What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You?
Wow, who'da thunk you'd see silly surveys on the Internet. I've never seen one of those before :) But this one was sorta fun. For those of you running your own business:

WHAT KIND OF ENTREPRENEUR ARE YOU?

I still don't really think of myself as an entrepreneur.... I'm more of a guys who makes and sells videogames. I'm not even sure I'm actually spelling "entrepreneur" correctly. But my result was:

Your Entrepreneur Type:

The Artisan

You are a practical, hard working, honest individual who believes anything worth doing is worth doing well.

Entrepreneurial strengths:

• persistence
• integrity
• multi-disciplinary and self-sufficient
• works well in teams

Entrepreneurial weaknesses:

• risk aversion
• difficulty with the big picture and abstraction
• personality may not be forceful enough to lead

What's pretty interesting (to me) is that when I first started RampantGames.com, I think I'd have gotten a completely different type. Probably "The Geek." Not that this is all that accurate of a test or anything. But I've noticed - with some amusement and even astonishment - how my attitudes and focus has changed so much over the last three years. Topics that bored me to tears when I was in my 20s now fascinate me. Things like personal productivity, team management, marketing, and so forth.

But I still love making - and playing - games. And it's still all about making something cool. I don't expect that to change.

Labels: Biz

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:20 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Twenty Hours to Level Up
I am trying something new.

Based upon my success (such as it was) creating an RPG from scratch in 40 hours, I'm going to be working on 20 hour iterations on Apocalypse Cow. While the 20 hours aren't going to be necessarily consecutive, the idea is to focus my time the same way I was able to focus it on that micro-project.

Every 20 hours, Apocalypse Cow is going to level up.

The idea is this: I'm going to start working in 20 (working) hour iterations. That's (theoretically) a week for a part-time indie like me. I am going to shoot for having a "release" for Apocalypse Cow at the end of every iteration. Now, "release" doesn't mean a final release to public, but it should be releasable for those working with me on testing. But I am going to be treating it as if it was a release candidate. I'm going to focus and plan out my time and project for every single hour with that goal in mind.

After all, that's the goal of iterative prototyping - with each completed cycle, you have a product that could be labeled "finished."

I'm jumping into some less-familiar territory at this stage due to the amount of work I have to do with content. While I'm getting third-party help for content, I still have to do a bit of it myself. I'm not much of an artist. It's quite possible I'm going to blow 10+ hours at a shot on a single low-polygon model or polishing up an interior level. But that's just what it has to take --- things aren't gonna get any easier with the RPG looming on the horizon after AC is done.

I'm hoping this will really help me focus on actual meaningful deadlines, and encourage me to put in those hours that I need for this final stretch. After all, it's an addictive mechanic in RPGs, MMORPGs, The Sims, and so forth --- so why not real life, huh?

I'll let you know how this goes.

Labels: Apocalypse Cow, productivity

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:46 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
GameTap Launchies "Indies" Label
Yet more distribution opportunities for indie game developers. Turner Broadcasting has announced "GameTap Indies," designed to distribute indie games to its subscribers. It's a non-exclusive service, so it's a viable distribution opportunity.

Whether or not it'll be worthwhile or not remains to be seen. But it's nice to see more opportunities open up.

GamaSutra: GameTap Launches "Indies" Label, IGF Award.

On top of that, GameTap is sponsoring three new awards for the IGF - spotlighting the best independent games. To get the cash prizes, the recipient must sign a five-year distribution contract with GameTap. That little caveat might not be so cool, but I can understand GameTap not wanting to spotlight a game they don't actually offer.

This is one heck of an interesting time to be an indie. Maybe it's just my vantage point and indie tunnel vision, but it sure feels like the whole nature of the games industry is experiencing a fundamental shift, doesn't it?

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:35 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
BYU Study Links Bible Passages To Aggression
Apparently, my alma mater, Brigham Young University, conducted a study very similar to one of the studies that linked violent videogames to aggression. In fact, one of the researchers was on the team that did the research most often cited linking real-world aggression with violent videogames. But instead of videogames, they used the Bible as their violent medium of choice.

The findings? Very similar to the videogame studies. Biblical passages about violence and, more specifically, justifying the violence were linked to an increase in aggression.

The story is in today's Deseret Morning News (the same paper that generally took a favorable attitude towards the anti-videogame legislation being promoted by local lawmakers). You can check out the full report here:

Research Links Scripture to Some Hostile Acts

As a religious university, BYU is obviously already feeling some concern about the political unpopularity of the results of this study. BYU takes scripture study very seriously, and requires 14 credit hours (basically a full semester) of religion classes to graduate --- including study of the Bible.

Professor Robert Ridge, explaining his findings, said, "We're not saying that just in and of itself violent media is uniformly bad but oftentimes there is no redeeming context to it. If one reads the scriptures with an understanding of context, both historical as well as with a (desire) to hear what God is trying to teach us, you can read it in a different way. But if a person dives into (a violent passage) without the context, you could probably get some increased aggression."

Well, I guess that just about explains the Crusades. We just can't have nice things, can we? People will twist any belief, philosophy, or ideal to justify their actions. I mean, I used to joke about militant Buddhists, but apparently that's no laughing matter, either. That Buddha was a meanie, huh?

But seriously, just like the videogame study, I take this study with a grain of salt small Siberian salt mine. Not that the results of the research are wrong - it's just that it can be something of a stretch to form a larger correlation about real-world aggression or violence based on the results of these studies. I guess it's a news flash that --- hello! - We're all influenced by the world around us. Be it media, scriptures, some guy cutting us off on the way to work, watching our favorite team win a basketball game, or having a coworker say, "Good job!"

Not exactly a news flash, but I think it helps put the previous study in perspective.

Hmm... think anyone's gonna try and push through legislation to criminalize selling the Bible to minors now?

Tip o' the visor goes to GamePolitics.com for the scoop.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:58 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
How to Make a Better RPG With Procedural Content
Dan C. recently posted an article about procedurally generated content entitled, "Content Is Bad," contending that as budgets increase, procedurally generated content becomes not only desireable, but critical. Jason Booth, formerly of Turbine Entertainment (makers of Asheron's Call, D&D Online, etc.) responded with another article entitled, "Procedural Content." Booth talks about using procedural content as a tool, but cautions that it cannot be expected to be some panacea that can generate infinite playability for little or no development effort. He notes "People are incredibly adept at seeing past the algorithm and sensing the underlying possibility space, and tiring of its parameters. As such, there is no such thing as infinite content."

He's not wrong. Ask anyone who played Daggerfall till the end... after a while the quests began to resemble re-used "Mad Libs." And while I adored Frontier, there was definitely a point at which the procedurally generated universe ceased to amaze and intrigue, and really did resemble just so much math. Sure, you can enhance the procedural generation to extend its value, but eventually you'll come up against the same wall. Procedural content may provide infinite content, but too much of it will be boring, "filler" content.

