This week's readings: Eureka Part 2!

Citation
Baumgarten, M. (2003). Kids and the internet: a developmental summary. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 1(1), 11-11.

Summary
Baumgarten’s article aims to help those developing programs on the Internet for children by examining their different psychological developmental stages. His analysis is categorized by age, ranging from preschoolers, to young childhood, up to those in their “tweens”. At each age, the author expounds on all changes children at each age are experiencing, including the physical and how this affects their reaction to certain objects. He then offers a more specific focus on how these processes affect web page and online game design, such as ensuring pre-teens are engaging in a higher level of challenge and that suitable content is selected that they may discuss with their peers.

Comments and Relevance
While not specific to children or adults, this article provides some fascinating insights into the development of human beings and how this affects their ability and susceptibility with regards to technology. The suggested design approaches all map perfectly well to the aforementioned theories, with excellent justification as to why. The only thing lacking is a practical implementation of these theories, which is strange as it sets out with a design intent. While it is a research article, many of its sources are medical books and journals, somewhat lessening its authority.

This article is highly relevant, with many trends able to be seen that may have serious implications for the interaction experience of adults. A key trend across all age groups is that people enjoy games and websites that enable them to learn and grow; a trend worth examining in older game players. While lacking in physical implementation, this article provides a useful approach for determining the full psychological impact of games on adults.

This week's readings: EUREKA!

Citation
Tavinor, G. (2005). Video games, fiction, and emotion, Proceedings of the second Australasian conference on Interactive entertainment. Sydney, Australia: Creativity & Cognition Studios Press.

Summary
Tavinor offers some fascinating insights into the link between cognition, and fiction and emotional effects derived from playing video games. The author examines a few different proposed theories as to the links between thinking process and fiction, honing in on a particular model, pretence cognition, which he believes to be correct. In this model, the game exists as a box in the player’s mind, with elements of the game present as “representational tokens” in thought, similar to thoughts about real-life objects. He also examines games as interactive fiction, finding that the interaction with the story creates cognitive effects in a person that are similar to thoughts about real world challenges. Moreover, Tavinor examines emotional effects created by specific games, stating that it is simply a result of this representational way of thinking.

Comments and Relevance
Tavinor’s research is one of the few studies which seem to be specifically addressed at understanding the thought processes of adults. While Tavinor does not explicitly state these thought patterns occur in adults, his selection of mature-rated game titles such as Grand Theft Auto and System Shock 2 indicate these cognitive processes occur in adults. The use of personal pronouns initially makes his approach to discrediting other cognitive theories a little weak, although the justification as to each decision far exceeds that of personal bias.

This article is an incredibly useful article in determining the psychological effects of games pertaining to older gamers. The use of commercial games which many adults are fond with in order to gain an understanding of these cognitive theories makes it a foundational paper in this research project.

This week's reading: Video Games: Five kids, nine Final Fantasies

This week's key reading: A Significant Cognitive Artifact of Contemporary Youth Culture

Authors: Henderson, L. http://www.digra.org/dl/db/06276.11341.pdf

Relevance to field: While not specific to adults (as seems to be the case from almost all research in this are), this article documents profound advantages to the use of video games on children, using their cognitive properties to enhance their learning skills

What is known about the field: It is made known that video games are generally looked down on as useful educational tools early in the paper, and seeks to disprove this by using a real commercially released game, Final Fantasy IX. The author took five students, each of differing "teacher-rated" ability, and observed and interviewed them as they played through the quest. To her surprise, the author found that many of the cognitive learning skills that were known to result from playing video games were put in play by all the students, regardless of academic ability. It makes known that it isn't just specific educational games fostering these abilities, but also those already on the market

What's missing: Admittedly, testing 5 students is a fairly small observation pool to draw many conclusive results from. It is also curious that of these 5, only 1 is female (resulting in skewed data). This seems to ignore the differences between girls and boys in play, as well as not having sufficient female representation to present conclusive results for her female student "Eyore". She also puts forward at the end that similar tests should be run on multiple age groups.

Comments: A lot of research has been carried out on theoretical games or on small demos. The author has instead chosen a commercially available and successful title as the basis for her research. This instantly gives her fair more relevance to study of serious games and the thought processes they evoke.

This week's reading: Cognitive Science and Serious Games

I knew I'd one day come back to this blog. This blog is now converted into a research blog across the duration of my honour's project.

This week's key reading: Cognitive Science Implications for Enhancing Training Effectiveness in a Serious Gaming Context

Authors: Greitzer, F., Kuchar, O., Huston, K.

Relevance to field: The authors note that current attempts to use electronic means for training are very limited and unfruitful, with many people not remembering key things from these simulations. They put forward that the characteristics of video games, such as well balanced cognitive loading, visceral appeal and ability to "stimulate semantic knowledge". They show this by running a test of a serious network game called CyberCIEGE at a certain firm. The results were that employees were much sooner working through "hard" situations with much less difficulty. However, they expressed frustration due to what is described as a poorly communicated tutorial.

What is known about the field: The paper starts with a detailed explanation of the cognitive advantage presented in serious games, as well as detailing limitations in current training software. The authors and staff seem to be fully aware of the advantages of video games as in instructional tool, and thoroughly believe in its strong psychological effects

What's missing: It is unusual that Greitzer et al begin their discussion of cognitive advantages by making specific reference to the effect of games on children and youth, without explicitly stating that the effects carry over into their much older testing demographic. They also surmise that there were several key tools employed by successful games which would be of use in a serious game context, such as levelling up and shared experience, which would aid the teaching process

Comments: This article is a brilliant example of research in the field done correctly. The fact they could cite a recent example with a well thought-out and detailed execution easily puts it above other papers as an excellent source.

So, there we have it

Wow. There you have it. 36 posts, over 15000 words, 13 weeks, multiple game ideas, lots of analysis, and too many Cokes to appropriate later, and we have a complete design journal. I thought my "last" one should probably wrap up, as I feel like it's been somewhat of an epic journey.

I've actually found this journaling process incredibly helpful for getting a grasp on the lecture content in ITN016. And I'm not trying to say this to appeal to the markers. I really have. I mean, learning about design concepts has been interesting, but I've found their use and importance by actually examining games in the industry against them.

It's also forced me to have to come up with my own game ideas. This has been great cause, while course co-ordinators invite you to think about your own ideas in your spare time, the truth is that.. you don't really get much opportunity to. Not only that, it's forced me to actually assess these ideas. Not just having ideas for the sake of ideas, but having some ideas that are actually soundly justified by tested design principles.

So, key findings:

- Designers abuse gamers - in difficulty, in interface use... and maybe not so much in terms of narrative and affect

- The tried and true methods are often your best bet - a lot of areas *could* be innovated in order to move the industry forward even further, but it's probably best for the moment they aren't ie. FPS interfaces, implicit vs. explicit challenge balances

- Games are a good medium for people to grow - whether this is by assaulting players memorisation ability and requiring superhuman ability, or by bringing them further along in their own lives

- Designing games is HARD - or harder than I initially thought: there are no guarantees what you come up with will sell, and the processes you have to implement to get there are actually quite involved

I know that game developers have probably known these for years, but it's good to have the revelation of these for myself.

I may even continue this blog in the near future. It sure has been useful for creating good game ideas. And while it may not always have an ITN016 lecture to go by, it sure will be focussed on finding new and innovative ways to revolutionise, or at least increment, the gaming medium.

Watch this space.

Alas, the tormented soul

I can't seem to escape this notion that designers are mean to gamers. They clearly are. I swear they are. Or maybe I just have some sort of deep, repressed hurt from the times that these games broke my heart so... Alas, my secret misery is now revealed.

But it just occurred to me that some things which could severely mess up a group of players emotionally could also be what inspires or engages another set of gamers. It seems that the perceptions gamers may bring into their experiences may have severe consequences on how they are affected, or how they allow themselves to be affected, by a particular gameplay segment.

The problem is choice, Neo.

In Knights of the Old Republic, you are given an extensive list of options as to how your character behaves, and a branching story that follows along depending on how you've acted. **SPOILERS** In a significant part of the dark side end-game, you are given the option of how to treat your party after you have fallen to the ways of the Sith. You are given the rather cruel option to turn one of your life-bound companions on his life-time friend and have her killed. When he refuses, you are then given the option to kill them both. It is a pretty high impact decision, after spending 20+ hours in the company of these characters. For some, it may have had them wishing they never said yes to Bastilla and her dark side ways. For others, it may highlight the new-found power and authority of their twisted dark lord. ***END SPOILERS***

I haven't played Half-Life 2 Episode Two yet, but I have played all the titles before it. So when I saw a link on GameTrailers to watch its ending, I couldn't help but click. And omigolly. An incredibly significant, albeit innocent character is shockingly killed off in the presence of family... then the game ends. When I saw it, I actually felt quite ripped off and it's sort of put me off getting the game. My mate Dan, on the other hand, said it was quite a good cliffhanger and would lead in well to the next game. The level to which we involved ourself in the game obviously came out.

