Pag on Games

E3 is underway and Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have all presented their keynotes. Microsoft left the whole gaming community in shock by anouncing Final Fantasy XIII would be available on Xbox 360. Sony couldn’t match Microsoft’s anouncement, but did alright with a few interesting titles coming up — nothing earth shattering. And then there’s Nintendo.

It seems Nintendo has entirely abandonned their core fans. The two biggest titles at their keynote? WiiSports 2 (including awesome mini-games like throwing a frisbee to a dog) and Wii Music.

I don’t get Wii Music at all. As far as I can see, you just waggle your wiimote randomly while pressing buttons when you feel like it (no rythm necessary) to play bad Midi versions of hit songs like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Yankee Doodle”. I wish I was kidding.

When asked if core gamers would feel left out of Nintendo’s line-up, Regie Fils-Aime (president of Nintendo of America) had this to say:

“How could you feel left out?” Fils-Aime said. “The Animal Crossing that we’ve been hearing about that people wanted. Fully connected to the Internet, go to other people’s towns. Plus, as I said, Grand Theft Auto on the DS. How do you feel left out with those types of announcements?”

So their best anouncements for core gamers is Animal Crossing — a game more casual than The Sims — and GTA on DS. Now GTA for DS would be cool if it were presented as anything more than a logo at this point. They didn’t even go as far as showing concept art for the game. Take 2 — GTA’s publisher — had nothing to say about GTA DS at their own press conference.

If Nintendo’s E3 keynote is representative of their current priorities, then it’s obvious they do not care anymore about gamers looking for deep gameplay. They now focus entirely on the casual cash-cow. Will third party developers bring what core gamers want? One can hope, but so far third party Wii games have been lackluster.

After a long wait, Apple has finally enabled third party applicaations to be installed on the iPhone and iPod Touch. All applications are distributed through the iTunes store, where a lot of games are already available. What will be the impact of this on the gaming industry? Will the iPhone dethrone the DS as the portable gaming system of choice, or will it be forgettable, like Apple’s previous efforts at getting games on their systems?

From a developer’s standpoint, the iPhone certainly has a lot going for it. The hardware is surprisingly powerful — with 620 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM and 3D acceleration, it might even be better than the PSP.

Since it’s connected to Wifi and cellphone networks, the iPhone is essentially always online and since it’s a phone, users will carry it around with them at all times. I believe there’s a lot of potential for games using the always-on, always-at-hand nature of the system.

Finally, the distribution system for applications is really interesting. Contrary to console manufacturers, Apple does not consider applications sales to be its main revenue stream — they’re in the business of selling a platform. As such, they give back 70% of sales price to developers. That’s a much larger slice of the pie than what game developers usually get after distributors and brick and mortar stores take their slice. Getting rid of middlemen can only be good.

Still, the iPhone is not the perfect game development platform. One big question is whether users will care about games at all. They didn’t buy the iPhone to play games initially after all. Cellphone gaming hasn’t taken over the world, so it’s quite possible it won’t take over the iPhone world either.

Another problem is input. The iPhone is not a gaming device and has such it doesn’t have the buttons a typical gaming device has. The multi-touch screen is great and motion sensitivity is nice, but sometimes the best interface is pressing a button and you can’t do that on the iPhone. This limits the types of games that will play well on the system.

Finally, while the distribution system is nice, it doesn’t solve the problem of funding and marketing. Making a game takes a lot of people and time, which requires money. If you want people to know your game’s out and why they should care, you need marketing. Publishers are good at funding gaming projects and marketing them, so I don’t think we’ll get rid of the publisher-developer relationship just yet.

Overall I’m cautiously optimistic about the iPhone’s potential as a gaming platform. If good games come out and grab the public’s interest, it might be a very interesting system. On the other hand, it may become just another way to play Bejeweled and brain training games while on the bus, like the rest of cellphone gaming. Time will tell.

There’s a long and fascinating interview with Ron Gilbert on Gamasutra where he speaks about his next project, Deathspank, episodic games and the way the gaming industry works. Well worth the read.