What's needed is a good mix of custom-created content with procedural variants, to reduce the boring repetition of the same (expensive) custom content. I'm thinking specifically of Jeff Vogel's recent complaint about having to kill the same wolf 200 times to gain a level. Why does it have to be the same wolf? Why couldn't each combat throw in some new and interesting challenges and variations?

Using Procedural Content For Enemy Variation
The latest incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons has some incredibly flexible mechanics for modifying monsters. First of all, there's advancement. If the monster is intelligent, you may be able to advance it in its chosen class(es), just like a player character. With literally hundreds of core and "prestige" classes amongst first- and third-party materials, there are a ton of interesting possibilities there. A medusa assassin, a minotaur monk, whatever. You can also use standard advancement on a monster with... uh, no class. As you advance a creature, it may get new feats and skills. So what may appear at first glance to be a garden-variety orc could actually be an acrobatic specialist in the use of the bo staff.

You can also apply templates to monsters to change their fundamental type. For example, you can apply the "fiendish" template to any monster to give them an origin from one of the "lower planes." This gives the creature some new special abilities, and may increase their difficulty a bit. The template is easy to apply, and doubles the potential monsters all by its lonesome. But there are many more templates. Like the half-dragon template, designating a creature that is the offspring of a dragon and some other creature, gaining some of the attributes of their draconic parent (The plethora of half-dragons found in official Dungeons & Dragons supplements indicate that in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, dragons are extremely horny and will mate with anything capable of reproduction).

The templates and advancement can even be mixed... you could have a half-green-dragon fiendish Orc with 6 Barbarian levels. Armed with a +1 Keen Great Axe, with weapon focus and Improved Critical feats with said axe. Which would be something at least a couple of orders of magnitude more dangerous than an average orc. Not something you'd probably want to tangle toe-to-toe.

And that's just one orc.

Procedural Content for AI Variety
With real-time combat against a single opponent, there probably isn't much the player can see in terms of AI variation. But against groups of enemies - especially in a turn-based system - even subtle differences might show through. Again, the acrobatic bo-staff wielding orc comes to mind. Or perhaps a spellcaster that emphasizes specific types of spells - not just different elemental types for "big booms," but more subtle or indirect spells.

Or maybe this very specialized half-ogre.

How the AI opponents interact with each other could be far more interesting and unique than how they interact with the player. Watching them apply their specializations (procedurally generated specializations?) with each other using tactics resembling actual teamwork would be the goal --- though that is often hard enough to implement without procedural variations.

Another area where this could get interesting is throwing around dialog in combat. In F.E.A.R., overhearing the enemy communication with each other really helped the AI come alive" for the player. While it may be impossible to pull off in this day and age of canned voice recording (text-to-speech synthesis still hasn't come along very far in the last 20 years), this could also accentuate the unique differences in style and abilities of the enemies as they team up against the player.

For comic-book geeks out there, imagine each enemy group of goblins barking out melodramatic commentaries and suggestions to each other in full supervillain-team style as they go up against the players. "Snotnose, hit them with your Moon-Ray!" Or, "Hey, guys, I'm taking a pounding! Can I get some healing over here?" How about, "Ah, lucky for me I am well-trained in dodging fireballs, such as those clumsily lobbed by your wizard!" Maybe even, "I spent the last several years developing an immunity to iocaine powder!" Cheesy? Definitely. But it would also help focus player attention on these actual variations, rather than chalking it all up to noise in the random-number generator.

Oh, and speaking of goblins named Snotnose... how about giving intelligent NPCs procedurally-generated names? Players are used to seeing a proper name as a sign for a special "boss monster," but I don't know that this kind of meta-gaming is really a good thing or not. And I don't know if players will actually care about groups of "Blugh the Orc," "Deathblade the Orc," "Sniggerbuckle the Orc," and "Trippy the Orc" when the names are all pulled out of a hat. But it's an idea.

Procedural Content for Visual Variety.
The next trick is that the 200 completely different wolves all look the same.

Once upon a time, games would use the trick of "palette swapping" to re-color the same sprite to designate variants of similar monster types. You'd battle blue ninjas, then red ninjas, then green ninjas, and finally black ninjas. Or something. The artists only had to create one ninja, and the software could color the rest. While it wasn't very exciting, it did the trick.

While this is sometimes used in the 3D game world, often it comes down to swapping textures. That's nice, but good hand-created textures can be just as time consuming as creating the model or animations. But can something be done procedurally to modify the models?

Some games have started swapping out anatomy and equipment. Oblivion did this for human opponents that the player encountered, so that while they all looked vaguely similar, they were at least distinguishable. Unfortunately, they didn't do the same thing with monsters, so that one minotaur looked very much like all the others.

Using shaders and geometry deformation, swapping pieces models around (like different heads in Neverwinter Nights), and random scaling you can add a great deal of variation that can make battles feel a little less like a stream of clone warriors. You could also have a texture overlay (decals) to give the enemy some interesting tatoos, hair color, facial scars, or what have you. Where appropriate, you could even use procedural particle systems to certain creatures.

Breaking the visual monotony can be just as important as breaking the gameplay monotony.

Procedural Crap
Perhaps this won't always be welcome by players. As demonstrated by attitudes in massively multiplayer games, players gravitate towards consistency and predictability. Even random variations in "hit points" (how much damage something can take before dying) are often unwelcome. And in all honesty, I don't think I'd want major variations in every fight - I like being able to learn the best way to take out that wolf, which might take me a few tries to figure out, plus a few tries to apply what I've learned.

Another concern with all procedural content is the likelihood of bugs - possibly game-killing bugs - appearing in certain rare combinations. It's impossible to check every possibility in testing with "near-infinite" procedural content, and it's always possible that some unforseen nasty combination will ruin the game for a player. Maybe the "fiendish" and "half-dragon" templates are fine by themselves, but the combination for certain monsters makes them vastly more powerful than anticipated. Or, worse, it ends up spawning in a peculiar spot that makes it impossible to attack, and it happens to carry the key necessary to get through the game. (Daggerfall had this sort of thing happen all the time, which they eventually resolved by simply publicising the debug codes to help players if they got stuck).

These concerns aside, I think that careful and clever use of procedural content as spice rather than meat could not only ease developer workload and help reduce the expense of creating RPGs, but also improve player enjoyment. It's a win-win scenario, but there's still a bit of experimentation that needs to be done.

Here's hopin'!

Well, actually, there's a bit more than just hoping taking place here at Rampant Games. But I can't talk about that right now. Especially since Apocalypse Cow isn't out the door yet.


(Vaguely) related words, vaguely associated with each other:
* RPG Design: The "Brute Force" problem
* The Evolution of Computer RPGs
* Why Does Jeff Vogel Hate RPGs?
* Designing a Computer RPG Rule System
* Innovation in RPGs

.

Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:58 AM (Permalink) 7 comments links to this post

 
Jeff Tunnell on the Great Games Experiment
Jeff Tunnell (founder of Dynamix and Garage Games) speaks up on the Great Games Experiment in an interview.

Excerpt:
"The industry is finally starting to recognize the Indie scene. GarageGames has been working for this since 1999, and as new people come in the market, they act like they are the first to recognize the market. But, everybody that comes into the market makes it stronger, and I think Indies have a bright future. However, not everyone will make it. In fact, it will be extremely difficult to make a living making games, but it is possible and will become even more possible for people that understand the huge amount of work involved in making a career of making games."

Check out the whole article:
Jeff Tunnell on the Great Games Experiment

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:06 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Supreme Commander Quick Take
There's a long list of upcoming and recently-released games that are on my list to pick up when I can afford 'em (and afford the time). I'm afraid I'm going to have to put a moratorium on purchasing some of them until after Apocalypse Cow is done. (And dang it, I have been waiting for Dark Avatar to pick up Gal Civ II, also. And now it's out and apparently rocks. Too many games, too little time!)

But Supreme Commander is one I have been anxiously awaiting for a long time. In fact, one might say I've been waiting for it since 1998 or so. So I picked it up and have been trying it out for too many hours.

In a nutshell --- Supreme Commander is Total Annihilation 2. I don't know how to explain it any better than that. In fact, as I'm playing, I keep hearing the soundtrack to Total Annihilation playing in my head. Chris Taylor has pretty much borrowed good from his previous game, made it even cooler, and given it a new name. If and when the "official" TA2 ever arrives, it's probably going to discover that a new king has taken over it's long-abandoned kingdom.

For those who never played Total Annihilation, it was a Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game that came out around the same time as StarCraft. It never gained quite the notoriety as StarCraft (I mean, sheesh, they made an OPERA about the latter game in Korea and made it practically a national pastime!), but it developed a rabid following. It was too big and popular to be called a "cult classic," but it's considered by most to be one of the best RTS games of all time.

However, it was also very different from most other RTS games in many ways. For one thing, the most important factor wasn't how many resources you currently possessed, but rather your rate-of-change - your production rate versus your expenditure rate. You were constantly producing tons of weaponry in that game, and all that production cost a ton of energy and minerals. In addition, your buildings cost energy to operate (though you could temporarily shut them down to save costs), and some of the gigantic static siege weapons required enormous amounts of energy to fire.

Another difference was that there was an avatar that essentially represented "you" on the battlefield, the Commander. In the default gameplay mode, destroying the commander eliminated that player. Even with that option turned off, destroying the commander resulted in an explosion equivalent to a nuclear bomb going off, wiping out everything within a wide radius. And as he was one of the most potent combat and production units on the battlefield, and irreplaceable, defeating the enemy Commander really hurt the other player.

Consequently, most winning strategies were focused on an early defeat of the enemy commander, or crippling his production.

Radar and stealth also played a pivotal role in the game. So a lot of sub-strategies involved blinding your opponent prior to an attack.

Two other noteworthy elements came into play. The game had 3D units (which was a new idea back in 1997), which allowed for some really believable motion and animation that was too cost prohibitive with 2D graphics. The aircraft banked as they darted and turned on their attack runs, and spun into the ground as they were destroyed. The artillery units rocked believably as they fired, and the tank turrets recoiled. As objects were destroyed, they flung pieces of themselves all over the map. And the production queues kept churning out more and more air, land, and sea units to make the conflicts huge and epic. When you were watching the battles in Total Annihilation play out, the chaos of the modern battlefield was visceral and believable. It was an incredible thing to see.

The other thing that 3D units brought to the table was that they were able to create a staggering number of units - they were cheaper to build and less memory-intensive than 2D units which had to have every frame of animation from every angle and action built and stored in memory. Now, purist veterans of other games didn't like this feature so much - it made battles confusing with so many different ways you could attack or react to an attack. The simple rock-scissors-paper equation of most RTS games was exponentially increased as you could combine land, sea, and air forces into really creative strategies. This led to battlefield tactics feeling very... organic. And creative.

And it had to be. Because resources were unlimited, a game could into a stalemate condition that could last indefinitely. Players could hole up in almost unassailable positions, with such strong defenses that brute force attacks would fail miserably. This could lead to very long games.

Now, it's too early for me to give a definitive answer. But as far as I can tell, everything I've just said about Total Annihilation applies equally to Supreme Commander.

Now, the specifics of some of the sneaky tactics that worked in TA have changed. There were a number of dirty tricks that were popular in TA that I don't know about in Supreme Commander, but I am already able to envision how some of the "organic" tactics will start to pan out with the game (and with whatever expansions come down the pipe).

A couple of examples of what I'm talking about in Total Annihilation: Your air transports were capable of picking up an enemy unit. I haven't tried this in Supreme Commander. It was hard to pull off, as the transports would usually be destroyed if they tried. But if you pulled it off, you could kidnap an enemy unit. They would be helpless as long as they were being held by the transport. If the transport was destroyed, they would be, too.

Remember what I said about what happens to the commander was destroyed?

One "cheap" way to victory (almost impossible to pull off unless your opponent was half-asleep) was to create an early fleet of air transports and scouts, and send them off to kidnap the enemy commander. You'd lose most of them in the attempt, but if you could kidnap him, you could fly him over a high-priority target (the center of his base), and either let enemy defenses destroy you or self-destruct your plane. The resulting explosion would cripple your opponent in the early game, even if the destruction of the commander wasn't set to an instant-win scenario.

Another, less cheap trick was to use crawling mines combined with air transports. Crawling mines were extremely slow vehicles that exploded with about half the force of a nuke. One mid-game strategy was to combine these with fast-moving air transports to create poor-man's nukes (or nukes not vulnerable to missile shields in the late game). You'd send a bunch of these through enemy defenses, either to self-destruct over the defenses, or to be destroyed by the defenses when they were close. The resulting explosions from the crawling mines would take the defenses out with them, which - if done right - could leave a gaping hole in their perimeter for you to rush in with your air units, followed up by ground support.

Now, most RTS games have little tricks like this you can pull. Experienced players have a whole bunch of them up their sleeves, backed up with very sound traditional strategies and very solid production priorities and unit control. But Total Annihilation seemed to have far more than its share, with new ones opening up that the designers had never intended with every new unit released online (one other innovation of the game) and with the expansions. And after some early game-balance problems were addressed, players found an effective defense against every tactic - conventional or unconventional.

So far, it seems like Supreme Commander may the heir to the legacy.
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:24 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
History of Computer Role-Playing Games, Part II
Around Christmas last year, Matt Barton did an awesome article about the history of computer RPGs. GamaSutra bought the rights to parts II and III, which is perhaps why we didn't see the next installment last month.

