Digital Distribution: Who Gets My Money?
In their own inimitable style, Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade have weighed in on the "used game" issue, but more specifically discuss digital distribution.

To them, it's a done deal. "Tycho" posts, "Going completely digital is a growing option for PC centered titles and its native developers - for example, I'm typing this post while Command & Conquer 3 drips down to me via EA's digital solution. I've also been a huge proponent of Steam. But even in the next round of consoles, you'll see those massive hard discs put to work storing full products. Marketplace, EDI, and the Shopping Channel are the first chapter of a story that ends poorly for Gamestop."

And as usual, their cartoon is funny and poignant. Although I have noted that GameStop has already jumped on the digitial distribution bandwagon.

But when you are planning on getting your next new game online, are you going to go to GameStop.com? Or will you go to the developer's / publisher's website? What does GameStop offer you, the customer, that warrents a portion of your cash when you are shopping online for digital downloads to your system? Is there any added value there?

Information about the game - faster downloads - free extras - community support - those would all be added values that would be worth it for me. Otherwise, I'd just as soon go directly through the publisher's or developer's site... or maybe an affiliate link through an online games site that has reviewed the game and helped me with my purchase decision.

To survive in the age of digital distribution, the brick-and-mortar media guys have to reinvent themselves. Their old service - slapping information into distributable package, and providing a moderately convenient place for consumers to get access to it - is losing its value. Its based on a foundation of technological limitation that is gradually fading away.

They've got a limited period of time to pull off the reinvention, or they will go the way of Tower Records (and I actually shopped at that very Rockville shop mentioned in Tycho's post). It'll be interesting to see what happens.


(Vaguely) related grumbles:
* Will 2007 Be the Year of the Downloadable Game?
* I Will Not Mourn Their Passing
* Indie Evolution or Revolution?
.

Labels: Biz, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:54 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Wandering Monsters and Random Encounters
There's a blog post on Game Crush called "Random Battles Equals Random Annoyance." Scorpia has followed up with her own commentary called "Random Encounters."

This has actually been a design issue I've been struggling with on my own, one which I still don't have a perfectly satisfactory answer for. But I thought I'd share my musings. And of course, I can't resist the opportunity to run off at the mouth (or the fingers) about one of my favorite subjects, RPG design.

Why Wandering Monsters
First off, the wayback machine. The whole concept of random encounters began in dice & paper games of old. The first edition Dungeon Masters Guide for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, printed in 1979, devoted several pages in Appendix C to "Random Monster Encounters." They served a great purpose in dice & paper games. They were a simulational abstraction, a tool for a DM who couldn't keep track of everything going on in his brain.

They were also referred to in modules by another term: "wandering monsters."

And that's what they were supposed to be. Not every monster sat contendedly in its room, guarding its treasure, oblivious to the sound of battle right outside its bedroom door. Players were not supposed to feel perfectly safe standing around in corridors or in rooms they'd already bathed in the blood of their opponents. The threat of the wandering monster was supposed to keep them pushing forward, and keep them from spending hours and hours cobalt testing the doors before opening them, and taking naps to restore spells in the middle of the troll's lair.

Even then, however, the modules and adventures usually indicated that the monsters came from SOMEWHERE. This was even illustrated in the sample adventure included in the 1979 Dungeon Master's Guide, where the wandering monster table stated exactly where those monsters came from. If you killed the 3-12 goblins encountered as a wandering monster check out in the hall, they were explicitly on patrol from rooms 7 & 8 on the map, which means they WOULDN'T be there to do battle against you when you kicked open the door to room 7 an hour later.

From this perspective, random encounters / wandering monsters are a good thing. Battles shouldn't only occur on the player's terms and on the player's timetable. Otherwise, it gets boring (as it does in some PC CRPGs, when encounters occur almost exclusively when the player moves into a particular trigger area).

It can easily go too far in the other direction, too. Jessie Decker and David Noonan mention this in their excellent article, "Let's Get Small: Adventure Design Part I." I'll just borrow a quote:

"In real life, if you attack a site full of armed, dangerous people, the entirety of them will respond—probably overwhelmingly, and probably right at the entrance. But that rarely makes for a satisfying D&D game. First, PCs don’t feel a sense of progression when they’re fighting battle after battle in room A1, not exploring the entire adventure site. Second, the PCs don’t get to make interesting noncombat decisions—the “left door or right door” sorts of questions. Third, a dungeon that empties out in response to a PC attack starts to feel like a random monster generator."

Wandering monsters resolve two issues at once. They help meet the demands of "realism" - such as it is. And, if used conservatively, they add to the game balance and fun factor (players may whine, but that feeling of risk makes them enjoy it all the more). It's rare you can kill both of those birds with one stone.

Wandering Monsters To The Rescue!
When I started running Neverwinter Nights games online, I implemented a limitation on how often someone could rest - part of a whole "Table Top Variant" set of lightweight rules I created to make the online experience somewhat closer to that of live "dice and paper" gaming. Otherwise, players would enter every single encounter fully rested, and the concept of "resource management" (or even bothering to use scrolls, potions, or wands) never entered into the strategy - it was always a straight-out brawl with the best spells at max hitpoints. Not much strategy at all. And, I thought, boring.

So I implemented the delay between rest periods. That helped a little. But what it really did was slow down the games. The players were still "safe" and knew they were safe, and would simply delay fights until they had a chance to rest. They might skip a rest break if they didn't think the upcoming fight was going to be too challenging, so it helped a little. But mainly, it just made the game slower, which was even more boring.

I started manually adding random encounters. THIS shook things up. Then I added some code to automate this process. They tended to appear when someone took a rest break (hey, you are taking a nap in the middle of a hostile dungeon, what do you expect?). That shook things up even more.

Well, I don't think the players liked it very much. They complained. However, it seemed to me that while the wandering monster encounters were frustrating (as they tended to disrupt the best-laid plans, usually hatched while milling about just outside the door to the Big Bad's Throne Room), I think they made the overall adventures better and more fun for the players. The risk, the sense of urgency, the drive to push forward in spite of not being at full resources, and the sense of danger heightened the overall experience and made it better.

It's kinda like losing a game. Most people don't like to lose. That's not the fun part of playing a game. But it's no fun to win if there's significant risk of losing either. The random encounters weren't anybody's favorite part of the game. But the threat of random encounters - and the encounters themselves which threw a wrench into otherwise straightforward plans - really did heighten the interest of the whole game.

Well, so I believe, both as a player and a designer / game master. My players might have a whole 'nother story to tell you, but if they do, don't believe them! It was all for their own good! :)

A Series of Irritating Random Encounters
But I know of what ItalianBreadMan is talking about in his rant. Too much of this, and you get exactly what Noonan and Decker were talking about - the dungeon becoming a random monster generator (with some boss encounters at the end). Literally. Console CRPGs (and some older PC RPGs) are among the worst. The web-based Massively Multiplayer RPG, Kingdom of Loathing, even lampoons this mechanic in the "Penultimate Fantasy Airship" level with the "A Series of Irritating Random Encounters" monster.

Too much of a good thing? A little bit of salt adds to the flavor. A swig of pure salt will make you vomit. Some console RPGs, where save points may be separated by tunnels filled with little but random battle possibilities, might not make you vomit, but they sure can trigger the gag reflex.