Here’s an excerpt:

 You know, the movie industry certainly has its share of space marine movies as well. There are big blockbusters that are shallow, but they make hundreds of millions of dollars, and I think the movie industry is pretty good at taking that money and funding a lot of more indie movies, and smaller movies, and movies for niche audiences. And I think the game industry needs to move into that model.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with Halos and Half-Lifes, and all these other things being out there. But I would like to see companies like Microsoft, and EA, and all these people take some of that, and really start to support different levels of titles. And I think if the industry continues to be financially successful, we will eventually start to see that; so I think that’s actually a very positive thing.

The problem with being an early adopter is that you’re the one finding the problems with the first revision of the hardware. I’ve missed a few weeks’ update of this site because my Dell m1330 laptop experienced severe stability problems, then died and had to be sent to repair. Now that it’s back and working again, I figured I’d give some details about my problem in case someone else suffers the same.

A couple of weeks ago I started getting weird computer errors: the screen would freeze for a few seconds, the colors of the picture strangely messed up, then the screen would flicker a few times, go black and everything would return to normal after a few seconds. Vista then showed me an error message telling me that my video card driver — specifically the file nvlddmkm.sys –  had crashed but was recovered successfully. Updating my video card driver didn’t help and my BIOS was up to date.

With time, those crashes became more and more frequent, so I called Dell’s support. The m1330 is a XPS laptop — Dell’s flagship gaming line of PCs — for which they have a special service line. I’d heard bad things about Dell’s service, but I didn’t have any problem: a technician answered the phone quickly and directed me to uninstall my video card  driver then reinstall it while in Windows’ “Safe” mode. Since the problem only happened once in a while, the technician told that he would call me later that  week to see if the problem was solved.

It wasn’t. The driver clearly wasn’t at fault since I kept having the same problem. I did some research online and found out that a lot of the m1330 laptops with the Nvidia GeForce 8400M GS video cards had this problem. After 6 months or so they’d start showing the nvlddmkm.sys error message and about a week later the laptop would be dead, the only remedy being sending it back to Dell so they could put a new motherboard in.

Not the kind of news I was hoping to read. I called Dell’s service again. As I was going through more advanced diagnostics, my laptop began agonizing. When I rebooted, the screen would fill slowly with colored lines and nothing else would be visible. If I was lucky enough to reach my desktop, the video card driver would crash over and over until the screen just stayed black. The Dell technician quickly agreed to arrange for a pick-up of my laptop so a new motherboard could be put in (the m1330 is so compact that the videocard is embedded in the motherboard itself and can’t be changed separately).

I was told that the repair would take 5 to 7 work days, but it was much faster than that. I’m actually surprised at how fast and without trouble Dell handled this. It’s worth paying extra for a XPS PC if only for the service.

I can’t say such good things about Dell’s engineering team, however. I’m rather frustrated about this whole issue — I buy a top of the line laptop and I have to send it for repair after less than a year. Now I just hope my computer won’t die again in 6 months time. Good thing I took the 3 years warranty…

There’s a fascinating read on Paul Graham’s website about how to find and do work that you actually like for a living, rather than just work because you have to. You can read this very insightful essay here.

To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We’ve got it down to four words: “Do what you love.” But it’s not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn’t—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.

Somebody at work asked me today for a list of good book recommendations for game designers, so I figured I’d put the list here to help as many people as possible. All of these books have taught me important things about design or have helped my work even though they’re not directly about games development.

Creativity and Innovation

• A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger von Oech: a classic book on how to be more creative
• The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley: How IDEO, a leading industrial design firm, keeps innovative and creative

Project Management

• Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert L. Glass: Quick overviews of lots of interesting topics on software development — nothing really in-depth, but you’ll get a lot of information in few pages
• Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timethy Lister: A classic on project management. The only management book I’ve read 3 times — it’s that good.
• Patton on Leadership by Alan Axelrod: Leadership methods based on General Patton’s approach to leading his troops

Interface Design

• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman: Essential tips on creating interfaces that are easy to use
•  Emotional Design by Donad A. Norman: Going beyond interfaces that are easy to use, how do you make people have an emotional reaction to your design?

