oizys

Preview post of the concepts chapter for Tatha

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dhpn5xkg_44g9fpxwsj

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been playing a lot of Little King’s story lately and I can’t help but notice one major design curiosity:

The game becomes more usable and coherent as you go along.

Normally it makes sense to introduce concepts to the player in a nice smooth logarithmic/sigmoid fashion to optimize learning.  A game begins as simple as it can and adds complexity after enough time to digest the previous mechanics has passed, limiting the amount of instantaneous new mechanics.  However, with Little King’s story, nearly every time a new feature was added (especially in the early stages of the game)… I felt like it was a convenience issue or it was long overdue.

Each time a feature was added it didn’t feel so much like a new thing to learn, but a shortcut to a boring or frustratingly impossible task previously.  It feels as if they started with the final game and removed interface and features until they arrived at the beginning.  Some may feel this is a sound design methodology, but I do not.  The beginning experience is the most cruicial to the game - it can be looked at as a subtractive version of the game’s concepts, but it should be just as compelling as later play.  On examining this I noticed even I noticed some conflicting viewpoints on this issue, even within myself.

On one side, the beginning should be representative of the gameplay, pure and enjoyable in its own right.  This is especially true of casual games and seems to come from the casual game part of my brain.  The idea is that there is no immediate ‘end’ which you are going to, you are enjoying the gameplay as it is and as it progresses.  To me, this is the very zen-like concept that attracts me to more mechanics-based and casual games to begin with.

On the flip side, if you’ve designed a game that has a degree of complexity to it, you can’t give it all up at once.  So, like any good school - you introduce a problem, then a skill, and then test for application (designers take note: it’s more effective to introduce the problem before the skill than the other way around).  This method leads to a very ‘tutorialish’ beginning, especially if condensed together (skill-skill-skill-game vs skill-game-game-skill-game-game).

Neither side is wrong, but there’s definitely some nuances in the approach that make it worth exploring further.  As much as I do truly enjoy Little King’s Story, I did feel like I was playing through about 5 hours of a mediocre / frustrating / aimless game to get to a more polished, enjoyable game later - and I didn’t even know that was going to pan out that way through the first 5 hours (not quite like begrudgingly sitting through tutorials).

Regardless of the design method with respect to the beginning (additive or subtractive), one should never skip polishing the beginning and examining it from a ‘what if this were all it was’ viewpoint.

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

Normally whenever the question “Are video games art?”  is raised, I have to force myself to avoid it, as I feel that describing my take on the subject will take far longer to type than the given blog/tweet post’s comments will be active for.  However, recently having read Damion Schubert’s take on it and having seen the subject bounce around on #gamedesign a lot, I decided I should give this a shot, so here goes.

The biggest difficulty I tend to find in discussions on this subject is that people aren’t always aware of what it is they are asking nor do they come to the discussion table with a shared set of definitions.  I am going to attempt to clean up this mess a bit with some simple logical statements and metrics, peppered with just a bit of subjective thought process.  So first off:

What is Art?

Perhaps the biggest culprit is a unclear definition of Art.  If only this were a problem limited to those discussing it as it applies to video games.  The true definition of art has been argued for quite some time (see also Aesthetics).  I’m going to try to pluck off the relevant issues.

Art can mean a reference to a field of study, a technique related to creative skill as relates to aesthetics, a product or work of art, or more colloquially ‘fine art’.  We’re going to need to pick or build a definition.  How about the first line in the Wikipedia entry - it’s gotta be the most relevant, right?

“Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions“.

Yup, games definitely do this!  We’re done!  The answer is yes!   Not so fast.

There is much debate about this subject so it can’t possibly be that simple… Let’s try another definition.  How about Britannica Online’s defintion:

“the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.” [my italics]

Well that one seems to fit with games pretty easily.  I don’t seem to be getting very far with this, so I’m going to work on my own definition.   I’ll use existing things that we readily call art as a way of removing away that which it is NOT, leaving that which it is.  Likewise, if the definition excludes things we conventionally call art, then the definition itself will be invalidated.

Is art a physical object?  No, or else music or performance would not be art.  Is it creative skill or technique?  No.  It cannot be simply a technique.  If you go a gallery to appreciate art, this definition works (appreciating the technique), but if you then buy the art, you are not buying the technique.  So clearly it is neither the sum of its materials nor the sum of its techniques - it is neither simply artwork or artistry.  What ties the two together but is wholly neither?  Well a concept does.  Concepts can be equated to thoughts and words.  Are words alone art?  Just a series of words strung together?  No, we do not call this art.  However, words written down or spoken can be poetry, which is definitely art.  So what is the difference between the intrinsic set of concepts floating along and that which we call art?

Well, both written and spoken word have the potential to communicate the concept from one individual to another.  So if I walk up to you and say something, is this art?  The problem here is that the communication is direct.  What if I yell the same words to a crowd, indirectly?  Now this is could be either performance art or the actions of a crazy person (or both).  We are now very close to the great writer Leo Tolstoy’s definition of art:

“a use of indirect means to communicate from one person to another”.

I like to call this ‘proxy communication’.  Or in diagrammatic form:

Artist -> Medium -> Audience

Does it really need an audience?  Must a work of art be shown to one other than the original artist?  If an artist paints a work and it is left in their attic, and their house is bulldozed, did the work of art exist?  This is doubly ponderous if the artist is also a mime. Well, here we can satisfy that formula to say that perhaps the artist was also the audience.  But is this cheating?   Well, consider a person talking to themselves (casually like assurances into the mirror, not schizophrenia).  That is direct communication from yourself to yourself.  However, if that same person wrote a diary, and perhaps drew a sketch in a diary to try to express their feelings (to be later read by themselves again long after they do not recall the original feeling), then that is indirect communication and as such we can call it art.

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Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

This highly scientific grading scale was developed by some random Joystiq comment from here that was since deleted.  I don’t really know what ‘creepy hot’ means either.

Creepy Hot:

• Warioware: DIY - No demo and little to no buzz.  If they called it Mario Paint DS, there would’ve been a fanstorm.
• Tatsunoko vs Capcom - Casshern vs Jun the Swan… that’s some childhood fantasy stuff right there.  Reinvigorated my interest for Capcom fighters.
• Sin and Punishment 2 - Holy hell yes, a sequel to a great and underappreciated game.
• Fat Princess - As one friend put it “this is a reason to own a PS3″.  Very fun, addictive gameplay
• Oboromuramasa - Gorgeous.
• New Super Mario Bros Wii - 4 Player Coop
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Epic
• Mod Nation Racers - One of the most impressive demos all show.  This is gaming 2.0
• Star Wars: The Old Republic - Ok, now I’m starting to drink the kool-aid too
• Scribblenauts - Could be one of the most ambitiously creative games ever
• The Last Guardian - Games are art
• All Points Bulletin - Last.FM streaming, mass customizing mayhem
• Front Mission Evolved - F@#! yeah
• Torchlight - Many agree this is one of the great surprises near the back.  Quite possibly more enjoyable for longer periods of time than Diablo 3

Hot:

• Little Big Planet on PSP
• PSP Go - Most comfortable feeling handheld device ever.  Though getting people to switch is going to be super hard.  Seems like they’re targeting new owners.
• Quantum - Wasn’t expecting much but it looks really great.  Good multiplayer ideas too.
• Metal Gear Solid Rising
• Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth - I cosplayed as him so you can bet I’m excited
• A Boy and his Blob
• Assassin’s Creed 2
• Golden Sun DS
• Alpha Protocol
• Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
• Battlefield 1943
• Bayonetta - Looks WAY more fun than I predicted
• Beyond Good and Evil 2
• Bioshock 2 - Wasn’t a huge fan of the first one (blasphemy I know), but the multiplayer looks fun - you can BE a big daddy
• Brutal Legend
• Brink
• Borderlands - the new art direction took some getting used to but I think it makes the game stand out on its own far better
• deTuned - .theprodukkt
• Food Network Cook or Be Cooked - looks like it might actually teach generation Y/Z gamers how to cook, increasing the chances of civilization as we know it surviving
• Fate Unlimited Codes - wished this was available to play
• Lost Planet 2 - though I did like the cold setting of the previous, the multiplayer fights look quite fun for this
• Katamari Forever - how can you not love more Katamari goodness?
• Heroes of Telara - the trailer for this is unimpressive, but the concept art and monster design is really quite awesome
• Gravity Crash -
• Fragile - XSEED always makes good games, and this one looks to be no exception
• Metroid Other M
• Mini Ninjas
• Saboteur
• MAG
• Order of War - Looked amazing, and I’m normally not a huge WWII kind of strat-gamer.
• Persona
• Sing Star Queen - finally a music game that contains only songs I know
• Zombie Apocalypse - Looks like a really well polished Smash TV style shooter
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled - a true multiplayer classic
• Trauma Team
• Trine
• Trials HD:  Looks pretty fun in that the bloopers will undoubtedly be awesome
• Tales of Monkey Island
• Singularity
• Shadow Complex
• Split Second - Such a great idea, universal studios tour plus racing.  Also the HUD / dials under the car is one of the best UI designs in all of racing.
• Splinter Cell Conviction - Some very impressive cinematic feel to this one
• Wet - a lot of cool flair and possibility here, but the trailer seemed kinda bad
• Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks

Meh:

• White Knight Chronicles - I love Level 5 but something about the demo just didn’t ‘feel’ right
• DJ Hero - If a real life DJ got that wicky with it for that long, I’d punch them in the face
• Natal - Seems to promise more than is capable.  I love that it will advance culture, but I feel that it will take at least 5 years after its release for it to catch up/on
• Pixeljunk Monsters on PSP - not because it isn’t awesome, but why can’t it also come out on PS3?
• Final Fantasy XIV - Final Fantasy 12+2.  Everyone I know’s heart sank when they heard it was going to be an MMO.  Square hasn’t proven it has learned the genre lessons.
• New Samurai Showdown game - Why oh why make this 3D.  I gains nothing from it.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum - Seemed like a lot of style and little substance
• Dragon Age Origins - Don’t see anything new or inventive here.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy - Gameplay felt really shallow
• Pop’n Music - I love this game to death… why give it the Wiimote treatment?  Hard as I try, I can’t imagine that being fun
• Left 4 Dead 2 - Feels weird that this isn’t just DLC and the daylight setting somehow takes something away from it
• Saw - seriously why publish a movie game so late after the movie?
• Spore * - Milk milk milk

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

A line a piece about game news today from e3:

• DJ Hero: Note to Activision - don’t reuse the Guitar Hero crowd cheer sound / crowd animations… people don’t cheer at clubs.
• APB: White Dodge Rams, piercings and tattoos oh MY.  Seriously, yes pls
• Shadow Complex: Interesting perspective - here’s hoping Card’s second foray into games is better received
• SWTOR: Those voice overs better be subtitled and skippable
• Splinter Cell Conviction: Realism is getting impressive.  Dark Grey is the new Bright Brown
• Natal: oizys - basically microsoft is claiming to have solved mocap and voice recognition perfectly,  zug - yeah they just threw enough money at it so now it works perfectly
• Natal: dickscanning device (bet you didn’t think about THAT yet)
• Bayonetta: Really pretty accompaniment to pressing X, X, X, Triangle, X, X, Triangle
• Tatsunoko vs Capcom: This will get me back into Capcom fighters… but I will probably only ever play Casshern
• Mini Ninjas: Exploration ftw
• Tales of Monkey Island: Yes!
• Front Mission Evolved: Moar, and gameplay please.
• Many many other games: Oh look it’s another multiplayer first person shooter shooter / racing game sequel
• Everything else: I’m really impressed at how good the game industry has become at making non-interactive movies - now get back to work
• Video Sites: Remember/cookie my goddamn age!!

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

Short list of games listed/rumored to be announced/ing at E3 that catch my interest and why:

• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - Always loved the franchise
• Fat Princess - Looks fun.  Both for myself and my girlfriend always looking for new resource management games
• Pixeljunk Shooter - I love everything this studio does
• White Knight Chronicles - Yet another JRPG? Probably, but not like there are a lot on the PS3 right now
• The Agency - Of course, it’s on my MMO list
• Half Minute Hero - I had an idea similar to this… want to see how they implemented it
• Little King’s Story - looks so awesome
• A Boy and his Blob - remake, skeptical but curious
• Zephyr: Rise of the Elementals - looks to be a fun katamari clone
• Nostalgia - fun/aggravating to see steampunk move into the game buzzword category
• Tatusnoko vs Capcom - not a huge fan of the capcom fighters but this is too interesting as an anime / casshern fan to not check out
• Dragon Age: Origins - I feel kind of obligated on this one as a dice rolling male
• Brink - I usually don’t fall for the ‘not-much-is-known’ hook, but this one has me intrigued
• Singularity - kinda bored of shooters but this looks at least aesthetically interesting
• DJ Hero / Scratch / Def Jam Rapstar - having predicted this for half a century, am journalistically obligated to follow up
• Quantum Theory - really just because the title… I’m a sucker for Quantum related sci-fi
• Alpha Protocol - been following this for a while
• Seven Haunted Seas - Have some friends working on this, looks really cool
  
• Everything Atlus is showing

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

Lately I have been playing a lot of Free Realms and having honestly a lot more fun than I thought I would.  So here is a brief analysis of why Free Realms works and what could be improved.  I’m going to use bullet points because bullet points, powerpoints and spreadsheets are how I roll.

Strengths

The section in which I glow all fanboy-like.

