Archive for the ‘Game Design’ Category
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Well, shiver me timbers, me buckos, it be that time o’ year. Official Talk Like a Pirate Day be Friday, the 19th of September. Ye doesna want ta be a lubber, does ye? Avast, ye scurvy dogs!
Ye be wantin’ the whole scuzzy tale? That ye can find on International Talk Like a Pirate Day. You can even learn the ten best pickup lines to use on buxom wenches on TLPD (Such as “Pardon me, but would ya mind if I fired me cannon through your porthole?” and “Prepare to be Boarded!”).
When ye be ready ta start talkin’ the talk and walkin’ the walk, ye might larn a bit aboard this here schooner.
Pirate Lore (or Pirate Lori)
“There be a bit o’ pirate in all of us. Some of our most memorable D&D adventures involved the pirate ship “The Lion Rampant” and its intrepid – or at least unusual – crew. Cap’n o’ the Rampant was Buccaneer Brucie, a foppish, presumed gay male paragon played by Lori. The first time she rolled into gaming session dressed ta the nines as Buccaneer Brucie – scarves, flintlock, cutlass, powdered white wig, tricorner hat, and all – there were several seconds of awed silence afore the gale force laughter hit us all.
Corey was slightly less impressive as the Dead Pirate Rogers. Despite never having watched Mr. Roger’s Neighorhood, he soon learned that a fuzzy sweater was apparently required armor for the role. Dead Pirate was a Dwarf, and First Mate to Cap’n Brucie. Of course, Dwarves aren’t yer usual sort o’ pirates.
Rogers was actually King Rockhard Ironstaff, deposed leader of the Dwarven kingdom of Moronia. Bein’ not a altogether bad pirate, Rogers composed this song (to the tune of the Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean theme song (this happened long before the films):
Yo ho, yo ho, privateers we be!
We plunder, we pillage,
We ravage the village,
But always by letters of marque –
Because we’re not pirates, but privateers,
We don’t do this for a lark!
Yo ho, yo ho, privateers we be!
Also memorable in the ship’s crew was Ferdiad, the sadistic ship’s surgeon. His favorite “cure” for all ills was Doctor Death’s Salve, a concoction so caustic that many preferred to die of their wounds rather than be cured with the Salve. (There was the time that Hobbes, the mischievous Hobbit, substituted Dr. Death’s salve for bear grease, but we won’t go there…)
The jolly ship’s crew had an actual treasure hunt in character on our ranch in the middle of the night by lantern light. Unfortunately, the character who had the map was a Hoka (a species of intelligent bear-like creatures from a high gravity planet in stories by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson). The Hoka, being a bear of little brain, started happily leading the party off in entirely the wrong direction. We’d marched half-way across the ranch before someone thought to actually look at the map.
The adventures of the Lion Rampant were chaotic and silly, but rollicking good fun.
Look Behind You! It’s a Three-Headed Monkey!
Despite having authored multiple best-selling “adventure games,” we’ve never played them very much. LucasArt’s “The Secret of Monkey Island” was the notable exception. We loved the humor, the mostly non-frustrating puzzles, the graphic style, the music, the setting, the story. It went on a short list of computer games that both of us loved to play (along with Rogue, Dungeonmaster, and Wizardry).
Note the timing on game releases – Hero’s Quest shipped in 1989, The Secret of Monkey Island and Quest for Glory 2: Trial by Fire in 1990, and Monkey Island 2: Le Chuck’s Revenge in 1991. We talked to Ron Gilbert – lead designer of the first two Monkey Island games – at the Computer Game Developers’ Conference, and he admitted to being influenced by Hero’s Quest, just as we were by his games.
Secret of Monkey Island had the most fun combat system we’ve ever seen in a game. Instead of slashes and thrusts, Guybrush Threepwood and his opponents hurled deadly (at least to the ego) insults at each other. Each insult could be parried by an appropriate witty repartee. Of course, you had to practice your dueling skills to hone your wit to a razor edge.
The story also held together really well, including some great foreshadowing. Early in the game, Guybrush is trying to be recognized as a pirate. Asked if he has any special talents, he says, “Well, I can hold my breath for ten minutes.” This turns out to be important later in the game, and those patient players who held out for the full ten minutes got to see an Easter Egg of sorts.
Dead Men Tell No Tales
Whenever we visited Disneyland, we tended to make a beeline to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The imagineers did a fantastic job with the setting. Combining Pirates with the Blue Bayou restaurant was a stroke of genius, as each contributes to the atmosphere of the other. The food at the Blue Bayou was also probably the best the park had to offer. As fond as we were of pirate stories like Treasure Island, The Muppet’s Treasure Island, and The Princess Bride, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride made us shiver with delight.
So we looked forward to the Pirates of the Caribbean film with a mixture of anticipation and fear. Would they manage to capture the essence of the ride, or turn out a commercialized travesty? To our delight, the movie was fantastic. Johnny Depp played Cap’n Jack Sparrow in the spitting image of Buccaneer Brucie (well, aside from having dreadlocks and a beard, while noticeably lacking a purple frock coat, white wig, and high heels – It’s all about the attitude), and the writers managed to walk that narrow plank between humor and a dramatic story absolutely perfectly. We were already Johnny Depp fans, and Pirates solidified his standing as one of the great character actors of our time. Of course the movie did undermine one of the basic premises of Piratedom – “Dead Men Tell no Tales”. Then again, most of the pirates in the movie were Undead Men, so maybe that makes it ok.
