http://www.brettdouville.com/ ¹A selection of thoughts about games, based on things I learn from other media. 2010-02-04T08:12:59-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2010/02/last_night_at_m.html The other evening I was watching a bizarre little Alain Resnais film, Last Year at Marienbad, which brought up echoes of L'Avventura as I watched it.¹ Although L'Avventura didn't connect with me in the same way, nonetheless, both films required a lot of investment. But first, a little précis of the plot, if it can truly be said to have one. A man approaches a woman in a hotel, claiming to have met her the previous year at Fredricksbad, or Marienbad, or perhaps Zarlsberg. She claims that it cannot be true, and he weaves memories of the occasion to convince her. This and the rest of the film exists in a bit of a dream state where various scenes occur which may or may not have been part of that story, or might be happening after he approaches her at the start of the film. Many lines of dialogue are repeated in different contexts, or at times even in the same context. There are various bits from the New Wave: shooting day for night, cuts which break up time in weird ways, overdubbed narration (though not necessarily from the point of view of a particular character). A second man, who appears to be romantically involved with the woman in some way (possibly her husband), enters the fray as well, and appears in various reinterpretations of particular scenes. The film demands the viewer to make associations between the characters, to consider potential interpretations, and to revise those interpretations as more information becomes available. It reminded me of nothing so much in games as puzzle games such as Drop 7 and Tetris, though with the added layer of narrative complexity, of a kind of semantics. In abstract puzzle games like the aforementioned, the player makes plans as he goes, interpreting the playing field in particular ways, and ultimately drastically changing his view of the playing field in response to unusual circumstances, such as the repeated appearance of a particular shape of block in Tetris, a series of the same number in Drop 7, or the uncovering of previously hidden information in Drop 7 which changes his approach. But the film succeeded for me not entirely because of its form, but because of the way that form pulled in thoughts of my own romantic entanglements of the past, and even acted as a sort of catharsis. The form allowed me to emotionally allude to events in my own life, and gave it a much greater meaning than it might have otherwise. When the film was over I was exhausted, just completely drained. Thinking on it, I wondered if there were a way to make a game that layered this sort of narrative meaning atop an interactive puzzly core. I will caution folks that this film is not for everyone, no more than L'Avventura is. Critics are sharply divided on it, and it indeed made a book containing the Worst 50 Films in the opinions of the authors, while other critics hail it as a masterpiece. It's the sort of film that inspires satire and parody -- when you see a fake SNL commercial in black and white with all the actors looking away from one another as they speak, this is likely the film that they are mocking. But in a certain frame of mind, the film is immensely successful at pulling out an emotional response that might be otherwise hard to achieve, because it doesn't fix on a particular story but a whole set of stories... exactly the sort of thing one expects games could be good at. I have been working up a post about why I pursue certain types of obsessive collecting in games and eschew others, and I may get to finish that this weekend, so come on back. ¹I tried to convince myself that I had seen the film before, perhaps a year ago, at another location, and I'm not sure whether I succeeded or failed. Yes, this is an obscure joke related to the film. (back)... Movies Brett Douville 2010-02-04T08:12:59-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2010/01/game_design_is_2.html Brett Douville 2010-01-10T20:52:27-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2010/01/game_design_is.html Games Brett Douville 2010-01-06T21:33:08-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2010/01/game_design_is_1.html Although I spend much of my time as a programmer, and not as a designer, nonetheless I like to think I've contributed to the design of most of the games I've shipped. But I actually managed to ship 6 games in which I was the sole writer/designer and indeed, also served as the live team, which I'll explain. They weren't computer or videogames, but nonetheless I learned a few things from doing them that I thought I'd share. A little back-story: On New Year's Eve, December 31, 1996, my then wife and I hosted friends for an evening of murder. At some point, I had been given one of those Host a Mystery in a box games. I don't remember the specific title or really anything of the plot, but I do recall that it was set on Maui, and so a group of eight of us got together to enjoy pineapple, fruity drinks, luau-style food, and a few laughs while the story played out over a few hours and courses. I don't think a single one of us got the murderer right, or at the very least, not for the right reasons¹. In any case, it was a good time, and the evening stuck in the back of my mind. Over the course of the next year, a few things led me to host another for my family, a gathering that would turn out to be 13 people, myself included. At that size, buying a boxed set was out of the question, and that left me only with the option to write one myself. I've been reading mystery novels and short stories for ages, cut my teeth on Encyclopedia Brown and Sherlock Holmes in my early youth and never looked back. Anyway, so began the first of several little game design projects, one a year for the next six years. The following items come from things I thought about and learned that first year. Item 0: Fun is foremost. It's worth repeating again and again: focus on the fun. I had done a couple of these before as both host and participant, and had been involved with role-playing for years, so I had a sense of what would work and what wouldn't. A variety of familiar character types and a healthy leavening of humor, with lots of interaction were the key. It wasn't even all that important that anyone solve the mystery, but the clues had to be there and the story had to be something that could be unraveled, if one were paying attention, because some players really enjoy that sort of thing. Liberal