• Free realms is not attempting to be WoW - This is amazingly important, carving out another playstyle and niche.  When games compete directly in their design and demographic with WoW they mostly serve to remind people why they played WoW to begin with, which doesn’t usually fare well in the long term for the budding MMO.
• Exploration - Ooh shiny gold sparkles!   I feel the MMO market has been underserving at least one major segment, based on looking at psychological data (Daedalus, et al) is the Explorer Bartle type.  Free Realms is one of the few MMOs that gives a real benefit to actually just exploring.  It’s unfortunate that they only really support the literal element of the explorer type and have some major issues even there (which I will discuss later) but it does feel like a genuine effort.  It also helps to give an economic grounding to the convenience that teleporting brings.  Teleport makes grouping and playing together easy, but incentives of collections are thrown to those who go on foot.
• Activity based, not progression based - With the combination of multiple independent jobs, minigames, a card game, racing games, and repeatable quests, the focus is more on what you want to do than who you want to be.  I don’t feel somehow penalized for not eeking out the most optimal progression/XP path while power leveling to cap so that I can participate in the game’s available activities.  I can choose to do whatever I feel like doing at the moment and I’m rewarded for my time - this lends well to the more casual demographic.  In addition, since the game can be played for free there is no urge to “get one’s money’s worth”, so you truly can set your own pace.
• Generally good and inventive minigames - Most of the mini games are not just copies of the popcap/pogo top 10 or classics we’ve seen a million times prior.  If anything they pull from a more modern ideaset - the cooking game for example is a wario-ware / cooking mama type game.  Perhaps the best (and most reused) is a select-many-and-drop game (*cough* Legends of Laundry), however props to them for really nailing the interface and feel for it.  The card game is simple but decent (it’s like a redux of Norrath)
• Combat is treated as a mini-game / activity - Normally I wouldn’t consider this a strength in a virtual world that is focused on providing an immersive experience.  However, in a casual setting that is constantly pulling you out of the world to play minigames it is far more consistent.  Plus from a game design side, it sweeps a whole slew of logistics problems effectively under the rug.  It allows people to play the game legitimately in a non-combat fashion.  It removes worries of asynchronous or asymmetrical aid, loot and xp distribution (mostly) and scarcity issues.  While it may feel a bit like cheating on the designer’s side, it means a whole clientele of players who do not need to be indoctrinated into tapping, loot etiquette, DKP, same-side pull griefing, and power leveling (it may happen but you don’t watch it if you’re not involved).  Loot drops during a minigame (yes even the match-3) seem to have a predilection towards being useful for your current job, allowing you to get better by doing the things you like.
• Mini-achievements and Tickets - Every mini game or combat in Free Realms has on or more primary goals that are required for success, but they also typically have a secondary goal, a bonus goal, and often a few bonus goals that are only available for subscribers (a brilliant ploy if I might say so).  The completion of each of these bonus achievements will typically reward the player in the form of ‘tickets’.  This system is not too unlike WoW’s PvE loot tokens, except that it is omnipresent and microscopic.  You can get tickets for doing just about anything and you get them often.  You can trade these tickets in in bunches of 10, 20, or 30 for a random roll of a treasure chest of low, mid, or high level respectively.  These rolls can sometimes be items of low worth (like a couple healing potions), but when they are so they are generally items of high use.  Since every player can use every item, there is a better chance that the item dropped might be better than something somewhere on your character.  Loot also comes in different random colors so you may get something you already have in a different color, and since there is no inventory size, there is no penalty for carrying around these options.
• No inventory - Again, this feels a bit like cheating during MMO Design 101, but it works with aplomb here.  No need to explain the complex culture of micromanagement, bank systems, alt banks, and most important no ‘prep time’ getting the right things into your inventory (and right amounts).
• You can generally walk away from the game at any time - Maybe I’m not mounting truck nuts on my mounts’ nuts here or showing my carebear side’s stuffing, but being able to get up and get a drink without worrying about being ganked by a player or killed by a respawning monster and losing something (XP, gold, repair, travel time), makes for a completely refreshing experience.
• Not all kiddie - The rounded edged demeanor that is the child-friendly world of Free Realms is sometimes pierced by something shocking, however I’ve noticed that this only occurs within the subscriber content (Medic, Warrior, subscriber quests).  It seems as if the age group for the subscriber content is about 3-5 years older than the rest of the game (discussions of relationships, more serious quarrels, nastier looking weapons, etc).  My favorite is probably the medic weapons - they include a bonesaw (Audition anyone?) and some sort of saw that looks like it was stolen from WoW’s goblin logger robots.  Other than these minute idiosyncrasies, I’d say that Free Realms has WoW’s visual and tonal style, only here it fits somehow more naturally.
• The Movement controls are copied 98% from WoW - Complete with (numlock) and everything.  Of all the things that WoW’s game genetics should pass on to future MMO genre games, everyone else seems to vote for the ! and ? marks.  Me? I vote for the movement and camera controls.  I’ve never understood why so many games that are blatantly going for the American market choose to use anything but this control scheme.  It would be like making an FPS where switching between your weapons are the letters Y,U,I,O and P instead of 1,2,3,4,5 - the possible benefits are outweighed by the loss of familiarity (think DVORAK).  This is the one place where you most want to copy convention, and I feel Free Realms is one of the few to do that to this extent.
• Good pricepoint and business model - With so many games demanding ~15$/month worth of subscription money and justifiable time, one can typically only choose one or maybe two.  The free-to-play market has creeped up around this, filling in the rest of the space and the play time of those without credit cards or enough justifiable time.  Free Realms has hopped in to grab the best of both worlds (which clearly works as RuneScape and Club Penguin will attest), however it bests both by providing far more reasons for upgrading that come at you from every direction, and a robust microtrans system to top it off.
• Streaming Download - No giant pre-download, no long patching times, relatively frequent updates, short waits.  Well done.

Weaknesses

Put on your hardhat - now I throw down the heavies.

