Tag Archives: Games

Feats of Nerdity

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My XBox 360 Gamerscore is less than impressive.

My WoW achievement score is quite impressive. Especially if one takes into consideration achievements across multiple characters. Not kidding. I have spent a stupid amount of time and an even more stupid amount of gold getting various WoW achievements.

100 Mounts? I got it. Ring of Dalaran? Yup. Loremaster? Check, check, check, and check. Minipets? At least one on every.single.toon.

Today’s Breakfast Topic on Wowinsider discussed what achievements *should* be in WoW. A great topic to discuss. Many of the suggestions for Burning Crusade raids were exceptional. (Nobody Move – awarded for no one moving during Flame Wreath on Aran. Brilliant.) But many were suggestions that while could mildly be interesting would be terrible WoW achievements. Of course, not to fault the people writing them in, but Blizzard themselves seems to not have a standard for achievement and achievement changes.

Bad WoW Achievements:

1. Any achievement that cannot be completed by every class/race/faction combo. Allowances can be made to have the 2 version achievements for Horde and Alliance. This means no achievement for x amount of spells cast.

2. Any achievement that can only be earned during a single short time. Though having Feats of Strength instead of achievements seems to work well for this.

3. Any achievement that requires leaving the game or something outside of the game.

4. Any achievement that effectively locks out level capped players.

Now having said that, I feel that Blizzard is very arbitrary on achievement creation, criteria, and removal. There are achievements that are wildly specific. And then some entire areas of the game that are ignored. They give achievements for gold loots, but not item loots. There are achievements for professions as a whole, but not for mining x ore, or disenchanting x items.

Of course, due to the fact that they added achievements in Wrath, they didn’t add many of the smaller more interesting dungeon achievements to old world and outland dungeons and raids.

When they remove achievements, for the most part, they make them Feats of Strength (but not all of them, see The Keymaster achievement). Also if they remove an achievement that was a part of a criteria for a meta achievement, they generally remove it from the meta (again not always, look at the Naxx achievements.) They also have been inconsistent with removing rewards from achievements, then not removing rewards from the exact same style of achievement. (See Naxx drakes vs. Ulduar/ICC drakes.)

They need to make achievements consistent. They need to make the removal (which is fine) consistent. They need to make the addition of achievements a part of each major content patch, even if it is just filling in old holes and gaps in the system. Imagine if they simply added a section now that gave a player an achievement for soloing all the classic dungeons?

Like it or not, achievements became a huge part of people’s enjoyment of WoW. Now they need to make it work across the board instead of just being shotgunned across expansions and spurts of creativity by designers.

I was young and needed the achievement points…

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Achievements in games are, depending on who you ask, the best thing ever or the direct proof that designers hate gamers.

I love love love achievements. An achievement for pressing start? I love it. An achievement for collecting 10,000 x? I love it. However, I do understand why some gamers hate (or ignore) achievements. I also think that the industry as a whole needs to do better at understanding what achievements should be.

Why gamers hate achievements:

It is possible most gamers hate achievements because many achievements are badly designed. Or the gamer’s expectation of the achievement does not match the designers expectation of an achievement. Many gamers attribute an “achievement” as something that is difficult. Pressing start? Not difficult. As a designer I view an achievement as a carrot that I apply to side or optional things to drive gameplay. Meaning that I use it as a tool, just like a pickup or any other reward, to drive the player into behaving in a certain manner.

Why designers put bad achievements in their games:

Each console has a set number of achievements. Xbox 360 requires a total of 50 achievements that total 1000 points. Designers attempt a balance of easy, medium, and hard achievements. After about 40 though, generally they start running out of ideas. It becomes a matter of the first person who suggests something that doesn’t sound stupid, goes in. Designers also tend to steal ideas from each other. So all it takes is one game having a terrible achievement, one designer thinking that achievement was a great idea, and thus the terrible cycle is perpetuated.

So what makes a bad achievement?

Any achievement that cannot be completed after a certain length of time. It seems like a great idea. Anyone who plays a game in the first two weeks, bam, an achievement. The thing is, not all gamers are equal. What if someone buys the game and then lets it sit on their coffee table for 3 weeks? What if a gamer is on a fixed income and has to wait to get the game? As a general rule, people hate being excluded. If a gamer buys the game, they deserve to have a fair shot at getting all the achievements.