So, be ye a landlubber or a true pirate? Ye’ll get ta show yer true colors this Friday and on International Talk Like a Pirate Day every year. Scupper us with a marlinspike if we not be speakin’ the plain truth. and speakin’ it like pirates!
Brucie’s Flag, the “Hello Sailor” and the singing Meep pirates were from our first “TLPD” on Transolar years ago. The coin is a bronze casting that Lori made at an SCA event from the mold of the coins used in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. The Monkey Island cover is from our original game box. The portrait at the beginning of the article is of the notorious Meeps, Cap’n Redbeard and Molly (a Meep thinly disguised as a parrot).
Tags: D&D, Humor
Posted in Game Design, Humor | No Comments »
Friday, September 12th, 2008
You’ve all played Rock, Scissors, Paper, right? It’s a two-player game in which both players simultaneously reveal a fist (rock), open hand (paper), or two fingers (scissors). Rock breaks scissors, paper wraps rock, scissors cut paper. If both players make the same choice, it’s a tie and they try again.
Did you know that there’s a professional Rock, Scissors, Paper tour? Actually, we’re not sure there really is one, but there are international tournaments and two different events each year that bill themselves as the World Championship of Rock, Scissors, Paper. “Professional” RSP players call it Roshambo. It sounds more mysterious, and it’s a little shorter.
Rockin’ the Night Away
On its surface, Roshambo seems like a totally random game. If you programmed two computers to play each other, and one always chose randomly, it wouldn’t matter what the other one chose. In the long run, they will tie. In real life, the game gets interesting because the players try to psych each other out. You either predict the move your opponent will make or use psychological tactics to get him to make the move you want. The game rules are evenly balanced, but players’ minds are not.
Perry Friedman, a Roshambo World Champion and Tiltboy, once gave me a few tips on the game. New players rarely pick Rock as their first move – It feels unnatural to start with a closed fist and keep it that way – so Scissors is a strong first move against an amateur. Of course, he might have told me that just so that I would pick Rock first next time we played so he could be ready to counter it with Paper. Sneakiness is an important attribute for a Roshambo champion.
One Rule to Rule Them All?
We keep reading books and articles on game design that basically say, “All games are variations on Rock, Scissors, Paper.” Everyone nods their heads sagely at such an obvious truth, then works on their latest RSP game mechanic. The only problem with this is that the “rule” isn’t true and lazy application of it leads to bad game design.
The idea is as simple as RSP. Create some variation in the game by creating several different types of units, then balance them so that every unit has its Nemesis. If artillery is strong against cavalry, then make it vulnerable to infantry. If a Wizard easily defeats a Warrior because armor doesn’t stop his spells, then let a Rogue sneak up behind the Wizard and kill him before he can react. This is much more interesting than giving everyone the same strengths and weaknesses.
The concept is simple and obvious… but it’s a little too simple. If all conflict was determined by numbers and formulae, then an RSP model might work fine… and make a really boring game.
Black-and-White Logic in a Multi-Colored World
The problem with “Roshambo rules all” is that the real world is fuzzy, not binary. Bart Kosko, in his book Fuzzy Thinking, talks about the philosophy of fuzzy logic. Kosko claims that fuzzy set theory does a better job of describing the real world than do traditional mathematical models. When we talk about “tall people,” we don’t mean that everyone over six feet tall is “tall” and everyone else is “not tall.” There are degrees of tallness. In traditional Aristotelian logic, everything is either part of a set or not part of it. Fuzzy logic is designed to solve problems that are best described by “partial membership” in sets.
Roshambo has no grayness. There are only three possible actions, and the results of each pair of actions are clearly defined. Great games have many more factors and no black-and-white answers. The excitement comes from uncertainty and the idea that “on any given day, anyone can win.” A combat (or competition) is decided not only by the game rules, but by the relative skill of the players and other factors such as equipment, environmental conditions, and the actions of other players and “monsters.”
World of Warcraft combat is fun because it is unpredictable. There is a Roshambo bias for who “should” win in an otherwise equal encounter, but it’s just an edge, not a guarantee. And that’s pretty much true in every great game. There has to be room for player skill to make a difference. If the game is totally symmetrical, then there is no reason for a player to choose a particular type of unit and the game might as well be simulated on a computer rather than played.
Of course, if the game is too asymmetrical, everybody will choose the strongest units and the game developers might as well have left out the rest. This is why game balance is one of the hardest aspects of game design to master. A seemingly minor tweak can result in some players becoming far too powerful or others becoming hopelessly weak. As characters or units become more powerful and complicated, achieving game balance becomes a tremendously difficult job.
A Hit-Driven Business
Coin flips, Roshambo, and dice rolling in Dungeons & Dragons all have something in common – They have black-and-white rules for who wins. The best game designs hit the sweet spot between such deterministic rules and total chaos. Players tend to see patterns where there are none, and often assume randomness where a game is actually deterministic. This leads to what I think of as the “probability fallacy.”
