearing a muffled 'whomph' come from outside can be somewhat alarming, but not as alarming as witnessing the van exploding with your own eyes. The fireball, the shrapnel, the bystanders being knocked back – these details all add to the severity of the scene. If we add more detail like limbs, car alarms, and a visual overlay of concussive feedback the situation turns towards distaste and even annoyance. It may be an extreme example, but I believe it illustrates the kind of balancing I'm referring to.

'Efficiently detailed.' That's the phrase. Underwhelmed vs Overloaded.

Uzumaki Prototyping

Had great fun tonight, making progress with the board design for the Uzumaki game.  

Over the next few days I'll be going through the Manga, again, making World and Story cards, with plenty of different effects to test out.  For example, a Story card from Chapter 3, "The Scar," could read: "Spin movement - all other characters move towards yours that many spaces, using shortcuts if possible."

Oh, that's another thing.  I'm throwing out dradels for a few very good reasons.  

1. No dradels = less cost

2. No dradels = no losing said dradels

3. Using the spinner instead will further reiterate the influence of Dragon Pond on the characters, and the player's influence on Dragon Pond.

Brilliant, really.  Wish I was the one to think of it...

Resort vs. Sandbox MMOG Design Part 1 - Immersion

As my adventures in Darkfall continue, so does the analyzing of its design concepts. This post was actually started several days ago, and has been slowly germinating ever since. Now it's just too big for its pot, so I'll be splitting it into two parts. Part 1 will venture into the systems which make players attempt to have fun, in Darkfall Online and World of Warcraft. Part 2 will contrast the risk and reward circuits between both games. 

Despite Aventurine's self-destructive attitude towards its community, they are in fact continuing to make Darkfall Online a functioning game. Cities finally have gates to go with their gatehouses. They've balanced out more pseudo-exploits that take advantage of the macro mindset. More people have successfully purchased it. However, they still don't give warning before server restarts, even though players can lose their mounts or rafts when that happens. They say they're working on a fix for that, but in the meantime they give the cold shoulder to unfortunate players. Apparently, a clan managed to bring the entire server down just by building a guard tower, which was glitched to the point it attacked its makers. Two steps forward, one step backward, apparently.

They may not know what they're doing on a Public Relations level, but Aventurine did pretty well for themselves by designing a world system that empowers its playerbase to make their own fun. Experienced players are self-guided in their playspace, as they don't need missions or quests in order to procure a productive experience. Instead, other players and player-driven situations provide opportunities.

Darkfall, simply stated, relies heavily on players being responsible for their own immersion.

A game like World of Warcraft, however, makes the player into a tourist.  They're shuffled from one location to the next activity, towards bigger and cooler locations, to more awesome drinks and fireworks.  They can give themselves up, and go with the flow.  The sweet, turn-off-your-brain river of repetition and reward.

Residents of Agon are left to their own devices, with little guidance outside of other players. They become engaged beyond the aesthetics and simple mechanics, quickly joining the rain of pebbles descending on the pond, each attempting to push back the waves from enemy players.  In Darkfall, even a newbie can help influence the world stage, if they're at the right spot at the right time.  That's pretty exhilirating. 

For example, you start off in one of the racial starting cities - one of three surrounding fortresses per race Capitol.  Quickly getting ordered to kill goblins, you run out with your newbie weapon and start the difficult fight, slowly collecting crappy armor as you watch your skill go up with the weapon.  Passing by the city is a small patrol of a large clan, who you strike up a conversation with.  Impressed with your outlook, they give you a mount so you can follow them to their home city.  Along the way, you manage to spot a large enemy force stalking your party, and you alert your new allies.  They quickly alert their clan on Ventrilo, and set up an ambush. 

Because of you, 10 players lost everything on their characters. And it's your first day.

By limiting the game-driven influence on a player, they allow the user to take a larger ownership - and investment - in the game experience itself. 

Contrast this with something like World of Warcraft, which is designed around holding the player's hand as their character simply follows the giant glowing exclamation marks to their next activity. Naturally more options become available to a player later on the game, concerning what they want to do in Azeroth, just as return visitors know what rides to attend or avoid when they go to Disneyworld.

This isn't inherently bad design, as WoW's success can attest.  I do wonder, however, if people in Azeroth become more mesmerized than immersed in the world.  I've heard somewhere that the human brain easily goes into auto-pilot when in a sensory-collection mode, as if in a grocery store.  

Due to the ever-changing conditions that lie just under the surface of Darkfall, though, I find myself almost always engaged on a higher level.