• Communication - The minigame-laden world prettymuch decimates social communication and context, to the point where it becomes almost exclusively a solo game experience.  Each minigame is a short removal from the world, but it generally requires your full attention and interface (often removing the chat window altogether).  Any concept of chat continuity goes right out the window as soon as someone pops into a mini game without even so much as an auto-afk to let you know.  Without a omnipresent voice chat or external tool like Ventrillo, I can’t imagine trying to play ‘with’ a friend other than popping together to do a combat minigame together.
• Combat - Is highly shallow, with little challenge or opportunities for learning.  Some encounters are well scripted and interesting but when you only have 0-3 abilities (most of which just do the same things), it’s generally just a keymashfest at best.  Combat also removes the normal game interface, meaning you can’t change equipment, view your equipment, change out your belt loadout, change class, view your quests (to figure out what you’re supposed to achieve in this combat), or just about anything else.  This seems like a major mistake - I understand not switching classes or maybe belt items, but not being able to see quests other than their text log outputs is a real head scratcher.  On the plus side, you can exit combat whenever you feel like.  Too much of the game is combat for it to be acceptable to be this dull.
• Little Class Variance - The class/job paradigm is a little confused in Free Realms.  There are two types of jobs: Combat Jobs and Activity Jobs.  The combat jobs have very little variance between them in terms of abilities or playstyle with the possible exception of the Medic, which is a pay-only job.  It feels like no care at all was put into this department to come up with a unique ‘feel’ for the jobs, or there was an imperative to stretch the game to too many different jobs at the start.  The most clear activity jobs (Miner, Blacksmith and Chef) are really 2 activities spread across 3 jobs, which is fine.  The rest are all fixed to a single activity or minigame and either aren’t explained how they progress, or do so poorly.  The pet trainer job feels tacked on just to add another job, since the pet itself progresses each skill, there are no benefits to the pet trainer class other than unlocking new tricks which will come naturally on the pet’s own progression, and the only way you can improve it is to stand still and do the same 5 second thing a couple hundred times.  Which brings me to:
• Pets - Pets seem like a last-minute push for launch to justify more revenue, not a genuine offering.  While they put a lot of work into the varied animations, colours, and tricks - the pets are personality-less, incentive-less and fall short of their Nintendogs rhetoric.  It feels like a preview of a feature yet-to-come.
• No Danger and Conflict - I understand that this is a kids game, but making a world with combat and no conflict, or danger feels like a hollow offering.  The only creature to give me any form of fear/trouble was the Grave Lord, but I still beat it on my first try at level 12.  Part of the explorer Bartle Type is wanting to ‘explore’ if you can beat something you couldn’t beat before, or the possibility of some hidden secret or treasure for beating a really difficult or out-of-the-way enemy.  Wandering around I often found ‘named’ / ’silver’ / ‘elite’ enemies marked as really dangerous.  I fought them.  I beat them easily.  I got nothing for doing so (not even an achievement or a ticket or anything).
• No zoning or grouping for quests - It’s amazing how hard it is to find a specific quest, or any and all quests nearby within a list of 30 quests across 8 or so pages, none of which show their ‘more’ to tell you what it’s about without clicking on each.  Whenever I zoned into a new area, I made it a habit of clicking the ‘right arrow’ to change the current tracking quest through all 30 quests just to see which quests were close by.  Only a bug that caused the update of the compass rose / path tracking to fail sometimes hindered even that.  In short, the game was meant to be played one quest at a time in a linear way.
• Lot of missing info  - Buffs and debuffs don’t show what they do or a duration.  Abilities don’t show how much energy they cost anywhere.  In general, a lot of information appears to be missing.  I understand keeping stuff hidden to not confuse the casual user - the ‘more’ for the quests does this elegantly.  The biggest problem:  a microtrans item that increases xp rate (stars) didn’t mention how long the effect lasted for.  I bought it as an experiment - the buff didn’t show either.  It disappeared after exactly one hour.  If I thought that it was going to last longer (as many other XP rate micro items do in other games), since I paid money, I would be very upset about this.
• Very segmented interface - The use of very large icons and text everywhere coupled with an exclusive use of paging systems and a lot of information hiding via slidein/out panels lead to a highly segmented interface.  In general, information isn’t really ‘presented’ in most of the panels, it is sort of dispersed all around and you have to find it.  The job switch dialog doesn’t fit all the jobs on one page, and doesn’t seem to have any sort of logical sort order, so you just have to page back and forth until you find what you’re looking for.  The collections interface has no way of sifting finished collections from unfinished or identifying easy the collections that are nearly complete, nor are they grouped by proximity or concept: one warp stone collection might be on page 4 and the other one page 13.  Most collections don’t tell you what they give you for completing them, but even that information is only accessible by clicking on each in turn.  The quest interface I already talked about above suffers from the same malady.  Items have the right start: two view modes, one which is a simple list form so I can directly see the item power levels - but there still is no way of sorting by this.  With plans for a console release of this game, sifting through pages of things that must each be selected / hovered to find any info will become less acceptable.
• COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT OF A WEB MMO - The website is mostly nonfunctional or empty, with the exceptions being what feels like an incomplete leaderboard and a profile page that tells you a couple numbers.  The portrait feature seems unimplemented or broken, the friend system is typically broken, none of the flash-based minigames can be played standalone on the web, and there aren’t regular updates of feeds of interesting information - just a news feed and a lagged / broken friend info feed.  In short, there is little to no reason for me to go to the website other than the fact that it is the only way to start the client.  Other than the social ‘marketing’ side (they have two twitter feeds and a facebook page), they also seem to be missing the point of the social web / mmo - there are no widgets to show off my character on other sites of mine, no apps to kill time or aid viral acquisition, no user involvement or contests through the social media, no GM rum events, no way of accessing my profile data / xml / feed rss.

Advice

Here is some advice for the Free Realms team.  I should preface these with stating that I am not the game’s target audience - and then follow that by saying that you are probably underestimating your target audience.

• Explain the Maker’s scores more predominantly - I have tried to figure out what they do by trial and error and still can’t quite get it
• Show leaderboard high score, best of friends, personal best on the start and end of each mini game - right now I have no frame of reference for my score
• Fix the missing info, more mouseovers, effects, more buttons
• Provide an ‘advanced’ interface mode that shows smaller icons and fits more on a page and has sort/filter options or just add the sort/filter options to the existing interface.
• Provide a ‘quests near me’ display, ‘track nearest quest’ button or group quests by zone interface in the quest list
• Repeatable quests’ (!) should be a different color, at least after the second time it’s presented - I often want to feel like I’ve completed everything in an area, and it’s difficult to tell since I have no way of knowing if I’ve already completed the quest before.
• Quest type hint in accept would be nice (not easy to tell between instace quests or the 4 types of search/race quests until you’ve actually accepted the quest)
• The youtube video recorder is a great idea but it doesn’t seem well implemented (the files are giant and yet highly compressed / unwatchable once they’ve been double compressed by youtube)
• In and out of game Contests
• Ways of playing minigames outside of the game client (Facebook app maybe?)
• Make some highly difficult areas or enemies (like possibly  unbeatable by a solo player even with microtrans items) - hey guys… remember The Sleeper?
• Look into implementing voice chat for friends to be able to communicate while weaving in and out of solo minigames.
• A way of customizing colours of items for a fee (or maybe a future job tradeskill)
• Residences - I know you’re planning this at some point
• Mounts - I know you’re planning this too
• As you raise the level cap and add new abilities to classes, refactor some of the existing ones so they have a little more variety or flavour
• Add another stat, damage type, or effect (perhaps only at higher level) to allow combat to be more than a mashfest - currently there aren’t many ‘choices’ in combat other than pulling tactics and perhaps item usage.
• More achievements / ticket bonuses!  (combat skill-based achievements maybe?)

Lastly, Congrats on 2million!  Keep up the good work and look forward to more updates!

‘One of those uninspired “cow in the moonlight” walks.’

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

I taught a friend of mine (who definitely isn’t Xenon) how to play the game of Go tonight, and he was asking for more links on it.  Since this might be of interest to others out there, I figured I’d post my favorite starting points for Go information:

• Kiseido - A great starting place for all things Go
• The KGS Tutorial Page - A great explanation of the rules with interactive problems (requires Java)
• The KGS Homepage - For downloading of the client for playing Go online and offline
• Sensei’s Library - The wiki for Go knowledge
• The Guided Tours - The best place to start on Sensei’s Library
• Go Problems - For many daily interactive Go Problems to practice
• Go Teaching Ladder - A living archive of recorded games from KGS, commentated by more advanced players
• Wikipedia Page on Go

I’m ‘oizys’ on KGS though I’m not often online.  Hit me up on AIM, twitter, or here if you want a teaching game or a serious game.

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

Or at least something major.  These are all MMOs slated for release in the next year or two that are at least substantial enough to generate some amount of hopeful anxiety within my heart of hearts.  These are my current favorite unreleased MMOs of the ones that have given us anything to show for (as opposed to theoretical MMOs or just-bought-the-license MMOs).  My choices here are fueled by any of:

1. game mechanics beyond the copycat mould (”only we promise we’ll do it better!”)
2. an expansion of a player motiviation or Bartle type currently underserved (builders, explorers, etc)
3. a new gameplay genre or aesthetic genre which could move the MMO classification beyond EQ/WoW cloneage
4. a new target audience and play pattern (e.g. casual or interstitial play - ease of getting involved in a large way without lots of personal/guild planning)
5. a colorful presentation and high quality concept art and tech demos

So without further ado…

1. The Secret World

[Website | Interview | Art | Information]

What it could change:  Storytelling within MMOs, ARG possibilities, Mystery Genre

This is a highly ambitious project and one that may only appeal to a niche audience, but it may teach future MMOs a number of new tricks - and it creates some subgenre firsts (earth-based, mystery-genre) that will hopefully continue to unfurl to become the long tail of our salvation from the fantasy tolkeinesque genre.