glasses of wine don't hurt either ;) I made every attempt to include fun at every step of the process, from names to the night in question. The title of the murder was "Murder fra Diavolo", owing to the theme, and the characters included Al Cappuccino, Ed Spresso, Gina Amaretto, to name a few, and myself, the chef, Scorchy Vanilli. Once there, I wore an enormous red chef's toque and had music from Big Night playing (along with some opera courtesy of my father's collection), to help further set a whimsical tone. Item 1: It has to start with a hook. Investing a bunch of hours into this sort of project (it would take me approximately 80 to prepare the first, not counting the night in question, with six hours of cooking), one needs to find a hook that will hold your interest long enough to want to deliver on it, and keep you motivated. My first hook came from a film I had seen that year, Big Night. At the time, I didn't know I wanted to host a murder, but after seeing that timpano, I knew I had to make one some day. When a timpano recipe appeared in the New York Times Magazine², the wheels started in motion. I needed a celebration to make such an enormous dish, which got me thinking about New Year's Eve, which got me thinking about the New Year's Eve prior... Item 2: Plan, plan, plan... until planning gets in the way. Based on the boxed set I had, it seemed reasonable to have every player make two accusations and respond to two accusations; more about that in the next item. Based on that, though, I didn't want to have any one person accuse the same person twice in the game; in some cases, I wanted the responder to counter with an accusation the following round, just to give a sense of continuity. Balancing that all out is important, and planning enough of this stuff before I started figuring out what the actual clues were was important. However, making a sensible story from basically a set of diagrams is difficult, and you have to work the problem from both sides; figure out what your story is independent of who's going to say what to whom, if you can, and then look for opportunities to wire the two together. In the end, I ended up having to replumb the diagrams based on the coherence of the story, and rebalance as I went. This wasn't terrible, but I did end up redoing a fair amount of work as I tried to keep to the rules I had set for myself. Item 3: You *can* have too much content. Twenty-four accusations per round is a lot of content to assimilate; having people figure out what was going on from that was more than they could reasonably handle. In this case, I think a little more thought up-front would have helped dramatically. Based on this, I switched to a one accusation/one response per person per round in future years, which was a significant improvement. That said, people really got into the role-playing aspect of these games -- they just couldn't reasonably figure out who the murderer was with all that information being thrown at them. Item 4: Props are fun... In a boardgame, or interaction game like this, props are good. I brought notepads and pens with me to the gathering so that people would have an opportunity to take ample notes if they wanted to. People were encouraged to dress the part, and in invitations sent out a month or so before the big night, their characters were described to them. It was a mob theme, a marriage between the children of two Mafia families, the Spressos and the Cappucinos, with the groom having been murdered, so it was familiar enough that folks could reasonably make costumes without significant outlay. Additionally, each participant would produce a Special Clue at some point during the evening, which might be a receipt for something, a photo, a newspaper article, that sort of thing. These Clues helped reinforce the play and lended further realism.³ Item 5: ... but be clear on the dividing line between fact and fiction. Unfortunately, that year the identity of the murderer hinged on a real physical trait of one of the participants, which didn't go well with at least one of the players, as it blurred the line too much. Although other evidence pointed in that person's direction, the fact that distinguished that particular person was a trait in the real world. If I were to do it again, I would have had the writing reinforce that fact to enter it into evidence, as it were. In the subsequent articles in this series, I'll describe each of the murder mysteries and how the rules I learned along the way applied. Check back in a few days or so for the next installment. Regrettably, my electronic copies of these games appear to be lost, but I'll keep digging around to see if I can find them on a backup disk or CD. ¹This was actually the second time we had done something like that, I'm now recalling. We also had a group of friends over a few years previous for a similar evening with a Star Trek: The Next Generation theme. (back) ²Cue collective groan from my friends, who have probably heard me say "I think I read about it in the New York Times Magazine" about eleventy billion times over the last 15 years... (back) ³Which seems particularly helpful now, in retrospect, considering some of the atrocious accents we had around the table each year...(back)... Games Brett Douville 2010-01-02T14:36:28-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2010/01/where_the_time_1.html or, The Year We Watched Too Much TV As I did last year, I kept track this year of how much stuff I watched, read, and played over the past year. The big surprise, looking at the numbers/lists, was just how much TV I watched this year, which is particularly surprising considering I do not have cable and no television reception to speak of¹. Instead, I have a Netflix subscription, which allows me both to receive movies and seasons of TV in the mail and to stream whatever's available on the service. The other big event this year is that I jumped into the latest generation with both feet, buying myself a 360 Elite and a high-def television back in May or so. That has led to many many hours of games but also television and movies, via the Netflix streamer on the 360. Anyway, here are the numbers: 139 films, or more accurately, as last year, 139 film or video experiences. This seems starkly down from last year's 192, but when I stop to consider that I watched 28 seasons of television (yes, complete seasons) compared to the prior year's 16², I think, holy crap, did I watch a lot of television this year. Thankfully, I think this will slow down in the coming year and I can get back to watching films, including a pet project a friend and I will hopefully be doing in the near future. I have only one season of Buffy left, two of Angel, and LOST's final season starts in about a month. I have a few others I want to see, but if I were to make a prediction about this, I think this year was likely an anomaly. In any case, I saw 32 films in the theater, which is about the same as last year, and 19 of the movies I watched this year were primarily because I have kids (I'm looking at you, summer blockbusters). 