Is a coin flip actually a 50-50 proposition? Only before you flip the coin. Once the coin falls, the result is known and is either 100% heads or 100% tails. The same applies to most game puzzle situations. Something that is a 75% probability really means that 75% of the players succeed 100% and the other 25% fail… or resort to restoring saved games until they “win.” Role-playing games get around this by repetition – If there is a 25% chance the player will get a particular item on killing a monster, he just has to kill dozens or hundreds of them to find the 10 or 20 items required for a quest. This can get more than a little boring and repetitious, but at least it gives players an extra reason for killing those monsters.
How about the actual combat? Dungeons & Dragons and its spiritual descendants have you roll two dice. The first roll determines if you hit, the second how much damage you deal. There are some problems with this approach, especially in an online multiplayer game. When you shoot at a moving target in Quake, do you hit it? It might look like a very obvious hit on one player’s screen and an equally obvious miss on the other.
A Warm, Fuzzy Feeling
A better fuzzy logic approach would be to apply a series of fuzzy rules to the combat – What sort of attack are you making? What kinds of defenses does your opponent have in play? How far apart are you? How much movement is involved? How good are your stats and equipment, and how strong are the opponent’s? A fuzzy combat system would combine the results of all the rules and come out with an appropriately-averaged result. This might be that you graze your opponent for a minor wound, or that you get in a solid hit, or that you miss entirely. The actual amount of damage would take all factors into account instead of being a random dice roll.
Obviously this isn’t a good system for a paper role-playing game where the players have to make all those calculations. But computers happen to be good at doing a lot of things fast. Why should our video games be tied to restrictions inherited from paper gaming?
Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness featured a fuzzy logic combat system. We think it was one of the most successful approaches in the series. Players could choose to fight as in an arcade game, or they could set a “combat style” and have the computer take actions according to that style. All of the “monsters” had individual fighting styles of their own. We think this made combat pretty interesting and helped players with poor arcade skills be able to enjoy the game.
We’d like to see more games use a fuzzy logic approach to conflict resolution. It isn’t much harder to program than traditional logic and it solves a lot of problems (such as the effect of lag) that have proven very difficult to solve with binary logic. Most importantly, a fuzzy logic system is much easier to balance because the reasoning can be recorded and observed. In effect, a well-designed fuzzy system can tell the developer or player why it made each decision.
So what will it be? Thinly disguised games of Rock, Scissors, Paper in which the game systems are transparent, boring, and can be manipulated by the players? Or tear up that paper tiger and create rich, complex game systems that use the power of fuzzy sets to balance themselves? Truly great games favor the skilled player, but leave enough room for a lucky, less-skilled player to compete and have a fair chance of winning occasionally.
Tags: Game Design, Quest for Glory
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Friday, September 5th, 2008
Lori’s friend Susan sent her an article from her local paper about the closing of the Star Trek Experience at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas. This was a exhibition and simulator ride based mostly around Star Trek: The Next Generation. Given that the show has been off the air for fourteen years, it really isn’t a surprise that they finally shut it down.
And yet, it’s sad.
These were the Voyages of the Star Ship Enterprise
Her 5-year mission was extended several times – The original show, The Next Generation, Voyager, and Enterprise. Each series had its own unique flavor, but they all stretched our imaginations and made us wonder about “what is out there” beyond the limits of our solar system.
We don’t consider ourselves to be Trekkies, although our lives have been heavily influenced by Star Trek. As children, we watched the original series with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. (Lori, of course, had a crush on Spock at the time.) Corey still remembers sitting on a couch with his family watching the season previews and how excited they were about the upcoming Star Trek show. Corey’s father helped run his father’s corner store in New York City and read every issue of Astounding Stories, If, Galaxy, and other pulp science fiction magazines. Corey grew up in a living room filled with books and magazines, many of them science fiction and fantasy.
The Prime Directive
Although the Enterprise crew seemed to forget it occasionally – when to do so was convenient to a story line – all starship crews were required to follow the Prime Directive. They were not to interfere with other civilizations, nor even to reveal the existence of the Federation or star ships to pre-spacefaring worlds. Wikipedia quotes it as:
“No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet. No references to space or the fact that there are other worlds or civilizations.”
Of course, they proceeded to break the rules right and left, all in the name of the Greater Good. Sort of like the concept of the Quest for Glory Paladin who must decide between the laws and justice.
The Star Trek series took on issues of war and authoritarianism, of personal heroism and working for peace. It was set in a world with no borders and no race or sex barriers – no limits. Then there was the overall message of hope – we will make it to the future, and the stars will be ours to explore.
Those were pretty good lessons to grow up with.
To Seek Out New Life and New Civilizations
Quest for Glory owes much to Star Trek. Yes, there’s the USS ‘Exitprise’ in the Magic Shop of Shapeir. On the hero’s way in to Shapeir, the magic carpet almost gets hit by the starship going into warp drive. But there’s much more than that below the surface.
Star Trek was always about going to new lands and new civilizations. The crew’s missions were all about bringing peace to war-torn worlds and creating a better future. Uhura, the Warrior and Adventure Guildmaster in ‘Trial by Fire’ and in ‘Wages of War’ was named after the character in Star Trek for a reason. In Swahili, the word uhuru means freedom. (We learned this from a Star Trek filk song!) We wanted the player to set people free from fear and evil. We wanted the players to feel like true heroes.