2. Blackstar

[Website | Interview | Art | Information]

What it could change:  The space flight and exploration genre, the anime-inspired sci fi niche

Blackstar is the game I foremost wish to have sex with.  It may be a case of style over substance, but in this case the style is a lot more than a coating.  The style imperative drives Blackstar into a niche that is relatively untapped (though growing fast) - the niche filled with games like S4 League - high speed action and anime influences.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my slower more realistic games like EVE as well.

However, I often explain it in terms of mecha.  There are two major ‘forks’ in the spectrum of mecha concept and design.  There is the highly mechanical version used by things like Battletech where the mecha is very ‘vehicular’ and requires constant tuneups, has major heating issues, and is realistic in its movement and damage withstanding capabilities.  Then there is the hyper-anime version where the mecha is a large superhuman extension of the human body - it behaves more like a Demi-god in various mythologies than a machine. Naturally these points came from a middle ground - the first Gundam books put forth the idea that to make the machine more than just a machine, the human would have to be more than just a human.  The modern Gundam franchise however is fully on the immortal-demigod side.

There are a few modern properties to wedge themselves in the middle somewhat:  Armored Core for example seems to steal equally from both sides, even though its roots lie more on the Virtual-On derived robot as shiny demigod side.  However, this gradient can be defined in rather simple terms when it comes to video games.  Much like the original Newtype concept, the question I ask myself is “How much does this experience make me feel like I am performing above my own ability?“.  In reality, it is only at the ‘top’ of my ability, not beyond, but using style and rewarding the occasional random reflex move with the great results, this feeling can be achieved.

Games that evoke this feeling for me are:  Zone of Enders, Wipeout, Descent, and Pop n Music (and many rhythm games).  Zone of Enders is perhaps the best example (and Descent for the same reasons) - requiring an awareness of more than just 2 axis of movement and encounter somehow feels extra-human.  ZoE uses just the right amount of glowy flash and style to make it feel like you’re this incredible 190 Beats-per-minute badass, computing every possible trajectory, even if you’re just mashing buttons frantically.

This is what I’m hoping Blackstar embraces, and seems to be doing with the pacing of its space combat.  The future-anime aesthetic of glowy lines, light streaks left in the air,visible concussion waves, and intersections of reality and user interface with an overuse of reticles and indicators.  If they can make a game with good mechanics, a fair amount of customization, that still makes me feel like a complete badass - I will be completely sold.

Interestingly, there aren’t many (if any) scifi-anime-franchise based MMOs, which could signify a lack of a niche, or (more likely if you look at the growth of anime in the US) a huge niche possibility.  Phantasy star has a bit of this niche right now, but it’s a completely different beast.  My bet is that Blackstar lights the fire of a small niche that will grow slowly over time and then eventually take off through some other means (for example a free-to-play anime-franchise world or similar), never reaping the success it deserves but I’ll definitely be playing it.

3. LEGO Universe

[Website | Interview | Art | Information]

What it could change:  Collaborative building environment that isn’t rife with furry penises

4. All Points Bulletin

[Website | Interview | Art | Information]

What it could change:  The advent of the modern-day crime genre, new levels of character customization

Modern day crime seems to be perfectly at home with the social structures common in MMOs.  The idea of getting together a gang who associate themselves by names and colors such that there is brotherhood even with members you haven’t met, and then engaging in a resource war to stake out territory for your gang - I’d venture to say it’s the thing in real life that most closely resembles MMO PvP.  Life resembles art, etc I suppose.

As it stands, the Grand Theft Auto multiplayer has done fairly well, but lacking the persistence that makes such a world truly thrive, it becomes more like a large game of counterstrike overrun with cheaters and those who are only playing ‘for the lulz’.  Bringing a real sense of property into this seems only natural.

Most of my questions regarding APB have to do with the larger social economics - how is equilibrium maintained (if you can steal cars from npc pedestrians and sell them, this would be an open economy and as such would need considerable drains), what avenues of PvP are available (stealing? territory? police griefing?), and what degree of continuity are they attempting to provide (shards, instances, fragmented economies, etc).

One of the most impressive things about APB so far has been the character customization.  It’s so nice to start seeing current-gen MMOs start to take this seriously.  The flexibility they were showing in the tattoos and face were pretty impressive.  I hope they treat clothing the same way, as that tends to be the part of character customization most often forgotten - the part that isn’t a couple sliders during the sliver of time we call creation.

5. Free Realms

[Website | Interview | Information]

What it could change:  The quality of casual and youth targeted MMOs, achievement structures, minigames in MMO, web cross-media support,  business models

6. The Agency

[Website | Interview | Art | Information]

What it could change:  Interstitial play and true MMO integration for FPS nuts, the spy genre

I love me some Team Fortress 2.  The thought of being able to play something like that and call it an MMO feels almost like cheating.  And yet, the bridge we could architect to cross this gap is looking more and more comical each day until the point where we can instead take a deep stride and cross.  Before you tell me about Planetside however, let me just say that that game was likely ahead of its time.  Not because MMO players weren’t ready to FPS, instead it was because FPS players weren’t yet ready to MMO.

Since then, we’ve seen the Battlefield series, Call of Duty 4, CounterStrike’s experiments with global economics, and even Team Fortress 2 having persistent improvements now through achievements.  It seems that persistence in FPS games is going to, well, persist. The biggest difference to me, however is a mindset.  When I think about logging on to an MMO I think about all the things that need to be done, the time each of them takes to complete, travel time, organization time - I’m generally exasperated before I log on.  However, playing a quick round of TF2 requires no preparation.  Better yet, pickup groups in TF2 are the norm and they are often FUN!  I don’t even need my friends to be online to have a good time.

If The Agency gets these things right, then it will be a blast.  The promise that I could have a slew of missions of known lengths (7 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes) and hop into the action immediately with friends or with people who are insentivised properly for doing their role is a tantalizing one.

Add to all this the spy genre possibilities (please have information warfare /espionage forms of PvP), and some of the more interesting mission mechanics I’ve seen in an MMO, and there is some serious possibility for win here.  Perhaps my single favorite design mechanic of The Agency that I have seen so far is the quality of completion for missions.  It’s a very console mentality idea that seems entirely at home in the genre even if it didn’t have the console release.  Having a gradient of completion means that you can win small and then keep improving, instead of failing to win (as is WoW’s predominant instance methodology).

Conclusion

There is no doubt in my mind that the release of these games will inspire improvement in the MMO genre - either through the flames of user exceptance of the subtle kindle of future designer inspiration.  This isn’t to say that other games won’t, but these are the ones that have caught my eye, and I believe deserve yours.

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

Much is often mentioned about the cultural disconnect between the Business, Design, and Programming fields within the game industry.  Different attitudes, different terms and languages, different expectations.  I’ve always felt this has been a self-perpetuating problem (when diagnosing it we canonize it by declaring that this is “just how it is” - further reinforcing the meme), and a rather large problem at that.