Writing Well

• The Elements of Style by William Strunk jr. and E.B. White: A small book with a ton of tips on improving your writing.
• Creating Unforgettable Characters by Linda Seger: How to create believable and interesting characters for any kind of fiction.
• Story by Robert McKee: Learn how to be a great screenwriter

Communication

• Presenting to Win by Jerry Weissman: How to make great presentations. A must-read for anyone presenting at GDC.
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie: It’s a classic for a reason. It does what it says on the tin.

Marketing

• Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath: Learn what makes ideas stick in people’s mind.
• Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout: Essentials of modern marketing
• The Anatomy of Buzz by Emanuel Rosen: How to create word-of-mouth marketing
• The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell: More on word-of-mouth marketing and the effect of social networks on the popularity and impact of things.

PC Gaming hasn’t been doing so hot the last few years, especially for traditional games sold at retail. Here are a few causes for this and some thoughts on avoiding those pitfalls.

• Piracy: That’s a huge factor. Sales of PC games have fallen faster than the number of actual players. It’s easier than ever to find pirated copies of games on P2P. I believe DRM and other rights restriction systems are pointless and only annoy legitimate users. There’s a number of better solutions:
  • Games as Service: Give the game away but sell the experience. Subscription games like World of Warcraft and the Korean model of free games with extras at a cost both avoid piracy very well.
  • Advertising-supported games: It works for TV, why not games?
  • Pay what you Play: Some “real world” games like Warhammer and Magic: the Gathering only make players pay for what they play — you don’t need all the Warhammer figures or Magic cards to play. Casual gamers pay a few dollars, hardcore players pay a lot. This model hasn’t been used much in video games, but I think it has potential if done well.
• Complexity: PCs have become a commodity. Hobbyists aren’t the only ones to buy them anymore and most “ordinary” folks can’t tell the difference between an Intel Core 2 Duo and an AMD Phenom, between a Radeon HD 2900 and a GeForce 9800. Making games that run fine on a 500$ computer or a cheap laptop is more important than ever. Games that only run on the latest generation of hardware are shooting themselves in the foot. That does mean focusing less on fancy graphics and finding another way to distinguish your game from the lot.
• Cost: Cheap PCs are more expensive than consoles — you’re not getting much of a gaming PC for the price of a PS3. This brings us back to the previous point: target lower-end PCs because that’s what a lot of people have.

So that’s for the problems. PCs do have a number of strengths over consoles for gaming:

• Openness: There are no gate keepers for PC games. You don’t have to please Nintendo, Sony or even Microsoft. That means space for edgier content, but also lower distribution costs because there are fewer middle-men.
• Unparalled Connectivity: Only the PC has full access to the internet, with no restrictions at all. There’s a lot of experimentation that can be done that wouldn’t work on console manufacturers’ limited networks.
• Unique Input Devices: The mouse and keyboard allow many things that consoles just suck at (and vice-versa). I’ve yet to see a RTS that’s easy to play on consoles for example.

I’ve been playing a lot of GTA IV recently — that’s why I missed last week’s update — and what really stands out for me is that the game doesn’t feel unfocused even though it has many different types of gameplay. A lot of games with that much stuff to do feel disjointed: one time you’re driving and another time you’re shooting, but it feels like two separate games slapped together. GTA feels very consistent throughout.

I believe this is because each of GTA gameplays is a different dimension of the same core focus. The focus is to be a gangster in New York City, and everything else flows from that. Driving, shooting and handling relationships are different parts of being a gangster, so it all feels very consistent.

Each of those dimensions of gameplay combines to make an experience that’s richer than each dimension individually. Combining driving and shooting makes the whole larger than the sum of those two parts because the intersection of those two aspects creates new gameplay: killing enemies by driving over them, shooting enemies in cars, shooting while driving, etc. Because they’re two dimensions of the same core gameplay, their effect multiplies instead of simply adding up.