Multiplayer achievements can be bad. A designer really needs to stop and consider if multiplayer achievements belong in their game. Just like everything else in game design, adding something like multiplayer achievements all depends on the game. Obviously Team Fortress 2 requires multiplayer achievements. Bioshock 2, not so much. While multiplayer was a part of Bioshock 2, they were bad achievements in that game. Unfortunately the multiplayer was only played for so long. So after some time has passed, these achievements are effectively unobtainable. (See above.)

Achievements that take an excessive amount of time doing something that could be considered “grindy”. Again, depending on the gameplay, this definition can be fluid. Excessive is a subjective word, but logically it should make sense. If the game has a play time of 10 hours, an achievement should not take 5 hours to complete unless it is one that requires playing the entire game. For example, in Lego Indiana Jones there is an achievement to kill x number of snakes. Seems simple right? Well the x number of bugs achievement dings about 3/4ths of the way through my first play through, as expected, and as a well designed achievement should. BUT the snakes one didn’t. In fact, after completing the game, then re-completing all the levels to get all the extra hidden stuff I still had not received the snakes achievement. I then spent 2 hours farming snakes to attempt to get the achievement, to no avail. Either the achievement was bugged or simply required too many kills.

Any achievements based on a random number. (See previous blog posts on random.) Achievements should always be a response to something the player has done.

What makes an achievement good?

Anything that is “clever” gameplay. If the game has a system to solve puzzles, then design takes the time to make sure this system works with a wide variety of solutions, the most clever of these solutions should be an achievement. Anything that makes a player feel like they did something nifty.

Anything that could be considered wildly amusing. In Lego Indiana Jones there is an achievement to kill Indiana using Dr. Jones Sr. It’s called That’s Blasphemy. Excellent achievement. It refers to the source material. It is completely possible to get accidentally in normal play. If a player is attempting to get it after completing the game it is very easy to do.

Anything that is considered challenging (not frustrating) within the normal gameplay. Beating the game on the hardest difficulty is a great example of this. Beating a boss without using a health potion? Beating a boss using only the standard attack? Beating a boss without taking damage? All great ideas for achievements.

True dedication to the game. Did they play every class? Did they search tons of hidden places? Break everything (within reason)? Shoot every weapon? These can be ways of rewarding the player for exhaustively trying everything in the game, but remember to keep it within the bounds of not being excessive on time to complete.

Why do I like achievements?

They give the player something to point to and say “Look what I did.” Look, I completed this game to 100%. Look, I did this really crazy thing. Look, I took out that optional boss hidden away in the corner basement. Not to mention they give me a definitive point where I can say, I experienced this game as far as the designer wanted me to.

Achievement points are here to stay. As designers we need to focus on creating fulfilling and meaningful achievements that meet player expectation. Just like everything else, achievements need to fit with the tone and style of the game.

Random the Third

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Time spent leveling to 85? Three days. Time spent grinding dungeons to have enough gear for heroics? Four days. Time spent grinding heroics to get enough gear for raids? Two weeks. Time spent learning a single boss in a raid and finally downing him? Two weeks.

Finally downing a boss only to have him drop THREE pairs of plate tanking boots? When you have a single BEAR tank? Skull bashing frustrating.

Random is not fun. I have said it before and I will say it again.

So if random is so terrible, why is it used so WIDLY in Massively Multiplayer games? It is an archaic and ancient method used by designers to increase difficulty, include “surprise”, and artifically inflate playtime.

My Issues with Random Drops in WoW:

1. Random is a complex idea, frequently misunderstood.

Casinos are completely based on the misunderstanding of random. People pay money into a slot machine believing they will eventually hit the number needed to win.

I frequently have to explain the difference between random chance and probability to players. So why stick to this misunderstood random? We are not trying to con players out of their money. If they are playing, we already have their money. If the general group of players don’t understand random then when they hit a bad streak they will feel a sense of betrayal, like the game is cheating. Or that the game “hates” them. One of a designers common issues is how to match player expectation with what is happening in the game. Why not remove this and instead put in a progressive random, or a even a weighted random that takes into account the player’s time and dedication to the task? This falls in line with player expectation.