BoRT #2, Jan '09 - The Black Cat

We're being given another round for this month's Blogs of the Round Table prompt. Which is good, because there have been some amazing suggestions by its participants. I highly recommend clicking randomly once you reach the drop-down.

I'm going to go ahead with the game that preceded the short story, 'The Black Cat.'

As with my previous post, the game will deal with spoilers in the story.

One of the most prominent factors in 'The Black Cat' is the narrator's ability to observe his mind and body turning against him. Not only that, but he eventually gives in, and embraces the damned being he's become. Naturally, that's one of the key ingredients to the game.

I imagine a first-person vantage point, to really put the player into the narrator's viewpoint.  (The Source engine would be more than enough.) During transitions and episodes of mental dissent, having a narrative voice-over should help provide the immersion I'm looking for.  Or at least, the foundation for it.

I don't think the game should take all that very long to play. In the beginning, as can be expected, you learn how to interact with the world. However, this is also a great time to provide backstory. (In retrospect, much like what Fallout 3 did.)  For instance, the narrator speaks of how Pluto, the titular cat, would follow along everywhere as his constant companion. Pluto would even try to walk through the city at his side. To build upon the setting, there would be a moment where the character finds himself outside his house one morning, to discover that Pluto has escaped and is running out to join him. The player must then simply scoop up the cat, and return him to the house, to proceed to the next part of the story.

During these simple exercises, however, a lot of minor details can be used. In the above example, when the player picks the cat up, a simple animation of the cat resting in his arms will be just at the bottom of the screen. When you approach the house, the character's free hand can automatically pet and scratch the back of Pluto's head, which in turn elicits a loud, obviously playful, and loving purr from the animal.

To drive home the point that Pluto is inseparably fond of the player-character, every brief 'tutorial' segment would have the cat in a blatantly noticeable, attention-grabbing position. Just as important, Pluto should seem content and happy with this arrangement, as should the character.

In 'The Black Cat,' Poe makes the narrator's wife second-string to Pluto. Despite being very complimentary to the narrator, that's all she really is. Her introduction should reflect how much of a side note she is, to the character. All that needs to be done is to have her mention, teasingly, about the superstitious connection between black cats and witches. A friendly banter, culminating in a verbal pat-on-the-head from the player-character. Then she'll return to tending to the various pets, and the player-character will look down to Pluto and give him a playful scritch along the neck.

Once the player becomes infected with the Demon of Intemperance, it will be time to get into the real horror of the game. By this time, the player should have a definite attachment to Pluto, so the character's desire to be with his cat should hopefully be easily transferred to the player. Coming home one night, inebriated and swimming through a visual filter of blurs, Pluto will avoid the player in the most annoying way possible. Sitting just close enough to appear catchable, then running just fast enough to avoid capture, then climbing high enough to further elude the player's efforts.

Eventually, after more than likely knocking several things over trying to escape the player, Pluto will slow down enough to be caught. The cat will be hoisted by the throat in front of the camera, gurgling a screech as its eyes go wide with fear. (Personally, I find this sight equally frightening.) Drops of blood will form as the claws dig into the hand. Then, the cat will be lowered, and the screen will fade to black.  The rapid beating of a heart should be very noticable, without anything on the screen.

I need to make a note about this scene. When first considering this post, I thought about the shock value of actually seeing the pen-knife referenced in the short story, doing its evil work. I then realized that 'The Black Cat' isn't really about violence. It's more about self-destruction. Besides, insinuated violence can affect the player more, when the moment is left to their imagination.

A secondary 'point' of the game could (and probably should) be the dangers of alcohol.  Making yourself a drink will improve your state-of-mind, which I picture as a status gauge similar to Indigo Prophecy's.  However, the longer you go between drinks, the more depressed you become.  It's a vicious cycle, and one that directs you towards the climax.

Chasing will be a central challenge of the game.  From the baby's candy ease in the tutorial, to the mechanically impossible later in the game, these moments will show the intensity of the narrator's emotions.  He loves Pluto.  He ends up hating Pluto.  He replaces Pluto.  He ends up dreading the new cat.  The player-character will ultimately have to run from the cat, as it chases you merrily, due to the massive emotional trauma it deals you whenever its in range.

Once your emotional state reaches a certain level, the player loses control as the character goes into a rage.  It will do everything in its power to either harm the cat, or leave the house.  The character's fast heartbeat will echo loudly. As the game progresses, it becomes easier and easier to rage.   Naturally, events will follow those of the book, with added context to the scenes.  Keeping to Poe's vague descriptions would feel far too sterile.