And you can't help but wonder, when playing these games, "Where the heck are these monsters coming from?" You've gone through the whole dungeon three times, killing everything in sight, yet they still keep coming. It makes you wonder where the "Monster Generators" from the Gauntlet arcade games are hidden, so you can destroy them. In fact, wandering about aimlessly waiting for random encounters to happen even becomes a key activity in these games, as you attempt to level up a couple times before facing the end-quest boss.

It begins to feel like the "Really Really Random RPG".

Realistic, Goal-Driven, Simulated Aimless Random Wandering
Now, in modern CRPGs, this thole thing has been rendered a moot point by the computer's ability to do away with this abstraction. Instead of simulating monsters going on patrol and surprising the player, this can simulated explicitly. Done properly, the whole concept of random encounters can be done away with entirely, yet still retain the excitement that comes from the monsters taking the initiative.

In fact, we could have the AI keep schedules, behave believably throughout. The player could even do the whole rogue thing and wait for the monsters to go to dinner or hunting or something, and walk off with their treasure later. Or the monsters could mount a full defense, setting off all the alarms and coordinate attacks against the player, and...

Aw, crud. Now we're back to having gameplay ruined by too much realism, aren't we? The older console games did it with a single dice roll routine. We've had to devote months to dealing with pathfinding, animation, and general AI to do do the exact same thing. AND we had to worry about polygon counts with all the monsters ending up in the same room... (Ugh! Cue flashback of Permafrost pathing bugs in EverQuest causing my framerate to drop into the low-single-digits.... Those were some spectacular deaths....)

The trick is finding the happy medium. I think Oblivion managed to do that pretty well. It seemed like there was a good mix of roamers vs. static monsters. It's not a perfect solution, but I don't think there really is one. Game design is much more art than science. And so far, conceeding art to the computer's CPU has rarely resulted in a rich experience.

So what it all comes down to me is: Wandering Monsters Good, Truly Random Encounters Bad.

With shades of gray in-between.

Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:00 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Interview With The Father of DirectX, Alex St. John
Alex St. John was the "Gaming Evangelist" at Microsoft when I started my career in the game development biz. He threw me a really awesome birthday party once, though he had no clue he was doing it at the time. He was the guy who really pushed through the DirectX initiative back in the day. And he's now involved in indie games, as the founder of Wild Tangent.

He's been interviewed at Shacknews, principally concerning his role in creating DirectX. This was awesome reading for me, as I was there in this era, on the periphery at least, viewing it from the angle to a game developer trying to figure out Microsoft's strategy (and being immediately suspicious, balking at the idea that a bigger, bulkier operating system could actually make games run BETTER). He also talks a lot about the politics at Microsoft, how he kept almost getting fired, and a little bit about Windows Vista and Gaming (which he isn't too happy about).

We were working with Rendermorphics when Microsoft (under Alex St. John's direction) bought them out. We were really irritated with them because we liked their API but needed some changes (or access to their code to make the changes), and they suddenly became very unresponsive. They were still friendly with us, and really were nice guys, but they suddenly wouldn't commit to anything. We were starting to look at alternative APIs when the announcement came out that they'd been bought, and that their new, improved API would be integrated into Microsoft's DirectX 2 for-friggin-free, and it all became clear.

And it took Microsoft another three years to fix the problem we'd been complaining to Rendermorphics about. DirectX 6 or 7, I think. That stupid execute buffer. It made perfect sense for things like 3D fighting games, or anywhere else where the polygon list was relatively static. But for a game like Warhawk (or any First Person Shooter), it was horrible. When Microsoft told us at a GDC that they were going to kill it dead, they acted like they were leading the charge to get rid of it, although they'd been ignoring the shouts of angry game developers for MONTHS.

Ah, the memories.

Originally, I was hired to be a PC guy at SingleTrac, so I was much more involved in what was going on for PC ports of our games. But very quickly I was pushed on to full Playstation development. I was still a PC game fan at heart, though, so I kinda forced myself into the periphery of things. So some of my coworkers got to go to the events mentioned in the interview, and I just got to hear about them later. My wife says she's very happy I missed the one with the eight-foot-tall vagina. Ah, the game industry in the mid-90's! It was a crazy time.

Alex says in the interview, "I actually attribute my reasons for being successful there to listening carefully to the game developers. My strategy was very simple--I go to them and ask, "What kind of crack would you get addicted to?" They'd tell me, and I'd go back to Microsoft and say, "If we make this crack, those developers will buy it." Very simple. DirectX was essentially the crack they asked me to make. That's the way you hook somebody--ask them what they'll pay money for, then go make it."

That's pretty much exactly what they did, and they made no secret about it. After years of being given total crap to work with on Windows, and told "Here it is, you'll use it and you'll like it!", this was a stunning new approach by Microsoft. Except we didn't even have to pay for it. The clincher for DirectX - more than anything else - was hardware / driver independence. Game developers for years had had to struggle with supporting all kinds of different hardware. The AdLib sound card versus the Covox versus the Gravis Ultrasound versus Sound Blaster versus Sound Blaster Pro versus the really nice MIDI sound cards. And all the different joysticks. And EGA versus VGA vs SVGA and the whole "Mode X" thing. And it wasn't just the game developers. If you load up DOSBox and try out some of the games from around 1990 to 1995, you will find yourself immediately faced with baffling configuration screens asking for IRQs, Ports, and so forth for every single game.

The big thing that DirectX offered was that independence. No more having to create your own configuration screen. No more confused tech support calls by customers trying to figure out why they couldn't hear sound out of their weird sound card that nobody had ever heard of. Then, with DirectX 2, they introduced a 3D API which was pretty fast (if cumbersome).

Like I said, the games industry (and PC gaming) in the mid-90's was crazy.

And as far as Vista? Well, Alex has already made his point known, but he elaborates: "Well, the PC--forget the operating system--is always a great platform. Modern PCs have superior graphics and memory and processing power to any next-gen console. I don't think Microsoft did anything to help the PC as a gaming platform with Vista, and that's a tremendous frustration because I take it very personally. If I would've been there, I would have made much more aggressive efforts to make sure Vista stayed out of the way of games. What you see with Microsoft is, without people at Microsoft who realize that the operating system does not add value to gaming, it gets in the way, they think they can add more value by adding in more sh** that only gets in the way of making a good game. Unfortunately, Vista does that. Microsoft added more sh** that impedes game development. It's certainly possible to make great games in Vista, it's just more of a pain in the ass than it needs to be. I think Vista is a missed opportunity for Microsoft to have done a better job in supporting PC gaming."

Anyway, as you can expect, Alex St. John is very ... outspoken. The interview is awesome, especially if you remember the heady Windows 95 days...

Interview With Alex St. John at Shacknews

I am dissapointed that he never mentions the toga party where the live lion got loose. Maybe he's trying to forget that one.

(Vaguely) related retro-views through infrared-tinted glasses:
* Dress Codes And Development
* The Wildest Birthday Party Ever
* Is Vista Going To Destroy Indie Gaming?
.

Labels: Biz, Interviews, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:11 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Indie RPG Roundtable
So what's happening in the world of indie CRPGs?

In case you missed everyone-and-his-cousin announcing this earlier this week, RPG Codex ran a great interview with three indie RPG developers - Jason Compton, producer of The Broken Hourglass; Thomas Riegsecker, lead developer of Eschelon Book 1; and Steven Peeler, lead designer / programmer of Depths of Peril.