As one who considers all three to be a passion I may be speaking from personal bias but I see this as a problem with a relatively easy solution.  To me, Business, Design and Programming are based on the same fundamental principle:

Define the goal clearly, research the available choices, then weigh the pros and cons of each choice to arrive at the optimal solution.

[This should seem familiar if you read my previous entry]

There is little benefit to shrouding a profession in mystery and much to be gained by integrating these goals into a single representation.  The commonly occuring pattern is the separation of these goals into components.  The other parts of the original goalset show up in each component typically as a ‘restriction’, but information is lost in this process.

Let’s take a simple example:

You and a friend are looking to go out for dinner and you want something relatively cheap and relatively good.  You deliberate for a bit and realize that you know a lot of quality places, and your friends knows a lot of cheap places - so you decide to specialize and divide the problem.  You try to find the best restaurant you can under 30$ a person, and your friend meanwhile tries to find the cheapest place with at least 4 stars on Zagat.  The chances that you will arrive at the same solution is slim to none (and reduces as the population of choices increases).

This is how game development often actually works.  The game needs to be relatively fun and impressive, while being relatively stable, maintainable and scalable, while also being done relatively quickly and cheaply.  The meetings are held, restrictions are put in place (typically time via milestones), and then each team optimizes for its pet criteria.  This can occasionally cause conflict  as all of these are mutually exclusive.

This type of problem is an optimization problem, and there are a few common patterns to solving it:

1. Positive Optimize - Pick the one that matters MOST, this reduces one of the variables (e.g. we have exactly 2 years worth of funding to release this - what can we make in 2 years?)
2. Negative Optimize - Pick the one that matters LEAST, this also reduces one of the variables (e.g. it doesn’t matter how stable it is - it’s just a prototype).  In patterns containing three goal variables, this I like to call the ‘Pick Two’ method, based on the saying: “Cheap, Good, Fast - pick two” or other patterns of “X,Y,Z - pick two”.
3. Simultaneous Optimize - this can be difficult to approach but is typically going to be the most accurate.  Programmers (especially AI programmers, Collective Intelligence programmers and Data Miners) will likely recognize this one.  The idea is to assign a fitness function and then try a number of different techniques to get the best possible result (all of which are generally little more than an advanced version of a random shot in the dark).  The ‘king’ of these techniques is more often than not a genetic algorithm.

When faced with a relatively small set of choices, I have a favorite way of tackling the full on simultaneous optimization:  Using a spreadsheet, the goal components of the fitness function become columns and the available choices become rows.  You rate each cell by how well that goal is satisfied by that choice (use the SAME SCALE for all cells, something like 0-5 or 0-10).  Then you apply a weight to each goal as to how important it is to the final fitness.  The sum of each cell in the row multiplied by its corresponding  weights per column is the choice’s final fitness.  It helps to throw in a couple dummy extreme choices to help you balance the goal weights to make sure your balancing is sane.

As soon as there are more variables or interactions between the choices, it becomes clear that you need something more like a genetic algorithm.  Luckily we all have something very much like that already - intuition.  I like to define intuition as “the sum of all knowledge and experience related to the subject”.  Humans are exceedingly good at making good guesses when presented with a problem that they have a wide knowledge and experience base to draw from.  However each large missing piece of knowledge or experience will heavily skew our guesses.

A few examples:

• a game designer wants to make a modification to a feature, thinking that it should be easy to change, sneaks it into the schedule - but it turns out to be very difficult
• a programmer finds after implementation that a design concept is not at all scalable, and codes up a tweak to make it scalable that defeats the original purpose of the feature.  Not wanting to have ‘lost’ the time on the gantt, the decision is made to keep the ‘fix’ in the final version.
• an executive looks at the gantt and examines where the product will be at for magical tradeshow X - a new trade show the company wants to do that’s 3 months before magical tradeshow Y for which there is a demo planned, and requests a demo version to send with the demo team to show X.  The team crunches and gets it done, but has to make enough hacks that the demo for tradeshow Y needs to have some features cut and is now behind on the entire schedule.

What am I arguing for?  Simply this:

Open and continual communication of goals so as to bring the choices people make closer to ‘optimal’ for the company/game as a whole.

and

An attempt by all to increase the cross-departmental intuition of everyone involved.

What I am arguing against is the ’silo’ effect and hyper-compartmentalization of culture and experience that is common of large hierarchies and specialization of labor.

A few things that help towards this end:

• Agile Development or similar methods
• Prototyping
• Small Teams (preferrably multi-disciplinary)
• Task Forces
• A relatively flat heirarchy (which is related to the previous two)
• A shared company calendar or internal blog/rss
• A wiki with an interconnected glossary of terms
• More multi-disciplanary employees (designers who can code, business heads who know design, etc)
• Task transparency (via the workflow management systems)
• Decision transparency (hearing a detailed explanation of a decision works to teach others about that discipline)
• Financial transparency (many companies cannot do this, but for those who can, it often works well)

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

Today I was catching up on some reading when I came across James Portnow’s opinion piece on the difference between Choices and Problems (The Problem of Choice).  I disagree with the separation entirely and see the presentation of them as separate as a form of False Dilemma that is all too easy to fall into.

Choices are among the fundamental elements of game design, economics, behavioral psychology and computer science.  In all of those fields, the concept of choice is defined roughly the same way:  (from wikipedia) “Choice consists of the mental process of thinking involved with the process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them for action.”

Making a choice requires a mental formulation - the generation of some model for weighing the merits of each option.  Merits are directly connected to goals, and one can often discern one’s goals through their choices.  It is also said often in economics that “choice defines preference” but preference is a tricky thing to pin down.

What James appears to me to be discussing is the transparency of the game’s own reward model.  When players align some of their goals with the game’s mechanical goals (as is generally the case when you wish to win), their merit models begin to look more like the game’s.

At this point it can be said that their merit model is far more mechanical than personal.  However, this shift is highly personal in nature.  Players are driven by a varying amount of drive for success (the Achiever Bartle type).  Take three extreme examples on the same game:

1. Player A wishes to win the game with the utmost ‘completion’, and so goes out and purchases a hint book which makes fully transparent all of the mechanical merits of each choice.  The player then chooses each in accordance with the walkthrough and obtains the ultimate score or reward sought.
2. Player B wishes to maintain the mystery of the game and avoids spoilers or hints from any source, wishing the game experience to be as personally driven as possible
3. Player C has little to no interest in completing the game and instead explores the mechanical simulation but with different goals in mind than the main ’success’ goal of the game - for example seeing how big of an explosion one can make, or how silly one can die with ragdolls, or if the game story breaks if you try to kill everyone.

As is obvious, choices with merits that apply to more than one possible goal are evaluated differently by different people.  My disagreement stems from the attempt to separate choices which are mechanical in nature to those which are personal in nature into two separate concepts.  I think this is highly dangerous as it generally assumes a singular goal system.  Where are goal systems most singular?  In traditional story-driven single player games.

Goals and Endings

Let’s take a game like Bioshock.  Instead of having a singular goal, there are multiple endings.  Each ending is now an available goal.  The problem with this is that while situations may change during the course of gameplay, long term goals and gameplay decisions of players rarely do.  This means that each player selects the ending goal that they wish to achieve early in play and now all choices become False Choices.