But the new one is now up! Well worth reading, covering the "Golden Age" of RPGs between 1985 and 1993. Right before they "died." Only it turned out they weren't dead, only sleeping.

Ah, the memories.

In case you need to review, they've reprinted part I as well:

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games, Part I

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games, Part II

Here's hoping Part III will arrive very soon....

.

Labels: Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:57 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Why Does Jeff Vogel Hate RPGs?
Jeff Vogel, Indie RPG developer, has been broken. He wrote a controversial rant a couple of weeks ago - part one of two actually - about why he hates RPGs. He states,

"During my recent intense bout of this market research (heh!), I finally came to terms with the fact that, after 23 years of playing them, I hate fantasy RPGs. I hate them, and I hate myself for making them."

I've been mulling this over for a couple of weeks now. Jeff has been personally been responsible for the design and development of more commercial RPGs than about anyone else in the industry --- and I'm including big names here like Richard Garriott. He's got something like 14 different commercial RPGs under his belt that he's personally created. So I figure that this guy knows of what he speaks.

That's a little scary. I mean, the guy has been doing indie RPGs for something like 13 years now, and he's one of the more successful completely indie game developers out there. I aspire to succeed as he has. And I love RPGs (well, I love many RPGs... I've played my share of crap). But I wonder if this is where that path leads?

Film Parallels
I used to marvel at how dissassociated movie critics were when they'd pan "crowd-pleasing" hit movies. I thought it was pure snobbery. As I've watched quite a few more movies in my life, and met a few movie critics (maybe I should call them "journalists" instead of "reviewers" or "critics"), and I now understand where they come from. After seeing the same formula repeated over and over in a thousand films that fortunately most of us never have to see, they become pretty jaded. My wife and I are familiar enough with the Hollywood formulas that we can recognize a formula movie and predict plot twists in a general fashion quite a bit in advance. We're okay with that. We still enjoy the film, even if its underlying skeleton is familiar to the point of being a cliche'.

But we haven't seen nearly the number of films as your average film-critic veteran.

In a similar vein, I don't think I've played nearly as many CRPGs as Jeff Vogel. Maybe that also explains Matt Pekham's sudden attack on the entire genre in his now-retracted Neverwinter Nights 2 review. After a while, that level of familiarity breeds contempt. Maybe. Go ask Scorpia. She certainly sounds frustrated with the mediocrity the genre has settled for, especially after having glimpsed the glorious possible evolutionary path it could have taken back in Ultima IV twenty years ago.

It sound an awful lot like those movie critics complaining about how the last great film to come out of Hollywood was The Godfather, and everything coming out of "The New Hollywood" (created by Star Wars) has been crap.

Mechanics and Story
Breaking down his arguments, though, it seems to come down to two separate complaints (with several examples of the complaints): Mechanics, and Story. Jeff explains, "Fantasy role-playing games are unique among computer games in one thing: they are fundamentally about starting out weak and learning to be strong. And that learning process generally involves a lot of tedium."

The whole point of the game mechanic is to upgrade your avatar (character) over time, to gain enough power to take on bigger challenges. In many Massively Multiplayer RPGs, this addictive mechanic has been exaggerated to accomodate months and years of play, to the point where it is almost a distorted parody of itself, lampooned in some "games" like ProgressQuest and Kingdom of Loathing. Players have come to refer to it as "the treadmill."

As far as story is concerned, the formula is ancient. Called the "Hero's Journey" or "Monomyth," it's a classic story skeleton common throughout literature, movies, folklore, and ancient mythology. It begins with the everyman hero - Joe Nobody, an insignificant person in a world of much bigger people and events that the audience can identify with. He (or she) is the Frodo Baggins, the Luke Skywalker, the Peter Parker, the Ripley of Aliens, and even the Peter Venkman of Ghostbusters orJason Nesmith of Galaxy Quest. This character finds himself propelled by dramatic events into the Hero's Journey.

It's worked thousands (millions?) of times, it'll continue to work long after we're all dead. The formula is branded into the psyche of the human race.

The story structure fits perfectly into the game mechanics of the RPG. In fact, it's arguable that the game mechanics of the RPG have proven so successful over the years because they so closely resemble the classic story structure that is so much a part of the human experience.

Is The Problem In Design Or Implementation?
My big question to Jeff Vogel (which I hope he'll answer in a future column) is if this is a problem with fundamental design, or with implementation?

Is it a fundamental problem with the gradual powering-up of the player avatar, the structure of the Hero's Journey, and the way RPGs have melded them together? If so, then he's basically screwed.

Even though he talks about the gradual powering-up of your avatar (in plot and mechanics) as being something singular to RPGs, the structure is found in many other games genres as well, particular in the most successful titles. In F.E.A.R., you start as the "new guy," someone the real soldiers joke about (right before they are melted to soup-and-bones by the game's principle antagonist). In Half-Life, you also begin as the "new guy," a lab assistant who is little more than an overeducated janitor, who begins his only partially successful save-the-world campaign armed with a flashlight and a crowbar. In Monkey Island, you play a young, naive pirate wannabe.

The increase in power or status may only be evidenced in the story (as in Monkey Island - your abilities stay the same, but you become the captain of a ship and the nemesis of the most feared villain in the game-world), by the aquisition of better equipment (most single-player FPS games), by the growth of other external resources (such as in most "Tycoon" games), within your characters internal capabilities (most RPGs), or a combination of all of the above. Start small - end big. Everyone's dream. Classic or cliche, it WORKS as it has for millenia, and designers deviate from it at their own risk.

Now, the flip side is the actual implementation. If this is more at the heart of Jeff's concern, I empathize. Too many games - especially RPGs, which nowadays have a requisite expectation from players of stretching gameplay out over at least 24 hours of play-time - wallow in the early stages far too long. This doesn't scale so well. From this, you get complaints from players who endure session over session of unheroic "make-work" to prove themselves worthy of getting to the good stuff. Make-work which is both uninteresting from a story perspective, and tedius from a game-mechanics point-of-view.

And this is perhaps the cardinal sin of RPGs - online or single-player. You don't ever want to be boring. Yet a multimillion dollar industry has emerged, called "RMT" or "Real Money Trading," where you effectively trade real-world money for someone else to play the game for you, to get you past the "boring parts" in massively multiplayer games. In the single-player's corner, the Final Fantasy series is perhaps one of the most notable offenders, forcing the player to wade through tons of irritatingly identical encounters between the "good parts." At least in the newest game (which I am still playing), the "filler" encounters aren't just thrust opon you at random anymore.

Jeff complains about having "to spend time wandering around and killing the same wolf 500 times so I could get experience and get stronger. " I think the complaint is right on the money. Tedium should be eliminated in ANY game. It'd be easier if all players got bored by exactly the same thing, so it's not easy to pinpoint.

