Attempting to ship game. Don't miss me too much.
8.27.2009
7.19.2009
The three R's
Game design is the act of serialized decision-making. And so, good game design is the process of making many decisions well. In the context of a fiction-based video game, I've found that three principles should be applied when considering each design decision you're presented with. Obviously the earlier, bigger decisions require much deeper consideration on these fronts than the later, micro decisions.
Restraint
Restraint is the act of resisting the urge to throw in every idea you have simply because it sounds cool, awesome, or hilarious. Pop culture in-jokes, gratuitous violence and sexuality, and self-indulgent story content tend to benefit the designer before the player. Do you want to make an idea simply to make it ('I want to make it so you can blow dudes' heads off,' 'I want to make a chick with big boobs,' 'I want to make a Monty Python in-joke,') or does it objectively benefit the identity of the design? Lack of restraint is adolescent. Restraint is based on tastefulness. Restraint will save you time because it is a culling behavior. Restraint is your first line of defense against executing on bad ideas.
Rigor
Rigor is applied through the act of objectively and deeply considering the practical implications of an idea. No design element is an island-- in fact, almost every design element is connected to every other by a complex web of dependencies. An idea that is not analyzed rigorously is destined to unstring that web, simply due to lack of consideration. Rigor is the act of questioning your idea unflinchingly from every angle, as this veteran programmer does for a couple of big ideas that sound good on the surface. Your job is to attack your design idea from all directions-- technical and gameplay systems in equal measure-- and find the holes in it before moving forward. Is your game engine capable of supporting this design element? Are any other design systems in conflict with this element? Any new idea must stand up to intense scrutiny before you move onto the implementation stage. This isn't to downplay the role of iteration-- even the most deeply examined idea will need to be iterated upon once you have it running. The intent is to root out those problems which would be "so obvious" once you got around to implementing the thing, and avoid spending time on an idea that is inherently untenable. As the old carpenter's aphorism goes: measure twice, cut once.
Rationale
If Restraint questions the "what" of your idea, and Rigor questions the "how," then Rationale questions the "why." Does this idea fit into the broader experience-- the identity of the gameworld, the conceits of the fiction? What is your justification for this thing's existence? Many of the fictional conceits for established genre mechanics in BioShock are wonderful examples of clever Rationale: why are there heavy weapons and vending machines selling ammunition in an undersea utopia? Because this society fell into civil war between its inhabitants (motivating them to construct grenade launchers, crossbows, turrets, etc. from scavenged materials) and was hyper-capitalist (meaning that war profiteers were free to exploit the conflict by selling bullets to the combatants via convenient vending machines.) In other words, Rationale can be seen as coming up with "excuses" for mechanics' presence in your gameworld, but this is a two-way street: your fiction might reasonably imply mechanics (a game set on a desert island might 'want' a cooking mechanic) just as the mechanics of your chosen genre might require adjustments to your fiction. The question is whether you can wrap your idea in a clear, easily-graspable Rationale, or whether it will disrupt the player's experience, sticking out like a sore thumb (as a counterpoint from BioShock, the Bot Shut-Down Stations had this latter effect for me.) An idea without clear Rationale feels arbitrary, and threatens the integrity of the player's experience. Mechanics with clear Rationale have a unifying effect, helping the whole of the experience hang better together.
Hopefully the above three principles are clear, and can help you analyze a design idea in its early stages. The goal is to arrive at a lean, coherent design, wherein every element supports every other. The challenge is to be objective in your questioning, not to fall in love with any one design idea, and to pare down carefully but liberally until you arrive at the core experience you want to convey. Hopefully, embracing Restraint, Rigor and Rationale from the outset will better guarantee smooth sailing as your ideas make the leap from paper to playable.
7.07.2009
Homespun
There is a Goodwill outlet down Fillmore St. from my apartment. Being that this Goodwill is in the middle of San Francisco, there are sometimes exciting finds in the used software section. Most recently, I picked up an original boxed copy of SimCity (on 3.5" AND 5.25" floppy!) as a cheap collector's item-- the cover art is wonderful, one of my favorite video game box covers:
Inside, I found the following slip:
click for bigTimes have changed and cheap nostalgia is easy, but I don't think it's unfair to lament the personal feeling the games industry had to it at the turn of the 90's. The entire industry has gotten exponentially larger in the intervening years, and so the creators of the biggest games tend to be the furthest distanced from the average player, unsurprisingly. Certainly this is one draw of the indie games community-- that it feels like a community, with relatable individuals making small, personal games to share with their dedicated playerbase.