To Boldly Go where no one has Gone Before
We have seen the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas several times. We ate at Quark’s Bar and Restaurant and talked to Klingons and Ferrangi there. We even got an Evil Tribble from it. This was a battery powered tribble that would wiggle and purr when we first got it… but little did we know its true nature. After a while, it would turn itself on at odd times and give low, growling noises and it wouldn’t shut itself down. I think we locked it away in a chest somewhere. Perhaps by now it has escaped and plotted to take over the world with the Evil Meep… but that’s another story.
We have a garland beside the kitchen with a string of lights and Star Trek ornaments. Our favorite drinking mug has a Klingon Bird of Prey. Lori even has a pressed coin with the Bird of Prey symbol on it from the Experience in her purse. She isn’t quite sure where she can spend that, but she’s well prepared for the Klingon Invasion. She even has a Klingon font on her computer, since you never know when you may have to answer an ultimatum from an invading alien species.
We’ve even played Klingon characters in D&D. Well, technically they’re Uruks, but the DM based them on Klingons, and they’re pretty much indistinguishable personality-wise.
We’re still not Trekkies. Er… by some definition. Even if we have gone to a Star Trek convention or two. And Grok Spock.
All Good Things…
Anyway, we’re sad that the Star Trek Experience has gone away. It’s sad that all of the Star Trek TV series have come and gone. Then again, they all seem dated and hokey in today’s world. They had their final voyage, and it’s time to let them sail away.
But the Legacy of Star Trek will live on.
Live long and Prosper. Q’plah!
Photos of ‘Corey gets Borged’ (he got better) and ‘Klingon Warrior’ were taken at the Star Trek Experience four years ago. ‘To Boldly Go’ is original art by Lori.
Tags: Game Design, Quest for Glory
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Friday, August 29th, 2008
Two days ago, AGDInteractive released the full-color, completely re-coded version of Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire. After eight years of development, they have a right to celebrate right now. They got to experience all the wonders of the ‘Endless Sisyphean Nightmare Warren’ and they didn’t even get paid to do so! This was a labor of love, and they offer it free to everyone who wants to experience or remember this classic Adventure-Role-playing game.
Once upon a time many, many moons ago, when we were young and innocent, Corey and I designed and developed Trial by Fire for Sierra On-Line. Fresh with the success of “So You Want to Be a Hero,” we were ready to take our players to a new world of role-playing. We wanted to created a fantasy game based on the Arabian Nights tales. It would have all of the tropes and archetypes of the Persian stories and a strong elemental theme of Summer and fire. We subtitled it, “Trial by Fire.” We had no idea the name would be prophetic.
Fast-forward ten years. A group of Sierra adventure game fans calling themselves the “Anonymous Game Developers” decided that perhaps they could do what Sierra had chosen not to do. They decided to use an open-source adventure game development system to recreate a few of the classic 16-color Sierra games – starting with King’s Quest 1 and 2 – with 256-color VGA graphics. Quest for Glory 2: Trial by Fire was next on their list and they started in on the project with great energy in 2001. After several iterations and a long journey through the Sisyphean nightmare warren of game development, AGDI has now (August 2008) released the finished product. You can read more about the history of QG2 VGA on the AGDI web site.
Amazingly, the AGDI team was able to get a limited license from Sierra allowing them to distribute the game with its original name and characters as long as they give it away free and nobody distributes it for a profit. Knowing how much work went into the Quest for Glory 1 VGA conversion, our hats are off to this incredible team for creating QG2 VGA as a labor of love. Incidentally, we had no say on the license, since Sierra/Vivendi owns all the rights to our games, but we are fully behind the AGDI team and the QG2 VGA project.
So how is the game? Well, actually, it’s so new, we haven’t played much of it yet. Corey has spent a few hours trying out the thief and fighter characters. The 256-color graphics are beautiful, although you will find them much different from today’s 3D graphics environments. The game play seems very faithful to the original with several new features. AGDI adapted the menu and point-and-click systems from Quest for Glory 3 to give Trial by Fire much the same feel. They also give you a choice of a fully menu-based conversation system, the original parsed system (type in the keyword about which you want to ask), or a hybrid system that allows both options. I really like the hybrid system as it allows me to skip directly to a particular topic without having to follow the menus.
I found inventory use a little cumbersome at first, although that’s probably mostly because I didn’t remember how we did in in Quest for Glory 3! You use the hidden menu to access your inventory and select an item. The right mouse button toggles between possible actions (walk, use or attack, talk, or the chosen inventory item), then clicking the left button on a person or object tries to apply that action.
Compared to today’s no-brain interface (right-click on something to do whatever the game designer or programmer decided you should do with that person or object), it takes more thought and more time to take an action, but it also really opens up the user’s choices. If you’re lazy, you probably won’t like it. Playing QG2 VGA reminded me that adventure games used to be much more complex and difficult than today’s games.
By the way, Save your game early and often! Corey didn’t and was pretty embarrassed when he died in his first combat and had no saved game to which to restore. There does not appear to be an automatic save feature in QG2 VGA, as there almost certainly was none in the original version. So far, Corey has been unable to defeat any enemy in combat. He managed to get a brigand down to 50% of his health before the main character succumbed. A serious arcade gamer might have an easier time with the combat, but this could be a problem in an adventure RPG. Perhaps AGDI will release a patch later with an “easy mode” combat option for gamers who were already mature when QG2 first appeared.