But the usual suspects keep lurking about. There are millions of variations to the Hero's Journey, yet most RPGs (and too many fantasy novels) don't stray too far from Lord of the Rings. Can't we shake it up a little bit more than that? And we keep trying to entertain players for 30+ hours by giving them 10 hours of entertainment mixed with 20+ hours of filler. We need more meat, less fat.

It's not easy, but I think we can do better.


(Vaguely) related blithering idiocy:
* But Is It An RPG?
* RPG Design: Why Can't I Get Past the Stupid Door?
* How To Get Me To Buy Your Indie RPG
* RPG Twists I'd Like To See
* RPG Design Seed Challenge
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Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:10 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
I'm The New RPG Section Editor for GGE
The Great Games Experiment is going to be opening its doors to the general public in a couple of weeks. Recently, they asked me to be the section editor for RPGs.

Things are still kind of evolving here, and the Great Games Experiment staff has kinda left things open to me (so far) to define my own role as what being a section editor is supposed to be all about. Mainly, I'm to keep an eye on the RPG titles, make any changes that seem necessary if something is improperly represented, and spotlight really cool games. The emphasis for the spotlights seems to be on indie games --- after all, the famous games have plenty of spotlight already. The point is helping gamers find games that they might never have heard of which they will enjoy.

The key as to whether GGE will take off or not is its community. The community that greets new members will establish the feel and flavor of the site, and it's evolution to come. And the key to GGE's success will be whether or not there's an active, lively community with things happening when people arrive.

So - I've got a whole bunch of beta invites burning a hole in my pocket. Since there's a pretty lively bunch of gamers (and RPG fans!) here in this community, if you are interested in participating in the beta of GGE and helping with the last-minute preparations / bug-finding / shaping of things to come, please let me know and I'll send you an invite (until they run out). You can contact me at feedback --- AT --- rampantgames.com.

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- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:02 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Guitar Hero for the Commodore 64!
Just all kinds of retroish-news goodness today. Old-school adventure games, the return of Wing Commander, and now...

Guitar Hero for the Commodore 64!

Labels: Guitar Hero, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:31 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
The Return of Wing Commander?
Perhaps my all-time favorite series may be making a limited comeback - this time as an XBLA download:

Wing Commander Arena Announced

According to the press release, there will be single-player, multi-team, multi-player free-for-all, and multi-player duel game modes for up to sixteen players. It's going to be more of a multiplayer dogfight game, from the sounds of it, than a story-heavy campaign.

Hmmm.... sounds a bit like Void War :)

Creating an interesting dogfight in space can be quite challenging. If they include big objective-based battles with capital ships (as implied when they mention gravity bombs and torpedoes), that can keep things pretty interesting. And they'd BETTER use the real ships from the series, instead of making up their own.

In fact, I'd really love to see all the ships from the WC1 and WC2 era - now that they can resemble their curvy, raytraced-bitmap originals instead of the blocky WCIII + ships.

Labels: Game Announcements

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:25 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Top 20 Freeware Adventure Games of 2006
Independent Gaming has a round-up of the Top 20 Freeware Adventure Games of 2006. For the puzzle-solving impaired, they have included a walkthrough for every game, as well.

Many of them look a fair sight better than many adventure games I played and enjoyed in the late 80's. I tried the Indiana Jones game briefly, and it seemed to retain the flavor of the old LucasArts SCUMM engine games, albeit a overly wordy in the intro. The Missing sounds really intriguing. Unfortunately, some of these games are just "works in progress" released as demos to the public. But free is a good price, and now I just have to find the time.

Labels: Adventure Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:00 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Console Indie: An Interview With Steve Taylor of NinjaBee
What does it take for an indie game developer to make downloadable games for the newest generation of consoles? I've heard a lot of indie and aspiring indie developers ask this question. Steve Taylor is the president of Wahoo Studios (AKA NinjaBee), which is on the cusp of releasing their third XBLA title for the XBox 360. So he ought to be the guy to ask!

Wahoo started out as a more traditional "gun-for-hire studio", but in late 2004 it set out on the path of the indie, releasing their self-funded (and award-winning) PC independent "tycoon" game, Outpost Kaloki, as a downloadable game. The next year, they followed up with Outpost Kaloki X, a new version for Live Arcade for the XBox 360. Kaloki X became a solid hit for the fledgeling Live Arcade service, and really interesting things started to happen.

In 2006, NinjaBee released Cloning Clyde, a hit side-view platformer for the XBox 360. As Wahoo Studios, they have also announced the impending release of Saga, a massively multiplayer real-time-strategy game. The soon-to-be-released XBox 360 title, Band of Bugs, is an IGF nominee.

This is one of the strangest interviews I've ever done, because I'm interviewing my own boss. He volunteered, and I was able to get a few questions from folks here to make sure I wasn't throwing too many softballs. This also gives me plausible deniability to try and avoid getting fired for asking some really ugly questions.

So, here we go!

--== Ancient Origins ==--

Rampant Coyote: Although you are a staunch supporter of the Xbox 360 and Microsoft’s leadership in downloadable console games, would you care to elaborate on the rumors that you are, in fact, a raving Nintendo Fanboi?

Steve Taylor: Haha, here's where you have an unfair advantage because you work with me during the day. I'm surprised you didn't ask me about the time I found the cardboard in my shirt collar! [Jay: Why ask? I already mentioned it in passing, though now everybody will know who it was!]

It's true, I'm a raving Nintendo Fanboi. Nintendo creates some unparalleled experiences. I've been hugely pro-Nintendo for a long time, and from a consumer point of view I don't feel like they've ever really let me down. I also had a great time working on N64 games as a developer. I look back fondly on that time in my life - working with the smart people at Nintendo was awesome.

One result of that was that I expected working on the Xbox 360 would kinda suck in comparison. Boy was I wrong. The system rocks, the dev setup rocks, and the Live Arcade team has been completely on the ball before anybody knew there was a ball to be on.

So I've learned to love cool things about Nintendo and love cool things about Microsoft at the same time.


Rampant Coyote: How’d you get involved in the videogame business?

Steve: I've been doing game projects ever since my brothers taught me to program when I was a kid, but I somehow got into writing educational software for a living. I left the educational software world in 1995, and worked on a game (Assassin) on my own that was released as Macintosh shareware. It was also released as a downloadable game for Outland, a way cool (but now long defunct) online game destination for the Macintosh. It wasn't until the end of 1995 that a friend (Kier) suggested I apply for a full-time game development job at Saffire. I was able to show the work I had done (Assassin and some tech demos) to Hal Rushton, who took a big chance and hired me.


Rampant Coyote: So what was the first game you ever worked on that actually made it onto store shelves?