72 books, which is ten more than last year. I didn't count any of the books I read aloud to the kids save one (A Christmas Carol, which is sufficiently hefty to be countable), but I did read a fair amount of genre fiction this year. I read a handful of nonfiction books (4) and three books for work (3 -- also nonfiction, but separated out), which means I read more than 90% of people in my profession did this year, if Steve McConnell is to be believed. This is up from 62 books last year, with roughly the same distribution. 11 games, which is up from last year as well, and those games I played I tended to play quite a lot of. I played Fable II and bought every property; I played Far Cry 2 and found or earned every diamond. I think I found all but two points of interest in Assassin's Creed (flags, or whatever), solved all the Riddler's challenges in Batman: Arkham Asylum, and found all the orbs in Prince of Persia. That's quite a lot of OCD gaming, my friends. And that's not even counting the games I've played quite a bit of but haven't finished (hopefully we'll see them here next year): Brutal Legend, Braid, World of Goo, Tomb Raider: Underworld... I also started several handheld games, never to finish them, and while I don't think I'm likely to, I did put some hours in there as well. And again, this doesn't count boardgames, though between me and the boys we have already started to amass a significant collection. The Resolutionary: I have no resolutions really to make except that I think that much television is excessive. Four series really grabbed me this year: MI-5, LOST, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel. Of these, LOST probably takes the least of my attention -- it's more an emotional rollercoaster while I'm watching it than anything else. I might also aim to play more quirky games this coming year, especially downloadables. I have played several but only finished a couple. The Accountant: I honestly have no idea where I found this much time for all this entertainment. Granted, I was not crunching on a game at all, so perhaps that's reason enough to have found a lot of time -- there were two or three months in 2008 where I barely read, watched, or gamed at all. The Biorhythmicist: Uh, why did I have this category last year? I guess I went into a period this year where I was really into playing games; all of the games I finished this year, I finished since May. I didn't play any in those first five months or so, at least, none that I cared enough about to finish. The Apologist: Those seasons of TV were especially gripping :) And having said last year that I'd like to blog more about games this year, I'd have to say I largely fell down. I did post twice as many blog entries in the last year than the year prior, which is good; I haven't yet posted about several games that I finished and have something to say about, which had a lot to do with when I finished them and how driven I was to get to the next one. I played a bunch of games in November and December, and only posted about the one. I hope to turn that around this year. See you in the next week when I start a series of posts about some game design work I did over a decade ago, and the lessons I learned doing it... I've already written most of the first one, so this is not an idle threat ;) ¹At least, I haven't tried with the new television. I had no reception with the old tube TV and although this one is LCD, I think I'd need to buy some kind of antenna or something. I'm not going to bother. (back) ²Even putting a season at a conservative 10 hours or so, this would mean about 60 more "movies" worth, meaning I'd have seen slightly more filmic entertainment than the prior year, or about the same. (back)... General Brett Douville 2010-01-01T20:46:13-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2009/12/i_need_the_cape.html Caveat lector: Spoilers ahead! Over the last week or so I have plunged myself into Batman: Arkham Asylum with alarming fervor; last night I pushed on through until about two in the morning until I had found all of the Riddler's secrets, ending with the final "Chronicle of Arkham". Nothing negative I have to say here should in the least detract from the immense achievement of Rocksteady Studios in this title. This game is far more than I could ever have hoped for in a Batman game, and as someone who has worked with a license before, I am quite honestly humbled by the degree of fan service in this game, from the amazing art (a dark vision brimming with its own artistic logic and vitality), to the gadgetry (everything I could think to want is here), to the voice performances (all the right voices from the animated shows over the years, headlined by Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill), the villains, the heroes, the setting. Amazing, amazing work. Much ink has been spilled about the boss encounters and various mechanics of the game. Most of the mechanics I found thrilling and few things troubled me, although the Killer Croc encounter left me more appreciative of just how nimbly and quickly we're able to navigate Batman through these terrific environments, when I was forced to creep along a lot more slowly. What didn't work for me, though, was stepping into the cowl myself, from either a physical or a psychological perspective. There are a few different ways in the game to inhabit the cloak and mask, increasing in the severity of disconnecting me from the experience. The first way in which I felt a little strange was in moving to a first person view to take "zoomed-in photographs". When Batman is wandering about, he can solve various riddles by the Riddler by photographing the answer to the question posed¹. Often it's enough to simply take a picture by standing Batman in the right place and snapping the button, but at times, you need to view the subject more closely (to be able to read words, for example), and at those times, the interface changes to seem to be from the perspective of Batman. It's a little disconcerting -- not unusual for games, though, but in this one I've spent most of my