Not only did ADGI include many of the fun Easter Eggs of the game like the Silly clown option with Harpo Marx running down the alleyways, but they brought back the Saurus Repair Shop that had to be cut from the release version of the game because it wouldn’t fit on the disk. I’m told they even added an Easter Egg or two. That just goes to show how much care and ‘professionalism beyond the call of duty’ ADGI has – they really went out of their way to add to the fun of the game.
Our recommendation: Visit AGDI’s web site and download your free copy of Quest for Glory 2: Trial by Fire. Make sure you read the included documentation before you start the game so that you’ll have an easier time with the interface and combat than Corey managed. Then let us and AGDI both know how you like the game… and if you love it, write to Vivendi and request they release a new edition of the rest of the Quest for Glory series. For some reason we can’t quite comprehend, Vivendi has rereleased King’s Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry, but has not repackaged the Quest for Glory series.
Two huge thumbs-up to AGDI for a fabulous piece of (an incredible amount of) work, the brand new Quest for Glory 2: Trial by Fire VGA remake!
The Heroes and the Carpet illustrations were based off the original sketches from the Trial by Fire manual drawn by Ernie Chan.
Tags: Game Design, Quest for Glory
Posted in Game Design | 63 Comments »
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
A recent article in Game Developer magazine (August 2008 edition, page 34) had us saying, “Yes! Tell it like it is!”. Actually, the article was a standard “What went right and what went wrong” article about developing an adventure game. It was the sidebar by Penny Arcade co-creator Jerry “Tycho” Holkins that really caught our attention:
“If we had known what we were getting into, we would never have done it. Game development is an endless Sisyphean nightmare warren of terrible nightmares. We wish we could go back in time, to our first meeting with Hothead, and shake our past selves, crying out: “Run, fools! Run for your very lives! Game development is a nightmare warren,” et cetera. We would spend a lot of time driving home this nightmare warren concept.” – Tycho
[Incidentally, we view Penny Arcade almost every day. Check out their unique blend of sardonic humor as they discuss the ins and outs of Games and the Game Industry.]
We often have starry-eyed young game players come up to us and ask, “What does it take to become a Game Designer, O Great Ones?” (although they usually don’t phrase it quite that way). This is much like a son, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, asking, “What did you do in the Clone Wars, Daddy?” We put our arm on their shoulders (ok, Corey does that… Lori’s too short), smile condescendingly, and say, “Son, it takes Moxie. Moxie, hard work, and luck.” Then we pat them on the back and send them on their way with such sage advice as “Study Hard”, “Get Good Grades”, and “May the Force Be with You”.
What we don’t say to those innocent dreamers is that game development takes all the sweat from more work than you ever thought you were capable of doing. It takes the blood from opening up your creative heart and watching it all spill out upon the cutting room floor. It takes the tears of frustration and agony as you try to deal with impossible people doing impossible tasks under impossible deadlines. It also takes selling your soul to the Devil.
We don’t say it because:
- A. We don’t like scaring people
- B. We’d like to play their games someday
- C. We get a kickback from the Devil for every soul we get to sign on the dotted line
“There are a few things we wish we had known beforehand. First, not to make video games – but we covered that…” – Tycho
Why is game development so hard? We start out with a set of vague concepts about the game style and features, then spend months or years creating art and music, prototyping then refining the code, and gradually putting it all together. I can tell you that we were in total despair over a few of our games just three months before shipment because they felt bland and lifeless. Then the music and sound effects were added, and suddenly the games took on life. Still, even after a year or three of work, we’re never really sure we’ve created a great game until the fans come back and tell us we managed it.
The Horror! The Horror!
You might have heard horror stories about months-long crunch periods of 60 and 70 hour weeks to complete a game. The situation is industry-wide; almost all game companies have similar horrible overtime periods. But you may wonder why. I know we have at times… usually when we are in the middle of pulling an all-nighter.
What it all comes down to is that game development is an inherently chaotic process. We are trying to create an experience that has a certain feel and flavor, but our tools have no built-in intelligence. We have to draw every pixel, write every word of dialogue, and program every interaction. We create shortcuts for some of this, such as art tools that let us draw a polygon and apply a texture to it, object-oriented programming tools that let us specify a class of behavior for certain types of objects, and so on… but in the end, almost everything needs to be hand-tweaked, tested and retested for play balance, and finally reluctantly released to the playing public.
“… coming in as people who ordinarily just buy entertainment software, we didn’t understand that a project doesn’t actually look like anything until the very end. We had resigned ourselves to the fact that our game would be about grey blocks stumbling around a featureless world.” – Tycho
On the rare occasions when we get ahead of schedule, we use the extra time – and more – to add more features or to further tune the game play. Then, inevitably, many of the bugs and play balance problems show up only when we think the game is finished in the final phases of testing. This is of course because our characters are nothing but “grey blocks” for most of the development phase – The testers can’t really put a game through its paces until it’s almost finished.
No Pain – No Game?
Is it possible to create a great game without pain? In short, “no.” The pain can be reduced, and the overtime spread out a little, but a game produced strictly “by the book” on schedule is almost always a boring, flat-feeling game. That’s because game development is all about passion and chaos and “endless Sisyphean nightmare warrens.”