And don't get started on Final Fantasy VII. When I see Aeris die, it just makes me remember all the parodies. "And remember, phoenix downs don't always work... I'M LOOKING AT YOU, AERIS!". But there are enough records of people breaking down in tears in that segment of the game to show that the game had some serious affect on people... or that they were just too attached to the game.


Well, there's an evident design question: How do you design so that people view your high impact, emotional scenes in the right light? Well the obvious answer, it seems, is you can't. You can't design for everyone, sometimes not even for yourself. But you can pick up trends and strategies used by others, in games and in other media, for touching the emotions of a particular market. Otherwise, it seems to be a large waste of time and money. Besides, if you can hit most people, it's usually described as a success. Here here, Mr. Uematsu!

Ok ok, so I'll admit it - gamers probably aren't as tortured as I've made them out to be. I guess when the Universal Survey of All Gamers is run*, we will finally know.

*May or may not be a Universal Survey of All Gamers, any likeness to a real survey is mostly coincidental

What are you implying?

Lately I've been getting into the Nintendo 64 Zelda games again. What great games. They're absolutely fantastic. Great quest and level design, fun controls, excellent reward system, wonderful score etc. The list goes on on reams of paper that clearly aren't fair for the humble rainforests.

Zelda is a really great series for showing the power of balance between implicit and explicit challenges. Combat, for instance, is always very explicit. There are icons on the screen clearly showing what button will initiate a jumping attack or a sword swing, as well as others corresponding to arrows or bombs. If that isn't specific enough for you, there's even the option to listening to advice from your fairy about exactly how to kill this beast. This is offset with a remarkable quest system: a spelled out critical path; some other quests which are largely hinted at, but not forced; and a whole load of quests which aren't even required, or eluded to, unless you go looking for them.

I wonder what would happen if all of those optional quests were suddenly spelled out in great detail during the game. Oh yes, that's right.


Runescape would happen. Every single quest you can possibly do is explicitly implied... explicitly implied? Well yeah, the quests are completely spelt out; then again, they aren't exactly forced. Perhaps it is more useful to the target market for Runescape, which could be a bit hard to gauge since it is an MMO spread largely by word of mouth (or at least that's how I heard about it). From the community I was in back in those dark days of playing it, I can remember a fairly strong early-teen contingent. Then again, Zelda has a similar target market, albeit those owning consoles.

How can a perfect balance be determined? Guess this is another example of people not straying far from the tried and true. Perhaps it would be perilous to even try. And yes, of course we're gonna try it for a moment.

Most current games follow the formula "explicit combat, explicit critical path, implicit sub-quests". What I was thinking is, what if you implied the critical path? What if it wasn't forced? What if the player had to actively go look for what they actually had to do in the game, rather than being spoon-fed by annoying "HEY! LISTEN!" or by extensive quest logs?

On the plus side, it would be a new experience for players. I can't think of a game that has you doing something like this. Actually, that's not true. There are some games where reviewers complained about "wandering around for hours, trying to find out what you actually have to do next". Perhaps players don't have the attention span or the motivation to have to search out their main objective.

Maybe if other things were made explicit in its place, like.......................................................... optional quests? Hmmm, maybe not the best way of going about it. Well I can't say that either, cause it hasn't actually been tried. If the earliest part of the critical path was made explicit (and was an absolutely AWESOME experience), then perhaps this wouldn't be so bad? Once again, unconfirmed, and in desperate need of an attempt.

And so it seems, the tried and true is once again the winner. Not necessarily a bad thing, but if a solid innovation is made in this area, we could be on to some good game sales...

Even more gamer abuse

I've done a couple of posts stating that producers who abuse their target market sell well. And I still maintain it's true. Just looking over some of the key design principles Peta put forward in the interface lecture, and I'm so reminded of all the games that abuse players, not just by difficulty, not just by challenge hierarchy, but by exploiting the interface to no end. Usually this is done in the audiovisual, via senses, but is also done in other ways.

Instant example is Eternal Darkness. The game's whole point is to mess with the player. As typical of survival horror games, you are always being bombarded with a constant barrage of downcast yet frantic music to instill fear. You're being hunted quite a bit. And then, this is where the game just gets amazing... you have a sanity meter, which measures how sane your avatar currently is. When this bar starts to go down, all sorts of crazy stuff happens. Your head will randomly fall off. A TV volume bar will appear on screen and mute the TV on you, like someone was turning it down using the remote. The interface will turn to static. Absolute madness. A perfect example of a game abusing the player via the interface to induce emotions of fear and panic.


A lot of multiplayer games will enable players to use the interface of their opponent to effect their ability to play the game, and some are quite mean. I think of how, in Guitar Hero battles, you are able to reverse the opposing player's dexterity orientation (ie. make a right-handed player use the left-handed interface, and vice versa). I *hate* it when this happens to me. Or the flashbang grenade in Counter-Strike or Operation Flashpoint. It completely blinds the player's character, and an instant white screen with a high-pitched wail is also annoying. I know it's to capture the "realism" of a flashbang, but that doesn't escape the fact it's sense-abuse.

You've gotta admit, developers must have some excellent recruiting processes to find the genii that come up with this sort of stuff. Absolutely remarkable.

But once again, this is an example of where players are tortured to some extent, in order to create a fun experience. I think, perhaps, the tolerance of players to this sort of thing is quite a bit higher than we have been led to believe. And these are just the most popular games. There is an interesting flash game I played that makes the player wander through a maze. I think it was called Disorientation. The premise sounds easy enough, right? But then it reverses the orientation of the controls, shuns you with motion blur, and gives you a moving floor to work with, all in increasing levels as you go through the game. Sheer madness.

Player abuse. Don't report it. Be a capitalist and make money off it. Seems to have worked for so many companies, and I'm sure there'll be more to come.

My place in this woooooooorld

Ignorance is bliss, they say. Perhaps this has been my greatest source of uncertainty in our group experience. Uncertainty that our game ideas are actually *good*. And fun. These things which are potentially impossible to assess are required to be assessed during the design process. *Sigh*. The joys of entertainment.

And actually, it has been. I have actually really enjoyed working in a group to create a game idea, and then implement it. I won't go into the details of what I've already said I've gotten out of it, rather, I should probably mention what I actually ended up doing in the team.



As I have mentioned before, I was a bit of a jokester, but I also wanted to get all the work done. I would find myself constantly going over the lecture content in my mind during our group meetings, and ensuring nothing we were talking about was devoid of the key words, like "critical path" or "starting condition". That seemed to have served us well, if our marks for our design document are anything to go by.

On the topic of the design document, I was charged with the creation of the lengthy mechanics section. Admittedly, once I was halfway through it (standing at about the 6 page mark), I was thinking I shouldn't have picked the biggest section. Once I pushed out of that mindset, I found that it was actually quite a bit easier to think about design principles than I initially made out. There was just so much depth to what conflict actually was and how it took place, the intricacy of the rules, and the idiosyncrasies of game balance.

I'd like to view myself as the token nerd of our group. Before starting some key meetings, Tristan, Dan and I would sit and talk for about an hour about the games we really enjoyed and the ones we're looking forward to. 10 minutes in, two things were obvious: I'm an extreme Nintendrone, and I know too many games for my own good.

Actually, that isn't fair to say. It seems that my "past experiences with so many games", also known as my extreme nerdiness, has served me well in this unit and in this degree at large. I guess it makes sense: if you were doing film and TV, you'd have to be familiar with a LOT of movies, so one working in the games industry should do likewise with games.

Overall, a highly enjoyable group experience. I look forward to working in similar environments when I start work in the near future.

Rick Role

Atari were true visionaries back in the day when they invented a home console with multiple control ports. The money is indeed in the multiplayer game. We love it. We live it. We leave it. It's how we roll. Or role, as it were.



Wherever there is a talk about design, Sutton-Smith is always there. I think he's following me. In fact, I think he may have snuck into my house somehow...

He has some intriguing ideas. A little while ago we had a look at some of the different roles he proposed were present in multiplayer games. And it looks like he was pretty much spot on: all bases seem to be covered. I couldn't think of one game where player roles would not come under one of the eight roles discussed. But no harm in trying, right?

Ouch... there sure is. I've got nothing. He literally has all the bases covered. I would've tried games that use most of them and seeing if there are any aspects of gameplay left missed... let's try that.

Guild Wars. This would have to do it, right? It has the following roles:

- To overtake - players enter an arms race to get their levels high enough to wear their best armour and get their best skillset; similarly, the counteractors (other players) try their best to get ahead
- To catch, tackle or tag - ...not so much
- To overpower a defense - the premise of the game is combat, so this is definitely prevalent, with counteractors being on the defence
- To take person - entire group quests will be focussed on capturing one objective, while the counteractor (player controlled or system controlled) will try to evade
- To taunt, lure - Ah, the madness that arises from the constant harrassment, via chat or action, from other players... it can't be missed
- To find by chance or clue - exactly how every time in the game is found; counteractors participate by trying to get items first, although not with great success
- To be a saviour - this is more circumstantial, but still present - if an ally is in danger, the team may mobilize to get them back (if they're nice...)
- To force a forbidden action - this is more generated by the social interaction than the game itself, but still present

And that leaves... absolutely no elements of gameplay untouched or unmentioned. I have been foiled by Sutton-Smith and his analytical brilliance. I SHALL COME BACK TO HAUNT YOU, MY HYPHENATED FRIEND!