time in the game with Batman filling up a quarter of the screen or so. Switching to a viewpoint from behind his mask seemed strange to some degree, though as I recall my introduction to this mechanic was fairly early in the game and I got used to it quickly. More disconcerting was switches to Batman's perspective in a couple of the cutscenes; I particularly remember being grabbed by Bane and shaken like a ragdoll, and viewing that from Batman's perspective (a view that was later repeated when Titan-ified Joker pulled off basically the same maneuver). I wanted to see Batman picked up and thrown, though perhaps the developers didn't. I'm wondering if they were going for a more visceral tie to Batman, but for me, I found it disorienting and a bit off-putting. My expectation in the game was to control Batman doing Batman-like things -- not really to become Batman, which I'll address last. The one area where the game completely fell flat for me was when the game attempted to shock me in ways that Bruce Wayne or Batman might find shocking. Specifically, these were the Scarecrow encounters, particularly the first one. Having discovered Commissioner Gordon's lifeless body, I continued on to the morgue where ultimately the point was to frighten Batman, in this case by presenting him with a vision of the bodies of his parents. This was the flattest moment of a game filled with peaks for me -- up until then (and for the rest of the game), my goals and beliefs were Batman's goals and beliefs, as they were the goals and internal logic of the game's world, the actions I could take, the information the environment would contain. But when presented with a psychological situation that required me to have Batman's own experiences, it didn't work for me, because I found myself not really wanting to be Batman, the tortured soul who is strong enough to bear everything he does. I really like driving him around, and sharing the same goals, but being Batman? Not for me. Let me watch him, making all my fumbling inputs look deliberate and correct. It is more than enough, and Rocksteady Studios justly deserves very very high praise. I'll be there opening day for the sequel... ¹These are themselves usually nice little set-pieces that are appropriate for the characters at hand, such as Harleen Quinzel's office (complete with posters of the Joker with little hearts on them), Victor Zsasz' handiwork, and the like. (back)... Games Brett Douville 2009-12-16T17:36:55-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2009/11/my_igda_leaders.html Thanks to those who came out to listen to me talk on Friday at the 2009 IGDA Leadership Forum. For those who couldn't make it, I've udpated my slides (please right-click, Save Target As or equivalent for your browser) with notes. Reminder -- you can compete to win a little something from me if you can identify the 4 programmers and 3 artists who appear in black and white in the talk. Simply send email to the address listed on the last slide, the names can appear in any order.... Games Brett Douville 2009-11-16T21:24:53-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2009/09/new_sidebar_fol.html Just a quick heads up. I don't much talk about my work in this space, because the blog was kind of a way of letting off steam about what I consume and not so much what I create. In any case, it's shameful that I haven't previously directed folks to two blogs by friends of mine from Day 1 Studios, Kyle Wilson and Adrian Stone. Kyle has published a number of articles about the architecture of Day 1's Despair Engine, the sorts of trade-offs that they make and why. Adrian talks about engineering concerns, often with regards to graphics but also general architecture or performance issues. His latest two articles are particularly nice and involve suggestions you can start using today on your own code bases. In any case, I knew from the time I spent interviewing with these two gentlemen¹ a few years back that I could learn a lot from them, and it was a large part of why I took the job. Anyone else can read their thoughts on coding for games without changing his place of employment. ¹A term I use loosely with respect to Kyle. Kidding! (back)... General Brett Douville 2009-09-19T10:10:23-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2009/09/beating_the_big.html Over the last month or so, I've been wondering how industry executives are going to thank Bobby Kotick. Will there be extra fruitcake at Christmas this year? Perhaps an assortment of nuts? I mean, the CEO of the number one American publisher has been doing little else but telling his competitors how to beat him. It started about a month ago with a report on Edge, which was quoting an Economist piece. Kotick told his interviewer that “Actually, people are happy with existing franchises, provided you innovate within them.” This is not necessarily untrue. Indeed, Activision Blizzard posted a strong set of profits this past year, driven primarily by sequels (Guitar Hero N, Call of Duty), movie tie-ins (Wolverine, Transformers 2), and a little perennial money-printing machine called World of Warcraft. They had one significant new intellectual property in the same period with Prototype, which according to VGChartz has sold close to 1.5 million units. Certainly, this is historically the time of a console lifecycle where one expects less new IP and more in the way of sequels and licenses. But console generations don't last forever, and a company who refuses to invest (even in a small way) in new creative ventures is bound to be unable to rise to the challenge quickly when the next generation comes around. If you leave certain muscles unexercised for long enough, they simply aren't going to pop right back into shape, it'll take time and more than a little bit of pain. Lately I've been watching Star Trek: The Original Series with my kids; the first season is available to stream on Netflix so it's easy to put on for an episode here or there. The other night we watched This Side of Paradise in which the Enterprise arrives at a planet to rescue a colony there, only to discover the small colony in a perpetual social stasis (due to a plant's spores). In the years they've been there, they've accomplished none of their original research goals, and have lived in a sort of vapid contentment¹. This is exactly the sort of world Bobby Kotick seems to envision for the games market; he's okay with the people already buying games being happy with the brands we have. In his world, there are only a relatively few people who complain. This is unsustainable. Kotick