2. Random is not fair.

Quell the urge to say life isn’t fair. Games are not meant to parrot life. Even the Sims did not stay true to life. When the player is competing against an AI or the game there is no reason not to be fair. It has a dedication to be fun. I don’t want to endlessly make futile attempts at something while watching another player succeed with seeming ease. This creates a stepping away point, where player one says, “Screw this, I can go play a better game.”

In a game where the acquisition of the newest thing is the goal and success identifier, the player who gives the greatest amount of effort should be rewarded first. If a player spends all their time focused on a single goal, and then spends a great deal of time, proving their dedication, shouldn’t they be rewarded, as opposed to someone who accidentally stumbles on it through a mathematical coin toss?

3. Removal of Random allows the experience to be defined.

If we remove the random element we can truly design the experience the player has. We take control over the fun and can tailor it to be precisely what we want for that point in the game. Also this allow a definable goal or time line to completion. The player knows how long they will be at a task.

The ability to determine the length of time allows the player to set goals and builds excitement towards the reward. As a player gets closer to a reward, they work harder, faster, and more diligently to get closer to it. As I near the required number of badges to buy an item I am far more likely to persist and keep coming back every day to get my daily dungeon done.

4. The inflation of time is unnecessary.

Portal proved a game doesn’t have to be long to worth it’s cost. I would even go so far as to say Portal is so exceptional because it’s experience is so cunningly condensed into it’s purest form then spread over an appropriate amount of time. As the industry gets better at making games, there are more games worth the time to play. But our time is limited. We don’t need artificial inflation of time to keep the player playing. Make each experience engaging and worth the time spent to play it.

In MMOs, it is all about keeping the player playing and thus paying. Interestingly, using rng to artificially inflate the playtime of the game actually drives possible customers away. It also makes the game stale for older customers. If I got 1k gold for every time a friend of mine quit playing WoW because they just didn’t feel like doing the grind any more, I could open my own gold selling business.

The interesting thing is seeing people who will grind on a dungeon for an item for 2 or 3 weeks and never get it. They invariably cancel their account and then return at a later date, only to get stuck in the same situation. I also see where people reach this point of frustration, get convinced to run it one more time, and then get the item, at this point their interest is renewed.

5. Blizzard is ALREADY combating this problem, just not consistently.

One of the big themes that was beat into us at the Guildhall was make your design decision consistent. If you can’t do x in the game, that’s fine. Explain it, and go on, but don’t change the rules, without re-teaching the player. If a barrel that explodes is red, it needs to be red the whole game. You can’t change it to blue without telling the player and giving them a reason why.

Blizzard already has a progressive random integrated for their quest items. They already use badges, crafting, and reputation rewards as partial backup for bad drops. They just need to make it consistent across the board.

There is no reason to cling to this outdated design idea. The difficulty should come from challenges, not in gearing. The surprise comes from new experiences, new raids, new classes, and maybe getting that item early. With the sheer size and scope of classes, raids, professions, dailies, quests, achievements, and even pvp, there is no reason to artificially inflate the playtime. The play time on WoW is already insanely high and they add new content every few months. Even with tweaks to speed old content, there is still more here than a standard player could ever hope to experience. So why not at least give them the chance to see more of it?

It may take a bit more code and a bit more design thought, but doing away with rng would also make a better game. And isn’t that our goal as designers?

There is no pause button…

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I have never been so glad to have the mom I do. Wow Insider’s breakfast topic today dealt with how do you explain WoW to muggles? (Muggles being non-WoW players in this case.)

Several issues were immediately brought up and then rehashed through the comments. I just wanted to take a moment to consider them and talk about what they really mean.

1. People don’t get that it isn’t a single player game.

Several people brought up how they have problems explaining to their parents/friends/significant others that the pretty avatars running around the screen are in fact all being played by other people. The first time I showed my mom WoW, I immediately explained, “You see this guy here, see how his portrait looks? See how his name looks? Okay, see this other guy here, see how his name looks? The first guy, he’s an npc. The second guy, he’s a player.” She then looked around the screen and commented, “But, most of the characters on the screen, they look like players!” I laughed at the surprise in her voice. From that point on, she really grasped that I wasn’t alone in the world.