Check out the interview here:
Interview With Indie RPG Developers

These are all (by my understanding) "big" RPGs. From a brief discussion I had with Jason Compton, it sounds like they is actively seeking a publisher / distribution partner. Interestingly enough, Steven Peeler is a six-year veteran of Ritual Entertainment, so he's also an experienced developer from the mainstream game industry.

All three games - by their screenshots - are looking pretty sharp. They don't have AAA-release $20million budget photo-realistic graphics, but the visuals are nice and professional, as you can see for yourself in the screenshots:







What makes these games interesting, both from an RPG fan's point-of-view and from an indie point-of-view?

Eschelon: Book 1 is my favorite (so far) out of the batch. It's a turn-based RPG, for one thing --- a rarity these days. Thomas and his team have gone back to classic CRPGs for inspiration for this game, and it shows in both the screenshot and what has been written about this game in this interview and elsewhere. It looks like Basalisk Games may be poised to give Spiderweb a run for its money for this style of RPG. Who will win? My money is on RPG fans!!!

Soldak Entertainment's Depths of Peril looks like the most traditional (of modern RPGs) design - an action-RPG that looks like it may have Diablo-esque gameplay. The twist is a strong strategy / political element to the game --- something that at first blush sounds a little incongruous with more hack-and-slash action gameplay. But I'm anxious to see how Soldak pulls it off. The game also features a more open-ended, organic quest system - quests you can actually fail and have "believable consequences."

Jason has been very public with the development of some very unique, cool gameplay mechanics in a weekly series for The Broken Hourglass. I've been reading the series, and every week I find myself saying, "Gah! Why didn't I think of that?" One of the coolest innovations that has caught my eye is the "party skills" system. Since there are many activities that involve the entire party of adventurers, the game calculates a composite "group skill" level based upon the contributions of individual party members. I immediately think of rogue skills in relation to the whole group, and apparently they've got that covered.

I try to curb my enthusiasm somewhat when I read these things, realizing that a lot of things that sound awesome on paper often come out a little less spectacular in the final implementation. That's the way of things. But it looks like we RPG fans have interesting times ahead from the indie RPG sector, and I mean that in a good way.


(Vaguely) related prattling-on...
* RPG Preview: Eschalon Book 1
* How To Get Me To Buy Your Indie RPG
* Why Does Jeff Vogel Hate RPGs?
* 2006 Indie RPGs of the Year Announced
.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Indie RPG News, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:15 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Chicken Invaders III Now Available At Rampant Games
As part of the minor overhaul of the Rampant Games website, I've added Chicken Invaders III as an affiliate.

I discovered the game because, like Apocalypse Cow, it involves violence to barnyard animals. It's a pretty straight-up top-down shooter, with an obviously off-the-wall sense of humor.

I mean, Space Chickens! What's not to like?

Try the demo, and let me know if I'm just on drugs or something (well, I am ... I'm on cold medication, but I got hooked on the game BEFORE that...)

Chicken Invaders III

Labels: Game Announcements

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:04 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
How I Single-Handedly Lost the Pacific War
The big new game release that I had to direct order because local stores don't bother with PC games anymore was IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946. If the name is a little bit unwieldy, it is only because the game itself is pretty much a poster child for "Hardcore Gaming."

The IL-2 Sturmovik series (of which this latest edition is something of a "platinum pack") has been THE game for people who want to experience every nuance of being in the cockpit of a World War II military aircraft, short of feeling real G-forces or real bullets. Of Russian design, this game models over 300 aircraft with painstaking accuracy, including 229 player-flyable aircraft. With only a handful of exceptions (mainly because certain companies have decided that millions in taxpayer money wasn't enough - they want licensing fees for representation of 60-year-old aircraft), if it was a combat aircraft in World War II, it's in the game, and you can probably fly it.

Or try to.

Now, that's not necessarily 229 totally unique aircraft that you can fly. There's somewhere around 75 unique aircraft, plus tons of variants. Now, a variant might not seem like a big deal. But to WWII aviation enthusiasts (or an IL-2 Sturmovik player), there's a HUGE difference between a 1940-model Bf-109E/4 fighter, and a Bf-109G/14 that entered service four years later. It certainly seems huge when you are in a twisting, turning dogfight with a Spitfire, at least (to be exact... a Spitfire Mk VIII from 1943)...

Did I mention "Hardcore?" Things like engine temperature and fuel-oil mixtures, and whether or not your fuel is gravity-fed or has a fuel pump (so your engine doesn't conk out in a negative-G maneuver) are just as important as how much ammunition is left for your guns. Of course, you can simplify most of the realism settings in a menu down to arcade-game levels. But somehow I don't think the availability of simplified settings is really going to make this game appeal to a less-hardcore crowd.

A Method To The Madness?
As I understand it, the IL-2 series began life as a very detailed study of only one aircraft - the Ilyushin IL-2 Sturmovik. If you haven't heard of it, it's probably because you aren't a Russian military aviation buff. To its credit, it's the most heavily produced military aircraft in all of aviation history - and the second most-produced plane (civilian or military) of all time. Apparently, after the designers spent all this time making one of the most sophisticated combat flight simulators in history, they realized that:

(A) That it would be (relatively) easy to make other aircraft in the game flyable by players with just as much fidelity, and...

(B) They'd BETTER throw in some flyable planes that U.S. players had actually heard of if they wanted it to sell outside of eastern Europe.

The first game was a hit, and they followed up with two sequels (Forgotten Battles, and - catering to the American audience - Pacific Fighters), and two expansions (the Aces Expansion, and an online-distributed "single-plane" study of the PE-2... another plane we American flight sim buffs have often never heard of). Then they wrapped it all up with the new 1946 package, which includes everything heretofore released, plus an additional campaign in Asia (Sturmoviks Over Manchuria), and some aircraft that didn't make it into production before the end of hostilities (for a hypothetical continuation of the war into 1946).

Let's Play War!
And with stable network code that supports up to 64 players in a single dogfight... with virtually any aircraft in World War II (plus tanks, buildings, ships, AAA artillery, trucks, trains, and all those other good targets), I figured I was in for a real treat. You could jump online with 64 of your closest friends and simulate an entire battle! Well, kinda.

I'd dabbled in multiplayer many winters ago with Forgotten Battles, and thought I'd done okay. But I haven't played since, and I've only been playing the series off and on since then. I get hooked on it for a week or two, and then quit. But this weekend, after spending several weeks playing and learning how easy it is to get the P-39 Airacobra into a flat spin (which, apparently, was a problem it had in real life --- go figure!) and practicing with several planes against all kinds of AI (all set to "average" skill level), I thought I'd "kick the tires and light the fires" and see how hardcore World War II reenactment was going online.

There were around 200 players on several different servers, when I logged in to Hyperlobby to check things out. I found a server with a lot of players on it, and decided to see what World War II in the air was like. The battle was taking place somewhere over the Coral Sea. I was ready. I joined the "Red" team. I'd be facing the "Blue" team. You know, color coding is so much easier to keep track of than Axis vs. Allies. I spent some time reading over the rules of fair play. After all, this is simulated World War II, which should be much more fun than the real thing.

The battle was purely a case of attrition. Each side began with so many planes available for use. Every time a plane was destroyed, the total plane count would drop. Once you hit zero, your side lost, and the opposing team would win. And, I assume, it would start all over again. It seemed both sides had quite a few planes left, so the battle would last a while yet.