should know better -- isn't the core of capitalism continual growth? Certainly, it's possible to grow in many ways -- acquisitions and mergers, for example, which has been Activision's modus operandi for years. But there's any number of ways to die off as well, and among these is complacency. After all, even mighty Rome fell² after it grew fat and complacent -- leaving room for the barbarians at the gate to invade. In fact, even now people are beginning to get fatigued from current franchises. Jeff Vogel, over at The Bottom Feeder recently posted a discussion of his personal view of why the hey-day of Guitar Hero and Rock Band and other plastic instrument games are doomed. I don't know that they're doomed, but I haven't bought one in a while and I'm not likely to, even though Rock Band appeals. The novelty has worn off after a few titles, and it has been months since I've really picked it up, possibly even a year. I've enjoyed the games, but even if they innovate within the franchises, I'm not likely to come back. Certainly, according to VGChartz, while Guitar Hero: World Tour was pretty huge, the single-band issues haven't enjoyed nearly the same popularity. This is only anecdotal. But I'm not solely a developer, I'm a hardcore gamer. I'm envisioning people like my neighbors, who will buy only a couple of games, but for whom something has to be fairly special for them to pick up. They don't need copies of the same games over and over. They're happy with just one plastic instrument game, if that. They won't go out and buy every copy of Call of Duty that comes out. They'll just get weary of the same old thing. And not long after I was reading Kotick's puzzling statement, I encountered Leigh Alexander's discussion with various designers about creative bankruptcy in games. Kind of goes hand-in-hand, doesn't it? Finally, just over the last few days, new reports of interesting statements by Kotick have come to light. Trying to instill "skepticism, pessimism, and fear" into a company culture doesn't sound like a place where I want to make games. Over the long term, in that environment, people will be unable to take the risks that will allow them to deliver the quality of games that will be needed to grow the business. We can only hope that Kotick's approach, directing the largest American publisher as he does, won't sour the market entirely. Lately, Activision just sounds like it copied EA's old ways of doing business, while EA is trying to make something more out of itself, funding riskier projects, investing in new IPs, investing in new markets (via mobile and other divisions). It seems like EA grew up from the kind of company that Activision now is, whereas Activision now has a CEO who believes strongly that it's the best way to be. EA at the moment has Brütal Legend waiting in the wings, and Dragon Age, and they are working the Mass Effect franchise. Even my old employer is getting into the act, both in mining its back catalog to find experiences they can bring to new users (certainly, Monkey Island didn't reach nearly the audience it might have had it been released into a larger gaming culture), and using the new delivery methods to experiment, as with the recently announced Lucidity. So, how do you beat Kotick, other CEOs? Just make an environment which rewards creativity and instills a positive outlook. Shouldn't be too hard. Wish him a Merry Christmas for me. ¹When I was in college I had one of those dorm room posters that read "Everything I Know I Learned From Star Trek". It's funny coming back to it after all these years and still enjoying it so much with my kids. (back)²We haven't watched the Season 2 episode "Bread and Circuses" ;) (back)... Games Brett Douville 2009-09-15T23:27:51-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2009/08/first_impressio.html One of the things I find important to any first person shooter, and perhaps any linear game¹, is the "introduction" -- how you are introduced to a new enemy, new weapon, new environment, anything. I came by this importance working with Nathan Martz, now the lead programmer at Double Fine, on Star Wars Republic Commando. As our enemy AI programmer, he really drove forward the idea that each introduction of a new enemy should be interesting and should say something about the character in question -- its tactics or its personality. In SWRC, that became important to how we introduced everything, from your squadmates to your weapons to your enemies, and it has become one of the lenses I examine games through. So, recently I played Gears of War and in this area there were a few things I felt they might have worked better. The game is very successful in the running, gunning, and cover areas, but less consistent in how it introduces its enemies. Here are a few rules that came to mind while playing. Personality is key. The Berserker was a good example of this, a blind, raging character who bursts through walls. Unfortunately, the introduction of the Boomer was far less successful -- two Boomers walking down a corridor who... step on a rat. It just doesn't fit with the character -- their in-game behavior is far better. While I understand that this was meant as an attempt at levity, it was completely out of place with the tone of the rest of the game, involving slapstick rather than the over-the-top macho gallows humor prevalent throughout. The player has to see it. The first time I ran across the Corpser, one of my squadmates pointed him out and made some remark. Problem was, I was looking the other way, and as of this writing I still don't know what I missed. This can be a real danger in in-game introductions, where you have no control over the player's current attention. In Republic Commando, all of our introductions were in-game, so we did our best to put them in spots where it would be hard to miss them. An ameliorating factor in the case of the Corpser was that there were several introductions, building tension, which gave me multiple opportunities to see it. Many of the introductions in Gears are done through cutscenes, which avoids this issue entirely, but takes you out of the first-person perspective. Give clues as to gameplay. The Gears "Berserker" is a good example of this; we're told that we can destroy him if we can get him into the outdoors. However, we're in a sealed-off room. Lo and behold, this critter is superstrong and will run at any noise... Introduce the enemy in an appropriate location. If you're always going to fight a critter in a tight hallway, don't introduce him in a wide-open cavern. The Wretches were a good example