2. There isn’t a pause button.

When I am not in game, the world keeps on turning.  Players keep logging in and things keep happening, even when I am not there. I can’t pause, because it isn’t a game that relies on my existence. This is where the sports analogy can really take over. To really explain this, most people said things like, “Think about it like the Superbowl. You can’t ask the players to stop playing while you go pee. The game is gonna keep going, you have to pick the best time to run pee. This might be the half-time show. Might be when  player gets injured. Might be when the coaches call a time out.” In WoW, you can’t just press pause and get up to do something. You have to be “safe”. If you are in a battleground, group, raid, etc, you can’t just jump up. You have to wait for half time.

Luckily for me, my mom was used to playing Tetris and understood that even being able to pause the game, when she came back, her flow and mindset for the level was broken and likely would mean restarting. So when she came up to me while playing WoW (or more accurately at the time DAoC) and I said “Sorry mom, busy!” she would say “When you’re in a safe spot, I need you.” And she was cool with that safe spot being 30 minutes or an hour out.

3. The people you are playing with are important and friends.

This is always the point where my husband rolls his eyes and says “Second job…” But my mom always stressed the importance of honoring your commitments, being on time, and being respectful of others and their time. I hate saying I will make a raid and then missing it. People will often respond with, “But it’s just a game.” From the number of comments that other people made, this is a very common issue. Responses to how to explain this generally fall into the sports metaphor. Many commenters likened being a part of a raid team with being a part of a bowling league or team. If you don’t show up to play, no one gets to play.

I show up to raid early, prepared and ready to pull. Nothing annoys me more than players who show up 15 minutes late, without consumables, and goofing off, essentially treating it as if it weren’t important. If it were a single player game, it wouldn’t be. But you have 9 to 24 other people, who deserve respect, waiting on you.

Another thing that came up in the discussion was the implication that these other players aren’t “real”. As if they matter less as people because the major connection with them only exists in a virtual world.  I always consider the fact that a real person, likely much like me, sits behind the avatar in game. But I have had people say things like “Well, your ‘friend’ who may or may not be real.” Chances are I have spoken with these people enough in game that if I call them my friend, I know them well enough to have made that decision. Even more so, chances are they are on my facebook, I have seen pictures of them, or maybe even hung out with them in real life.

4. Yes, it’s a video game… That doesn’t make it any less important to me.

I always love it when people ask me how much I play WoW and I respond with 3-4 hours a night if I head straight home from work, plus 7-8 per weekend day if I can. They are genuinely horrified. Couldn’t that time be spent doing something better?!? I can’t resist laughing. This is the point where I ask: Do you watch TV? Do you watch movies you get on Netflix? Do you play golf? Do you play basketball? Do you hike/bike/swim? Usually the best one they respond with is “Oh of course I watch tv, I watch x show, and x station” etc etc. See the thing is, unless I am playing WoW, I don’t watch tv. WoW is my hobby, just like building boats is Gibbs’ or bowling is Abby’s. Just like my grandpa sat around listening to music and playing his guitar. Just like people who go out and run for an hour every day. Just like people who go and sit at a bar and socialize. The only difference is, I go and socialize with people who live in Canada, New York, Florida, California, and everywhere in between.

I especially like when people are like, you pay 15 bucks a month to play a GAME?!? My retort: You paid how much for those golf clubs and greens fee? You paid how much for that paintball gun? You paid how much for all that camping gear? Football teams spend how much on players???

WoW is no different from any hobby or sport. There are people who get it and people who don’t. To try to explain it, you have to use their words. For most people the sports analogies work pretty well to explain WoW. I am a member of the team. Raids are the games. Dungeons are the practices. The Guild Master or Raid Leader is the coach. My computer is my speed and agility. The internet, my stadium. My guild, my team. In the end, I am the equivalent of a minor league player, who loves the game.

14th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards

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So apparently all Activision developers are enrolled in the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. One of the things they do is like the Oscars, but for video games. As an Activision employee, I was enrolled (though it appears anyone who works in the industry can apply, which is pretty neat) and today received an email asking me to vote on the nominees to determine who would receive the awards for various areas. It’s a pretty neat idea and as games have moved into the area of art, they deserve the recognition.