Steve: Technically, a version of Assassin was released on a shareware collection CD in Japan, so that was on somebody's shelf somewhere. :)

My first traditional retail project was Legends '98 Football. I was a programmer on the PSX version, which got cancelled, but I think I had *some* positive impact on the PC version that finally shipped. Over the next half dozen years at Saffire I did some N64 games, a bit of management, a Dreamcast game, and I made what contributions I could to games on a bunch of different systems. I even worked on a tech demo for the Nuon for a few weeks.


Rampant Coyote: So what led you to strike out on your own and create Wahoo Studios?

Steve: In 2001 there was pain and sorrow and gnashing of teeth across the industry. Investors had been disappearing for a while, projects were scarce, companies were shutting down, and the games business felt like a wasteland. Naturally that seemed like a brilliant time to try to start a new company!

Basically, I had been planning to leave my previous employer for some time, and when a friend (remember "Kier" from earlier in this interview?) left for his own reasons, we had a few talks and decided it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take our own shot at doing things our way. We left together and started Wahoo Studios in a little basement office in Pleasant Grove, UT, with almost no cash and certainly no work lined up.


Rampant Coyote: What else has Wahoo done prior to Outpost Kaloki?

Steve: Prior to Outpost Kaloki we did a whole lot of begging, some writing contracts, some low-budget PS1 and PS2 games, some level contract work, some programming contract work, some concept art contract work, a few useless demos, and countless concept pitches. We also got to work on a GameCube game for 3DO, which was a good experience in a lot of ways, but ended up finishing right when 3DO declared bankruptcy. That was not good.


--== Current Projects ==--

Rampant Coyote: Okay - since people keep asking: What’s the difference between Wahoo Studios and NinjaBee? Aren’t they the same company?

Steve: Wahoo Studios is a traditional contract development studio that does work for publishers and other people with money and a project. The NinjaBee name was created around the time we decided to release Outpost Kaloki, as a unique brand with which to label our self-directed Indie efforts. Wahoo and NinjaBee are very much the same people - we don't make a distinction between who works on which projects, but we use the NinjaBee label only for projects we design and create ourselves.


Rampant Coyote: What can you tell us about Band of Bugs?

Steve: Band of Bugs is NinjaBee's new Tactics game for Live Arcade. The game features some new ideas designed to focus and accelerate the flow of turn-based strategy games. We also worked hard to make the game interesting for traditional Tactics game players while still making it appealing and accessible to more casual users. The game was designed from the start for Live Arcade and incorporates a bunch of unique Live Arcade features, including all the standard stuff (Leaderboards, achievements, rich presence, online play, etc.) as well as some neat new things (like a level editor and the ability to play custom levels over Live).


Rampant Coyote: What can you tell us about Saga? (Yes, I know, I’m feigning ignorance here, as I was one of the guys who spent much of 2006 working on it. But I’m not allowed to say anything. Maybe you can!)

Steve: Saga is fortunately more public than Band of Bugs, so we can talk about it a bit more. It's a persistent-world RTS supporting lots of players (hey, it's an LMOG!) with a cool collectible unit system. Dragons, elves, magic, machines, orcs... Cool stuff! People interested in the game can visit www.playsaga.com for more info or to sign up for beta testing...


Rampant Coyote: Why wasn’t Cloning Clyde submitted for the IGF this year?

Steve: Well, technically Cloning Clyde didn't qualify! Clyde was the achievement of an Indie vision from start to finish, and a true labor of love, especially for John Nielson, but we did get some significant help from Microsoft for that one.

Band of Bugs (which does qualify, since we paid for everything) almost didn't get submitted to the IGF - we were so swamped we barely got the submission in by the deadline.


--== Indie Game Development ==--

Rampant Coyote: In a game like Outpost Kaloki, how much of the gameplay is the design of a single person, and how much is a group effort? Is it a case of one person coming up with a design doc, to which everyone else adds, or is it a case where everyone brainstorms together until they have a common vision?

Steve: I feel it's fairly important to let everyone contribute to the design - everyone needs to have a sense of ownership so they're excited and committed to the project. At the same time, we always have a "buck stops here" kind of person who can define and document the final official design. In the early versions of Outpost Kaloki, that was me. For the Xbox 360 version, Jeremy Throckmorton ended up taking on a lot of that responsibility. But everyone working on the project (including artists and testers and programmers and management) had some influence on how it was built and balanced.

Band of Bugs is a bit more structured - Jeremy has been the lead designer from the start on that, but again everyone has had a chance to give feedback and make contributions along the way.

I'm also a big believer in the value of goal-directed design. It's easier to define high-level goals for a project and throw all the big design decisions against those goals to see what makes sense. For example, the goal of making Band of Bugs a game that could be played in short sittings strongly influenced a bunch of smaller design decisions that came up, such as how to handle turn order in multiplayer games.


Rampant Coyote: You've done several games now without the help of a publisher. Is this something you're looking to change, or is the money simply not worth the risk of giving a publisher leverage over your project?

Steve: Honestly, we intend to continue doing a mix of traditional contract work for publishers (as Wahoo Studios) and self-directed stuff (as NinjaBee). Working with a publisher has its downsides (including smaller royalties, less control, loss of IP, etc.) but also has tremendous upsides (more money, increased stability, additional resources such as research people and a marketing staff being contributed to the project, etc.) that we continue to appreciate. How will this balance change in the future? I'm not sure. So far, we swing both ways. ;)


Rampant Coyote: So here’s the biggie – let’s say I’m an indie game developer (I know, it’s a HUGE stretch…) How would I go about getting my game published and distributed through Live Arcade?

Steve: Yowza. This is a question I love to think about and talk about, but it would take me days and many pages to explore it fully. Let me try to brutally summarize:

1. Make an awesome game demo
2. Get an NDA with Microsoft
3. Show them the demo, and pitch the game
4. Make sure your design has great graphics, live arcade focused
gameplay, awesome multiplayer, and cool downloadable content
5. Convince them that:
5a: The game will rock and will take advantage of the Xbox and of Live
in brilliant ways
5b: That your team has the ability to pull it off
5c: That you're in it for the long haul - you're not just one guy in his
basement, you're a team of dedicated individuals with a history of
completing projects and the commitment and resources to finish this one.
6. Make a deal with Microsoft for distribution
7. Work hard and endure delays and hurdles and finish the game and hand
it off to certification
8. Hope the game passes certification! Spend a number of sleepless
nights worrying about this.
9. Relax and Enjoy. Or, start on the next one. :)

Note that you need the resources (talent, money, etc.) to make the game! It's a lot more expensive than you think. Consider testing, certification, localization, development hardware, etc...

For some more great insight, read this interview with Ross Erickson:
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/07/25/joystiq-interviews-xblas-ross-erickson/

[Jay: Note - by way of current events, Erickson just left XBLA this week to join Sierra. But the information is still valuable.]