of this done well -- they spew out of a hole in the ceiling in a tight hallway, which is a space which works well for them. The first impression can't be far from the payoff. With the Corpser, there were several opportunities to see what was coming, and a lot of tension built up... that was squandered as the critter disappeared until the very end of the next act, several hours of gameplay away, which for me was as much as a few days. As a counterexample, the Reavers are shown in an introductory video and immediately pay off by attacking the train you're riding in. Make the meaning clear. It must be clear to the player what they are seeing. In the case of General Raam, I had no idea who this guy was, and he ended up being the final boss. He appeared briefly and shot some random soldier, and then disappeared until the end of the next act, depriving that final encounter of the emotional impact it might have held. Hmmm... I seem to be getting a bit Bullet-Pointish these days, I'll have to watch out for that. No idea what I'll be talking about next, but you can meet me back here in a week or so. ¹This is not to say that I don't believe this can be managed to some degree in open-world games as well, though it's a more significant techological and artistic challenge. (back)... Games Brett Douville 2009-08-08T10:31:39-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2009/08/rss_feed.html I've updated the RSS feed link to point at the atom feed, which works much better with Google Reader and I suspect others. For full text and better formatting, I suggest you unsubscribe from the feed and resubscribe. Hey, while you're at it, you can follow me on Twitter.... General Brett Douville 2009-08-03T21:01:16-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2009/08/the_perfectly_e_1.html As you know, I've been playing lots of games again, which is nice. My travels have included the planet Sera and two trips to the Middle East, albeit a few centuries apart, and lately I've been relaxing at the mall. In those travels I've noted down a few impressive "mini-mechanics" -- little bits of games that aren't the center of it but do a good job of reinforcing the main game. The mini-mechanics that work best for me tend to follow a few guidelines: They reinforce the main character. An old game development hand once said to me that characters in games had nothing to do with their personality, and everything to do with what they could do. In other words, while Mario's name was changed from Jumpman, that name almost exactly defines Mario as a character in his first game (and might therefore have been too limiting). Indiana Jones, in the context of a videogame, is his whip. Buffy Summers is a stake. Riddick is his vision. You get the idea. A perfectly executed mini-mechanic reinforces the gameplay traits of a character. They are brief. Hence "mini". They should fit right in with the rest of gameplay. They are infrequent, but hardly unique. If you're doing this every few seconds, it's not a mini-mechanic, it's probably the mechanic. Similarly, if you're only doing them once, in a boss battle, it's not a mechanic. They aren't required. These are purely optional; more accurately, it might be better to say that any individual instance is optional. They should be in situ, not apart from the bulk of gameplay. If you come out to another interface screen, as in many mini-games, you're really doing some other task, and not using a small mechanic to reinforce the main game. It's not meant to challenge the player. You aren't doing it enough, probably, to be able to do it perfectly every time. So, it can't be a high skill proposition; the risk-reward ratio can't be too high. It should never be a game-ender. The first of these that really struck me was the "leap of faith", from Assassin's Creed. In each of the game's 11 locations¹, Altair may ascend a set of towers and other high points to get the lay of the land below him. Now, having gone to all the trouble to make Altair able to climb up or down every vertical surface, I would have forgiven the designers for making me control Altair back down to a reasonable location. Instead, they turned a very real gameplay problem into an opportunity for a beautiful little mechanic. Generally speaking, the place I need to go next is way down there amongst the ants, so adding a way to get me down there quickly was an excellent choice. It's flawlessly executed -- the animation is fluid and frankly gorgeous, and got me every time. Finally, it reinforces the character -- this is a man who is able to do thrilling things with his body through years of training. The next two worth mentioning from my recent games both come from Gears of War, though I think one of them was better executed than the other. In a few years, when I look back at this first year of HD gaming, I'm going to remember the "roadie run" from Gears of War. For those who haven't played... oh, who am I kidding, I'm last to the party on this for sure. In any case, the opportunities to use the roadie run are somewhat rare -- in any large spaces where it would be most appropriate, you're often too busy with enemies to be able to use it for pure navigation, and in smaller spaces, it's less effective. But as a means of moving up in a sort of semi-cover (crouching to make for a small target), it's terrific. It accentuates the gameplay -- Gears is almost entirely a game about cover in combat -- and it furthermore reinforces the physicality and bulk of the character, as Marcus Fenix rarely looks as built as he does when he's running in a crouch carrying all his heavy equipment. And it uses up a resource, though a hidden one; there's some sort of fatigue going on, since Marcus can't use it indefinitely. The other is the "active reload". I was less enamored of this mechanic, primarily because in order to get the feel for it, I was constantly drawing my eyes away from the action. The active reload mechanic involved exactly timing a button press to an on-screen indicator, but I found that you could train up on it. Early on, splitting my attention between the action in the center of the screen and the reload bar in the upper right was more than I could manage, particularly with a variety of weapons, and I think this is largely the reason why this mechanic didn't quite feel right to me. Later in the game, once I had taken a look at the achievements list, I spent a minute of relative calm just doing it a dozen times in a row to get the achievement, and after that it felt good and reinforced the character. It felt like the sort of thing that some