However I have some issues with the entire process. First off, what pool of games is this pulling from? Minecraft is no where to be seen, so one assumes “indie” games do not count. Also there doesn’t seem to be any consideration given to the size and scope of games in comparison to each other. Angry Birds was a fantastic game. But does it in any way, shape, or form compare to Red Dead Redemption?!? The sheer scope of the games puts them in a different class from each other! (The movies have “shorts” much like this should really keep casual/small games in their own category.)

Second, when the academy votes on movies, they have to take time to view all the movies before voting, while there is no such ability to do so for these games. They ask you to cast votes on things you are certain of. So it is on an honor system. But then, I felt terrible because I had to pick a game with an outstanding soundtrack from a list of games I have never played. I ended up choosing the one that was a sequel to the game I felt had a great soundtrack.

Third, the nominees are heavily focused on about 4 games. Now to be fair, this *can* happen. Look at Lord of the Rings Return of the King. Or this year with The King’s Speech. The thing with the game nominations is that it really feels like people just took one game they played and nominated it for every spot, regardless of how appropriate it is. What this leads to is categories like Innovation in Game Play, where *none* of the games are particularly innovative despite the fact that there are games out there that were wildly innovative. Back to my Angry Birds example, it’s a great game, but physics is not particularly innovative. Half Life 2 did it how long ago? Boom Blox did the exact same thing how long ago? I ended up voting for Heavy Rain, despite the fact that I feel it isn’t really a “good” game because at the very least it tried to be innovative. (Not that quick time events are innovative, but at least the heavy weave of the story, the character outcomes, and such were mildly innovative, though the case can be made that Indigo Prophecy did it first without the quick time events.)

I like the idea of an awards show. Even the Spike awards as an idea appeals to me. But it needs to be a thoughtful consideration with clearly defined areas that allows all games to shine. Unlike movies, games can be wildly divergent and should be compared to their peers. Also the terms need to be clearly defined to the voters. There is a great deal of adjustment that needs to take place for these awards to truly mean something and to be fair.

1001 Video Games You MUST Play Before You Die

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It’s a book. http://www.amazon.com/1001-Video-Games-Must-Before/dp/0789320908

I saw it, got excited, and decided to pick it up, quite a while ago. First off, any book like this *should* be subtitled with “As of 20## year.” Dozens of games are release every week and you never know when a new one is going to be a new Must Play. After all, Minecraft a year ago was barely a peep, and now I would say it is definitely worth the title of a Must Play.

I skimmed some of the index, of course great favorites were present. However, once I got the book home and took some further time to read it, there were dozens of terrible terrible games included. And some wonderful games that were truly great passed over. Not to mention that with 1001 games to list, one will likely have to list a huge number of lesser games. The book, while not great by any means, gets the idea across. There are games worth playing, even if they aren’t up your alley.

Of course, 1001 is over kill, but still, a 100 or so wouldn’t be amiss. (My List, not theirs)

Bioshock, Pac Man, Super Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong, King’s Quest, King’s Quest 6, Zork, Pong, Lego Star Wars, World of Warcraft, Warcraft 1-3, Dune, Command and Conquer, Suikoden, Xenogears, Plants vs. Zombies, so on and so forth. Even if you get snobby and don’t count Facebook games, Windows games (like solitaire) or such, you are still gonna have a ton of great games.

I can forgive terrible games. What I can’t forgive is the serious omission of *critically* acclaimed games. No mention of Dark Cloud, Dark Ages of Camelot, Heroes of Might and Magic, but here we see Knights of the Old Republic 2?!? Really? The buggiest game ever released, and it gets mention? Heavy Rain, but no Indigo Prophecy, from who Heavy Rain stole the story? A slew of Final Fantasy’s, each more redundant than the last, but no Legend of Dragoon, with it’s innovative timing attack mechanic? No addition of Alan Wake or Mirror’s Edge, but we have three virtually word for word ports of Bomberman? Table Tennis makes the cut, but no Xenosaga?  I am shocked Valkyria Chronicles and Persona 4 made it in!

