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Monday 31 October 2011

Social Gaming - Making it Better

I'm not a fan of the current crop of social games, because they just smack of lazy / copycat game design. Most off all however, they aren't taking advantage of their single biggest USP - the social network. In fact, some of these games are actually on the fringes of being immoral - after reading an article in Edge about the comparison of these games to drugs, not sure I agree 100% with the conclusion, but certainly they are designed to use behavioral conditioning and peer pressure.

So rather than act like a virus and attempt to spread as far and wide as possible, I got to thinking about how you could actually make a game that uses the social network itself, rather than abuse the network as it seems to do currently.

Before we delve into the potential for connectivity, we must understand the platform itself. Whilst a standard multiplayer experience with everyone playing against each other at the same time could be possible on Facebook, the drop in, drop out nature of the platform makes such games difficult to organize. This is why turn based games, or co-operative suggestion works better. So with this in mind, we can think about prior examples of where this has worked really well.

Asymmetric Multiplayer
One intriguing type of multiplayer that could work really well with large groups of people, is an asymmetric design - that is where one or more players have different goals to the others.

For example - imagine a spy game, where the other players had to determine who the spy was. This could easily be envisioned as a Who-Dunnit mystery like the board game Clue.

Then there's the Games Master paradigm, where one of the players controls the experience for the other players. This can fit very neatly into the social structure - certainly there are probably plenty of D&D styles of game on Facebook already, but it wouldn't be too hard to tailor this to a more mainstream audience.

Augmented Reality Games
Another great aspect of the platform is its embedded nature in our lives. Now so many users have Facebook, etc on their phones, they tend to use these devices to check in to various real world locations. What if we took advantage of that with our games?

Take for example Geocaching. Here people use the GPS to find real-world caches of treasure. We could easily make these virtual caches, and set riddles, puzzles, etc for people to solve as they check in to various places - this could easily tie into discount promotions at stores to allow a possible source of revenue.

Social Engineering
What if we use the social network literally - what if we had a political game where you had to lobby people and get them to vote for you? Some kind of virtual government. You could even tie this into a Sim City style game, so we could create a series of interlinked games that are tailored to the respective tastes of different people - one person could be the urban planner, whilst their citizens play their own political games within the city, which in turn provides challenges for the city planner.

Friday 28 October 2011

How to Get a Job in Game Design (Revisited)

So a fair while ago I made a post about how to get a job in game design. After reading Mat's little blog post on Getting Into Games, I thought I'd follow his ideas up by being more specific about what you need to be a designer.

The Essentials

There are several requirements for designers that are non-negotiable. Without these skills you can pretty much forget about even bothering to become a designer, as you're not going to be able to do your job effectively.

1. Communication
This is the big one. Forget about having tonnes of ideas - ideas are worth nothing unless you can communicate them to the world. Design is in its purest form communication of an idea and nothing else.

There are two groups you need to converse with - your team and your audience.

Conversing with your team can take a number of forms - not every designer is born equal in communication skills. Some are verbally adept. Others are better at communicating through the written form. Others may have visual design skills that communicate best through images. Whatever the form of communication - there must be at least one clear method that demonstrates this communication skill. If you are bad at verbal forms of communication then it can make interviews pretty tough. My suggestion in this case is to be honest - tell your potential employers that your communication skills are better served through other methods, and provide examples.

Conversing with your audience is a little different. A good designer doesn't just design games for themselves. They must understand the commercial realities of the market. They must be ready to engage in user testing - gaining data from their audience and interpreting it in a way that will benefit the game. Good games are very, very rarely designed in a vacuum - that is to say that everyone needs feedback and critique.

2. A Lack of Preciousness
This may at first seem odd. Shouldn't I champion my ideas? Should I not defend them? Simple answer - no.

A good designer will be willing to collaborate. They are willing to listen to everyone's ideas (no matter how daft they may sometimes seem). They act more as an arbiter of ideas, filtering out elements that work from those that don't.

In regards to their own work, they must be open to critique and be ready to change and improve upon what they have done. If you feel really strongly that something is the right direction and it is being challenged, the best possible advice I can give is pick and choose your battles. If you defend every single idea you have, there is no room for maneuver. If you carefully consider which ideas are worth holding onto - then you are compromising - and compromise is an essential part of collaboration - it shouldn't ever be seen as "giving in".

3. Passion for Games
There's no doubt that without a passion for games, then there's no point in becoming a designer - you simply won't enjoy the job.

This passion should extend beyond a small subset of games, otherwise you end up becoming too narrow minded. There is potential for the spark of an idea in all genres - new mechanics, ideas for scenarios, enemy types, etc.

But don't play games at the exclusion of all other information. This leads neatly into the next requirement...

4. Passion for Information
A good design has a thirst for knowledge that is almost impossible to quell. They should want to learn about almost every subject, since there is something of use for any designer.