This is especially true of the hintbook-user who starts by reading up on all the possible branches and endings and makes their selection at the beginning (see also Mass Effect sex scene).  However even someone who is only cognizant of the fact that a game has multiple endings (read it on the back of the box - multiple endings is a feature list slick item), they will pre-construct likely ending goals in their mind, select one and then act accordingly.

This is the basis of role-playing.  If you decide you want to play an evil character with a soft spot for cuddly looking things, then you will make your choices accordingly and you hope that the ending or rewards that you get respect some element of this decision (for example at least that you decided to be evil).  The problem here is the ending - the concentration of goals on the game ending.  Pen and paper roleplay works because it is often open-ended (if you’re not playing strictly from an adventure with an unimaginative GM, you don’t know that the game will contain roughly 40 hours of play time before you start playing it).  The solutions here are to spread the goals out - achievements, chapter-based games, social systems, and economic systems.

The Myth of Purely Aesthetic Choices

So what about choices that aren’t attached to a goal mechanism?  It turns out a rare few of these are purely choices without goals.   Examples in the real world are common in non-essential purchases - what flavor of chips do you buy for yourself?  what color of a particular shirt do you choose when one is offered in multiple colors?  However they can quickly be turned into goal-based variations:  what flavor of chips do you buy when you’re having guests over (maximize for utilitarian benefit), what does this shirt say about me? (does it further the goal of presenting myself to others the way that I wish to?).

In online games, even aesthetic choices become intertwined with social or economic goals.  Let’s take a look at some examples:

• Choice of Color:  This can be an economic merit judgment (based on rarity), and a social persona merit judgment.  Example - a hardcore PvPer picking a pink colorset for its memorability and humor value.  If one is in a guild, color coordination may be desired, limiting choice.
• Choice of Name: Economic factors are huge here (is the name already taken? am I willing to live with Legolasx345 or do I want something truly unique?), as well as roleplay and persona considerations (one trying to play an elf might want an elf-like name).

The name selection example is perhaps the best.  Trademark and domain name selection for a company or product is based on a huge ‘problem’ equation of relative merits - Pronounce-ability, Length, International Meanings and Pronunciation, Logo/Glyph possibilities, Linguistic distance from similar trademarks, Search loading (what is currently found by that name through searches), Legal Availability (and cost to acquire), DNS Availability (and cost to acquire), Social network Availability, and Linguistic connection to the desired evoked emotions or symbols are just a few of the criteria.  This creates a giant ‘problem’ equation, where the stakeholders balance the merits of each to be able to mechanically rate the possibilities - if the company is hiring a marketing firm or is a min/maxer in the player terms.  A company who is like player B in the above example might just pick a name and hope for the best.

The Single Player Game

Ok, so digging further - let’s come up with the most pristinely pure-choice example we can come up with.  The choice of aesthetics or actions within a purely single-player game that has no predictable affect on the outcome.  I say purely single-player because these are a rarity today.  Any game that is connected with online achievements, gamer scores, or leaderboards is no longer ‘purely’ single player in that the motivations for winning change.  Increasingly with fraps, machinima, youtube, and other forms of shared media, even the most single player experience can become a social one, much like when a friend watches you while you play.

One obvious problem with these kinds of purely surface choices is that they are bad design!  Presenting choices that have no measurable effect can easily disenfranchise the player.

On the opposite side, easily transparent mechanical goals also removes much of the fun of choosing.  If every text option in a game like Fallout had next to it in parenthesis how many XP points you gain by selecting that option, much of the fun would be immediately drained from the game.

The Multi-player Game

When choices can be boiled down to merit equations based on a preset list of goals, they become less interesting.  However, one simple way to stop this is to obscure the mechanics by introducing an external (unpredictable) factor.  The classic examples of this are found in the birthing of games themselves:  Go, Chess, etc.  When one cannot easily predict what situation a choice will wind one up in, the choice becomes more difficult but also more meaningful.   Life is mostly comprised of these choices.

Traditional games don’t have the issue of transparent choice mechanics or purely aesthetic choices, nor do connected games - only single player ‘movie’ games do - a problem we have invented for ourselves as game designers.  Sometimes choice doesn’t matter in these games (when the game is purely linear and driven by twitch skill) - but this to me is a somewhat sad shallow concept of interactivity that doesn’t take full advantage of the medium.

Solutions

While I may disagree with the conclusion in Mr. Portnow’s piece - I agree with the prescription - we should be more cognizant of what we call choice in video games.  And since I never like to just rant without providing some solutions (ok that’s not entirely true… a good rant is fun, too), here are ways I think we can improve the ‘choicyness’ of the single player game experience:

• More achievements and mini-goals, especially ones off the beaten path
• Shareable media awareness (best examples of this are shareable replays in racing games or the snapshot camera in Little Big Planet)
• Episodic game play (smaller, sooner goals)
• Condition-driven systems (instead of using a hidden character ‘alignment’ number, test for conditions present in the world that could indicate alignment)
• Better, more unpredictable AI (the more human ones’ opponents are, the harder the equations are)
• Adapting mechanics (less of Oblivion’s level adaption with reduces impact, more things like enemies having an increased chance of resistance to the tactic/ability you use more often)
• Random scenario changes (this works best in repeatable content, but things like Left 4 Dead’s slight changes in the level layout keep it from being just an equation)
• External stimuli changes (massively single player games, rendering of ghost player data into the game, using external factors to drive economies)
• Generally be more graceful with player ‘mistakes’, build in teaching mechanism to choice systems, allowing a player to get better

And finally, some things we need to do less of:

• Stop thinking of choice being between GOOD and EVIL
• Early-branch trees (e.g. good/evil, character class choices in System Shock 2 - each problem has multiple solutions, but only one generally valid based on your class)
• Using optimal-path scoring (i.e. leaderboards with only total points, time to completion, etc), instead score sections, allow mistakes
• Not planning for the meta-game goals and looking only at our own mechanics

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

Episode 1 of the Valkyria Chronicles anime is out - haven’t watched it yet but from a quick glance it seems to have a lot more time to go in depth with the character development which is good, even if the story isn’t exactly the same.  Also the ending is cute.  I really hope this spreads awareness of this amazing game.

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

I had a blast at GDC this year - couldn’t help but notice memes everywhere.  Internet - stop invading my real life.

Also special shout outs to Pixel, Dasha, Jamy, Jay Moore, Royal O’Brien, Matt Daly, John Say, and all the fine people I met while up there.  I wish I took more pictures; ah well, reminder for next time.

• A lot of good conversations were had, also great to meet a large contingent of game-making-game people over drinks
• Many people liked my ideas about social convergence and asynchronicity; I have some potential beta testers for my collaborative storytelling engine
• Met many good business contacts over many good drinks
• The Fairmont hotel was awesome, complete with trap door bookshelf and bed that Marilyn and Kennedy were in
• I regret a bit not getting the full pass, but I was tired enough as it was (great to sleep in on those days)
• Jane McGonigal’s panel was inspiring as always
• Was a master of concentration but a failure at relaxation in NeuroSky’s game
• Got my head scanned - still need to go get that app to post on facebook - my hair looked funny but dull
• The new BigWorld 2.0 stuff looks amazing
• lol @ BoneTown - great work guys, expect a contact
• A lot of buzz about Onlive - check 2 entries back for my response
• Unity is looking cooler and cooler these days
• Exhausted and sick as soon as I returned, but at least I’m getting over it fast

And now some pics

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.