So, our advice to all you wannabe Game Designers really should be “don’t give in the the Dark Side of the Force.” But since no one ever takes that advice, don’t worry. We know a dandy lawyer who will be happy to write you up a Game Development contract. Don’t be too concerned if he asks you to sign it in blood. In triplicate.
Have fun!!!!!
Tags: Game Design, Humor
Posted in Featured, Game Design | 10 Comments »
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
“We were playing a game.” “No game.” – Joel Rosenberg, The Sleeping Dragon, 1982.
Dungeons & Dragons™ is the most important game introduced in the last 50 years. Without it, the landscapes of both live and computer gaming would look totally different. It’s certainly been influential to us. Our games wouldn’t exist at all without the influence of Dungeons and Dragons. There’s a very good chance Corey would still be designing productivity software if we had never discovered Dungeons and Dragons. Lori would still be a schoolteacher, and we’d never have met each other.
World of Warcraft would not exist without Dungeons and Dragons. Nor would Everquest, Ultima Online, Zork, any other text or graphic adventure video game, nor thousands of others. I don’t think we could say that about any other modern game. Exaggeration? I don’t think so.
What Makes Dungeons and Dragons Different?
How is Dungeons and Dragons different from playing Cops & Robbers, or Knights & Knaves, or tag? Dungeons and Dragons has rules and structure. Characters have specific abilities and restrictions. A player can’t say “I leap over the 50 foot chasm” and expect it to work… unless they know how to fly. They might be able to say, “I cast a Fireball,” if their character happens to know the Fireball spell and has one ready. So a Dungeons and Dragons character can do a lot of things the player can’t do in real life and can’t do things just because they make a good story.
Another critical aspect of Dungeons and Dragons is the concept of experience levels and experience points (XP). These have been adopted by most current role-playing games. We used a different system in Quest for Glory – individual skills and talents that improved with practice – but that really is just a variation on the XP theme. For all practical purposes, Dungeons and Dragons invented the idea of playing a single character with skills that improve over the course of many sessions of playing that same character. Since then, almost every role-playing game has been built around that concept. That’s pretty revolutionary!
Storytelling and D & D
But Dungeons and Dragons isn’t just about the rules. It’s also about playing a game where storytelling is as important as the game mechanics. A couple of Corey’s Bard characters come to mind. Each of them wrote a song about one of their adventures. In one case, our low-level party took on a much more powerful creature with the help of some magic. It could have been just another hack-and-slash moment, but the Bard immortalized it in song as “The Slaying of the Remorhaz” (giving himself a starring role, of course). Similarly, Carolan wrote a song, “You Can’t Keep Carolan Down,” about her adventures. Turning the gaming into a story has helped us remember that campaign many years later.
What makes Dungeons and Dragons so memorable? It’s the characters, the story, and the interaction between the players. We brush aside the boring parts, “Um, let’s see. I get +1 to hit from 16 Strength. Oh, wait, that’s damage, not to hit…” We remember matching wits with a Master Vampire, organizing a village to stand up against an ancient Red Dragon… or making a deal with the Dragon to stop attacking the village. We remember joining together to face an enemy that would have totally destroyed any one of us alone. This is the stuff of great storytelling made all the richer because we are participating in the story and helping to write it.
More than a Game
Dungeons & Dragons is the “more than a game” that helped us to write our own life story. How about you? Have you been influenced by Dungeons and Dragons or other “paper role-playing” games? How did it change your life? Or do you think I’ve exaggerated its importance, and there would still be lots of fun computer and video games if Dungeons and Dragons had never existed? We want to hear from you.
Tags: D&D, Game Design
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Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
Yes, we all love games. It’s just that we don’t always try to figure out why we love a particular amusement, and more importantly, what made it so interesting. In this series, we take a look at some of our favorites and try to figure out what we can learn from their design.
Bridge – Playing With a Full Deck
Corey was a chess nut until his second year of College. At that point, he realized he couldn’t keep up with young players who had much more time and willingness to study openings. After a couple of years of computer games, Corey was introduced to bridge and has been playing it ever since.
What’s to Love About Bridge?
Two things epitomize the appeal of bridge – partnerships and duplicate play. Bridge can be played for money and makes a great skill-based cash game with an element of luck. But amateur play for master points is far more popular, which helps keep the cost of play low. This is much different from Poker, a “money management game resolved by cards,” which is almost pointless without having real money at stake. Bridge involves deep thought, partnership communication within the very limited vocabulary of the game, and imagination to cope with the opponents’ unknown hands. It also has a subtle learning curve in that a beginner will sometimes get lucky against an expert, but knowledge and practice pay off in the long run.
Another advantage of bridge is that the playing equipment is readily available, fits in a shirt pocket, and is very inexpensive. In duplicate bridge, each pair plays the same hands as their opponents, removing most of the “luck of the deal” aspect from the game. That brings skill and good judgment to the top.
What’s Not to Love About Bridge?
Rubber bridge requires exactly four players. A team game needs an even multiple of eight players to avoid having players sit out. Duplicate bridge usually requires at least 16 players, and is more fun with 32 or more. That’s a lot of players to get together in one place at one time, and without careful planning, there’s a good chance that 1-3 players won’t get to play at all or will have to sit out at some point.