The most obscene of these errors is the inclusion of Suikoden 3, which while a decent game, with an innovative mechanic that allows the story to be told from 3 points of view, but NOT including Suikoden 1 OR Suikoden 2!!! We have every Zelda, even the terrible ones, every Mario, even the terrible ones, Guitar Hero METALLICA, enough Tennis games to choke a horse, games that aren’t even games but MODS of games, indie games that aren’t really games because they don’t have defined goals, Bass Fishing, Wii Sports Resort, 4 Wipeouts, 6 Resident Evils, 3 Space Invaders, and dozens of other sequel prone games that didn’t deserve their second!

To this DAY Suikoden 2 sells at $150 FOR A USED COPY. Clearly this is a game WORTH owning and playing at that cost.

All this has done is confirmed my belief that games reviewers are idiots. And that even if you have 1001 games, you are gonna miss a few diamonds, in addition to getting a ton of filler.

Store Exclusive Bonus Items

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They are incredibly common now. Pre-order X game from X store and get X bonus. It is a logical extension from the 80s and 90s of Sold only at this store. The idea is, if said store is the only one that carries the product, it drives you to go to that store to buy the product. Then, once you buy the product you buy a few other things while there as well. The store gets higher sales and you might come back later. It makes it worth it for the store to bribe the manufacturer to only sell it in said store.

Now they do it with content in video games. The store exclusive never bothered me. Most of the time I would just go in, get the item and leave if I didn’t like the store. Otherwise I probably shopped there already. But what they are doing to video games… THAT bothers me. It’s not a store exclusive, as in the case of a Nerf gun or Lego set, it’s actually taking a chunk of content and removing it from the game and selling it in pieces. To own the entire game you would have to buy it three or four times over, just to get all the bits.

Some would say, well they are just bits, they don’t really matter. My response is, well yes, but I am paying 60 bucks already. I deserve to have access to ALL the bits. And in some instances they even change the game! (Star Trek Online, I am looking at you.) There are valid arguments that it is a business and this is just a part of it. That’s fair. But for the same reason I buy Collector’s Editions (I want more of them) I try to avoid pre-ordering just to get a bonus. And if the person in the store asks, I will tell them. I am very vocal about the fact I think the practice is just wrong and borderline offensive to the gamers that are supporting your product to begin with.

Is there a solution? Of course, and it is very simple too. Make pre-order bonuses temporary. X game is released with x bonus at x store and y bonus at y store. Six months later, release x bonus and y bonus on the console’s downloadable program of your choice for the amount of x game’s pre-order. Ooo, isn’t that interesting? The stores get their bonus, because it is still at launch. By 6 months in, anyone who is going to buy it at your store has bought it, not to mention most of these bonuses are usually directly tied into pre-orders. People who want to support the developer and not the store can. People who don’t care can continue to not care. And I get to calm my wildly OCD desire to have a complete game.

Until a solution is implemented though, I will just keep voting with my wallet, as always.

You know the single player game is done right?

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Once again, an idea from comments on a news post. Some goof ball commented that Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword had been completed, they were just drawing it out to extend the life of the console. Even the Picard-Riker double facepalm isn’t enough to cover that idiocy.

But it reminded me of the time David and I were in Borders, looking for an Iron Man collection. I had just been hired by Sega and was very excited to be working on Iron Man 2: the Video Game. I wanted to read the comic, at least a bit, so I would understand the world and the characters. I couldn’t find it, so when one of the ever so helpful employees walked by and asked if I needed help, I asked if he knew anything about Iron Man and if he did, could he recommend a few of the graphic novels for me.

As it turns out, he didn’t know anything about Iron Man. But he *did* know about Superman and Batman, and began recommending those to me. I interrupted him to point out, I was looking for Iron Man for a very specific reason. I pointed out I wanted to find the ones that covered the time period when Tony Stark was in charge of SHIELD. When he admitted he didn’t know, he asked me why.

Now, I have never been one to keep information to myself, and I quite love the look on people’s faces when they find out I design video games. I am an extrovert, we have no secrets unless they aren’t ours. So I explained to the young man why I was specifically looking for Iron Man stuff. He, as do most people, got very excited and struck up a conversation about video games. One thing lead to another and we got to talking about future games we were looking forward to.

I feel the urge to point out, up to now, David, had been standing silently by, as he always does. He doesn’t like telling people he makes games, and has expressed to me that he doesn’t particularly like when I tell people he makes games. Odd, but generally I respect his introvertedness.