Or at least, it WOULD have lasted a while, had I not shown up!

Many aircraft were available to me to use to defend my beloved homeland of Red. There were planes of all kinds of nationalities, from an American B-25 bomber to a British Spitfire, to a Russian FW-190, some Russian aircraft, and... ah-hah! A late-model P-47 (one with the bubble canopy, for improved visibility). I chose it without a second thought. It's my favorite WWII fighter!

Soon I was up and flying! Well, no, that's not exactly right. Here's what really happened.

Losing The War In Eight Easy Steps
Plane #1: I was in the cockpit, and started my engine. I looked around to find out where the runway is. I catch a glimpse of several aircraft up in the sky. I should be safe - the official rule on the board was that you could not destroy a plane on the ground. Unless you were a bomber.

As my plane began moving, I saw the aircraft zoom overhead. Hey, was that a B-25 bomber? For the opposing team?

BOOM! I blow up, plus one other player unfortunate enough to get caught in the rain of explosives.

Plane #2: Okay. This time I'd move faster. I'd not wait around to take in the scenery. I immediately start the engine, throttle up, taxi around... right into the respawning aircraft of another player. BOOM! Both our aircraft have exploded. Okay, I've now hurt my beloved mother country of Red by THREE planes in only two tries.

Plane #3: This time, I turn and taxi to the LEFT instead of the right. Unfortunately, this time the other player respawns to my left. My wing hits his propeller and.... THWAP THWAP KAPOW *REND*. Another two planes wiped out and depleted from Red's score. I really suck.

Plane #4: I've had enough of this. These aircraft could take off on a level field if need be, so I try that. I'm gonna skip the runway entirely. I almost make it, too. Just before I reach a high enough speed to lift off, by wheels hit the edge of the lake. My plane sinks.

Plane #5: I make it to the runway this time. But seeing enemy planes back in the air above me, I'm a little too quick to throttle up. I overcompensate for the resulting torque, and I go off the runway and wreck. I should know better than this!

Plane #6: Coming onto the runway to take off, I accidentally clip some equipment on the side of the runway (why'd they put it so close to the runway anyway?) and the plane is unflyable. I don't know if it counted as a loss or not.

Plane #7: FINALLY! I got my crate up in the air. I'm low and slow, but slowly circling to gain altitude. Another player is doing the same. Out from the northwest come two racing enemy planes from Blue. I don't have much airspeed, but I manage to get a piece of one of the two attacking FW-190s. I don't do much damage to him, but it does force him to abandon his attack against a friendly plane (the same friendly plane I crashed into... twice... it looks like he managed to finally get off the ground, too). But then I'm engaged by the 190's wingman, who manages to take big chunks out of my aircraft. I lose much of my rudder, and one aileron. Still, the P-47 can take a pounding. I try to land my plane on only half my control surfaces. I don't quite make it. I cause a lot of wreckage to appear on the runway.

Plane #8: This time, the air is clear when I take off out of the runway. This time, if I'm gonna crash, I'm gonna crash on the ENEMY base! Off I go, into the wild blue yonder, getting some altitude advantage to mercilessly use to defeat my poor foes, low on altitude, airspeed, and ideas. I see the enemy airfield, and I spot two aircraft heading my way. Both FW-190s, by the looks of them. They are below me but climbing fast --- very fast. Did they put rockets on those things?

I roll my plane and begin a turning dive, turning altitude into airspeed. I barely see the tracers before one of my wings is shot off. I bail out of the spinning aircraft, and enjoy a very long look at the scenery as I parachute down from about 10,000 feet.

At this point, I've single-handedly dropped Red's score by ten points. Now, as an excuse, I think those guys in the FW-190s have been playing the game quite a bit for years. Maybe. And maybe that I REALLY need a lot more practice. Either way, I figure its time to quit the field in shame. I'll be back... and maybe then I'll play for Blue team and help them lose a few points!

Somehow, I don't think it was quite like this in 1944...

Labels: Flight Sims, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:10 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Making a Rogue-Friendly RPG, Part III: Beyond Lockpicking
Monte Cook (co-author of the 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons rules) wrote an essay once called "A Second Edition Joke." I recommend reading it now - it's short - because I'm gonna go and spoil the punchline in the next paragraph. Not that it's all that funny, but it's better to read it now. Go ahead. I'll wait.

At the end of the story, the former-thief laments, "When we were low level,I could open doors and occasionally -- very occasionally -- get in a backstab. They kept me around because I was sometimes useful. Toward the end I realized they were just keeping me around out of nostalgia."

How About Getting Rid of the Rogue?
While illustrating the weakness of the class in 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, it also suggests an interesting question. Are we just keeping the rogues around out of nostalgia? Are we including it in fantasy RPGs (at least) out of blind adherence to tradition set by a tactical miniatures variant introduced in the 1970's? Have we evolved past needing it now?

For Cook and his team, the answer was "no." The answer was to fix the class - give it a more solid role in groups, lots of neat options, and some capability that wasn't made superfluous at higher levels.

For some kinds of CRPGs, such as the "jRPGs" or Japanese console-style RPGs, the answer may be "yes." And that's perfectly valid. Many jRPGs have simplified (some might say "optimized") the RPG experience down to a story-driven guided navigation through combat encounters. I'm fine with that. It doesn't fit everywhere. I can enjoy those games.

But I'm still going to prefer the games that allow me to play my own variation of Indiana Jones, the Stainless Steel Rat, James Bond, or Shadowspawn.

The Mechanics: Active, Passive, and Reactive
I tend to think of gameplay as "making interesting decisions." Decisions that have a cost (or opportunity cost), a risk, or require some strategy to pull off. For the purposes of dealing with rogue-centric abilities, I've been thinking about character abilities in terms of active, passive, and reactive skills, and how they interact with gameplay.

Passive abilities are those abilities that automatically take effect based upon something happening to the character. Defending against a fireball, or sensing an ambush, for example. These are great abilities to have in a computer RPG because they require very little in terms of interface work. They can differentiate races or classes, and at most you have to let the player know that his ability was USED for some reason. However, they aren't really actions that the player takes. They aren't verbs.

Passive abilities are special effects in a mechanical sense. They don't add too much to the actualy gameplay, other than changing some of the parameters upon which the player bases their decisions. For example, if a character has a high level of fire resistance, a fire-based threat is less of a risk than usual.

On the flip side, there are active (or "pro-active") abilities. These are abilities that the player must consciously decide to use, and can choose to use them at any time (or in very common circumstances, like in combat). In a well-designed game, these decisions are "interesting" as described above. For instance you may have to choose between drinking a healing potion right now, thus giving the monster an extra hit, or taking one last attack in hopes of finishing the beast off (and saving yourself an extra hit). It's simple, but it works (and makes up 90% of the decision process in the dungeon-crawl sequences of Empires & Dungeons).

Then there's what I call reactive abilities. These are abilities which are only useful in reaction to specific, unusual circumstances in the game. For example, a skill in a rarely-encountered language would be both passive and reactive (the worst of both worlds?) . Usually, when the opportunity is called for to exercise this ability, it's a no-brainer. You encounter a locked door in a dungeon. Do you use your lockpicking ability?

Duh.