An avatar to call my own

How can you create for a player a completely unique avatar? Or at least, more unique than exists at present? And then ensuring that these unique qualities are balanced? I think it's time I stop asking rhetorical abstract questions and actually try answering some of these...

So here's some ideas.

The game Second Life (yes, the game) does this in an interesting way. The developers have created their own scripting language, enabling players to create their own custom... everything. You can upload custom clothes, custom textures, and even custom planes (that vigilante ITB010 students can come and make vanish). While it is a bit hard to do, and the quality of the gameplay in Second Life leaves some to be desired, it has proven quite successful, and allows players to fully customise their avatar.

But Second Life is not a combat-based RPG. The clothes and items do not influence how you play the game. But if this sort of scripting was ported over to World of Warcraft, say, then the results would be more felt.

Then there's the issue of ensuring balance. If players are allowed to write their own weapon scripts, what's to stop them giving it an attack radius of half of... whatever planet WOW is on... and doing 500000 damage a second to anything in its way?

Well, this is where I had an idea. Perhaps players could have a preset amount of "balance points" that a particular item must be under. For example, players could spend them all on attack power of a weapon and make it ridiculously strong, but wouldn't be able to put any points on its speed, range or required level. Or perhaps the "required level" attribute would be determined by how many points were spent on the item. For example, if 100 out of 1000 points were spent, perhaps you could equip it when you are on Level 15, but if you spend 1000 points, you would have to be Level 70 or 80.

Logarithmic mathematics is the friend here, with the amount of points being spent per attribute increasing as you buy more and more of that attribute; vis-a-vis, if you spend 50 points on one level of speed, it may cost 60 points for the next level.



Log maths seems to be quite useful for any sort of progression in a game. I think it'll be my loyal companion in years to come, where I may get an opportunity to implement some of these ideas.

The humble goth

An energetic speaker I once heard was talking about the importance of finding your identity. He was talking about different fads that people become part of in order to have some sort of identity. He then mentioned a conversation he had with a group of gothics one day in the Queen Street Mall.

Him: So, why do you all dress like that?
Goths: Because... we want to be different.
Him: But you all look the same!

Perhaps this sort of behaviour is also exhibited in the area of customisation of player avatars in video games. People want to have a character they can identify with, but some way of making them theirs. For example, in Guild Wars, every player will buy all the different robes to try and make themselves more and more unique online. But the problem is, for high levelled characters, if you want to have the best stats and attacks, you pretty much have to use the "optimal configuration" as determined by the game gurus. And there your avatar is taken from being an active representation of you in-game to simply just reflecting your play style.

This is an interesting challenge to try and genuinely address. Then the issue of symmetry arises. How can you allow players optimal customisation without compromising symmetry, or balance?

Guitar Hero does this with a list of extensive guitars and costumes to choose from. These items, however, have no bearing on the actual gameplay - they are purely visceral. Then again, this isn't all that interesting. What's the point of customisation if all it is is to make the character look pretty?

I guess this is sort of bearing on an earlier idea I had to create a unique army in a strategy game, yet this is more related to an individual avatar in a game like an RPG. At present, developers are hard-pressed to come up with different skills which are very unique, yet still remain truly fun and balanced with other skills in the game.

Or perhaps it could be done by giving each player a specific role or variant critical path or...

Even then, how do you do that without making it boring? And by still maintaining balance?

Perhaps the best system that does this well is real life. Each player (person) has their own unique skillset, their own critical path and try to find their identity. However, one of the main reasons people play video games is for fantasy fulfillment, to do things they can't in real life.

...What a challenge. Maybe this is why developers haven't strayed off the familiar paths. Or maybe they can't? This may be worth having a look at.

Oh, and it would seem I have picked the correct topic for my thesis.

Are you certain, Mr. Game and Watch?

In a much earlier post I pondered a game I would make that would fully exploit the immense amount of fun generated by uncertainty. Perhaps I left the impression that I think that the mix of uncertainty should be too far bent over towards complete random anarchy and chaos. In fact, most of the games I enjoy have a lot of elements which are quite certain. And I think that the vast majority of gamers hold the same idea. Uncertainty is important and useful for creating enjoyment. However, if used in a framework of anarchy, it clearly wouldn't sell that well. Or would it? Hmm...

Dungeons and Dragons is a good non-video game example of a highly uncertain game that actually sold quite well. All the combat, all the movement, all of almost everything relies on the roll of the infamous 20-sided die. The quests are all designed on the spot by the dungeon master, and tasks are completely reliant on the outcome of the throw. By this complete immersion in uncertainty, it should've completely turned to madness, but actually went on to create a dedicated subculture of elves and warriors.

There are also the old skool Game and Watch games. They seem to be fairly structured, then you realise how completely random the gameplay was. Green House involved you trying to kill the bugs trying to eat your precious plants. However, as you played more and more, you realise the bugs aren't in any sort of pattern, but are appearing and moving completely at random. And it was the Game and Watch games that essentially sustained the industry til the NES came out and saved the industry from going under.

Even the Final Fantasy games have a heavy dose of randomness. Random battles. Random item finds. Fairly random attack damage. Random odds of attacks missing and hitting. Random chance for a super critical hit. The only thing not random about the series is its sales, which are consistently excellent for each title.

Of course, all of this uncertainty is contained in a stable and structured framework. Dungeons and Dragons has a list of extensive rules on attacking and defending, which are always consistent. The Game and Watch games have the guarantee that the buttons you press do exactly what they're meant to every time, eg. you are guaranteed that left will move you left, spraying a bug will kill it, bouncing a patient will save them, and so on. Final Fantasy has a well-structured narrative and fluid combat system.

So as long as there's a solid level of guarantee in a game, either generated by rules, controls or narrative, developers have been mainly free to inject whatever level of uncertainty they feel is useful. And it seems to have had a positive effect on sales. Noted and accepted.

By, HUDson Soft!

Last time I found that the "people can only remember 7 plus or minus 2 things at a time" should be reworded "interfaces should have no more than 5 to 9 things displayed". It led me to think about how other games do their interfaces. And then the GUI for the FPS genre of games came up. There really hasn't been any innovations to the GUI since Half-Life really. Or even Doom.




It may or may not be a problem. "Don't fix what's not broken" as they say. However, a little innovation in this area would probably serve this industry quite well. It may even inject some valuable years into the cash cow that is the first person shooter.

So obviously you can't get rid of the main window. That is a pretty crucial part of the interface. Without it, a first person shooter wouldn't be first person, a shooter, or a game for that matter. So there's one to keep.

A useful tool in other genres of games (and other applications) are context-sensitive menus. They always work quite well for giving users more specific control over their environs, such as games like The Sims, and applications like Word 2007. I really like the way Cryis implements Sim-style mouse-wheel menus. While they aren't context sensitive, their design would be made more useful if it were context based. Perhaps this would be a more useful method for popping up things like avatar abilities, actions when next to a vehicle, or for customising powerups. Sort of like the communication system of Republic Commando, only controlling player actions, rather than communication options. This would only popup on trigger by the user eg. on middle click or something like that.

Then again, I don't think a HUD should completely remove every staple of FPS huds. Ammo, health and armour should remain as it is: on the corners of the screens using an unintrusive font.

So ammo, health, armour, main game and context sensitive menu. Five things, well within the maximum number of interface elements. This is how I'd "revolutionise" a first person shooter's HUD. Admittedly, it's not much of a revolution, but the combination of successful elements from other popular GUIs would prove to be a great success.

Super Human

At uni, I've done several subjects which cover the issue of interaction design. Creating pretty GUIs. Useful interfaces. Intuitive human-computer interaction. So when I saw some of the points in the interface design lecture, I thought "omigolly, I know where this is going". After some musing, I decided to get over it and actually listen to how they apply to games design.

So Nielsen's usability laws. Seen all them before. They're all good. Colour, spacing etc. Yeah, I've got that. And then there was the familiar idea that people can only remember 7 plus or minus 2 things at one time. It holds true for Windows form applications. Microsoft Word, Access and Excel are very intuitive because they rely heavily on this fact. They don't abuse the users' senses with overwhelming amounts of knowledge. Flash applications, such as online pizza ordering services are similar. But games?

I initially thought, sure, Nintendo does this well. Sequential tasks. Jump on turtle. Check. Jump on Goomba. Check. Jump over pipe. Check.

"Oh wait, she's talking about interface..." it dawned on me. Ok, so it isn't about how much the player has to physically manage, it should be that there shouldn't be more than between 5 and 9 items on the HUD. Like a first person shooter. Main screen. Mini-map. Task list. Special commands. Fairly generic, items are easily accessible. Essentially, these games have followed the same framework since 1998's Half-Life.

Once again, I find myself compelled to think about strategy games. They seem to be that one genre that likes to push the envelope. The modern strategy game is a marvel of user interface design. I think Age of Empires II was one of the first games to create the framework that exists today:


The user is given a large bar on the bottom third of the screen, and this is further divided into three boxes. The left-hand box contains commands for the selected unit. Quite useful. The middle bar contains information for the selected unit, building or formation. Once again, quite useful. And the right-hand side contains the ever-relied on minimap. The remnant of the screen is largely taken up by the actual game, with some more system menu buttons on the top.