Rampant Coyote: Outpost Kaloki was released to several portals for its PC release, but was only popular on a few of them. Yet it was a significant hit on the 360. Why is that? Aren’t “Tycoon” games traditionally PC-centric? How would you recommend indies approach deals with portals?


Steve: Hey! You're trying to sneak two questions into one bullet point!

How did a game from a traditionally PC genre do well on a console and not well on the PC? For starters, we put a LOT of effort into making the experience console-centric. In fact the original design for Outpost Kaloki was for console play, and it's really the PC version that was "adapted". For another thing, with the Xbox game we were a bigger fish in a much smaller pond. Finally, one key reason the game didn't do well on traditional portals is that it's not a puzzle game. It's not super casual. For a console game, it's relatively casual, but for a PC game released on sites like BigFishGames, it's a bit complicated!

How should indies approach deals with portals?
1. Don't make an "agent" deal with a portal - don't let them sell your game to other portals and give you a cut of the deal. You end up with almost no return while your game is spread all over by some portal 3 levels down the chain.

2. Get the low lying fruit (like high-traffic free-game download sites) yourself with your own version, and THEN make the deals with the portals. Otherwise, you'll finally get around to putting your game on a download site and find it's already there, but with somebody else
getting the money!

3. Don't listen to me - go read indiegamer.com and gamedev.net and other indie developer sites - those guys actually know what they're doing with PC indie games.


Rampant Coyote: After the initial success of Xbox Live Arcade, specifically with games like Geometry Wars and Outpost Kaloki, it sounded like everyone and his dog (including most major publishers) were proclaiming that they had plans for dozens of Live Arcade projectst. Greg Canessa claimed that they were swamped by large and small publishers wanting in on Arcade. For a while, looked like the indies might get squeezed out. However, it sounds like over the last year the biggest problem was that there weren’t enough XBLA games (from the consumer standpoint) hitting the pipeline. Do you have any insight as to what's been up with that?

Steve: I am not privy to Microsoft's release schedule or relationships with other developers, so I can't really say for sure what the situation is.

One possible issue is that making a game for Live Arcade is a lot harder than it seems. Sure, it's "small" stuff, but it's still console development, and the quality bar is still high, and the certification process is still tough, etc...

Regarding Indies getting pushed out: It sure seems like that's not going to happen! I've talked to 2 or 3 key people on the Live Arcade team who are quite committed to supporting indie efforts on Live Arcade. They can't approve every game they see, but there seem to be some great indie games coming down the pipe, and I think that will certainly continue, thanks to the approach Microsoft is taking. This is all my personal observation, of course, and I can't speak for their official policies in these areas.


Rampant Coyote: Hey, I’ve got this idea for a game, do you want to buy it from me and make it? I’ll only charge you 50% of the profits…!

Steve: Haha, My Favorite Question Ever! Can I *please* pay you cash up front for your awesome idea? We are all stupid and completely bereft of good ideas, and yours is surely going to Change The World!


Rampant Coyote: Once upon a time your advice for other indies on how to properly get involved in the downloadable games market was “Don’t.” Has your advice changed at all?

Steve: Hmm... I still think it's important to read articles (like this one: http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/3/10029 or this one: http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2006/07/yes-virginia-there-is-money-in-indie.html) and face up to the fact that most Indie games lose money! But I believe in the increasing power of Indie game makers, and in the *potential* for talented, persistent people to put in some serious time and start making a profit after releasing several titles.

But you know who's a bad person to ask? ME! What do I know about making a hit PC indie game? The biggest return we got on the (significant) investment we made in Outpost Kaloki PC was that it opened the door for us to make Live Arcade games right when that door had a chance of being opened. As far as I'm concerned, if you count success in dollars, we're not a successful indie PC developer at all! From an indie point of view, we're a bunch of n00bs that suddenly had a lucky opportunity to apply their console expertise to an indie situation, so they grabbed on with both hands, both feet, and a few teeth just in case. And it paid off.


--== +1 Questions of Smiting ==--

Rampant Coyote: If you were offered the chance to do an online version of any board game, what would it be?

Steve: Well, my instant answer is Settlers of Catan, which I was playing way before it became everybody's favorite board game!. But hey, that's already been done. I'd strongly consider games like Robo Rally, Empire Builder (or EuroRails), and Cosmic Encounter. [Jay: Cosmic Encounter = Best boardgame EVAR! Though Cataan comes really close.]


Rampant Coyote: Let’s say you could go back in time and correct one mistake you’ve made in your business. Aside from hiring me, what would you change?

Steve: Maybe waiting so long to hire you? :) Seriously, though, that's a hard question. We started the company, which was pretty exciting. Then everything TOTALLY SUCKED for a really long time. And then some awesome opportunities came along and we worked hard to make them happen, and now we're pretty happy. How could we change anything in the last five years and still come out in the same place?


Rampant Coyote: What are you playing in your “spare time”? And I caught you playing NetHack the other day, so no using the “I’m too busy to play games” dodge!

Steve: Haha... Justin (the team lead on Saga) caught me playing NetHack in the middle of a Saga meeting. Of course, Justin is a NetHack addict as well, so I think he was more envious than annoyed. :)

Besides NetHack, I'm still occasionally playing Civ IV, which is a (most of the time) brilliant game. And I play every Live Arcade game when it comes out. I play Wii Sports and Zelda Twilight Princess when I have a chance. I'm looking forward to playing Supreme Commander.

As far as indie PC games go, the last thing I played with any decent level of attention was Virtual Villagers. That was a great game.

I really do have a hard time finding time to play games during the week. I started writing the answers to this interview at 2am on my birthday and finished about a week and a half later, so I think I should be able to claim I'm a little bit swamped. :)

Rampant Coyote: I just ask for insanely long interviews, I think. Okay - last official question: What is your high score in Ms. Pac Man?

Steve: We have a speed-up chip in our Ms. Pac Man standup, so it's not really a fair score. I'm at just over 200,000, but I'm pretty sure Justin's at 300,000+...


Rampant Coyote: Okay, I'm tapped out. Finally. Anything else you'd like to add?

Steve: Nope! Thanks very much for the chance to talk about NinjaBee and Band of Bugs and indie stuff in general!


(Vaguely) related signs of my impending mental collapse:
* Interview with Georgina Bensley, Creator of Cute Knight
* Interview With Amanda Fitch, Indie RPG and Casual Game Designer
* Scorpia's New Tale: An Interview With One of Gaming's Most Popular Columnists
* Indie Interview: Mike Rubin on 3D Interactive Fiction
* Avoiding Target Fixation: How NinjaBee Did It Right
* Jay Sells Out! Or Maybe The Opposite...
* How Do You Create "Fun?"

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Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:00 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Blender 2.43 Is Out
The newest stable version of Blender, version 2.43, was released over the weekend.

If you aren't familiar with it, Blender is an open-source (meaning 100% FREE) 3D modeling / animation / rendering package. I am consistently impressed with the quality and professionalism of the product. Yes, people complain that its interface is... well, less than intuitive, but I've gotten used to it. And some artists are doing some incredible work with it.