So they aren't very interesting from a gameplay perspective. They aren't interesting decisions. And the player only gets to use these abilities when the game master (in a dice-and-paper game) or the game (for CRPGs) effectively lobs the ball directly at him. That's extra work (and expensive work, for CRPGs) for the designer / developer, especially for something that's only going to be worth a single a routine ability check. And while appreciated by the player, they still aren't very exciting.

And in too many RPGs, far too many of the "rogue-centric" abilities fall into the passive and "reactive" category. Detecting traps and secret doors. Disabling traps. Picking locks. And too often their active skills are like picking pockets - useless in the most common situations (you pick the pocket of a monster you are going to kill and loot, anyway), and of such a poor risk / reward ratio that they are virtually useless even when they should come in handy.

And that is where unhappy rogues come from.

Breaking the Rules the Thief Way
The Thief game series, originally by Looking Glass, were action games based around things that sounded fun about being a (pseudo-)medieval (well, steampunk) thief. They created the "first-person sneaker" genre, and were popular and enjoyed great critical acclaim. They put the player in a rogue's situation - hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, where attempting a direct assault was guaranteed failure. This wasn't just a storyline in the fiction of the game, but the real situation. Surviving direct combat with a single guard was chancy at best - but attempting to take on the entire level's worth of alert, warned guards was impossible. Stealth was your key to success.

Many people talk about the stealth mechanic of Thief, which was certainly the key gameplay element. You had to keep to shadows to stay hidden, and keep to areas of the floor that would muffle your footfalls whenever there were guards within earshot. But you also had to know when to break cover and race across lit areas. Timing was everything.

All by itself, the stealth-and-timing mechanic was a lot of fun. Hiding in a pitch-black hall, waiting for the guard to pass by close enough to steal his keys was incredibly tense and thrilling. But what took the game over-the-top was the additional options provided to you by the tools you could purchase to aid you in your task. Water arrows could be used to douse torches. Noisemaker arrows could cause distractions for the guards. Rope arrows could allow you access to otherwise unreachable portions of the map. Moss arrows would allow you to move silently over areas that would otherwise be too noisy to traverse.

In other words, these tools allowed the player to manipulate the environment and manipulate the AI. Fiddle with aspects of the game level traditionally denied to players. It allowed players a limited, selective way to break the rules.

Could similar mechanics be borrowed by RPGs to allow the same thing? I really don't see why not.

Simulation or Story?
They key is having a more open, organic rule system. This has been done in RPGs before - most notably the hit action-RPG Oblivion and the classic Fallout series. Unfortunately, it means relinquishing some control over the storyline and how the player progresses through the game. The game must focus on the player accomplishing objectives, rather than enforcing how those objectives are met. It means treating the game-world as more of a simulation that a story.

This has pros and cons that have been debated endlessly in blogs, forums, and articles for years. But if you are really trying to support a style of play that specializes in derailing, it is probably best to avoid rails. Striking a decent balance between the two extremes is one of the great challenges of any game designer.

Other Good Uses of the Rogue
Other games offer some fun, active abilities that make the rogue (or a rogue-like character) worthwhile.

Baldur's Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights allow the rogue to construct traps, as well as disarm them. This was a great way to turn a reactive skill into an active one, and was potentially the rogue's most powerful offensive ability. But you had to be tricky to pull it off, and convinced the AI (rarely a problem) to stumble into your previously-trapped territory.

The Baldur's Gate games also had what was possibly the most powerful use of a rogue's stealth abilities I've seen in a CRPG. In conjunction with a magic-user, a rogue could act as a "forward observer" for powerful area-effect spells. By the time a magic-user moved within range to see his opponents, they would also see him (or her), and attack. But a rogue could sneak up on the enemies, opening up the visibility and allowing the mage to cast his spell at a safe range. Sometimes, the monsters wouldn't even move out of the threatened area after the first attack (where WERE those fireballs coming from?), allowing follow-up attacks.

In Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, a character with high stealth could clear levels of most opponents by sneaking up behind them and breaking their necks (or drinking their blood, if you were far enough away from other enemies). Oblivion and other games often rewarded high-stealth characters in a similar manner, allowing huge bonuses for attacking from hiding.

The D20 rule system (the core of the 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons rules) gave rogues access to the "Use Magic Device" skill - an extrapolation on the apparently little-used 1st edition rule that allowed a high-level thief access to magic-user and cleric scrolls. (I say "apparently" because I sure took advantage of the ability back in the day...) This allows the rogue to "fake" the requirements necessary to use certain magical items, opening up his options considerably at higher levels. Fortunately, this rule has made it into the computer games based on the dice-and-paper rule system.

In Fallout, one of the early missions allowed you a chance to infiltrate a gang of marauders (or, actually, join them). You could bluff your way through to see the boss, and then get into a fight with him.

Some Theoretical Rogueishness
I haven't seen anything like these examples in a CRPG, but I don't see why they wouldn't be possible:

Faction Fiction: A few games have set up faction systems (the Elder Scrolls series, many MMORPGs, Neverwinter Nights) . However, there's often some kind of zero-sum math involved: Improving your standing with faction A decreases your standing with their enemies, Faction B. (A noteworthy exception is Oblivion, which was criticized for not featuring many of these "interesting" faction decisions). Why couldn't a rogue use deceptive practices to frame others or conceal his involvement in the "faction wars," manipulating his faction levels artificially?

Escape Artist: Players never seem to run away or get captured by bad guys in computer RPGs (except as an unavoidable scripted event). Probably because the "load" command makes it be victorious in every encounter. But assuming you can lick the one problem, having the rogue there to help the party make a run for it - or to overcome the deathtraps of the villain's lair.

AI Manipulation: Just borrowing directly from Thief, why wouldn't a rogue be able to no re-route the AI's movements and patrols via misdirection? On a more abstract level, the rogue could even reduce (if desired) the number of random encounters, or choose when such encounters take place (due to his enhanced stealth and perception)?

Art of Disguise: In Final Fantasy VI (III in the U.S.) - while it was a special, hard-coded sequence - there was a segment where you could disguise yourself as an enemy soldier to sneak around an enemy-occupied town. I can envision a game where this is made a more general skill - less powerful than magical shape-changing, but passing muster as an alternate form of stealth if interaction is avoided. While this could get you closer to the boss without fighting through all the other monsters, escaping after the fact might be a whole 'nother story. Could it be done without blowing game balance? Could it be made fun, and not so overpowering that it becomes a dominant strategy?

Interception!: While this certainly doesn't need to be limited to rogues, what about having AI attackers (or even player characters, in multiplayer PvP) telegraph their next move in ways that a player character can possibly identify and interrupt or at least prepare for? Maybe it's my brief fencing experience talking, but I can imagine a combat system built around feints and counters this way. I don't know if it would be any fun, but I can imagine it.

Gadgets: In many "rogue stories," the rogue is outfitted with a number of gadgets. James Bond has his high-tech equipment, the Stainless Steel Rat has a variety of miniature bombs - heck, even ninjas tend to have a lot of low-tech tools to accomplish their deadly business. Expendable tools of all varieties could certainly be used by non-rogues... but a specialist character might be most skilled in their employment. Aside from lockpicks (common in manyRPGs), how about other devices that allow the player to "break the rules" in a limited fashion? A smoke grenade to increase chances of escape. Sleeping or blinding powders. Ear plugs to defend against sonic / charm attacks. Caltrops. A shock buzzer to escape grabbing attacks. Sneeze powder to interrupt spells. A vial of vomit-inducing poison to pop open in case the unfortunate possessor gets swallowed whole. And ways to wire up many of these items as a booby trap. If all else fails, the rogue can almost act as a back-up mage in this way --- using gadgets, magical items, and tricks to pull off "magical" effects.