I imagine the murder of the narrator's wife to be dramatic, but over with very quickly.  The player-character randomly stumbles, and sees the cat take off. Rage takes over.  The camera looks over to a nearby axe, and automatically moves the character to it.  He'll pick it up, and be unable to drop it.  The player regains control, and will naturally turn around.  The wife will be there, and will attempt to calm down the narrator while grabbing for the axe.

The rage will return, and with one quick swing, down goes the wife.

The voice-over will demand that the cat join her.  While the player walks around the house looking for it, bloody axe in hand and vision tainted red, an internal monologue will explain its plans to wall-up his wife's corpse and avoid imprisonment.  Once this finishes, which will be connected to searching every area of the house, the scene will end.  

After the next fade in, the narrator will be sitting in his house, nursing a small drink, wondering to himself about his good fortune that the cat ended up running away for good, as it hasn't returned for several days.  A knock at the door will herald a party of policemen, and as they perform a search of the house the character's heartbeat will be subtle and calm.

When the search ends, the character's internal monologue will admit its growing pride, and the fateful arrogance will take over.  The ending moments would be a scripted event, with the tapping of the wall and resulting flight across the cellar.  The scream needs to be absolutely panic-inducing.  A noise that is otherworldly, and as such fills the player themselves with anxiety.  The narrator will back away, glancing at the fear-frozen faces of the officers, before stopping to watch them tear down the masonry.

The camera zooms in, as his wife's seemingly undead body falls partly out of the wall.  Then, climbing up onto her head, the emaciated and demonic-looking form of The Black Cat will appear.  The character's pounding heartbeat will follow the player into the rolling credits.

BoRT: Jan '09 - Uzumaki the Board Game

I figure that the new year would be a good time for me to join in on the fantastic Blogs of the Round Table series over at Man Bytes Blog.

This month, we're Putting the Game Before the book.  The question is asked, "What would your favorite piece of literature look like if it had been created as a game first?"  

Initially I considered Raptor Red, as it's one of my favorite books.  That, however, would essentially be a Sim along the lines of Lion or Wolf.  Passing over The Giver, I began thinking of Poe.  For a time I was desigining something for The Black Cat - a maddening, Noir-esque piece where you control a hulking madman with an axe as he destroys his house hunting down his taunting pet.

I at long last settled on Uzumaki.  It's a manga by Junji Ito, set very firmly in the horror genre.  In english, the title translates to "spiral."  This may not seem very scary at first, but Uzumaki is a fiction powered by monomania.  Spirals are taken to the extreme and become instruments of insanity.  Snail shells, fingerprints, suspension springs, hurricanes - anything is fair game.  Once the insanity strikes, death is generally not far behind.  

Ultimately, like a maelstrom, there is a point of no return, where you can no longer escape from your doom.  The curse is just too strong to flee.  I don't know about you, but Inescapible Doom is a powerfully disturbing theme to me.

(Read it top right to bottom left!)

SPOLERS BEYOND THIS POINT:

I felt that the best way to continue the spiral-madness was to make the town, and its events, into a board game.  The track of play would become a spiral, ultimately turning into the swirling longhouse that appears later in the story.  In the center of town would be the pond, which the players are attempting to get their characters to, first.  

Why would players actively be trying to get themselves to their destiny first?  No, it isn't the Cthulhu Cult mentality of 'getting it over with first.'  Instead, the player is actually the Spiral-Cave itself.  The board, on the other hand, represents the characters' desire to escape their destruction.  In other words, spaces on the gameboard will push characters away from the middle, while the player's actions will drive them towards it.

I imagine a derivative of Chutes and Ladders for automatic gameboard mechanics.  Switching places with another gamepiece, or otherwise moving your opponants around would also be present. 

Now, time for the monomania.  In the center of the board, inside the pond, is a dial-and-arrow players can flick to select directional effects.  Instead of dice, dradles will suffice.  Circular event-cards, with a spiral backing, would be an obvious choice for events.   My co-worker suggested a Tornado Rex-style top, that can threaten to knock pieces down at certain spots as it parades around a spiral-track; it's a delightful idea due to the twister-causing troublemakers that show up later on in the story.  I'm just not sure if I can have that 'track' built onto the board, and have the board roll-up when you're done playing - to get spirals on either end.

I think the point has been drilled home, though.  This board game of troubling events attempts to affect the players the same way the story does: make you obsess over spirals.  Personally, I will always remember the horrors of Uzumaki - especially when I have a visual cue that's so subtley prevelant in our lives.

Prototyping Story

I'm curious, from my amateur position, how exactly some of these professional game developers make decisions on story. Fallout 3 spoilers will happen beyond this point.

I've had two major incidents with conflicting story, in Fallout 3.