Right as David turns to join the conversation, the Borders Employee says that one of the games he is most looking forward to is Bioshock 2. Of course, David, working on Bioshock 2, immediately clams up. I nod and say I am quite looking forward to Bioshock 2 as well. The guy interrupts me to say, and I will quote as accurately as I can recall:

“You know the single player game is done right? It’s been done. They are just working on the stupid multiplayer. Don’t you just hate when they ruin games by taking time away from the single player to tack on a multiplayer that no one really wants?”

To this day I have no idea how I managed not to laugh in this guys face. Oh, to be fair, he had no *clue* who he was talking to. But surely they know 2k is in the area and they are *likely* to have the employees in the store. I can assure you, not only was the single player not complete at this point, but also the multiplayer, not even being developed by 2k Marin, but rather by Digital Extremes in Canada. Holy wars of the necessity of multiplayer aside, this guy could not have been more wrong. We didn’t say anything, but the very moment we got into our car we both started laughing about it.

After 4 years in this industry, I can honestly say, I can’t imagine a publisher being “done” with a game and *not* shipping it immediately. More than half the time I would say they aren’t done with the game and it gets ripped out of the developers hands and shipped anyway. It’s the great joy of producers to come in and slash features to make sure a game ships on time. And generally the aim of every programmer, designer, and artist to cram as much awesome as possible into the game before then. I am always surprised at how much developers are completely willing to crunch just to get a feature or thing into a game because they truly believe it is going to make it better.

I doubt very seriously that any publisher would *sit* on a game, all done, just to “extend” the life of a console. If anything they would push to release a second game quickly, to extend the life of a console. It is far more correct that games are in fact rarely, if ever “completed” but are instead ripped from their loving womb and shoved into the cold hard world to be broken, criticized, and abandoned, long before they are actually ready to. It’s part of why leads and producers love completion – just make it work type developers so much.

Not about WoW, but rather about Games

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My inspiration for posts often comes from a news article I read. Today’s comes from a member blog post on Gamasutra. It is a QA Tester who believes every company should have a mandatory play hour every day. To play their game. I laughed a bit, started to navigate away and decided to take a moment to read the comments. Imagine my surprise that people were arguing against his point.

I’m sorry… but WHAT?

Were there seriously *game developers* saying we *shouldn’t* be playing our own game? Excuse me while I boggle at that absurdity. If someone had come in and said, I do play our game, more than an hour each day, because I am testing things I am putting in, there might have been a valid point. But these people seemed to have missed the guy’s point. Let me see if I can nail it down a bit better.

When designing, arting, programming a game, the designer, artist, programmer is the FIRST person to see it. I build a level, I put it in. I should immediately be applying values to the level. Is it fun? Does it hold to the spirit of the design? Is it fun? Does it fit in the framework of levels? Is it fun? Does it fit in the game? Is it fun? Is this a treasure area or a combat area? Is it fun? An artist or programmer will likely ask their own barrage of questions (Is it pretty? Does it fit with the theme? Is it optimal? Does it work as intended? Does it work as a system?) but they are the first people to experience the game.

It doesn’t exist unless it is on screen. I first heard this at GDC, and I cannot express how much I love that sentiment. It doesn’t exist unless it is IN THE GAME. Once you can play your game, your daily focus, beyond tasks, is finding the worst thing in your game and fixing it. How do you find the things that are bad and need to be fixed? By playing your game. How will you know what systems are currently in place to use for the best effect? By playing your game. How will you know when the exact piece of art you need already exists, it just isn’t in your level? By playing your game. How do you know it is fun and you are on the right track? By playing your game.

Play it early, play it often, and play it as oddly as you can. Once you feel you have exhausted *every* possible bit of creativity you have, get someone else to play it and watch them. Don’t help them, but watch them. Play it when you are tired. Play it when you are inebriated. Play it when you are caffeinated. Try to play an entire level without killing anything. Try to run past enemies. Try to only use alt fire attacks. So on and so forth.

I love the idea of sitting down and playing something from the game every day. Gather up the design team, sit them down in the conference room and play the level we haven’t seen in the longest. Or the level with the most changes. Talk about it. Just talk out loud. Make different people play it. Attempt to identify where it went right and where it is going wrong. (Here’s the trick, don’t come up with solutions, let the designer think about that later and talk about it later. You’ll get bogged down in problem solving then.) Now, to be fair, no, I don’t think you should base all your opinions on your game off your own design team, but they are the first line of defense against a bad game.