This is where I found myself returning to the "But games?" thought. Doesn't a minimap have it's own interface? Doesn't the game have it's own interface in addition to this? There is so much happening on screen and on the minimap that it is immediately clear that players are required to constantly remember more than 9 items at a time: the positions of the units in the game alone are enough to blow this limit open. Add to this the hotkeys, the constant activity on the minimap, the constant sounding of alarms in numerous areas when entering combat, and you get a rather frantic experience occurring. Even under this idea, it seems strategy games require super human feits of their players. Despite this, players are well able to perform and micro-manage different events and interface feedback at once. The evidence? People buy these games in droves.

So, what then can be said for user interface? I gather that it may be wiser to say "users should not have to actively use more than 5 to 9 controls at any one time" for strategy games. It would seem that this can be accurately said for most strategy games, further evidenced Empire Earth II which tried to break this limit... and that reflected in sales. Yet, this intuitive interface provides players with enough tools to efficiently go beyond what has been classified as "normal human memorization patterns".

Of course, RTS games have a specific market. Usually those with a more logical and attentive mind are active purchasers of these games, over those who are less inclined. These others who don't purchase strategy games may be those we would ascribe this normality of active memory too. But for this other market, game developers are successfully appealing to and enhancing the skills of the super human.

The trust fund

I'm so glad I'm not a law student. I know a few of them, and gives new meaning to the word "workload". All that reading. Omigosh. Can I get it in PDF? Or in MP3? No, it's all overpriced textbooks which weigh 9kg just in the table of contents. And all that contract examination and writing. Ugh.

So it was to my dismay to discover the term "social contract" being used in video games. Well, initially. After about 4 seconds of talking about it, it seems to make sense. The guarantee of certain social interactions. Got it. Works well. Two most important elements are trust and safety. Trust is one of those weird things at the moment. It's a very fragile issue for many people, but surprisingly, games have worked quite well in fostering environments of trust.

I think the great difficulty in creating an agreement about trust is the great deal of past experiences brought to the game by the players. I think of the people who have had trust violated in earlier stages of life and what difficulty that may pose to trusting in a game. A game may be, to some people, just another environment where their trust is broken. The thing is that, especially in MMORPGs where several hours of life are invested, rewards, items and money take on a much greater value. And so, in these cases, a betrayal really IS an issue game developers need to address. I think the value created by the time spent in-game also have the potential to create these trust-shattering moments. Peculiar, maybe, but I have played several MMOs where people have been extremely put off the game because someone quite seriously betrayed their trust with an expensive item or load of money. Some cases are unavoidable, and perhaps ill-addressed by the developers.


I think of other games like Call of Duty 4 or Battlefield 2 where you are divided into two teams trying to kill the opposing forces. The developers made the interesting choice to turn friendly fire on by default, meaning that team killing would have the potential to run rampant. This design choice is counterbalanced with demerit points for killing people on your team, as well as the addition of the vote-kick feature. This allows players to nominate these annoying time-wasters and send them to the video game equivalent of the Abyss (AKA, kick them off the server). It seems that this voting feature requires players to place a certain amount of trust in each other to remove the defective player. Interesting, as their subject for voting is created by enabling a potential breach of trust. This seems to be a social contract many players have adapted to, otherwise FPS games wouldn't be the fastest selling genre of games.

Whichever way trust is fostered (or destroyed), it seems that players will indeed come back for more if the conditions are clearly communicated. The social contract. It'll be pleasure doing business with you.

Blame it on the Boogie...

So I thought I'd reflect on my group experience a bit more. This morning I was talking to a mate who's just finishing his honour's thesis at UQ, and we got talking about addictive songs somehow. He was saying one of his team members in one of his group assignments, whenever he was to blame, he replied "Don't blame it on me! Or the sunshine! Or the moonlight! Or good times! Blame it on the boogie!". Ah, the joys of being overly familiar with your group.

Besides my group experience being vastly different from past experiences because we were creating a piece of entertainment, it also created a very unique environment based on the other members of my team. One member, Dan, I have done 4 major assignments with in the past, had a lot of classes with, and generally spent a lot of time with over the course of my... course. The other, Tristan, I only met during this unit. The depth of our relationships, added to the context of creating a game rather than a program, created an interesting and useful experience for me.

Usually, overfamiliarity can be a bad thing for the productivity of a group, but in creating a game, past experiences with Dan enhanced our team's outcomes. In some past units, 010 and 711, we've been pretty forgiving of the other's lack of work at times, usually accompanied by a long round of tomfoolery. An excessively long round. In fact, the previous unit's tomfoolery immediately flowed into this unit's tomfoolery. Only this time, it seems to have benefited our creative devices. Our first idea was created by variances of "Epic Fail", the drawing of a hippie-esque whale, and a mention of Pokemon. However, since we'd worked together, we also knew we could just speak openly about the idea and tear it to shreds in the light of the time we had remaining.

Initially, and I've gotta be honest, I thought having an additional member to our dynamic duo may have been problematic. Mainly because Dan and I have work in a very unique... style. Constant programming jokes (that make us shudder), lots of talk about games, and too many in-jokes to remember (and I just lost the game). But Tristan proved to be quite an excellent comrade, and brought some very useful insights to our team. I think we did well to start our first meeting by just going out to Gloria Jeans and getting acquainted It worked quite well for us, and I quickly learned Tristan was just as serious about doing well in this subject as we were.

Where working with Dan was more about obscure jokes becoming good game ideas (which has been the case... and we actually are quite productive together), working with Tristan has provided an excellent balance to ensure we don't go too far off track. Usually when I have thought of an idea, Tristan has wisely assessed it based on the previous lecture and tutorial content. It has been incredibly useful for me to keep my mind on sound design over pure zeal for zany ideas. That's not to say Tristan is a killjoy, cause he most certainly isn't. Nor is it to say our team had one half overly crazy, one half serious. Our team dynamics served to bring a healthy balance without these extremes becoming prevalent on their own.

So, where do I fit in? Well, glad you asked. Or rather, I'm glad I forced you to ask. I guess I was the more extreme one, laughing heaps at terrible puns and crazy game ideas, while constantly thinking about the lecture content. However, working with Dan and Tristan has helped me not to be overly in either category, but rather healthily in both. I've found that when I was too focused on the design principles, the creative juices ceased. I also found that when I focused too much on the creativity, it just turned into one long bout of laughter and aimless brainstorming. I think we all helped each other in this area, and we were able to quickly create, as my ITB009 lecturer described, a "high performance" team.

A key point that has been discussed in all subjects where group work has been involved came into full view in this team: it's all about creating an environment for members to perform at their best. We were certainly able to do that, and I think it's a technique that will be invaluable as I go out into the games industry.

I'm not being arrogant, but I say with some pride that our team was a fantastic combination and has helped me develop great creative processes for designing entertainment. This will no doubt serve me very well in the near future as I look out to launch a career.

And just to finish appropriately when discussing our group...

We were an *exceptional* team. We should give it another *try*. Well, I guess I'll *catch* you soon. I know, it's *finally* over.

It's the principle, it's the issue

After doing IT at QUT, I'm pretty much set in group work. I've had at least 2 group assignments per semester, in a variety of subjects. Some for business, many for programming, others for web site development, and even trying to work out algorithms for AI. And then all of a sudden, enter 016. Fundamentals of Games Design. Suddenly, I'm in a team where we aren't working on creating some massive codebase, or examining how to get C++ and Java to talk (or Tawk as we put it), but rather creativity is required of me. I have to try to categorise and invent "fun". Not just that, I have to do it with two people who have an almost identical experience to mine.

It's funny. I've done a software design subject where they taught us that is useful for programmers to have some sort of idea as to how software should be designed, what classes to write, what return types to use and what have you. It turns out the same is probably true in the games industry, especially if you want to climb the ranks to becoming a producer (like I do).

Initially, I found it quite a bit of a step up from other group assignments I had done before. Instead of there being some set structure to research, there was now something to create based on some principles with a much broader requirement than "write a program that...". Now I had to help design entertainment, something which is incredibly hard to assess. And since this is the case, it's equally hard to create. This has been my experience, and I can finally say I sympathize with all those game designers who've been frustrated when their ideas don't work.

I can also fully understand the statement "just because you think something is a good idea for a game doesn't mean others will share your opinion". I think this was more something we discovered as a group, when we had an initial design that sounded like a lot of fun (and on paper it certainly did). When another group member thought it was a bit sketchy with some good points, we quickly saw he was right. Admittedly, we were left a bit distraught (especially as a deadline was approaching). He was right, of course, the game wouldn't have worked, and would've ended up being a lesser version of an existing title. Not with the level of innovation we had conjured up, at least.

On the note of innovation, I made another key discovery in the confines of our group. No matter how much you try, innovation is not something you can force. All you can really do is create an environment for creative ideas, which is what we fostered as much as we could, by

• Many brainstorming sessions in the length of hours
• Constant bouncing of ideas, and
  
• An openness to try something new.