The first one occurred during my attempt to complete Blood Ties. While hunting for Lucy West's brother, I eventually found The Family's lair and bribed the guard to let me in. He soon went to sleep, and I started to take everything I could before killing the guy. Not only did he not have the bribe I gave him, but this also made The Family hostile towards me. Which didn't make a whole lot of sense, because there was no way for them to have known he was dead.

To make a long story short, I one-man-armied The Family and found Ian West. I woke him up and showed him his sister's letter, and he went back to sleep, promising to leave The Family shortly. On the way out, I killed one last member of The Family, and I had a little window pop up saying that "The Family and the residence of Arefu are now hostile towards you." Which didn't make any sense at the time, because Arefu hated The Family.

Then, Ian tried to kill me - despite being outrageously out-gunned. I let him run away twice, but despite his near-fatal wounds he attempted to gnaw at me one last time.

So I vaporized him.

Much later, I would find Reilly (leader of Reilly's Rangers) in a coma at the Underworld infirmary. Being told that waking her up could be dangerous, I decided to go looking for her Rangers, instead. I went to their headquarters, eventually hacked in, and found them to be gone. So I took a look around (as well as some loot that was just laying out) and left. Coming across their emergency radio broadcast, I would ultimately attempt to rescue them from being trapped on top of the Statesman Hotel by Supermutants.

When I met Butcher for the first time, he asked me about Reilly. Even though I knew her location, and had read her diary, the only responses I had for him were those of ignorance. I was forced to say I had no idea who Reilly was, despite knowing exactly where she is. As well as who she was recently sleeping with.

I was also rather shocked to find her back at Ranger HQ, after we escaped the Hotel. I was looking forward to bringing the Rangers to Underworld for a dramatic "she's waking up!" moment.

The point of all of this is that there seemed to be a lack of important story routes between certain nodes. Perhaps they weren't exactly obvious but still not hard to realize.

I wonder if these could have been remedied, had Bethesda made an in-house Interactive Fiction of Fallout 3 to prototype these kinds of situations. I've been watching the Alabaster project with interest. Emily Short and co. used Inform to solicit more branches of dialog for the story, where a player's conversation attempt would be recorded and then implemented in a future version.

Apparently, this whole 'attempt recording' feature is going to be packed into a future release of Inform. Is something like that crucial for the development of sandbox worlds? To me, it seems as though the QA phase of Fallout 3 was focused on getting rid of technical bugs, instead of some equally important ones in the storyline.

So I wonder if it would have been easier and more efficient for Bethesda to rip out all the combat and simply make a textual version of the game. I can't imagine that they actually did do such a thing, because of my previous examples.

Or is it simply OK for the developer to release it, then patch away those inconsistencies when the millions of players find them?

Gaining Traction, I hope

So I finally feel as though I can take a break from Spore.  Or at least, play it 'casually.'  A few days ago I reached the Center of the Galaxy.  Today, I finally killed an Epic in the creature phase.  Took me twenty minutes or so once I actually set the fight up correctly.  Really didn't work out the way I had hoped, having allies come in and help in the fight.

I really like Spore's website, though.  Being able to view anyone's creation from your browser is really neat.  Here's my profile. 

And this is just neat:

I am quite proud of The Horrid.

To my surprise, I managed to find an Easter Egg in Spore.  At the main screen, if you spin the galaxy as fast as you can, pictures of people will fall out of the center of it.  I have yet to find out who these people are.

Moving right along, I was happy to find an email today from Metaplace, proclaiming my new status as a beta tester!  If you haven't heard, Metaplace is the baby of Raph Koster, and is essentially going to be a virtual multiverse of related infrastructure.  It is primarily for making virtual worlds, but the back-endedness of those worlds can carry over to other places.  Or you can license your code to other designers, and get a chunk of the change if they start making money off their game.  Just visit the site, that'll explain it much better than I can at the moment.  Just know that it's kind of a big deal.

So now I guess I'll be looking into learning LUA.  When Metaplace was first announced, there was a huge buzz about it and I quickly found myself helping a fledgling game called MetaPunk get organized.  We wanted to make a cyberpunk game that was really worthy of Shadowrun and Johnny Mnemonic and Neuromancer.  When I wasn't accepted as one of the early beta-testers, I decided that my efforts were better utilized elsewhere.  Now that I'm here, though, I was just in time to see MetaPunk go into stasis.  Until it gets more help, at least.    

Buzzkill, man.  Bad case of deja vu.

The Meaningful Play Conference is just around the corner.  I'm waiting to hear back to see if I can be an Associate and therefore not pay the conference fee, but at least I have a place to stay, now.  Courtesy of Spartasoft's current president, I have a lovely couch to crash on while we raid the conference for three days. 