Not playing your own game is almost as absurd as being a game developer and not playing games. As a designer, I try to play new games or significant games every so often. (Or at the very least watch other people play games I am terrible at.) I was once told about a lead, who was interviewing a design candidate. They asked him what he was playing. He responded that he hadn’t been playing games recently but rather had been focused on getting a job. (He, not too shockingly, didn’t get that job either.) When designing games is your career, playing games is the equivalent of taking a refresher class. Taking a certification course. Attending a seminar. More importantly, you have to do it with games you would never play in the first place.

This is why I am so thankful to have family members who play games. I can watch them play, and excel, at games I am abysmal at. I can watch them and determine why they are fun (despite not being fun to me) and then apply that later.

As I boggled over the seemingly absurd responses, I did note one thing. Several people assumed because he was QA that a. he was talking about focus testing or b. his point was invalidated because he was QA. If there ever was a time i wanted to reach through the internet and slap someone, it would be now. Never discredit an idea because it comes from an unexpected source. A shocking number of design ideas I have had come when doing something completely absurd, or talking about something not even remotely close to the issue I solve. If an artist comes up with a great gameplay idea, I am not going to discount it because it’s his job to make the level pretty. If it makes the game better, use it.

Finding the Fun – Facebook Edition

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Recently I decided to wade back into the putrescent and vile waters of Facebook gaming. I clearly did not have high hopes. Most Facebook games seem to be a small step above Progress Quest with monetary purchases that either completely unbalance the game to those who buy or have no worth. It seems to be an all or nothing deal which I believe is indicative of an overabundance of marketing/business people and a dearth of true game designers. The thing is, I can *see* the potential. Much like I imagine early game designers saw the potential in 3d graphics, online multiplayer, and motion control. This *could* be the next great stage of gaming. This could be the thing that pushes gaming into the wide main stream and silences all such arguments about the “outcast violent gamer” stereotypes.

I don’t even want to say how disappointed I am that such a cultural shift might come from something as absurd as Facebook or even any other social networking site. It feels like a thing that should come from the indie community, or from a AAA publisher. But I will take it any way I can get it.

Square Enix released a Final Fantasy “Mafia Wars” type game. I did not believe that this game would be true FF quality, as I was fairly positive it was outsourced to some for hire studio. But it was possible it had at least improved upon the quality of Facebook games.

To begin with, this game has very little to do with Final Fantasy, with one major exception. You have classes, and each of these classes are able to be changed out as you play. It seems even like one of the major goals is to gather new classes. The art is simple drawings, without a single animation. You go on accept quests, with no narrative and collect gear that simply allows you more access to new accept quests. You collect 7 of randomly dropped items for collections which are then converted to a new class medallion. They could and should take this about 10 more steps forward in complexity and make class decisions an actual choice with independent leveling in true FF style.

The interesting thing was, not much varied from other games of it’s ilk, except for a bug. This bug allowed you to add “companions” of other players without adding them to your Facebook friends. It allowed you to ask for help on click quests and such, without having them be friends. Now, you couldn’t send free gifts to each other, but you could send items you had already acquired.

And I was having a blast. I had added almost 400 random people from the discussion boards and was merrily tromping through quests and pvp fights with the greatest of ease. I didn’t know any of those people, but I gifted extra items, clicked on chest links, clicked to help with quests, and gifted action packs. I was wildly enjoying my progress quest, even though it meant very little, because I had all these friends helping me.

Of course, the company eventually fixed the bug and I lost all my ill gotten friends. Now it is me, and the lowly 4 people I managed to convince to play with me. And to be honest, it isn’t as fun or as consuming. I can still win at pvp, I can still quest with the greatest of ease, it’s just not as much fun because I don’t have 400 people to share it with. I don’t have 400 people to share items, help on quests, and give power packs to. I had found the fun in a game that had no business being fun. Then the developer ripped that fun away.

Now the true question is: How do I replicate that in a game, while still retaining the marketing desire for you to peer pressure your friends into playing?