Even with these great principles, we did not have the necessary innovations in the area of character progression that would've been needed to bring our game into reality. At least not within our time frame. By the way, our game idea was a Guitar Hero RPG, which is still not forever lost. But within the context of this unit, unfortunately it has to be.

So for me, participating in my group has been a real stretch, just based on the fact that the focus of our efforts was a piece of entertainment as opposed to my previous code monkey experiences. I must say it has been an irreplaceable experience for me (and I really do mean that). The challenges I faced in the group have certainly refined my views on game design and the creation of "fun". Perhaps another time I'll talk more about some of my experiences more specifically with the other group members, and hopefully arrive with a fuller picture of what doing this group assignment has helped me realize.

Abusing Players = Sales?

Earlier on in the month I noted one intriguing thing: that players will take a lot of torment with respect to difficulty before they give up. In fact, more abuse can sometimes result in a more thoroughly enjoyable experience. Having now had a look at the fact that the amount of stress and required level of skill (forming the absolute difficulty of a game) needs to be well thought out, do I change my mind? Once again, I turn to the industry for help here.

And I don't know why I'm constantly drawn to this game, but I just cannot help but think of Guitar Hero here, specifically the third one. Now, the game is fairly easy on the easiest setting. Nothing too complicated. The player has to press one of three notes and strum to some sort of rhythm based on the song, but really not a high level of skill is involved. Also, the stress levels placed on the player are fairly low. This is somewhat maintained on the medium setting, adding another button and slightly increasing the stress in the way of increased notes and faster timing. As you'd expect from a "medium" difficulty. However, the last 8 songs see an even higher increase, while still contained within the medium setting. Hard and expert follow a similar pattern, with expert literally making it impossible for humans to get 100% on certain songs. Some of my gamer friends won't go past medium, as I thought I wouldn't, but the extremely satisfying reward created by the culture of gaming beckons us forward. Yes, Through the Fire and the Flames is an abuse of players (which the developers acknowledge by labelling one of the solos "What the?!"), but it has been a great selling point for this title. All you have to do is Youtube this song and you'll see that there are literally millions of views.

The example of Guitar Hero was an easy example to think up. The next ones were a bit harder. I think that this exploitation of human limits also takes place in a 2D space shooting game called Ikaruga for Gamecube, and now X-Box Live Arcade. Similar to games like Raiden and R-Type before it, this game took human reflexes and multiplied normal human processing power by 500. The game from the offset requires an extremely high level of intrinsic skill, even on low difficulty settings. Your ship is constantly being bombarded with literally dozens of lasers at a time. Rather than just having to dodge them, your ship is able to absorb some of the shots, depending on the colour. There are only blue and red coloured shots, hence only two types to try and absorb. However, when this is added to the sheer magnitude of attacks coming at you, you quickly learn that only the elite will get through to the end without cheating somehow. However, it seems again that the rewards of glory created by the surrounding culture thrust players against high difficulties, just to get their prowess recognised on Youtube.

It seems Youtube has been quite a powerful tool in reinforcing a culture around gaming. It seems that because of Youtube, the once unnoticed communities devoted to finishing Mario 64 in a ridiculously fast time, or topping out the times in F-Zero, have now been put in the spotlight, and the reward significantly increased. This has given me a great idea that I can't believe hasn't been done: why don't games have an interface for recording games to AVI? I know Mario Kart and Gran Turismo have the ability to record a "ghost", which is a virtual run of what you did that other people can compete against, but it seems that Web 2.0 is where the culture is gaining its full strength. It just HAS to be done.

Something interesting came up in both titles, and many others like it. The culture of gaming that forms around a title can greatly influence the success of a game. This begs the question, how can games be designed to target this culture and its creation, and how can this culture be encouraged to be driven by the rewards of glory? If these didn't exist, it can be assumed that the tolerance of abusive levels of difficulty in games would diminish.

But we won't let that happen on our watch, will we?

(Rewards of glory, hierarchy of challenges and absolute difficulty by Penny Drennan from ITN016 lecture 7, culture of gaming from ITB750 Lecture 3)

The profound and the heart stirring

After exhaustively looking at the quality of "epic" in games, I have come to one obvious conclusion... I obviously want to create a masterpiece. I think this is the desire of many people looking to get into the game industry. Creating the ultimate escape, an amazing sprawling "living" world, an unforgettable piece of entertainment. Something equivalent in scale to, say, The Lord of The Rings movies to the film industry.

The difficulty in the current video game climate is that so many games have already come and set and reset the definition of epic that any attempt to do the same requires much more effort (and about 5 trucks full of money). Even so, I think it's possible, and I really really want to do it.

This is one of the main reasons I want to get into the games industry: to stir people's hearts to hope. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but I think the gaming medium possesses the power to present a powerful uplifting message to its audience. Many games have proved their power to affect already using different contexts, such as the surging feeling of triumph at the end of Final Fantasy VII. But I'm more looking for a different emotional response. I'm looking for a reflective poise, creating excitement and awe, and perhaps a bit of old fashioned compassion and love.

I've been thinking much about how I'd actually go about this. Perhaps excitement is the easiest emotion to create in a player, and also one of the most necessary to maintain to preserve a state of flow. One way I thought of doing this outside of an enjoyable combat system (which I have mentioned in earlier posts), is by having a single or group of incredibly adept enemies who are constantly portrayed as being extremely powerful. At random points throughout the game, they would appear and cause some massive event of destruction or, by their very presence, inspire curiosity and fear. Yet, the player would not be able to attack them right away. I think this constant teasing of these powerful enemies would lead to an incredible sense of excitement when they finally appear in the last few hours of the game, ready for battle. The vision I have is of a now highly skilled player completely focused on the task of destroying these enemies that have constantly been in their mind during the game. This would be the use of narrative to reinforce this emotion.

I think a sense of awe could be conveyed in a similar way. These rival characters may be extremely powerful, in that they launch the first truly devastating attack in the game, perhaps in the scale of a nuclear warhead. Large environments in the context of a raging world war with one-to-one player combat would cause any player to feel part of something bigger. The reward system in the game would be crafted to allow players to develop an even greater skillset than the initial attacks of these rival opponents, perhaps increasing speed to blinding levels or attack radius to entire cities. A war-driven narrative on such a scale must be complemented by a brilliant soundtrack. None of this MIDI stuff. Let's get some great orchestral pieces in the making. Each piece would need to be carefully fine-tuned to perfectly blend with the gameplay, to create a piece of machinery which redefines the gob smack.

Here's the hard part. Love? Compassion? Reflection? How do I get a player to feel these emotions, or run these thoughts? Gameplay would probably not be the best tool here. "Shake the Wii Remote to propose to her". "Press A to voice the voiceless". Probably wouldn't work. As much as I'm not a fan of the game, I think GTA4 is on to something in the lead protagonist of Niko. He's certainly not the perfect guy, but he has been crafted with a wit to make him lovable, a past to create immense intrigue about him, and also the ability to receive consequences for direct player actions. This means that players instantly have a strong character which they can either relate to, or use as a digital representation of themselves.

A strong protagonist like this would be the most effective method to convey these emotions. However, where Niko has his own weird gangster story, the lead character in my game/s would need to face problems more common to those in our society. Perhaps then players would resonate in themselves with the protagonist's crises of love, or the decisions they make in the face of difficulty, or the solutions they find. Perhaps in this way a player may be affected in these "unusual" ways.

Actually, I'm quite glad I've been given an opportunity to think about affect like this. Games certainly contain a lot of power to convey strong messages, as well as much potential which probably hasn't fully been realised. It's only a matter of time, and I hope I'm there to be one to usher it in.

Affectionate Anomolies

Ok, so last time I concluded that there were three ingredients to epic games. Concluded... or confirmed with the findings of what I've been taught (which is always a good thing). Epic musical score. Great hierarchy of challenges. Strong narrative. Specifically, the use of all three of these elements turned out to create some of the finest games of our time.

But... You know that kid that, despite all psychological analysis and discipline and direction, still acts irrationally? There are games like that. And they can be annoying for trying to work out sound design. They have been extremely successful and maintained the title of "epic" while not using all three of these vehicles for affect. Here are a few I thought of.

Super Mario Galaxy. Or any Mario game for that matter. Most of them have been the most successful titles of whatever platform they were on. Super Mario 3 for the NES. Super Mario World for the SNES. Galaxy for the Wii. People just can't get enough of that fat plumber, his plastic girlfriend who has been stringing him along for 25 years with no sign of marriage in sight, and an old OCD lizard with red hair. But thinking specifically of Mario Galaxy, because it wasn't just me who enjoyed it; it actually did quite well in terms of sales. Many reviewers (IGN, GameSpot, GameTrailers) described the game as epic. Funny, cause that's the word I used to describe other games like Zelda and Metal Gear Solid. So let's look at the checklist again:

Powerful music? Definitely. Some of the finest tunes to date on any platform.

Hierarchy of challenges is well portrayed? Certainly, although tried and true. People have still found it fun to be told you need to rescue the princess by obtaining 120 stars, while on the way having intermediate challenges of different worlds and atomic challenges of that great platforming mayhem.