It's wonderful. But it doesn't diminish the fond memory of buying a box of disks from Babbage's or Egghead Software, taking it home, and feeling that you'd opened up a personal conduit to the creators of the thing you held in your hands. We may have entered the age of impersonality... or maybe we just need to restart the practice of packing in a signed letter with our street address on it.
6.13.2009
games I'm looking forward to
I don't have any great, high-minded reason to be posting this, aside from feeling the urge to remind myself of the upcoming games I'm looking forward to, post-E3. I can't claim that this list is anything but mainstream, but it's at least plugged-in, and has helped me remember that there are a lot of exciting new titles just around the bend.
Most Anticipated overall:
The Last Guardian:
Viewing the original (leaked) trailer for the new game from Team Ico last month ended my mind and left my mouth hanging open. Every element of the game seems so perfectly conceptually balanced-- the platforming and friendly AI of Ico meets the epic creature scale of Shadow of the Colossus. The creature itself instantly captured my imagination-- a baby giant, a presence that at once feels innocent, friendly and clumsy in its youth, but dangerous and imposing in its stature-- and the spears and arrows dangling from its flesh imply a vulnerability that might cast the player as his occasional protector as well. The single technical and interactive challenge they've chosen-- a complex, friendly AI with the scale and interactivity to meaningfully impact the player's navigation of the gameworld-- is incredibly inspiring for me from both a designer's and player's perspective. I can't wait to befriend this strange, wonderous creature and see what new aspects of Team Ico's unique fictional world he'll help reveal. The one misgiving I have is a stealth element hinted at by the trailers. I have confidence in Team Ico in pretty much every regard, but their games also aren't perfect, and stealth is very easy to screw up in an extremely frustrating fashion. Regardless, the mere promise of this game should be enough to remind any designer of the potential for novel expression that big-budget game development holds.
Outright sequels:
Super Mario Galaxy 2:
The sequel to what I would have personally awarded Game of the Year in 2007 (even over BioShock and Portal!) has been announced. I was honestly surprised, as it hasn't been Nintendo's habit since Mario 64 to directly sequelize their flagship Mario titles. But more Galaxy, plus Yoshi, is nothing to sneeze at. Some games feature such great core premises that more content alone is draw enough to foster legitimate excitement, and Mario Galaxy is one of those games. Bring on more weird floating space orbs! And Yoshi.
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle:
Being a huge fan of the ethos and execution of No More Heroes (and Killer7 before it, though to a lesser extent,) I was excited to hear that NMH was getting a sequel, as I'd never heard it performed especially well at market-- it was cited fairly often as "proof" that hardcore games were destined to fail on the Wii. But again, more original content set in Travis Touchdown's wild world of otaku, beam swords, hipster t-shirts and world-renowned assassins is more than enough for me. Bring it on!
Mafia 2:
The first Mafia game (by the former Illusion Softworks, now 2K Czech) was one of my favorite games of the early 2000's. I was especially impressed by the mature (not "M for Mature") story and characters, and the sober characterization of the gameworld itself: you had to live as a civilian in the city of Lost Heaven, as opposed to being a rocket-launcher-wielding immortal. The characters were human and believable, their arcs were compelling, and it all wrapped up in a satisfying and melancholy conclusion. I was especially impressed with how little the game's narrative pandered to a juvenile audience-- no ultraviolence or fantastical wish fulfillment, no reliance on "nerdy" tropes that even other notable story games of the time-- Half-Life, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Planescape Torment-- copped to. Not all games need to be so grounded, but Mafia impressed me with the degree to which it felt so ahead of its time in this respect. Mafia 2, due some 8 years after the original, promises a similarly deep fiction, with perhaps a greater emphasis on high-octane action and forgiveness of player misbehavior, along with an even richer, more absorbing, living gameworld. I can't wait to play the game that 2K Czech have been toiling over in those intervening years.
Mass Effect 2:
Another game where "more of the same, but better" is fine by me. I played through Mass Effect at its release and have felt the urge to replay it a number of times since, but I'm holding out for the sequel. As a normative nerd type, I'm excited to explore the Blade Runner-esque city of blackened highrises and flying cars depicted in the game's trailers, to meet new partymembers such as "the greatest assassin in the universe," and to carry over my character from the first game in classic RPG style. I look forward to returning to Bioware's Star Wars-meets-Star Trek universe and experiencing the sequel team's "darker, grittier" approach to the material.