I'd do my best to Liveblog from the event, but I need to get a new power cord for my laptop still. 

Dino Run Review

I was aiming to put this up onto Giant Bomb, but apparently it's not worthy enough to get an Article. Not entirely certain why that is, but I guess I'll stick a review of Dino Run here, for future reference.

So, Dino Run is one of the best browser-based games I've played, for several reasons. It's not just because it's addictive, either. A lot of nicely designed elements are squeezed into such a little package.

I found that Dino Run was addicting for a very different reason than Civilization or World of Warcraft. Civ's legendary "One More Turn" addictivity stems from the game's management/reward structure. The more you order things around, the more often you get new units to do stuff with - like order them around. Vicious feedback. WoW's engineered to give you just the least amount of reward at just the right time for just barely the most amount of invested time.

Dino Run, on the other hand, is giving you things to react to every couple seconds. Well before you get bored, the race is over, and you see your score go up as well as any awards granted. The game rests firmly in the sweet spot of a Good Story - you know, the "Interesting people dinosaurs doing interesting things in interesting places" thing. Then you get to do it all over again.

Sadly the stages aren't procedurally generated. At least, I don't think they are. With all the different landmarks shuffling around, it's kind of hard to tell. Especially when they change with the difficulty. Which only adds to the replayability - the levels are familiar, yet they're always different. Though what you've learned from previous levels can still be applied to the future ones, since the major landmarks are recycled. For instance, the long flat riverbed that has a large herd of Triceratops is featured in several different stages.

This leads me into the difficulty curve. It's spot on. Especially when you're able to control your dino's increase in stats. Wall of Doom catching up with you? Increase your speed. Having trouble climbing hills? Increase your jump. Hard Levels still too difficult? Drop it back down to Medium and gain some more DNA for your stats.

One of the really cool things about Dino Run's difficulty is that the game tends to generate a steady stream of emergent situations. For instance, I was running along rather merrily when I fell into the second hole of a dual-pit. Jumping to get out, I was snatched up by a blazingly fast pterodactyl, who just happened to be at the right place at the right time (or at least, appeared to me to be, which matters more). This was pretty awesome, as the Doom Wall was fast approaching, and that act probably allowed me to beat the level. On the other hand, the game can harm you this way as well - like blasting a fire boulder down the egg-filled tunnel you were about to hop into, destroying them all and making you work to escape.

The game's frosting would probably be the multiplayer races, which also allow you to customize your runner's coloring a fair amount. If you rock the main game, you can unlock a few crowns and helmets to wear during the race. If you donate to Pixeljam, they'll give you even more hats to show off (including demon horns and an Aliens head).

EDIT! I forgot to include one of my favorite parts about the Immersion experience. The graphics at a glance are very retro, but at the speed you end up going it's actually a boon to only have to process shapes and colors. Besides, your brain ends up extrapolating a ton of detail anyway when you fly past a Stegosaurus, so it's not really a big deal. On top of that, when the Doom Wall gets close, the contrast is ramped up to black silhouettes against a red background. The effect does a great job of accenting the immediate danger you're in.

There's just so many really neat things to this game. I hope it picks up more attention.

Then again, I may just be totally full of it. Who knows.

Thoughts: Economic Analogies for Game Design

There's a recent article at Gamasutra titled, "MMO Class Design: Up With Hybrids! An Economic Argument" that has my interest.

To summarize, the author makes points about how a party has 'Supply and Demand' for particular things during a battle - like 'Tanky-ness' and 'Damage per Second.' This seems obvious at first, but just like an economy, the demand for certain things changes (or at least, should change) throughout an adventure. So non-specialized 'classes' could (should) come in handy and be worthwhile at some point in time, so that pure-specialized tanks, damagers, and healers give up their respective monopolies in favor of balance.

It's an interesting point of view - I for one despise things like hit points and the concept of 'damage per second.' They're a crutch, in my opinion, even though they are a great conduit for simplicity. So while they're needed, I think they're used way too often.

However, I'm more interested in using economic theory to translate data collected by a metrics system, into something to help balance out the gameplay. A 'Supply and Demand' chart for 'tanky-ness' would be fascinating - if not completely vague. Unless your definition is simply 'damage taken vs. total party damage,' but even then it would still be useful to look at. Heck, it would be useful for a min-maxer to look at, too. "Oh, wow, my tankyness dropped 10% (or, demand for my tankyness fell 15 points, etc.) that last Raid, looks like I should go back to using my previous build..."

Could definitely be a useful tool, and something to keep in mind.