Narrative... *sigh*. Mario, Mario, Mario... you have to confuse our design concepts. The storyline of Mario Galaxy is admittedly NOT epic. Yes, it provides context for the game. Rescue the princess. For the 50th time. There have been additions to the formula: Bowser steals the whole castle this time rather than just the princess. Outside of that, still fairly barebones. Still, Galaxy has been given the status of epic. Perhaps this is because of its great mastery of the other two elements. In the case of Galaxy, reviewers have specifically praised the music for affect (see this review as an example). Either way, the game is weird in the sense it doesn't fit this framework entirely.

As much as it depresses me to seem like I am paying out my faithful Nintendo... Super Smash Brothers Brawl is another such anomaly. However, it is in deficit in both its challenge hierarchy and its narrative.

No criticism could ever be levelled at Brawl for its lack of music. In fact, its music is probably what has given it such a close spot in so many people's hearts. Over 200 fully orchestrated tracks from the Nintendo universe. The mixture of nostalgia and loud, big band numbers makes it a winner in every sense of the word in affecting players' emotions.

However... narrative is a mixed bag. There are a few single player campaigns... but they don't go past much more than "fight all the baddies and beat the Master Hand". Another tried and true Nintendo strategy, and brilliantly it still works. There is a longer campaign involving all the characters in the game, which contain some cinematics to add a feeling of grandeur. A quick search of Google and you'll find that a faithful contingent of gamers still found this narrative quite enjoyable and, dare I say, epic. Although, the fact that players are able to control many of these different characters somewhat lessens the sense of immersion as it is enforced by the narrative.

Strangely, it is the challenge design that is the unmaking of this "design stereotype". This is probably because it is part of the 2D fighting genre. Where the other titles would apply the style "Here's the final goal, here are the steps to get there, utilise your combat skills", Brawl adopts more of an incentive-based model. Beating the Master Hand does not mean the game is over, but instead rewards you with one of several hundred trophies you can collect for doing so. The game does not even present you initially with a critical path or a visible end state, but rather lets you pick up a player and revel in the atomic challenge of combat (which is very well designed, mind you). I'm not saying that Brawl's challenge design is terrible, merely that it presents a model of play structure that prevents the statement "narrative, music AND challenge design make a game epic" from being true. To put it like Penny Arcade so brilliantly has for another well-known title, "it's like the sales assistant replying 'Sure, that will be money dollars'".

Surely there are many more games out there that have an influence on an affection template. Genre seems to heavily influence it, as does the power of each of the elements. A good finding, and hopefully one to remember as I go out with my own designs.

Epic Tale avoids the Epic Fail

It seems like an innate human desire to be thrust into some larger story, much larger than themselves. It probably is, in fact. Since video games are a source of fantasy fulfillment, no doubt game designers have created games with this in mind. One look at the top 30 games on GameRankings.com confirms this. Grand Theft Auto 4. Zelda: Ocarina Of Time. Metal Gear Solid. The Half-Life games. The list goes on.

What do all these games have in common? They are designed to be highly affecting pieces of software, stirring emotion and provoking thought in their players and surrounding cultures. And they have all succeeded brilliantly. HOW is it that these games have communicated such a sense of awe and wonder, stimulating a player even to their hearts. It sounds extreme, but the truth is that this is the level of affect these games have had on their audience.

I think if I can catch some of the common things from these titles, I'd be on the way to a successful idea. Just add some unique IP, and voila.

So the first thing I noticed was their epic musical score. It has been said that sound is the cheap-and-dirty to engage a player. I disagree wholeheartedly. The success of these games has largely been due to their powerful and well-selected music. Since I'm a Nintendrone, I'll use the examples of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess. These games have very little to no voice overs. The gameplay was excellent. The character design was flawless. And yet this was all delivered through a fantastical soundtrack, full of catchy Nintendo tunes and amazing pieces of music genius. The music in these games fully enhanced and conveyed the sense of emotion which the player instantly resonated with. An example of this is during the lead up to the final boss fight in Ocarina of Time. As you climb his tall tower, you are constantly bombarded with the sound of an ominous organ being played, conveying a sense of true climax and significance. Similarly, Metal Gear Solid had a soundtrack which perfectly complimented the finality of the last missions. Keys for success so far: great score.

Secondly their hierarchy of challenges are designed to immerse the player in the greater story, without sacrificing the fun of the micro-level actions. I think of Metroid Prime 3 for the Wii here. The narrative of the game was quite massive. From the offset you are told you are going to have to take out large Space Pirate bases on three planets by means of invasion, eventually destroying the source of the enemy completely. Quite an enormous scale is conveyed by the narrative early on, and confirmed by the intermediate level challenges; that is, the destruction of each pirate base. When you arrive on each planet, a similar sense of scale is shown: Here is the final target, called a Leviathan, but here are all the things you need to get there. These lower-level challenges are well varied and still carry this sense of scale. One I will always remember is the constructing of a thermonuclear bomb by collected 3 large pieces, then dropping it on enemy territory. This is all complemented by the atomic challenge of combat, which was really an excuse for Nintendo to show off how good the Wii is for FPS titles, ensuring the entire experience is constantly fun. But its this outlay of tasks while keeping the main goal in the back of the player's mind that creates a truly epic title in Metroid.

It could be debated that the previous two methods mean nothing if not for a powerful narrative. Metal Gear Solid is the ultimate game in this sense. An excellent plot of betrayal, love and triumph give context to these other elements. Without the quick wit of Solid Snake, would a player hear his theme music with the same sense of triumph? Without the insane introduction and description of boss characters, would the challenges they present actually be immersive? It would be like taking the Ring out of the Lord of the Rings.

After writing this and looking back on the lecture on designing games for affect... it seems like the listed design principles are indeed the strategies of developers. That's quite comforting and quite remarkable. And also quite humbling. Some of the greatest games I've ever played, the most affectual to me, were very carefully designed using these three factors. Sheer genius. Now I need to do the same.

(The anatomy of challenge taken from ITN016 Lecture 7 by Dr Penny Drennan)

The Ultimate Reward

I considered doing a post about the ultimate goal in man's pursuit in life... but I thought I'd stick with video games, at least for this blog anyway. All games, in some way or another, implement some sort of reward system. They have to. How will a player receive feedback if nothing is said, given or presented to the player? How will progression take place if not through enhancing and developing the player's skillset or abilities? Name a game series that wasn't remembered for some element of its reward system. Yeah. Exactly.

So as I was thinking about the different types of rewards, I wondered "What is the one reward to rule them all?". That is, which reward type is most enjoyable, and/or keeps players coming back for more? Let's have a look:

Access: So, these type of rewards open new areas to players, either temporarily or permanently. Probably the most common type of reward in adventure games such as Metroid or Zelda. Let's use Ocarina of Time as an example, since it is/was considered "the best game of all time" (til something rhyming with Me P.A. Law came out). Once a player had advanced a certain part of the narrative, a new area would be made available. For example, climb a mountain and talk to a Goron and you open up a new dungeon. Much later in the game, approach the same area 7 years later in the game time with a new skillset and by talking to a baby Goron, and suddenly the entire interior of the mountain becomes available. Personally this part was a big thrill for me, as finally being able to enter areas you've been seeing from a distance had a real feeling of value, and many other player share the same belief. That said, perhaps this type of reward is necessary for progression in ANY game. If new areas or songs or challenges did not become available in response to some player action, the idea of progress would not exist.

Facility: Related to strengthening and enhancing playable characters. Zelda is another perfect example of this. In fact, the entire game and its progression rest in these rewards. After partially completing each challenging dungeon, a player is rewarded with some sort of new weaponry, such as bombs, boomerangs or arrows. These things allowed players to access the new areas, and hence usher in the rewards of access. In fact, this is identical in any game: Guitar Hero, where new player skills usher in new songs; Metroid, which is much the same as Zelda; even Grand Theft Auto uses this idea.

So perhaps these two reward systems MUST be contained in a game. They seem to be too interlinked to be separated and compared. Hence, it must come down to the final two. Is it for glory, or for sustenance?

Just as brief definitions, sustenance rewards are just that: all about sustaining a player's character or characters. Rewards of glory usually take place outside of the magic circle of the game, usually in the community of gamers.

It seems that sustenance, for a very long time, was a main focus for rewards in games. This was usually in the form of RPGs, such as Final Fantasy. Your character and/or characters have permanence: their statuses aren't lost on power off like in games like Mario. One of the main ways this was delivered was in the forms of level ups and equipment, offering many unique and customisable rewards for players. This is also present in online games such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, and is the sole focus of many players for a very long time, until...

...their focus switches to the rewards of glory. The focus and adoration of the fan community. You have a Level 70 Paladin now. So what? Other players do not consider this an achievement, and in games where there is a strong community focus, the community will inevitably drive players to focus on these rewards. It's not a matter of "how good are you at Guitar Hero", it's "What's your top score on Through the Fire and the Flames", or "How many 40-man raids have you led?". Albeit, the same questions cannot be asked of Final Fantasy or other RPGs.

This leads us to an interesting point. Glory and sustenance seem to be more valuable depending on the genre and community focus they are used in. RPGs like Final Fantasy, played against the computer, seem to do well to reward players via sustenance. Games where there is a strong community focus, such as MMORPGs or rhythm games, do well to reward players via glory.