A counter-example to this multiplicative effect would be Mario Party. Mario Party has a lot of different types of gameplay — dozens of mini-games are available. But each mini-game is separate from the others, so each new mini-game just adds to the total of gameplay, it doesn’t combine with anything else. Each mini-game is a separate game entirely, it’s not another dimension of the same core gameplay.

You could remove a bunch of mini-games from Mario Party with very little impact on the game. Remove driving or shooting from GTA however and you’ve changed the game entirely.

Exploring one core concept with multiple dimensions of gameplay makes for a richer experience. Each part combines with the others to create a very large amount of possibilities for players. A lot of games follow this approach: Assassin’s Creed (stealth, acrobatics and combat), Gran Turismo (racing and car tuning), Civilization (strategy, diplomacy, expansion), etc.

Focusing on a single dimension of gameplay is easier however, as it lets you focus all of your energy on one thing. Guitar Hero does one single thing but does it very well, so does Ikaruga. Casual gamers like this type of game because it’s easier to approach. Fewer dimensions reduces complexity but also the richness of the game.

The most important thing is to know what the focus of your game is. Slapping together a bunch of types of gameplay doesn’t make a game good. Each part of the game — whether it has one dimension or many — should stem from a clear core experience.

Clay Shirky has a transcript of an interesting talk he gave about the over-abundance of free time people now have because of modern technology and how it’s wasted on watching sitcoms.  This surplus of cognitive capacity is slowly being redirected toward more productive activities. Instead of being a passive audience, some people now spend time editing Wikipedia or organizing guilds in World of Warcraft rather than watching TV.

So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project–every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in–that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it’s the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.

And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. […]

And this is the other thing about the size of the cognitive surplus we’re talking about. It’s so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications. Let’s say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That’s about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 10,000 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.

I think that’s going to be a big deal. Don’t you?

via Slashdot

I’ve played pen & paper role-playing games quite a bit in the past. Being a game master is great training for game design: you have to create an exciting and entertaining experience for your friends on a regular basis.

One thing a game master must do is create a lot of non-player characters. The challenge is to create memorable characters on a regular basis. After creating what must be a few hundred characters, I figured a few simple tricks. These tricks are useful whenever you’re creating new characters, whether they’re for a pen & paper RPG, a video game or even a novel.

The key to a memorable character is distinctiveness. The character must stand out from others — nobody remembers the average Joe. If your character is distinctive in multiple ways, that’s even better. I try to create characters that are distinctive in 3 different aspects:

• Appearance: The character should be obviously different by simply looking at her. This is particularly important for characters that are not actually seen, only described — like in a novel. A character with a peculiar haircut might be good enough for a movie or a comic book, but it would probably be hard to describe memorably in a novel.
• Actions: The character should act in ways that are different from the norm. This can take the form of special abilities (like a superpower or a peculiar weapon the character always uses) or the way the character acts (a weird way of speaking or is she’s paranoid, for example).
• Background: The character’s past should be interesting, to somehow hook into whatever you’re creating. A character could be an orphan, or have trained with a secretive order of ninjas for example (or both, like Bruce Wayne).

Let’s take Captain Jack Sparrow as an example of a memorable character. He has a distinctive appearance, what with the thick black eye-liner, the dreadlocks and the bandanna, he most definitely acts in a memorable way, thanks to Johnny Depp’s wonderful acting, and he has a distinctive past, having been the captain of a mutinous pirate crew turned undead.

Another good example is Darth Vader. Vader’s apperance is definitely unique, with his black outfit that doesn’t show a single inch of skin. His mastery of the force gives him unique abilities that make his actions distinctive. As for his past, it’s interesting enough that it spawned a whole trilogy of hit movies.

Of course these guidelines aren’t the most subtle thing in the world, so they’re probably not ideal for stories with very realistic characters. The broad strokes these guidelines create are very good at creating memorable larger than life characters however, and that’s a type of character that’s useful in a lot of games.