You can get the latest version of Blender HERE. And if you happen to be a Torque user, there's a new converter that supports it (I tried it tonight, it works!) available via multiple links in THIS THREAD.
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:03 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Future Play Competition
So let's say you are a beginning indie game developer, still in school and wondering how in the world you can compete against these experienced, professional game devs out there.

Well, one option that was just brought to my attention is FuturePlay. They have a competition in November in Toronto with the following stipulations:

• Only full-time college or high school students may have worked on the game, and those student developers must have been enrolled in school at least through the Spring 2007 quarter/semester at that school.
  

• You must have had no professional game developers help develop your entry. The spirit of this event is to showcase what students can do, unassisted by professionals. Your teacher/professor, of course, is an exception unless they are a professional developer.

So now you don't need to worry about the seasoned vets blowing you out of the water. Speaking as a seasoned vet who has been blown away by some student-created indie games out there, I don't think the competition is going to be that much easier. But if you are interested, the full submission details can be found here:

FuturePlay 2007 Competition Details

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:39 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
How Much Difference Does Preparation Make?
I remember a story once about a father who was trying to help his daughter improve her falling High School grades. For a critical test, he worked with her and forced her to study much longer than usual. She grew frustrated, feeling she already KNEW all this stuff, and didn't see the point of further preparation.

The day of the test came, and that night she reported to her father that she'd told him so. All that time spent preparing was wasted, she announced, feeling vindicated. The test had been EASY.

I've noticed in the last several weeks some dramatic differences in my productivity in my indie game dev. Some nights it's easy. Other nights, I get an awful lot of web-surfing done. Some of the difference is undoubtably associated with how fatigued I am from working on games all day long for the day job. Sometimes it's hard to jump right back into it. Other nights - I'm not so sure. I'm making an analysis of my personal productivity the last days makes me wonder if I couldn't take some tips from the girl's father in the story about preparation and planning.

I've been juggling three projects the last few nights (Apocalypse Cow, some website changes and blogging, and the Next Game). For two of them, I had a nice list made up of tasks. I'd broken the tasks down into small enough chunks that I could pick out the task, could easily figure out how to get started, knew what it would take to finish, and in spite of some major setbacks (including a lock-up when I hadn't saved in a LONG TIME, shame on me), I managed to get stuff done more quickly than anticipated. Go me. Which gave me time to work on the third project - the new game - an unexpected windfall.

I was thrilled! Since it's in such early stages - still being designed with some prototype work - it's a lot of fun. I don't usually have any time to work on it at all, so it felt like a reward.

And I got almost nothing done on it.

I kinda stared at the screen, zoned out, got distracted by other things that needed to get done that I had a better handle on, and of course Teh Interweb Shinies. I had no tasklist - but did I need that? I mean, there's TONS to do, I could just take my pick!

Apparently, I chose none of the above. The hour I dedicated to doing some work on it was almost completely wasted. Sure, I got stuff done - including some needed tasks. But nothing to make progress on the game.

Granted, it was late, and I was getting tired. It was a whole writer's block type of situation. But I think there was more to it than just that. I suspect that if I'd taken ten minutes out of the hour-plus I'd given myself and just focused on what I wanted to achieve, and then committed to it, I'd be further along on that project this morning than I was yesterday.

I'm not a big planner, and I have seen projects crippled by overplanning in the past. But underplanning can be even worse.

What I'm coming to realize is that my brain runs in two different modes. Mode One is the design / plan / architect / manage mode. Mode two, probably the stronger of the two, is the furious-getting-things-done mode. I have trouble recognizing that these are two discrete states that I have to deliberately transition between. I keep thinking that I should be able to plan and organize and figure out the steps to accomplish the task when I'm in mode two - as I go along - and my brain just doesn't seem to want to operate that way. Thus the "comment first" methodology works so well for me.

Obviously, I need to make some changes in my work flow habits to take advantage of this. Because I really, REALLY need to get Apocalypse Cow out the door and make some serious progress on the next game this summer.

For the idly curious as what I did manage to get done, I created some scripts to help automate changes to the main website, finally added a link page (contact me if you run a gaming site and want to swap links), modified navigation on the site a little bit, worked on an upcoming blog post, modeled, textured, and changed the behavior of the rescuees in Apocalypse Cow, and worked on a ... uh, let's just say Barking Cows.

Labels: productivity

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:43 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Action vs. Turn-Based RPGs: Evolution, Trend, Or Catering To The Lowest Common Denominator?
In the latest "Side Quest" column at RPG Watch, Corwin offers his two cents on the Great Debate: Turn Based or Real Time Combat?

Personally, I always thought the great debate was about "save anywhere", but maybe that's just me. It seems to me that, as far as mainstream is concerned at least, real-time combat has won. Game Over. I mean, when was the last mainstream turn-based combat RPG released (in the U.S., I'll stipulate... those wacky Japanese get all the cool stuff)? I'm not super-knowledgeable about recent console RPGs, but on the PC at least, the last one I can think of was the Temple of Elemental Evil. Which kinda bombed, from what I heard. I didn't play it on account of the stories of the awful bugs in the game, not because of the combat system. (UPDATE: I just got some reliable secondhand information that ToEE actually made Atari money. Just not as much as they'd have liked.)

Even the latest Final Fantasy game uses real-time combat, after a couple of decades of turn-based game systems (even if there were real-time components to the turns).

Help me out here if I'm missing one. Or a few dozen. I wish I was more "in the know" as to the goings-on in the CRPG world than I have time to be.

Todd Howard of Bethesda, which is creating Fallout 3, recently said in an interview, "Certainly turn-based combat limits your audience to a small number, but I do find that audiences will come if your game is good enough and the presentation is superb. Ultimately we'll do what we think will be the most fun."

"Certainly, turn-based limits your audience to a small number."
It does? It's being spouted off like a truism. And I don't doubt that a big part of Diablo's success was because it abandoned the original turn-based system in favor of the click-and-kill interface now aped by many mainstream PC RPGs nowadays. But I wonder what happened to all the fans of Final Fantasy VII, who made it the best-selling RPG of all time? Or all the fans of the original Fallout games. Or, much more recently, all the people that bought Final Fantasy X and X-2.

I wonder what Mr. Howard's definition of "a small number" is?

Now, I am going to assume for a moment that he's correct in that turn-based won't sell nearly as well as realtime. He states it as a given, and I'll take it at face value. So my next question is:

Why?

Possible answers:

#1 - The Market has Evolved
Back in the day, the old RPGs were designed to emulate an imperfect gaming system which had to be turn-based by virtue of human moderation. But with computer moderation and cleaner interfaces have arrived, it's natural to go towards more action-style play because it is inherently more fun (to most people