Well, it looks like it’s going to happen.  I’ve been predicting for the past 3 or 4 years now that someone is going to make a midi controller of a real instrument a game - not pressing 5 buttons that magically represents the whole spectrum of musical expression.  In addition to learning songs (much like piano teaching systems have done forever), many of the higher forms of institutional music knowledge can be codified and graded (achievement: shifted modes for 4 bars of a song and then back).

The reason this has always been an infuriating prediction of mine is that real guitars honestly don’t cost that much.  The possible exception is the drums (a starter set might run you 199$ as opposed to the 60 or so for the rock band drums) - though there are some interesting middle grounds.  The drums are honestly the most transferable skill in the whole rock band ensemble anyway, so giving that a midi output is cake (as the internet will certainly show).

The main reason why this probably hasn’t happened on the guitar is twofold:

• The old-world business mentality is one that cannot understand how free might be worth something - how user generated content might have value - and prefers the iron grip of absolute control.  Let people get too skilled at making actual music and sharing their actual songs online and you might have some sort of indie revolution on your hands - not to mention all the copyright infringement from cover songs.  (Oh wait I forgot there’s already a youtube.com)
• The guitar-as-game franchises are now owned by publisher-giants, ensuring that progress will always be incremental at best from now on.  However, there’s always the possibility of someone outside the franchises offering something different, but most of them are additional publisher-giant meetoos (example A and B).

However from out of leftfield… I think this could be the dawn of the new era:

Scratch: The Ultimate DJ

For a genre where expression is everything, remixing is the norm, and you need at most two servomotors or otherwise encodable direct-drive system, and a couple of faders.  However the reason it might fail is that it doesn’t impose an automatic social structure - but I doubt that’ll be the case.  If they do it right, turntablist battle parties with your friend freestyling on the side will be far more fun and entertaining, while still also allowing people to practice solo.

Best quote from the article:

“Without Quincy, Dan and I are just a couple white dudes trying to make a hip hop game. He keeps us relevant and on point, and makes sure that nothing gets missed.”

Originally published at /dev/oizys. You can comment here or there.

Prologue

So I’m totally digging on Shining Force Feather and can’t wait for it to come out in the US.  For those who don’t know me well personally, Shining Force is while probably no longer my Favorite Game of All Time, it is probably the most influential game for me - Turn-based Strategy RPGs are my soft spot, and Shining Force really turned me onto that genre and solidified it in my heart.

And while I’ve liked that Sega kept the ‘Shining’ world and brand alive and developing with the Souls, Wisdom, Tears, Force EXA, and Force Neo franchises - they always felt a little bit like a betrayal of the roots.  It would be like making a Sonic game that…. … oh I’ll stop there.  I did love Shining Tears X Wind though - or at least the quasi-furry fanboy in me did - because it felt like a cheesy romance novel for male Genesis gamers.

So here comes Shining Force Feather.  The first turn-based return with the name since the Sega Saturn.

Official Site

Youtube Trailer

Preview-review

First off - it’s not trying to be retro.  Stylistically it’s more like the modern Shining series: super anime-centric.  The character designs were done by Pako (who did Shining Force EXA and the lovely Rental Magica) and Noiji Ito who’s responsible for that Haruhi Mania out there that I wouldn’t know anything about.  Together they compound further upon the emerging Shining style: Saturated colours - with a unique color assigned as the primary palette for many of the lead characters.  Story wise it’s also very modern, unlike the original Shining Force which had an almost laughably rpg ‘genre’ plot (complete with a nagging mom).  I guess it’s now a different genre stereotype:  The brash, rude treasure hunter main character with spikey hair who speaks with a heavy dose of slang (I’m looking at you Bleach, Naruto, etc). It’s also SUPER text-heavy at least in the beginning bits, but the art is nice and quite often there is recorded voice to go along with the words.  Unfortunately because it’s the DS, I can’t really beseech Sega to keep a Japanese Audio version (due to file size), nor would it make sense in the presentation…. but please don’t get shitty voice actors.

Mechanics

So on to the action.  It isn’t grid based.  BAM.  It’s more like Phantom Brave, with a purely vector/circle form to everything.  Which works out just fine.  Though ironically the levels seem to still be squares.  It also has more of a ’store up time’ concept and a turn order listing (see also FF Tactics, Kartia, most SRPGs these days) which works fairly well.  And the combat isn’t complacent, it has a Golf-swing timing bit and a 4-button hotkey map to ability concept.  Each ability costs a given amount of “Force” which is like MP but it’s also like the time you stored up (every turn regenerates 30 of it or 40 if you pass that turn).  So if you have 45 of it going into battle you can use a 15 cost ability three times or a 20 ability twice.  You can also dole it out however with as many attacks as you want.  Spend 15 on attacking this guy and then 30 attacking someone else.  Finishing off an enemy no longer uses up a character’s whole turn.

Easy Button

I’m not terribly far into it yet (nor do I want to be as I’ll have to retrace it in the English version once it comes out), but I did notice a couple problems.  The numbers are really stretched out.  By that I mean it might take like 10+ turns for you to kill an enemy or them to kill you.  You have like hundreds of hitpoints even in the early levels and attacks are usually doing damages like 10 and 15.  You seem to get a bonus (of more gold at least) for stringing together big combos, and you can press a button at the right time to gain some force every time an enemy attacks you.  So I’ve found the ‘best’ strategy is to just pass your turn (for 40 Force), as long as you’re in no danger of dying until you max out or nearly max out (there are max abilities you can only use when at max), and then just do massive combos.  But this seems a little weird… waiting an entire turn or two consequtively just being human piñatas and then ripping havoc, but it’s mathematically more effecient (as you get 40 instead of 30 and you’re burning the same amount of force now or later).  Also combat is rather ’small’ (a few enemies over a tiny space - 1 turn to close in) but drawn out - it never seems to get ‘harder’ as the level raises, just more drawn out.  But I haven’t found a lot of the cool magic and such yet - right now I only have 2 meatheads and a healer / useless archer.

Light and Shadow

It’s making a great contrast to the other game I’ve started playing on the DS - Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, which kills most characters irrevocably in a hit or two and requires you to choose someone to permenantly sacrifice on like the third prologue level or something just to prove to the game that you’re hardcore enough to play it - or you just instantly lose.  It’s not a pretty anime world who speak lots of Osakan dialect and say lots of things like they’re a comedy troupe.  Instead, in every level just about - someone is left behind to die and the party mourns them and continues on - not being so kind as even to leave their fate up to imagination.

I see both as labors of love in a way, but the cute anime character way of the Shining series is far less laborious - for certain.

Conclusion

So in ending, bravo to Sega for bringing one of my favorite gaming memories into the present day.  Judging from the Japanese site, Sega is becoming an amazing RPG powerhouse (7 Dragon, Phantasy Star Zero, Blazer Drive, for DS alone - let’s not forget the recent Valkyria Chronicles and the salivating Phantasy Star Portable).

Originally published at The Ephemeral Notebook. You can comment here or there.