Red Dead Redemption:
Reading McCarthy novels like Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses has made me want a game set in a more grim, grounded version of the rural west than those offered by, say, Neversoft's Gun or the original Red Dead Revolver, and Red Dead Redemption seems poised to deliver just that. Rockstar is clearly trending more intently toward "serious" takes on their subject matter (just look at GTA4's, and even more pointedly The Lost & Damned's, depressing view of Liberty City,) and the Capital Wasteland has sold me on the potential for exploring a huge, open no-man's land. Red Dead Redemption promises an unsettled plain dotted with fledgling frontier towns, trappers' camps and cavalry forts, and even "a complete ecology" wherein hawks snap up jackrabbits and coyotes descend upon NPC's campsites in the wild. I can't wait to explore Rockstar's vision of the American frontier.
Not sequels:
Little King's Story:
I was turned on to Little King's Story by Edge's review, which speaks more or less directly to me when it says: "Perhaps the game’s greatest achievement... is a constant focus on you, the player, delicately changing the world as your kingdom expands." Something of a (I'm guessing accidental) cross between Dungeon Keeper, Pikmin, and Civilization, the player controls the Little King, who runs around the gameworld throwing his subjects at obstacles in order to clear rocks and trees, gather resources, build towns and defeat enemy armies in his quest to oust all the other nefarious kings in the world, spreading the borders of his kingdom to the four corners of the map. The tone and style sound irreverently self-aware, and watching your territory expand is always satisfying. I expect it to be incredibly original, and the glowing reviews floating around only buoy my excitement to play it.
Scribblenauts:
The breakout hit of E3 probably doesn't need much introduction at this point, but suffice it to say that one play session of the game produced a battle between a giant Kraken, Einstein, and God, all on the Nintendo DS. The player can type in any concept they can think of, and more often than not it's been created in pixel form by the game's developers, appears onscreen, and goes to work interacting with whatever else has been spawned. Einstein might eat cherries, be flammable, and apparently goes aggro on God. Stories told from E3 playtesters include spawning a time machine which transported the player back to the time of the dinosaurs, then spawning a meteor which caused all the dinosaurs to go extinct. Even Keyboard Cat was present. Sample puzzle objectives include reaching a star high up on a perch, or getting a beached whale back into the water. Do you go the simple route (for instance, spawning a ladder to climb up to the star) or do you spawn the most gonzo conceptual Rube Goldberg device you can imagine? As Crayon Physics Deluxe is to player-generated physics interactions, Scribblenauts is to conceptual emergence, and hot damn am I eager to see all of the insanity that's guaranteed to result.
Night Game:
I was entranced by the understated, lonesome atmosphere and simple, satisfying movement and collection mechanics of Knytt, and Night Game seems to retain these elements while adding 2D physics gameplay to the mix. You play as a self-actuated rolling stone, bouncing across an evocative silhouetted landscape. To what end? I'm not sure, but I'm interested to find out. And while I'll certainly miss Knytt's player avatar (what I referred to lovingly as the "stupid little cat,") I'm looking forward to spending more time rolling around Nifflas's singular, alien world.
New translations of old games:
Flower, Sun, Rain:
As noted above, I'm a fan of Suda's work that's been translated into English (including the overlooked Samurai Champloo tie-in game, which bore all the Suda hallmarks and was surprisingly good.) So of course I'm intrigued to play a translation of one of this PS1 games, being brought to DS this year. The story (as I understand it) involves a private eye arriving on a resort island along with the sentient, crime-solving AI contained in his briefcase. A murder mystery (maybe?) is afoot, and surreal occurences are guaranteed. An adventure in the point-and-click tradition through Suda's demented lens, with new touchscreen additions for the DS release. Sign me up.
Policenauts:
http://policenauts.net/english/
Though the Policenauts fan translation has been in the works for some years now, they're currently "one bug til Beta," barrelling towards a releasable build... hopefully within the next year or two :-) I really enjoyed Kojima's Sega CD cyberpunk adventure Snatcher when I played it a few years ago, and Policenauts is the spiritual sequel: aping Lethal Weapon like Snatcher aped Blade Runner, set in a gritty near-future (and, interestingly, featuring the Metal Gear Solid universe's Meryl Silverburgh,) I'll be happy to point-and-click through some vintage Kojima nuttiness. The successful fan translation of Mother 3 gives me hope that this project might finally see the light of day. I've got my Ebayed copy of Policenauts for PS1 sitting right here, waiting.