Online play helps with this – In a large online bridge club, you can usually find a partner and opponents fairly quickly. However, if you end up with an incompatible partner – either a bad player, one who doesn’t know your bidding system, or one with bad manners – bridge can be excruciating and you may be stuck with that partner for four or eight hours. It is also very hard to prevent cheating at bridge because of the hidden cards. Online, a pair could be sitting next to each other or talking on the phone or instant messaging. Even in live play, subtle differences in timing, arrangement of cards, or even of the scorekeeping pencils, can give one pair an unfair advantage over their opponents.
What Can We Learn from Bridge?
A game shared trumps a game played alone. It doesn’t take gambling to make a card game fun. Nor does it take a huge number of different cards. Like chess, bridge thrives on elegance and simplicity. Random starting positions make every hand different, so no two bridge deals are quite alike. Deal duplication reduces the element of luck so that players benefit from practice and skill. Duplication also lets players discuss deals after the game – Often the post mortem is as fun as the tournament. Corey used to say that Bridge and Dungeons & Dragons were the only two games he knew in which players spent more time talking about the games afterwards than they spent actually playing them. The enjoyment doesn’t end when the game is over.
Tags: Game Design
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Friday, August 1st, 2008
Let’s face it – We get a little compulsive when it comes to gaming. Of course, some games are more compelling than others. Here are a few of our favorite card and board games, past and present, and some of the game design lessons we’ve learned from them.
Chess – The Classic Board Game
Why has this simple board game survived for thousands of years and remained popular today? Everything is out in plain sight, there are only 6 types of pieces, and the board is a boring 2-dimensional checkerboard of black and white squares. If we proposed a game like this to a publisher today, we’d get laughed out of the building.
What’s to Love About Chess?
That very simplicity is a virtue. You can learn all of the rules in an hour and start playing immediately, yet there are deep strategies that take months or years to acquire. Chess only needs two players, so it’s easy to find a game. The equipment is inexpensive and durable. The best player tends to win (or at least hold the game to a draw), but a less-experienced player always has the chance to come up with a strong winning combination. There are strong national and international chess federations to rate players, hold tournaments, and help players find opponents.
What’s Not to Love About Chess?
Especially in tournaments, a single chess game can take hours to play. In fact, a typical open chess tournament consists of 5 or 6 games. One big mistake in any game can result in a loss that takes you out of contention.
This has been partially solved by use of the chess clock. In a tournament game, it prevents one player from agonizing for hours while his opponent suffers. There are also speed chess games in which each player only has 10 – or 5 or 2 – minutes in which to make all her moves. Speed Chess is a very exciting variant in which both players are likely to make mistakes. Chess also requires a lot of memorization, particularly of opening sequences, to play well. It’s “open” nature (no hidden information) has resulted in exhaustive analysis of opening sequences, which detracts from the creative aspect of that part of the game.
What Can We Learn from Chess?
Games don’t have to be complicated to be fun. Clear rules and a small number of possible “moves” that interact to allow deep strategy can make great games. It also helps that chess is a 2-player game. That makes it easy to find a single opponent and gives a “dueling” quality to a chess game. Chess also benefits from great publicity and online play ability due to the simplicity of the rules and game transcripts. When Electronic Arts first started out, their catch-phrase was “Simple, Hot, and Deep.” That describes Chess perfectly.
Tags: Game Design
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Thursday, July 17th, 2008
We were recently interviewed by Allan Karmine for a Ukrainian gaming magazine, “My Gaming Computer.” He asked some very thoughtful questions as well as telling us something of the state of gaming in the Ukraine. The interview was mainly about our Quest for Glory series. We are always pleased and surprised to be interviewed about our “antique” gaming series – Quest for Glory development ran from mid-1988 until late 1998. (We intended the games to be played forever, but alas, the modern computers just can’t handle them.) This time, though, we turned the tables around and asked Alan some questions about gaming in the Ukraine.
When our games were released in the 90’s, no U.S. games were legally available in the Ukraine, let alone translated into Russian, but that didn’t stop the gamers! Here are some of the things we learned about Ukrainian gaming:
Corey: Was there much difficulty playing games in English?
Allan: Even vice versa! My studies of English were sped up and greatly nourished by Sierra games and mostly Quest for Glory series, since I had it in rounds over and over again, from creating a greenish Hero in forests of Spielburg to disappearance in Borgov castle …. After that, I almost never played a translated game. When first English books appeared in rare foreign bookstores, I started reading them, and now I buy DVDs with English soundtrack… But base was formed many years ago, with QFG being my first serious practice of written English. For which I thank you.
Corey: I don’t think Sierra ever translated any of our games into any Slavic or Cyrillic languages. I know there were trade restrictions on selling modern computers through the “iron curtain” and I think on software as well. It’s amazing that any sort of a fan community was able to develop there under those conditions.
Allan: Well, it all began with the Perestroika in 1985 and unleashed a mighty wave with fall of Union in 1991. American culture (if it’s possible to call a bunch of popular comedies and action movies that way) flowed here unstoppable river. Ukraine, as well as other ex-soviet states, had a base for education and learning a lot of information. Many different communities that study foreign cultures or sub-cultures formed since then and they never stop appearing again. Computer gaming was one of those. Since real life was too dirty, risky or even dangerous, people clung to games as a different way of thinking, and escape from truth they had to face each days.