Rogues In the Group
Within an adventuring party, the rogue's skills (and methods) are going to transfer at least to some degree to the rest of the group. At the very least, they will benefit from the rogue's enhanced abilities. But the rogue should grant additional options for the rest of the party. Which may or may not be to the liking of the party's paladin.

For example, if the rogue has the rare skill (in CRPGs) of climbing walls in a game, why shouldn't he be able to lower a rope down and extend that skill to the rest of his party? Ditto for disguise and stealth - he can help the rest of the party hide.

And as long as we're at it, why can't the rest of the party help out in disarming traps? That aspect of the game would be much more interesting if it was a multi-step process, handled interactively like combat, and involved group participation. Maybe.

Let Me Explain. No, There's Too Much. Let Me Sum Up.
This concludes for now my diatribe on rogues in RPGs. At least for now. I've talked about why it is difficult to design a generalized RPG with rogue-like characters in mind. I've also talked about what sort of role a "rogue" might fulfill in an adventure, and what player expectations might be. And I've given some concrete examples of what has been done and what can be done to help a player with a preference for that type of adventure experience a game

Ultimately, I wrote this series for my own benefit, as I've been trying to wrap my head around some of these issues for my own benefit. I hope you haven't minded - I've appreciated your comments and insight as you've helped me think about things from different angles.

What it really comes down to is broadening the horizons of the Computer Roleplaying Game and incorporating more styles of play. I think that's something most players and designers would agree with, at least in principle.

I'm not saying every game should incorporate all styles of play! While that might be a goal for larger games (especially MMOs), it's not necessary. And I really do enjoy some good ol' school hack & slash fantasy. But computer RPGs tend to get stuck in a rut (as with every other game genre out there), and I think it behooves both game designers and players to demand a little bit more. We can use some games that let us - or even encourage us - to explore new styles and possibilities in the vast potential of the genre. Where's the RPG that really lets us be James Bond, or Indiana Jones, or the Stainless Steel Rat? I am waiting anxiously!


(Vaguely) related mutterings of a diseased mind:
* Making a Rogue-Friendly RPG Part I: Rogues Get No Respect
* Making a Rogue-Friendly RPG Part II: The Rogue's Role
* Innovation in RPGs?
* Roleplaying and Computer Roleplaying Games
.

Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:00 AM (Permalink) 8 comments links to this post

 
The Return of the Villagers: Virtual Villagers 2 The Lost Children
The Virtual Villagers are back, in a new game:

Virtual Villagers Chapter 2: The Lost Children

The new game picks up around the "end" of the original game, though you don't need to have played the first one to enjoy the sequel. Once the mysterious cave with the remnants of the original inhabitants were found, two of the villagers wandered deep into it and discovered a vine-covered opening on the other side. Pushing through, they fell down a steep, slippery rocks and a waterfall.

What they discovered on the other side was the remnants of another village - this time, with several dirty, hungry children in need of care.

Who are these lost children? What happened to their parents? You get to discover the answers yourself in this sequel to the hit casual sim / strategy game of last year.

I don't consider myself much of a casual gamer, but a few casual games have hooked me. Virtual Villagers was one. Maybe it was just the appeal of living on a tropical island paradise. Of course, I'm also a sucker for "sim" games, like Outpost Kaloki, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Sim City, and so forth. Virtual Villagers was a fresh take on the genre. One of the more interesting elements of the game was that it would continue to "run" in real-time while you weren't playing - unless you chose to pause it, say if you were actually taking off for a REAL trip to vacation on a tropical island paradise.... mmmmm....... oh, sorry. Where was I again?

Anyway, the result was a game that you could play for just a few minutes a day. You could spend fifteen minutes at a time checking up on your villagers, assigning tasks, helping those villagers newly grown into adulthood get started supporting the village, buy technologies, solve quests, and have the children find mushrooms to support the village food supply. A downside of the game was that once you got everything situated, there wasn't a whole lot of reason to actively play, other than to find more mushrooms for the children to retrieve.

The new game adds several more activities to the mix to make things more interesting than ever. There's just more to do. In addition to mushrooms, there are now collectables to be found on the island. The collectables are also retrieved by the children, and unlock new secrets or can be used to increase research towards new technologies. There are also the sixteen mysteries (or quests) to solve, emotional states, a new "sewing hut" you can build to customize your village and change their outfits, and more. The end result is that even during the more slow, stable parts of the games, there's more stuff to do and tweak to improve your village.

Fortunately, it doesn't seem like they've stomped on anything that made the first game so fun to play. The sequel is every bit as fun as the original, and more. While there are lots of differences (different technology, mysteries, special events, and so forth) between the two game, the sequel has lost none of the original's charm.

Anyway - if you liked the original (or never tried the original), I'd recommend checking out Virtual Villagers 2. The demo is available for free to try it out and see what you think at the following link:

Virtual Villagers Chapter 2: The Lost Children


(Vaguely) related things written while wishing I was on a tropical island paradise:
* Tamagotchi Villagers
* Dead Villagers
* Virtual Villagers II Developer's Diary
.

Labels: casual games, Game Announcements, strategy games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:41 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
What To Do If You Lose Your Registration Number For a Downloadable Game?
I ran into a problem the other day with some downloadable software I'd purchased many months ago. The computer on which I'd installed it (my wife's old system) finally went to the great network closet in the sky, taking the hard drive with it. We'd previously pulled almost all information and licenses (and serial numbers, etc) from her old system, but we'd missed that one.

I hunted through my emails, and couldn't find one that had a registration number or license number.

I didn't feel like digging through my credit card bills, so I just emailed the company that had handled the transaction. "Look," I told them. "I don't have the license number, and I'm not entirely sure when I bought it --- I think it was around October." I explained about the dead computer, and I told them the name that was on the credit card I used. That was it.

The next day, they happily sent me the license number to use to install the software on the new machine. We got it installed on the new machine, no problem. Total turnaround time was less than 24 hours.

Yeah, there are some serious concerns about what happens if the company supporting the game (or software) goes out of business --- will your game be disabled and no longer playable? But by comparison... I couldn't find my CD-key for a retail game I'd purchased some months ago. Until I found it again, I was pretty much S.O.L. I prefer the way things worked with the downloadable software on the dead computer.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:24 PM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Roguelike Magazine
There's a new (free) online magazine for Rogue-like games, such as Rogue, NetHack, Larn, Angband, *cough*Diablo*cough*...

Entitled, mysteriously enough:

"Roguelike the Magazine"

I never thought I'd see such a detailed analysis of text-based game interface design after about 1990. But there ya go. Though they do talk about those games with actual --- you know, those new-fangled GRAPHICS and stuff, too. :)

Labels: Roleplaying Games

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

 
The Casual Games Industry Sucks, Two?
Same problems, different year.

GameZebo has a fun little rant entitled, "I'm Mad as H@#%, and I'm Not Gonna Take It Anymore." An excerpt:

"The industry needs to stop resting on its laurels and take casual games to the next level where it deserves to be, on the same level of traditional video games. That may sound bold, but in the past 5 years, we have grown an industry from $0 to $500 million a year, gotten millions of people who would never touch a gamepad to play games, and influenced the latest round of consoles (Nintendo Wii, Xbox Live Arcade).