Doing research is an essential part of developing a good game - and learning about history, geography, math, etc will ensure that the designer is rounded enough to think about things from many different angles. You can always tell when the design of a game has had a poor background in research - even the smallest detail being wrong can lead to obvious holes for your audience.

So get reading - the internet is the most incredible invention for human knowledge in our entire history. Use it, but remember that not everything you read is correct ;)


The Advantageous "Qualifications"


So the essentials seem a bit intangible? Yes - that's because the essence of a designer is fairly intangible. I've worked with designers from all types of backgrounds:

  • Computer Science graduates (of which I am one)
  • Modders (of which I also am one)
  • History graduates
  • English graduates
  • Physics / Philosophy graduates
  • Engineering graduates
  • Game Design graduates
All of these are perfectly valid for designers, but guess which ones have the toughest time getting game design jobs? It might surprise you, or might not, but Game Design graduates are less likely to get the job than the others. There is a large amount of disdain for Game Design courses within the industry, except from a select few colleges / universities (such as Carnegie Mellon or University of Abertay). So what do we look for in designers?

1. Academic Qualifications
Like it or not, Acadameic qualifications are extremely useful (but not essential I might add). They show employers that you have the ability to work at a certain level. They show you have applied yourself to a subject and potentially mastered it. They show that you have a thirst for knowledge. As mentioned above though - the type of qualification is important. Don't do a "bums on seat" degree like Media Studies - and if you are going to do Game Design, ensure that you do it to build you portfolio, because the qualification isn't going to get your foot in the door as courses currently stand.

I'd actually suggest doing something more like Engineering, Computer Science, Product Design or Architecture, as these teach you skills that you are going to be learning on a daily basis, but aren't as narrowly focused as a Games Design degree (also if you don't get in the industry you have a fallback plan, because a Game Design degree will get you laughed out of most "serious" jobs).

2. Modding
This is the single best way of getting in the industry - since it proves several things - a passion for games, an aptitude for creating things and the self motivation to do your own work. The major benefit of this is it also builds your portfolio for when you decide to apply for a job in the industry. Just remember when applying for jobs, that the way modders work and the way professionals work is very different.

If you want to start modding, pick a game you enjoy and go from there. These days its a lot easier than when I started back in 1998 - since you can pick up a copy of UDK or Unity and create your own games with relative ease.

3. Extra Curricular Interests
Don't just play / make games - this makes Jack a dull boy. You need to be rounded in your interests - as mentioned above - you need to have a thirst for knowledge.

Play sports, learn an instrument, read books, watch movies, go hang-gliding or cook food. Do something that ignites your passion beyond just gaming. This is more important to an employer than you can possibly imagine.

Thursday 27 October 2011

Guiding the Player

How do you guide the player without holding their hand too much?

It's a difficult problem, made all the more tricky by the different capabilities or tastes of players. If the hand of the designer is seen too much it becomes too easy - the player feels led through the game. Too hard and the player gets frustrated and ultimately turns to Gamefaqs or a strategy guide to seek out the answer to their problem.

Navigation
Navigation is the key area of where guiding the player comes into play. The way you plan navigation for the player is determined in a large part by the type of game structure you are using - is it a linear adventure, or is it more of an open world? Either approach relies on one thing - a clear goal. If you muddy the goal at any point, then the player starts to lose track of what they are doing, and in turn finds it harder to navigate the world.

With a clear goal set, it then becomes a case of how you signpost that goal. This is where things start to differ.When you are creating a linear experience things are fairly easy - there is but one path for the player to travel, so it becomes a case of clearly showing the exit point for any one area. There's a lot more depth to this than initially meets the eye however, and requires careful lighting, shapes, and flow through a space to ensure the exit is recognized by the player. However, the problem with linear design is how to make it an interesting space that doesn't feel entirely linear. This is where the concept of wide-linear comes into play - creating pockets of free-form gameplay to allow choice, broken up with pinch points and diodes to push the player forward. Providing a single landmark that can be recognized through the area can also help the player to align themselves in the world and understand how the current space fits within the whole level.

Open world games are a lot trickier. Valves and pinch points can't be used in the same way, and a lot of the tricks used to point players in a certain direction won't work from every angle. The key thing here is to ensure that the world has plenty of landmarks to enable the player to learn the space quickly. They can use these landmarks to understand how the space fits together and where one chunk is relative to another. There's a fascinating book that delves into the way that humans organize spaces such as cities in their mind, which can provide great insight for open world game developers -Image of the City. Open world games often use waypoint markers as a device to guide the player. This can occasionally seem like a crutch - particularly if the fiction of the worlds doesn't really support the idea.

Puzzles
Another area where players constantly butt up against the potential to get stuck is in puzzles. This can be a very difficult tight-rope to walk due to the difference in players' cognitive abilities. People are good at different things - some like math, others are better at solving spacial problems.