Corey comment: Something that has always amused me is the idea that fantasy writers “just make up stories” and that there is no need for realism in a fantasy. We’ve always felt the opposite, that to be believable a great fantasy story has to draw from real world archetypes and backgrounds, and that it has to be as real as possible outside of a few fantasy tweaks. Quest for Glory was no exception – We did countless hours of research into geography, history, and mythology before writing one line of dialogue or descriptive text. One thing that really struck us about Mr. Karmine’s comments was that across thousands of miles and a huge language gap, he “got” what we were trying to express. Here are some of his comments on the individual Quest for Glory game settings.
Allan: Before setting up an interview, I’d like to thank you for what you have done for us. That emotional blast, the thrilling storyline that reached deep into soul. Particularly, I am amazed that you replicated Baba Yaga’s hut and even set up burning skulls! Which comes not in every folk-tale of her. Thank you for Shadows of Darkness, wish it were longer and deeper. I have studied every corner of forest, and first time playing spend two in-game month walking around Mordavia so it became real to me.
Trial by Fire was a spiritual revelation to me. I have read some of 1001 Nights by that time so many things were recognizable… But the whole atmosphere of becoming a professional Hero – was something new. I took it serious then, and I take it so now – about learning Honor and accomplishing deeds and practicing with commander Uhura, er, simply Uhura, each day, and throwing fireballs all around the alleys watching over shoulder so that no one would notice. See, not just a storyline, but freedom inside the setting. As well as pretty roleplay system where you actually raise what you trained for hours of real life. And these secret ways were the best. Like, you can have all stats you want, but you can only become real Hero if you are a Paladin and you see more to the world than before, and see how much is yet to be done. Only by becoming a Wizard you step in contact with Faeries (pity that side-walk was short). And, let’s talk of romance of being a Thief and reaching some places unnoticed. I disgust common stealing, people should work for their bread – but I’d wish there were more missions like sneaking up the Khaveen’s place or balancing on a rope under Ad Avis spells. When dexterity and flexibility and open-mindedness and insight and compassion take place – that’s where happens Quest for Glory.
Corey and Lori: And that sums up what the School for Heroes is all about. We are trying to create a real environment on the Web where people (including us) can learn more about heroism and making a difference. Mostly it’s about fun, but there’s also a very important core of Doing What Is Right. We are adding to the fantasy lore of Silmaria and building a world, but we hope that we are also helping to create heroes in our own real world.
Tags: Game Design, Quest for Glory
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Thursday, July 10th, 2008
I suppose that it’s a bit of an exaggeration to call this the “Class of the Titans,” but the Golden School is that “he who has the gold runs the school.” So we’ll class-ify ourselves as above average, and school ourselves to get back to the subject at hand – the Making of the “School for Heroes.”
Over the past few weeks, Lori has been working feverishly on creating www.TheSchoolForHeroes.com web site. She’s using the “grunge look” so that there is a lot of background detail behind everything on the page. Besides looking cool, this will give us the opportunity to sneak some hidden puzzles into the site. Meanwhile, Corey is creating an interactive “What kind of hero are you?” quiz to help our players/members decide on the character classes that best fit them for the school.
“Character class” is an old role-playing term, but it has a double-meaning when we’re talking about a school for heroes. The game characters will be assigned to a “class” such as Warrior, Wizard, or Paladin, then will take classes in that subject. Instead of just puzzles, we’ll have class assignments. Of course, the classes and assignments are all about fun, not busy-work!
Did you ever have one special teacher who really made you enjoy a class in school? That teacher probably gave you unusual assignments that really made you think about the subject material. One of Corey’s favorite teachers was Mr. Cross, an 8th grade math teacher. One day, when he saw that Corey was a little bored with the standard material, Mr. Cross asked him to stay a few minutes after class. Pulling out a College workbook on probability theory, he told Corey, “You might find this interesting.” A lifelong fascination with probability and chance began that day. By the way, Corey highly recommends “Lady Luck” by Warren Weaver if you’re interested in the subject.
Lori had a great high school English teacher, Mrs. Eades. This was the first time Lori really felt special in a class. Mrs. Eades went out of her way to encourage the talented students and make the class fun for them. Lori was inspired to continue studies in creative writing in College and to become a schoolteacher. Without Mrs. Eades’s encouragement, Lori might never have become a professional game writer.
The School for Heroes is full of special teachers for exceptional students. Everyone has the chance to show that they are heroes inside, and the teachers recognize and encourage this. They will go out of their way to make all of the classes fun, to create unique and challenging assignments, and to mold their students into true heroes. Have you done your Wizard homework lately? One of your assignments might be to search the school for hidden messages that can only be revealed by use of the Sense Magic spell you learned in the last class session. Of course it gets even more fun when you discover that not all of the secret messages out there were placed by your teacher. There are many secrets to discover in the School for Heroes.
So that’s what The School for Heroes is all about – a place where the true heroes live, laugh, love, and learn in an exciting, challenging, and above all fun environment. We hope to see you there with the other great heroes! We’ll be sure to send you to the head of the class.
Tags: Game Design, Humor, School for Heroes
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