According to the latest studies, as many people play casual games as go out to the watch the movies. But casual games are defined as games that can be played by everyone. We should not rest until every single person in the world is playing casual games."

Well, okay then!

Though I cannot let this go without a little bit of commentary. Those of us who are deeply involved in any particular industry (or hobby, or activity) tend to move and expect movement at a much more rapid pace than everyone else, and we tend to notice details ignored by others. It can be easy to get disillusioned or frustrated.

I used to wonder about this as a kid when film critics panning films that I loved. I'd see an enjoyable story with cool characters and great special effects, and they'd see a "tired formula with hackneyed characters, thinly disguised by distracting special effects." The difference was that I'd seen only a few dozen "grown-up" films in my life (this was in the days before VCRs had become as common as televisions), whereas they'd see that many in a month. So while the critics were frustrated with more of the same crap coming out of Hollywood, it was all novel and fresh to ME.

We kinda get the same way about games. We're coming off of this great "discovery" of casual games and an untapped audience and an explosion of old ideas becoming new again and... just wow! Those who have been observing it for several years may be seeing how innovation is slowing down, but there are still new players discovering these games every day (who don't even realize they are becoming "gamers") for whom it is ALL very fresh and new. They encounter some match-three Bejeweled clone without ever hearing about the original.

Not that it makes these kinds of rants any less true (or less entertaining). But a little perspective helps.

Labels: casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:00 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Silverfall Available For Download
Will 2007 be the year of the downloadable game?

Looks like.

The brand-new Diablo-style mainstream RPG, Silverfall, published by Atari, has just been released... and its available via retail store OR direct "digital download". I imagine it's a big-honking download. It is interesting to me that they are offering to bypass the retail option entirely for a brand-new, major (I think) release.

Maybe Atari learned their lesson from the Dungeons & Dragons Online launch fiasco.

Shall we call it a trend? Are all the cool publishers selling first-run PC games direct downloads now? I don't think so, but I'm interested in seeing how it goes.

Dang. So many games, so little time. This sounds like a halfway decent Diablo-esque, too.

Labels: Mainstream Games, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:00 AM (Permalink) 10 comments links to this post

 
Getting Better 1,198 Polygons At a Time
I read in a book recently that the best way to increase your earning potential is to become the best in your field. And the way the author suggested doing that was to create a list of the main 5-9 skills needed in your profession, and then do a thoughtful self-analysis and rate those skills within yourself. Going by rule of thumb that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, address your weakest skill. It's probably the one thing you like doing the least. Work on it until it's no longer your weakest skill. And then move on to the next weakest.

How do you "address" a weakness? Education is part of it. Especially in high-tech industries, our knowledge is constantly acquiring gaps that need to be addressed. With as much knowledge as is available at the speed of Google these days, there's not much excuse for remaining in ignorance.

But what it usually comes down to is practice. Lots of practice. Scott Hsu-Storaker had a pretty interesting challenge for himself back in 2006 (which he is continuing this year). Given the idea that experience and practice is just as important as talent, and that after spending a thousand hours doing something, you ought to be able to start getting pretty good at it. GBGames has been doggedly posting his updates every Monday morning for the last year and change as he's been pushing to increase his game development skills by putting in 1,000 hours of development time over the course of a year.

I figure I'm pretty dang good at wasting time by now. Too bad that's not one of my skillsets for being the top in my professional field. Or for making the top-selling indie games on the market.

Unfortunately, as an indie game developer, that list of skills is extremely large. Even though I've been a professional programmer for *cough*overadecade*cough* now, I've still got some gaping holes in my skill sets. And since an indie needs to wear so many hats, that's only a drop in the bucket. (Hmm... maybe figuring out how to finance and deligate so I don't have to wear so many hats might be a good start, huh?)

So I have a lot of things I suck at that I've been working on to make them not suck.

Part of my objective with Apocalypse Cow was to spend some time learning the artistic side of game development a little better. Now, I'm nowhere near 1,000 hours modeling and texturing with Blender (and Gimp), but my latest undertaking is a helicopter, originally modeled by George McEwan and subsequently modified all to hades by myself. It currently has 1,198 polygon faces for me to texture - yes, two shy of an even 1,200 - that's taking me several hours (well into my second 20-hour "leveling up" process). While I'm not individually hand-painting all of those 1,198 faces, it sure feels that way.

I've gotten to the point where I can do a passable job (kind of) on pure geometric modeling. I can confidently say at this point that I suck much less at 3D modeling. I don't think it means I "don't suck" yet, but sucking less is progress. Texturing is still a bear for me. And animation is a giant mutant bear with cybernetic legs and adamantium claws. But I figure the best way to learn is to practice, right? And Apocalypse Cow is offering me a ton of practice.

It's just frustrating when I want to get the game out the door.

If anybody knows of any nice tutorials on good texturing techniques / methodologies, I'd like to hear about them. I think I've got many of the basics understood --- but it's still a nightmare of unwrapping, assembling together puzzle-pieces of polygons, exporting the mesh layout, trying to do SOMETHING resembling a non-heinous job of drawing the textures to match the polygon layout, then working with more puzzle pieces for the symmetrical opposite side, etc. I'm sure I'm doing some things... well, sub-optimally.

Labels: game art

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:00 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
I'm A Gamer?
I was in a discussion with my daughter's sixth-grade teacher a couple of weeks ago. It was parent-teacher conference, but we were shooting the breeze a little bit before getting down to details, which we are fortunately pretty familiar with. My wife is a former elementary school teacher herself, and tries her best to keep informed about how our kids are doing.

For some reason we got to talking about my job - making videogames, and the teacher made a few comments about not understanding these kids and their games.

I told her that actually, the fastest growing segment of the market was casual games, which tend to be geared more for adults.

She was astonished. "Really? I just don't see that," she said.

I nodded. "Yep. The growing market right now are women 40 and over." She looked at me in complete disbelief. I kept going. "They aren't playing bloody shooters for hours on end, though. They are playing little games like Solitaire or Minesweeper or gem-matching games for fifteen minutes at a shot - just to take a break and get some relaxation in between things they have to do."

I saw the light of realization appear in her eyes, but she quickly bowed her haid and shielded her eyes with her hands. "Oh, that's ME!" she admitted. "And thank you SO much for announcing my age to everyone!"

I considered mentioning that SHE was the one who fessed up to belonging to that demographic, but held my peace as we all chuckled before moving on to the business at hand.

Apparently, we've got a ways to go to fix the stereotypes of videogames and "gamers." I think we've got a lot of gamers out there who don't know that they are gamers.

Labels: casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:56 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
MMOs: Everyone's Doing It!
So why not you? Come on... all the cool kids are making their own MMO...

Antiques Roadshow Online. And the Cat MMO. And More!

Who wants to be a level 60 spreadsheet? I know I do!

Hey, is it really any weirder than the just-announced Legos Massively Multiplayer Online Game?
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:16 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Crushing the Dreams of Would-Be Game Designers
After the stupidly naive wide-eyed dreams of the suckers Collins College tries to woo in their ads...