The issue becomes one of either holding the player's hand too much and giving them the answer, or making it so hard that they just go and look on gamefaqs for the answer.

There is no right answer here, but the best approach is to provide enough clues for the player to make some simple deductions. Then make the next clues a little more obscure, but provide a way to solve them from the information around them. Don't show them the answer - just provide a little more information over time. The secret here is also a lot of playtesting - but don't assume that your audience won't get it - you'd be surprised how many people actually find their way through as long as enough information is provided - show them that they have that information and it should be enough for them to figure it out and get that sense of reward.

Mechanics

Forms of guidance can also exist at a lower level - within the core mechanics of the game itself.

One example I can use from personal experience to highlight this issue, is the ledge behavior we employed in Enslaved. The idea was to stop the player from experiencing frustrating falls to death, but the decision really divided the audience. A lot of players loved it - it removed that die / retry issue altogether for tricky traversal. A similar number of players hated it - it felt too much like they were being prevented from having the active choice - there was no challenge.

So how do you solve this? The key is to either provide ensure that there is always the potential for danger, a feeling of being challenged in all mechanics. Mechanics without challenge or skill tend to fall flat, as they feel like going through the motions.

Batman: Arkham City

So I know a few of the guys working over at Rocksteady - and I know that these guys are dedicated to their craft and very talented. After the stella work of Arkham Asylum I was very excited to get my hands on Arkham City, probably the first game in a while I have actually been excited to play.

It's very good, there's no doubting that. Combat is addictive as ever - great fluid combos, easy to transition between enemies, great integration of the tools into the combat flow and wince inducing attacks combine to create a fantastic playground of opportunity. Really loving the additions they've made here - it comes together really well. Last night I played through the Mr Fries battle and loved it - a well thought out and signposted boss battle - one of the most memorable I've played in a while. And whoever said - let's use the Bat Sign as a waypoint marker should have their own bonus just for that.

It's been getting rave reviews and deservedly so. But looking at it with a critical eye, as us designers are wont to do it does have a couple of issues:

1. Pacing

The open world presents a lot more opportunity for exploration, side content and distractions. All of this makes following the main quest a little more difficult - as such I think the pacing of the main quest isn't as tight as it was in the predecessor, and I'm wondering if the many side quests are making it harder to get a smooth sense of pacing, as the feeding of information seems oddly structured. This is most evident in Predator scenarios. It seems there is a large assumption on having played the previous game - very quickly new concepts are introduced for guys with thermal goggles, taking out the perches, etc. I'm barely able to remember the possibilities of the first game before these are thrown at me, so I'm wondering how someone completely new to the series would cope.

2. Art / Detective Mode

The major bug-bear of the first game still seems to be intact. There's some great art in there, but detective mode is so useful, I end up with it being on a lot of the time, rending all that time spent creating beautiful art a little moot. Then there's the greater problem of a Batman game - it has to be set at night. This seemed less of a problem in AA - there was a good sense of color progression throughout the game, but here it seems a little more haphazard. It feels overwhelmingly black and grey. I think that is a symptom of it being more about the grimy city that needs to have a unified feel, than having distinct interiors which became their own space in AA. All this grey makes navigation a little harder - I find it hard to distinguish one part of the city from another.

3. Dialog

The level of "on-the-nose" dialog is slightly frustrating. Having Batman spell out his thoughts so precisely feels quite wooden. It fits with the comic book style, I get it, but it's just jarring to me.

Then there's the level of dialog repetition, which during the Fries fight in particular became extreme annoying. It's not too hard to have a variety of dialog, and when using a pool of dialog, it's pretty easy to set it to not repeat the same phrase again. This is again very jarring for me, and pulls me out of the fiction.


Conclusion

This problems don't stop the game from being a superb piece of work, but I do wonder why reviewers and players are overlooking these issues that have been solved by other games. It's interesting to see what gamers are willing to overlook - some of these are things that I spend hours agonizing over getting right - sometimes it makes you wonder if it's worth the effort to do these small things.

All in all though - I'm enjoying my time in Arkham City, and I couldn't be happier for the guys over there in their achievement. I suspect a few Game of the Year awards are heading their way ;)

Uncharted 3

So Uncharted 3 is about to come out next week. The review scores are in, and it's all looking very good indeed. 94 Metacritic is a fantastic result - and a testament to the hard work, perseverance and dedication of the team here at Naughty Dog.

I've never worked at a place with as much "can do" spirit as the people that work here. "No" is not a word you hear often when crazy ideas are thrown forth - and no one ever takes the easy route out. It can be tiring and difficult at times, especially when your hard thought out design is torn to pieces by a pack of hungry wolves, but that only makes you want to create something better next time. That's how things operate around here - push each other to produce the best possible work.

We truly care about the games we are making and I think the results of that are shown in the products we produce.

Here's one happy designer :D