So perhaps there isn't one reward to rule them all. But it seems that wise designers should consider genre and the metagaming elements in the creation of any reward structure.

(Types of rewards taken from ITN016 Lecture 7, from QUT Blackboard, written by Penny Drennan)

I need a ruler

Very good news for us: our game for our assignment rocks. After sitting down for a long playtest over the last few days, we have come to two conclusions:

1. Our game is a lot of fun
2. Our game is incredibly well balanced (so far)

My job has been to focus on the mechanics side of the design document for our game. This has caused me to be thinking quite a lot about rules and rule design. The trend for the modern game seems to be supplying rules without... supplying rules. The classic example is GTA3. The sandbox game. Freedom to "do whatever you want".

This has made me think a lot about a rule structure for any games I design in the future. The GTA "model" has been incredibly popular, reinforced by the industry's desperate longing for the release of the fourth game next week. So on a deeper level, what IS the rule structure for this game? Are they clearly defined? Why do people enjoy it so much?

Really, this model is just a loosely enforced critical path. That's what people are feeling freedom from. Underneath this, however, is a much more intricate rule system. Don't die is a big one. Killing will usually result in netting in some good cash. The developers haven't needed to spell most of these out for players though. The rule system is a lot more implicit, and I believe if they were a lot more spelled out it wouldn't be nearly as fun.

Games of yore had rule sets which were entirely explicitly defined. Games like Monopoly, Super Mario, Zork. And these were still fun. These newer implied rule sets usually take place in adventure games. Perhaps players find exploring their boundaries in the game a motivation for playing these sorts of games.

Implied rules sell. There is obviously a yearning in the market for exploratory constraints in gameplay. Thinking on this, here are two of the implications on rules I could think of for the mech game I mentioned in a much earlier post:

1. Multiple ways to exploit the natural physics system - players are wanting more and more freedom in rules of motion. So I'd consider flight, supersonic motion, teleportation. These would need to be constantly made available without great announcement and enhanced during the game to continue to push the player to explore the boundaries of the game.
   
2. The removal of the boundaries between walking around and combat - making these functions available all the time, rather than "switching into a combat area". Usually if you're around friendly units, your combat abilities are negated. What if "friendly fire was turned on", so to speak? Rules defining what can and can't be destroyed may be completely opened up.
3. A severe but subtle reward and penalty system. Obviously, the sandbox idea doesn't throw the game into complete anarchy. Players need to see these rules enforced in some way. Since we are aiming for the implicit rule structure, instead of giving the player immediate feedback for every action, there should also be some sort of longer term effect initiated.
   

I realise this would make a game that would probably sell extremely well. However, I may not find these design decisions particularly fun myself. I never really did get into GTA - one reason being I found this open-endedness not necessarily enjoyable. But, this is a big industry. Games companies are businesses looking to earn revenue, not to create products that it can only sell to its staff. That said, I think explicit rule systems have great merit. Perhaps I'll discuss this in my next post.

An asymmetric industry

This week in our workshop we were asked to play Fox and Geese. It's a game where one player controls 14 geese and one player controls one fox. The fox is trying to jump over all the geese (which is symbolic for eating them I guess, unless jumping over them causes them to teleport somewhere), and the geese are trying to surround the fox. Clearly, 6 geese can take down a fox. When I initially started playing it I thought "hey hang on, this game is clearly not balanced, the fox has much more power to do". However, after playing it for about 3 seconds, I soon discovered that the geese were balanced to match the fox's evil-jump-of-killing-geese-death-amon.

The current state of the industry, I think, has needed to and is needing to continue to move towards asymmetric titles which are very well balanced. This is probably due to the rise of the RPG and the use of RPG elements in almost every genre. RPGs by nature offer enough customisation to encourage a player playing through a game several times. This customisation of course creates a different play style every time, removing any equality between characters. This has become the norm for first-person shooters. Sure, there may be some similarities such as character speed, but there is usually enough difference between them to cause the label "symmetric" to become redundant.

One of the first games to start this off were the Final Fantasy games. From around 2 or 3, the "job system" was introduced. This allowed you to pick primary jobs (or classes) for your characters and had a massive effect on each character's moveset and abilities. Add to this the ability to have multiple jobs and the combinations were effectively limitless, warranting excessive amounts of play. While I haven't had much hands-on experience with this title, I can guarantee that most people have their preferred job set. The combination they believe to be the most powerful or useful. Were the games balanced? I haven't heard too many complaints regarding jobs being too weak or too strong, but this may be because this is a player vs. environment game. I believe players are more impacted by imbalance when other players are involved.

The first-person shooter used to be one of the most symmetric genres around. All players started with equal health, speed, payload and equally efficient locations. While there were a lot of different guns players were able to pick up, and some ridiculously super powered ones as in the case of Quake II, the reality is that all players still had equal opportunity to these resources. This all started to change with the development of Counter-Strike. In CS, players were able to buy new more powerful weapons every round. Depending on how many people they or their team killed, they would receive an amount of money to buy whatever guns they wanted. This is quite balanced to play mind you, some of the weaker guns in the hands of the right player are just as deadly. But this inclusion of RPG elements in an FPS game began the gradual removal of symmetric gameplay from the genre. The fact that players could be very unique in an FPS game left players wanting more.

Enter the modern FPS. Something like Call of Duty 4. Dark Seeker. Battlefield 2 and 2142. These games have incorporated RPG elements with great care to create a truly customisable yet balanced system. Take Battlefield 2 for example (since it's the one I've played the most). Battlefield 2 rewarded you experience points for every kill you made, every game you played and every capture point you earned. Once you've gained enough points, your avatar will level up, allowing you to unlock a new weapon of your choice. You could select between the different classes and unlock a few new guns for each. This gave you more options to select from instead of just the default weapon load-up. The Heavy Support troop could get a PK machine gun, which was a lot more powerful than the standard gun, yet was balanced out with a higher inaccuracy to make sure that the weapon didn't dominate completely. This holds true for all the weapons, and it is truly a credit to the games designers to maintain a perfect balance with all the customisability.

So what? What does it mean if the game industry is becoming more and more asymmetric, at least in the case of FPS games? Well, specifically for me, it highlights the need to give careful thought to any variance between players, and to consider the effects on them if any changes are made. The best way I can think of to achieve this is just excessive amounts of play testing, fine-tuning, and trying different combinations to ensure we have a flowing piece of genius at the end.

DOMINATION!

Ok, so the other night I went into a bit of a rant saying that unbalance can make games incredibly fun. More specifically, that games that have some degree of unbalance sell extremely well and become very popular. Perhaps I went too far in the direction of saying unbalance is always going to be fun, cause clearly, it's not always. The area that can imped the experience is the dominant strategy idea.

Take any Star Wars game for example. In any game where you are given force powers, the powers belonging to the dark side are always ridiculously more powerful than the light side powers. In Jedi Academy, a game where you control a Jedi Apprentice, you are given a few light and dark side options to put your force powers into, as well as some neutral ones. The idea of this was to give you some "different play styles" that you could use. You could select the light side powers so you could be noble and walk the ways of the Jedi, like Force Absorb, which would let you absorb some attacks. You could do that... or you could get Force Lightning, which allows you to pick up all enemies in front of you and launch them in every direction. Because of this, online play would always result in a lightning-fest, with very few people using light-side powers. While this didn't necessarily remove the fun aspect, it caused the play styles to be illusionary as the aggressive style was always superior.

Dawn of War was honoured for its highly balanced factions... until the expansion, Dark Crusade was released. This expansion introduced the Necrons, a zombie-like race of machines. They played fairly balanced to begin with, until you upgraded your main unit known as the Necron Lord. This unit could be used to resurrect all fallen units in its radius. What players would do is build an army up to their population limit, delete them all, build up to their population limit again, and then resurrect their entire fallen army. This effectively doubled the size of the Necron army above the balanced, defeatable population cap level. No wonder people online only use the Necrons. To be fair, some of the later patches of the game introduced greater levels of balance to the other teams because of this ability of the Necrons, but players using this race still had the edge online.

Mario Kart DS was a fantastic racing game. One of its biggest selling points was that you could play it online via Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection. Upon starting one of these matches, you will instantly see the dominant strategy come into play: snaking. In MKDS, you are able to powerslide to help you get around tighter corners. If you jiggle the direction pad left and right during this, you will receive a turbo boost. Online players exploit this to no end, by going through all the levels constantly using this boost. If you don't do the same, you stand little to no chance of winning a race.

So far I've found that there are different levels to balance that should be considered. Being fair to the player is usually admirable, but a lot of players can stand a lot of "torment" in terms of difficulty before they stop playing, and in fact may find it more enjoyable this way. At the same time, different strategies that are presented to players should be equal in effectiveness, otherwise you severely limit the multiplayer experience.

Enjoyable Unbalance

Balance has become an important part of the "fun factor" of games. At least by today's standards. You'll hear the constant drone of the Starcraft players bantering "STARCRAFT IS TEH BEST GAME ON EARTH CAUSE IT'S SOOOOOOO BALANCED!!1!1!1one". The entire industry will make a case for balanced games.