... Comes the soul-crushing despair of reality in the good ol' Triple-A Mainstream Videogame Industry:

What They Don't Tell You on the Game Design Job Description

Now, while the above article is a little whiney, bitter, and exaggerated (as it should be for proper entertainment effect), it's also more-or-less true. I read a couple of bits to the guys at work (one of whom is a designer), and they nearly fell out of their chairs laughing. And we're at a pretty good company which takes game design seriously.

If you want to work on your own game, your own masterpiece, and show the world your uncompromised and unadulterated Vision(tm), go indie. It'll be hard on your wallet, and even harder on your ego, but the channels are wide open in this day and age to get your vision out to the people. There's simply never been a better time. Unfortunately, you won't have many excuses other than "lack of budget" when it becomes clear that nobody else thinks you are Stanley Kubrick, either.

If you want a steady paycheck in a 9-to-5 (or, too often, 10-to-10) job as a game designer for a major publisher, well, here's the deal (speaking in vague generalities, as every studio and publisher is different): As a "game designer" 80% of your job is that of a glorified tech writer. Most of the remaining 20% of your job is to attend meetings and to make hard decisions like, "What features do we cut to make milestone," and "How blue should this control be?" and "should there be a particle effect in the idle animation when the troll scratches his butt?" Oh, and repeat what you've already written in the game design document, because your lead programmer vaguely remembers seeing it somewhere but he is too lazy to go look it up now and knows a ton has changed since it was last updated and you are sitting RIGHT THERE (~~~ ahem --- guilty as charged, your honor...)

Because really - when you get hired by a game company to design games, you are being hired to MAKE THEM MONEY. And in all seriousness - they do want you to be creative and to have vision and all that. They really did hire you for your creativity. But it's like hiring someone to detail your car or landscape your yard. You want them to have vision, and to express themselves creatively and do something cool. You want to draw upon their experience and passion and come up with something that you both love. But they've got to do it within the bounds that you set, and meet the goal you hired them to achieve. They may really have a passion for drawing fat naked men eating grapes on the moon --- and hey, that's great for them. But I don't want to drive around town with that painted on the side of my car.

So maybe my soul has already been crushed, and I have become The Man. Maybe my mercenary attitude is the reason so many game designs seem stale and tired today. And maybe it's just the fact that I love giving the designer on my team a hard time.

Thanks to GameSetWatch for the link!

Labels: Game Design, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:36 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Making A Rogue-Friendly RPG Part 2: The Rogue's Role
One of my favorite strips in "Knights of the Dinner Table" (A comic about... believe it or not... RPG players) is entitled "It Takes a Thief." Bob, the player of the group's thief (rogue), is late for the game, and so the party is attempting to get some playing done without him.

The Game Master, B.A., sets the stage for a contest in town with a very valuable prize that their characters could participate in. He explains, "An ornate rug approximately fifty feet by fifty feet square covers the center of the flagstone pavement. Dead center in the middle of the rug is a fine golden goblet. It is encrusted with gems around its rim. And sitting in it is a marvelous ovate opal."

He goes on to explain the rules. "The nice lady explains to the group that the first person to take possession of the gem without bearing down on the rug may keep the opal and the goblet. But here are the rules! You can not walk on the carpet. You cannot suspend someone over the carpet. You cannot attempt to hit the goblet or stone with any kind of missile or thrown item. And you cannot use magic items or spells to accomplish the task." There are twelve other (non-player-character) travellers attempting the puzzle, and each participant is only allowed one attempt per day.

The players struggle for three hours (and several in-game days) trying to solve the puzzle, with no luck. Their attempts get disqualified because of the use of magic. One player attempts to disbelieve the rug as an illusion and just walk over it, to see if its all a trick. They attempt to pole vault across the rug (missing woefully). They try to send a trained monkey across to pick up the gem. They try stilts. They build a small catapult to fling a player across the room - resulting in no goblet and a lot of damage as he strikes the wall on the other side. They plan to build a suspension bridge across the courtyard, but are told that it is not allowed.

Finally, Bob shows up. The other players express their woes, and one player expresses the opinion, "Don't bother, Bob. It's a no-solver that B.A. threw at us to keep us occupied until you showed up."

After Bob hears the rules, he says, "Well, let me start with the most obvious solution. I kneel down on my knees at the edge of the rug and begin to roll it up. When I get to the middle, I'll reach over and pick up the goblet and the opal."

B.A. exclaims, "That's it! The opal and the goblet are yours!"

The other players stare at Bob in disbelief, and then in frustration. He says to them, "Sorry, dudes. Sometimes it just 'takes a thief!'" (Then he decides not to share his treasures, and dances a mocking jig on the table. The other players rip up his character sheet and pour soda down his pants. He got off easy.)

Rogue Is a State of Mind
Now, playing a rogue in an RPG isn't necessarily going to translate to clever outside-the-box thinking on the part of the player (at least for most players). But I think it illustrates a point that I promised to talk regarding some concrete ways to make a more rogue-friendly RPG.

Rogue is as much a state of mind as it is a set of rogue-like skills. The rogue, to me, is the outside-the-box thinker. They follow the fighter-pilot admonition "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'." And they in some way embody the trickster achetype - Loki, Coyote, Raven, Brer Rabbit, Puck, and others.

When given the choice of the lady and the tiger, the rogue is the guy who tries to open both doors at the same time, and then make his escape while the tiger is busy eating the lady, and then trying to figure out how to run off with the princess later. The rogue is Captain Kirk reprogramming the simulation so that he could beat the Kobiyashi Maru scenario. The rogue gets around the rules, possibly even breaking the rules, often choosing higher risk for higher reward.

Which undoubtably annoys other players in a multiplayer game when the risks don't pan out.

Motivation many vary, but in general what a rogue player in an RPG wants to feel like he's contributing to the group's success (in a multiplayer game) in a meaningful way, has the chance to really shine with his unique abilities once in a while, and that he gets to do it all by being clever, tricky, and and cunning rather than just being mightier-than-all-opposition.

A Rogue By Any Other Name
Of course, this isn't limited to a rogue "class" (particularly if you are playing a non-class-based system). Any player or character can have a rogue mindset. An RPG might have several rogue-like classes that specialize in cleverness and non-traditional tactics under different names: Swashbuckler, smuggler, netrunner, thief, scoundrel, fixer, secret agent, scout, whatever. Or it might be a classless system.

In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the illusionist class (pre-3rd edition, when it became just a specialization) had plenty of roguelike potential. It was also very hard to play well, as the sheer flexibility and power of the spells tended to confuse players. I thought the Enchanter class in EverQuest had more of a roguish style of play than the rogue class itself. When they weren't being tapped as little more than a mana battery.

Mixing Rogues And Non-Rogues
Sun Tzu talks about the orthodox and the unorthodox giving rise to each other, and how the combination of unorthodox surprise attack and the orthodox direct attack, used in combination, lead to victory. In a party-based game, the rogue is (at least in theory) the unorthodox specialist. Even if orthodox combat, in the real world, scouting, espionage, and surveillance is a critical activity... all rogue-like specialties. Laying siege to a castle isn't necessary if you've got an "inside man" who can leave the back door open for you.

The roguely route might be offer the chance of the highest reward for the least resources, but it also often yields to the highest risk. Clever plans go south. That's where the rest of the group comes in to pull the rogue's butt out of the fire --- er, I mean, provide a backup contingency plan. When you finally get caught sneaking through the Imperial battle station trying to rescue the princess, it's time for a few straight-up fights while you make your escape.

Playing the Rogue
Playing a rogue well in a dice &