Army grunt might know -- oh, if you bang the butt of the rifle at the right time, you can kick the first round into the chamber quicker, but watch out, the gun can jam if you misstep. That all said, this was a mechanic I appreciated rather than loved, unlike the other two. The leap of faith would have gotten old if I used it to jump off every building. I would have wished for better running and gunning had the roadie run been constant. With the active reload, I would have been more impressed had they showed a little restraint and made it only available on the one gun -- the gun with which a Gear would theoretically be most familiar. At the beginning of the game, where I was switching amongst several weapons to find the one that fit me best, the reload was a hindrance more than a help. By the end of the game, I had given up trying to time any weapons other than the main assault rifle that you start with; it was simply too distracting and not worth the time to invest to learn each of them. Finally, it's not necessary to always introduce a mechanic, or to make a mechanic more complicated than it need to be. I appreciated that in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, there was no special trick to place a charge or tank-buster or what-have-you on an armored vehicle or other target. In these cases, it was simply a "get near and press A" proposition -- an absolutely minimal implementation. Pressing the button on the controller was like opening a door or doing something else similarly trivial. More than that would have likely led to player frustration, which should be avoided like the plague in mass-market titles. Well, that's about all I've got for now. Join me in the next week or so again for some discussion about "introductions". ¹Sure, it's an open world game, but there are three cities, each with three districts, your home town, and the "Kingdom". For purposes of this article, the modern office building to which Desmond Miles has been kidnaped can be dismissed, as it contains no actual gameplay. (back)... Games Brett Douville 2009-08-03T08:35:44-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2009/07/playing_at_war.html As I recently posted, I finally jumped in and got myself a 360 recently¹. With the recent reveal of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at E³, I felt like it was a good time to catch up on what modern shooters are doing on the next-gen hardware. I started playing the game on June 4th, a Thursday. I started late in the evening; I seem to remember coaching a baseball game that night, so I started some time after 9. I may have had a beer with dinner, which I would have had when I got home. I hadn't played any shooters to speak of on the next generation, though I've since also played Gears of War, which I'll discuss a little bit in this space soon. I couldn't play more than a single level of Modern Warfare, if I even finished that, and my hazy recollection now is that I didn't. You see, I've gotten back into the habit of listening to the news this year, what with having a President I can stomach and all, and while I certainly wouldn't say I've been ignorant of the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's nonetheless pretty safe to say that it wasn't on my mind day in and day out. These days, however, it's more on my mind, particularly with concerns about Iran constantly popping up in the news, and reports about surges being part of Morning Edition or All Things Considered nearly every day it seems. I sat there and tried to play this modern first person shooter and I just couldn't do it. I was consumed by anxiety, completely stressed out by the sounds and sights of virtual war, bothered more than I could imagine by the suggestions that it brought of real war. It was really surprising to me. The next day I brought it into work to exchange it for something else from our expansive game library, but due to one thing or another I ended the day having not had time to select something else. In the meantime, one of my producers (a huge fan of the series) suggested I give it another go; he was surprised by my reaction, and thought the game had a lot to offer. So I dragged it back home again. As it turned out, on June 6th I had a rare day of not much going on, and around the middle of the day I put it in again. I was still a little concerned about my reaction, but for whatever reason -- the daylight, the lack of beer, the lack of baseball, or some other random factor -- it didn't affect me to nearly the degree that it had. I still felt a lot of tension, but it was a healthier, "intense game" kind of sensation, not the panicky, rabbity-heart kind of physiological response I had had only 36 or so hours previously. In all probability I had simply become desensitized having been exposed to it once. I played through the game on the easiest setting -- I was most interested in being aware of what the game had to offer, as an example of a top shooter, than of the story or the particular level of challenge. I was looking at it with my game developer hat on, not with my gamer hat on, and maybe in the end that made the bigger difference. I enjoyed how characters in the story showed up in a series of flashback missions, which were my favorite missions of the game, both because of that bridge between earlier games and the "present", and because of the remoteness of those characters from current world events. I found the remoteness of the "death from above" mission horrifying in the way it removed the consequences of actions both visually and in virtual distance, the way in which targets became mere abstractions. It's quite an experience. But playing it on the anniversary of D-Day, with the graphical fidelity these machines possess, and with what's in the news day in and day out, it didn't exactly feel like a game, which I intend as high praise. Worth "playing". Join me in a week or so for a quick little discussion of mini-mechanics I've encountered recently... ¹Although I have at least a couple dozen games on the last generation I haven't yet played, I've been employed for the last year with Bethesda Game Studios, and it seemed appropriate that I get a system at home I can play our games on. On the plus side, the company also has a sizable game library, so I will hopefully not end up with dozens of games this generation that I haven't played. Check back in a few years I guess. (back)... Games Brett Douville 2009-07-23T21:00:32-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2009/07/eating_popcorn.html A month or so ago I finished Assassin's Creed as my first