After thinking about this for about 3 seconds, I thought "hold on, some of the most popular and successful (and fun) games of all time don't entirely meet this balanced requirement too well". An example from my games design lecture was that of Command and Conquer, where the Soviets were clearly more powerful than the allied units. And yet, it's still one of the most popular strategy games of all time.

One aspect of balance referred to the difficulty of player vs machine/environment games not suddenly ramping up. However...

Guitar Hero 3 is a fantastic game, and one of the best selling games of the current generation of consoles. It's an amazing multiplayer game and a highly satisfying singleplayer. After about the sixth set of songs, however, the difficulty ramps up to a ridiculous level. The note count of the songs almost double, and the rhythm of the songs almost disappears, leaving you relying purely on visuals and not audio to strum. And yet it's this level of challenge that completely adds to the enjoyment of the experience. Plus, it's created a culture of gamers that will be trying to get 100% on Through the Fire and The Flames for years to come.

Another aspect of balance is not having to rely on the player dying several times in order to make progress. But...

Megaman X on the Super Nintendo has made many "best games of the SNES" lists and is still a blast to play. The premise of the Megaman series was to play through levels with crazy robots and instant death traps at an extremely fast pace. One segment of the game has you jump on this go-cart and go down the side of a step hill. After about 5 seconds of standing still, you're killed by a massive amount of enemy lasers. You need to be jumping to get around them. However, jump too high and find yourself crushed between a wall and the cart. If, after playing through it another 10 times, you're still alive, you'll need to boost and jump, else you'll fall into a bottomless chasm and instantly die. Sheer bliss of fun getting the jumps and attacks just right.

So while complete unbalance could ruin a game, maybe a seasoned amount of unbalance would heighten the experience. It's worked in the past for Megaman, and it's worked more recently for those crazy rock 'n roll kids with their toy guitars. I think I need to process balance in games a bit more, and then put some more thoughts up later on.

The Uncertainty Principle

I have been a fan of RTS games for quite a while. From my experience, the most enjoyable plays of an RTS happen in the first few weeks of owning it: every unit is new and different, things are surprising, strategies haven't been seen before.

This is particularly true for the game Warhammer: Dawn of War. When I first played the game, 75% of my enjoyment was coming from finding out what cool units I had, and what new technologies I had. Seeing the predator tank, one with 4 huge lasers and a machine gun, with lots of hitpoints, was a real thrill. Finding out that my Force Commander had a move that shot laser artillery off a satellite and could decimate an opposing force was just awesome.

All of a sudden, when I had become more familiar with my own units, these massive units from my opposition entered the field. The Squiggoth, a 15000 hitpoint elephant with 6 cannons and the ability to eat almost any unit appeared outside my base. I had no idea what to do. I sent 5 squads against it, only to watch them instantly dispersed and, one by one, mercilessly killed off by this opponent I hadn't seen before.

There is nothing quite like having that sort of "insurmountable" challenge appear unpredictably. This high level of uncertainty made the gameplay so much more enjoyable, especially in the early months playing the game. It was very satisfying discovering all the different units for all the different races, ranging from their quick but versatile units to their super-powered, take-up-have-the-screen behemoths. But as time went on, and I became more and more familiar with the game, the entertainment completely shifted off this uncertainty of available units to the uncertainty of the opposing players' strategies.

This gave me a thought of an RTS game where the player was able to create their own units during gameplay. This would be somewhat reminiscent of a real war. Take World War II for instance. Towards the end of the war, Japan believed they had seen most of the US arsenal. Then the nuclear bomb was invented and dropped, and the sheer awe created by this technology completely changed the "gameplay", if you will.

I originally thought that it might be useful to create your own units and upload them online, but a friend brought up the issue of everyone just creating things that would just kill everything on the map in one shot, and removing the fun from any game aspect. Then again, this could also be a problem in-game, with people racing to build a "killer unit" earliest.

Perhaps it would be best if each player had some confines on the statistics of these units, for example, strength, hitpoints and speed would all be drawn from the same point. That way, nothing too powerful could be created.

There's also the matter of the character model that this unit would use. Thinking of some way to create one in-game would be a real exercise. So at this stage, I guess I'm uncertain as to how to make a strategy game's uncertainty... uncertain. Let's see how we go.

Beyond perception

I was just having a read of Sutton-Smith's model for psychological experience during games. Written in 1986, he denotes visual scanning, auditory discriminations, motor responses, concentration, and perceptual patterns of learning, are the primary cognitive actions we undertake during play. After having a look at these and comparing it to my own experience of play... I've gotta say, he's nailed it. However, I think the psychological requirements of players have extended beyond anything he would've been able to see back then.

Visual scanning has gone to a whole new level on current gen systems. Rather than just a simple scan of the screen, as in the case of the old Atari games, players are called upon to manage and react to a significant amount of information. First person shooter games often display several dozen enemies that the player must account for at any one time. These games also usually take place within larger contexts, such as barren battlefields or even interplanetary wars (eg. Halo). In addition to the frantic flashes of light and managing of things currently on a screen, players are also given radars and sometimes communication windows to go beyond just what can be seen from the player point of view. Moreover, the first person perspective boosts the perceptive requirement of the player to supercomputer levels.

Auditory discriminations have also been extended like visual scanning, and more thoroughly exploited in current games. The creation of the music game, for instance, requires players to have heightened reactive auditory awareness. Not only are we reacting to sound effects or drums or little game beeps, but we are now required to ponder volumes of spoken dialogue rivaling the contents of novels.

Motor responses have been taken to a whole new place with the creation of gesture-based gaming. No doubt the Wii has had something to do with this (good 'ol Nintendo). Rather than just the tapping of A to kill the bugs in Greenhouse Game And Watch, players, quite literally, physically respond to something on screen. In the case of my game idea, players would need to constantly physically block attacks and attempt their own with the movement of their whole bodies, rather than just their thumbs and trigger fingers.

Concentration... probably isn't strong enough of a word anymore. You can concentrate in some games and still fail to complete them. I think a more appropriate term would be something like "trance" or "religious activity". The amount of information and the instantaneous reaction time requirements presented in some current games is far too high for you to just "concentrate". Try playing Through the Fire and the Flames in Guitar Hero 3 on Expert while just "concentrating". Try beating Samurai Goroh on very hard mode in F-Zero GX without going into a trance.

Finally... perception patterns in learning has by and large become superseded. We aren't just coming to know the nuisances of the games we play. What started as a marketing strategy has now become a requirement for developers: players need to be able to live in the game world. The replacement term should be immersion. Players now crave to be immersed in their game experience. They want to feel included, but not just on a surface level. They want to be drenched in the lore and the backstory of the games (eg. Guild Wars). They want to be able to pick up and play and find their characters have permanence to their development (eg. WOW, Oblivion). They want to be taken away by the narrative emotionally and... strangely sometimes physically (eg. Final Fantasy VII, Mass Effect).

Who knows how much further along the psyche of players will be taken? I'm sure Sutton-Smith didn't see the MMORPG or the Wii coming. It's exciting to think about where this industry can and will end up.


Psychological Model from: Toys as Culture, New York: Gardner Press, 1986

At the beginning of the best of times

So now that I have some idea of a good use of interaction (one-to-one Wii fighting), and a character progression ideda to try out (logarithmic point for point spending), I need to sort out what sort of starting and ending conditions I would have in my own game.

Probably wise to start from the start (GET IT). The character would be the pilot of a mechanical warrior similar to a Gundam (of Mobile Suit Anime fame) or a MechWarrior, but smalle rand more responsive to control. This would start as a form of entertainment similar to gladiators of yore, and eventually become so popular and powerful the military would start to take notice. The player would start off with little to no knowledge about the protagonist, as to create intrigue and lead the player in a journey or being able to gradually relate to the player without being so overwhelmed with knowledge from the offset.

The state of the game world would probably start off peacefully in reflection of the narrative. This also provides some sort of tutorial mechanism, in providing easier challenges and fights to get the player adjusted to the nuisances of the controls and the fighting system. The player would start with a set of fairly basic skills initially - I wouldn't give an Mega Super Ultra Hyper Annihilator Beam straight off. They would have some special attacks like rockets and/or lasers, and have some lower stats based on a selected specialization or class.

The mentioned tutorial or introduction mechanism would be a simple fight against a weak but cocky opponent to give the player a feeling of triumph in accomplishing the first task. This should ensure that the player gets a basic feel of the gameplay, and also ease them into the interaction and nuisances of the fighting system. Of course, this also allows players who are playing a second time through to defeat the first opponent with some advanced fighting techniques they've learnt.

I think as part of character progression, a rival would be excellent. Someone or a set of people who turn up all throughout the game, but not consistently. They would also have their skills develop throughout.

The ending conditions would ultimately have the player controlling a ridiculously high powered machine with blinding speed and battlefield-shaping attacks. The state of the world would be a wa-ravaged, mid-apocyliptic mess of politics and high skill battles. The final boss would be something epic, in the scale of a world dictator and his innumerable hi-tech army.

Now that I have this framework, all I now need to do is to assess the "fun" factor of these ideas.