foray into high-def gaming¹. I had bought myself a big TV and a 360 with Halo 3 and Fable II² and considered what games I most wanted to jump in and play. Without a doubt, the first that came to mind was AC, since I remembered being very interested in it years ago when creative director Patrice Desilets and producer Jade Raymond showed some early work at GDC 2006. I want to say from the outset that I loved this game, but I have to be honest and say I loved it largely in the way I love popcorn. For me, there was a definite thrill to be had from the parkour elements, and the graphics were frankly stupendous. I used to be the sort of person who wouldn't really care about graphics, but to be fair in this case, they completely drew me in. In the future, I guess I'm more likely to say that while the play of a game remains most interesting to me, there are certainly large benefits in the areas of immersion to be had from excellent graphics. Not a great insight by any means, but certainly a change in my own thinking. That said, I truly felt like the gameplay of the game was a bit schizophrenic. In essence, whilst in cities there are two forms of locomotion, walking around slowly on the ground and flying parkour style amongst the rooftops. The action on the ground seems largely made from negative reinforcement. Moving quickly is discouraged, because if you bump anyone too hard, the guards will wake up and you'll be fighting your way clear, which is fun if you're doing that intentionally because you enjoy the combat, but significantly less fun when you're attempting to execute some mission. A quick catalogue of the ground obstructions: Guards, around whom you must move slowly, because they will otherwise realize that Altair, who is dressed all in white unlike all the folks around him, somehow doesn't fit in and must be that assassin everyone's all worried about Beggarwomen, who are placed at various locations and who run up and deliberately obstruct your progress, crying out about their family, and how they have nothing, etc. ³ Madmen, who simply run up and push you, therefore slowing you down Women with baskets, vases, urns and what have you balanced precariously upon their heads, who must be carefully navigated via the game's "push through a crowd" button Thieves, who can be pickpocketed for resources (throwing stars, which are of use in the rooftop game), but who, in cases of failure, engage you in a fistfight. These stop randomly, leading to failure. Scholars, who obscure your presence but walk maddeningly slowly. They aren't properly speaking an obstruction, but they are indicative of the problem I describe. This is in signficant contrast to the rooftop game, which is all about speed, killing guards quickly and quietly, moving from place to place with great rapidity, and generally getting that sense of flying that I loved so much from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The extreme positive reinforcement of running around on the rooftops should be reason enough to go up there; the game doesn't need to negatively reinforce the ground game by making it so much slower-paced. It's particularly noticeable because so much of the game must take place on the ground. Contacts are on the ground, your throwing star refills are on the ground, side missions are on the ground, assassinations are on the ground, which is perfectly sensible and realistic. However, spending time on the ground is such a slog, the differences between it and the rooftop game are so different, that the one feels constantly as if it is fighting the other, like two sides of a split personality. How would I fix it? (After all, it's easy to complain.) I'd relax the always-on alerts until the main assassinations actually occur, or in particularly sensitive areas like palaces or guard barracks. I'd tie pickpocketing, which already exists, to a small amount of resource management whereby merchants can be pickpocketed and the money given to beggarwomen. Thieves would stop less frequently and for more clear reasons, and vase-carrying women would be automatically navigated unless Altair is running. I'd remove the madmen altogether, and I'd speed up the motion of scholars. In short, I'd aim to make the ground game more quickly paced and only deploy those resources as obstructions when they really ought to be. I hope I'll be back soon to talk a little bit about how weird it felt to be playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on D-Day. ¹Aside, that is, from time at work spent test/playing Fallout 3, but that doesn't count -- the focus of the eye is less drawn to the positives than the negatives when you're readying a game for ship. (back) ²Both of which will likely see a write-up here at some point, since I've finished F2 already and played it quite alot. And look for a bit about FPS design in reaction to my playthrough of Gears of War, which I finished yesterday. (back) ³I actually found this quite frustrating, because what I really wanted was to give them some money and have them never bother me again. This felt a bit like a lost opportunity element; I would have been interested in paying a beggarwoman money to distract a guard. Instead I found myself tossing dozens of them aside so that I could get 5 cheap achievement points. It didn't work and led to significant unnecessary frustration, quite apart from the realism it was likely intended to convey. (back)... Games Brett Douville 2009-07-12T10:33:53-05:00 http://www.brettdouville.com/mt-archives/2009/07/swrc_retrospect.html EuroGamer has a retrospective of Star Wars: Republic Commando¹ out, motivated by the game's release this week on Steam. Here's a clip: The whole game is simply a brilliant action package that subscribes to the Halo mantra of delivering that same exhilarating burst of action again and again - all to orchestral music that blends the chants of excitable holy men with the familiar strains of John Williams. Jesse Harlin on the music, everyone else on the "brilliant action package". ;) Second post about Assassin's Creed will probably drop today -- have been very busy playing games for a change. Getting a new console always seems to goose that for me; it feels like I've finished as many games in the last two months as I think I finished all last year.² ¹I was lead programmer; it's a shame we never got to do a sequel. (back) ²Patently false, by the way. I finished 8 games last year, not including the game on which I worked, and have only finished 4 this year. But it's true that I feel like I have. (back)... Games Brett Douville 2009-07-12T08:46:31-05:00