Tentatively:
Fallout: New Vegas:
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/58229
Any spin-off or companion to Fallout 3, perhaps my overall favorite video game of all time, is sure to catch my attention. An all-new Fallout game (not DLC or expansion) by Obsidian Entertainment, a company founded by Interplay and Black Isle veterans, is certainly an interesting proposition. I have misgivings-- honestly I was disappointed with Fallout 2 compared to the original (including their gimmicky take on Reno,) and haven't been much impressed by the Fallout 3 DLC I've played so far-- but the potential is there.
Lost Planet 2:
I was reading the preview of Lost Planet 2 in this month's Edge magazine, and was surprised at how excellent it sounds. The focus on character customization in particular caught my eye-- the sequel is focused on four-player co-op in that strange, low-tech future-steampunk style shared by id's RAGE and certain anime (it makes me think of Iria that always seemed to be on the Sci-Fi Channel when I was in high school for some reason,) and allows each player to customize the appearance of their avatar's futuristically anachronistic wargear. Along with building your own anime supersoldier and blasting up enemies with your friends, there's co-op grapplehooking, which looks like a blast, and big, nasty co-op mech battles, which I'm totally onboard for. Hell, the trailer above opens with a rip of the Offworld Colonies zeppelin from Blade Runner, and I'm taking the nerd bait. On the other side, the first game didn't impress me much, and I'm skeptical of fighting more big weird insectoid monsters, which is never very interesting to me. The trailer does feature a good deal of soldier-shaped cannon fodder, but if the combat mechanics aren't well tuned or the campaign uninspiring, I could see getting tired of this bug-blaster real quick. But I'll play it long enough to cobble together a cool-looking cyber-steam-space marine at least. That's just how I am.
The Saboteur:
This open-city game of the WWII French Resistance shares a lot of mechanical overlap with one of my favorite game series of all time, the Hitman games: stealth (both view-cone and social,) costume changes, a third-person orbiting camera, and complex planning that can hilariously blow up in your face at the drop of a hat. Add in a beautifully-realized real-world setting, some Assassin's Creed-like parkour elements, car chases, and a game board that you gradually flip to your own side mission-by-mission (structurally reminiscent of Syndicate, maybe?) and it all ends up a pretty exciting package. Led up by Fallout and GTA veteran Tom French as lead designer, it even has an impressive personnel pedigree. The question is whether the full package adds up to more than the sum of its promising individual parts, which is yet to be seen... but I'm optimistic.
Borderlands:
While I'm interested in Borderlands' new visual style and the FPS/RPG genre bent, I'll be honest: I'm a sucker for futuristic revolvers. The mix-and-match approach to generating near-infinite weapon variants means that I'll play this until I've found the ultimate-cool magnum revolver that eradicates enemies with a single round and looks amazing doing it. For me, the magnum is generally a highlight of games that feature it-- The Darkness, the Half-Life games, Fallout 3, Army of Two, Rainbow Six Vegas, even GTA: Vice City-- and the ability to roll my own nasty future-Mateba chambered with acid-tipped high-velocity rounds is pretty much irresistable. And get this-- you can even roll a sniper rifle that's constructed with a revolver's cylinder, meaning I'll be on a quest for the ultimate one of those, too. On the downside I usually am not big on the Diablo-style grind structure, so I don't know if this can really be one of my personal favorites in the long-term, but I am looking forward to playing it.
Red Steel 2:
Red Steel 2 is as much a series reboot as any: they've gone completely bonkers, it seems, pushing the setting to some strange, future-retro east-meets-west post-apocalyptic Japanese frontier town in the American neo-old-west (?) The game looks to roughly share a visual style with Borderlands, and I'm interested to find out more about their wacko shift in setting. If the gameplay is better than the first thanks to Wii Motion Plus, it could be great fun. On the downside, the levels look incredibly linear and sort of repetitive even in the 10-minute video showcase above, so I could see this wearing out its welcome quickly, but I'm intrigued by their extreme departure from the first game at least.
Infinite Space:
http://ds.ign.com/articles/874/874179p1.html
I'm kind of worried about this one, as it's fallen off the radar a bit: no showing at E3, Sega? But it's still scheduled for release sometime this year (or next?) and the initial promise has kept my interest: a Platinum Games-branded DS title (initially called "Infinite Line," now "Infinite Space,") conveying a grand space opera, with mechanics focusing on building your own fleet of battleships from myriad parts and stats, then engaging in epic confrontations between opposing armadas. It looks incredibly twiddly and deep, as much of a fleet simulator as anything, and reviews of the Japanese version, released earlier this year, have been quite positive. If it ever does make it to these shores, I'll be interested to try my hand at this uniquely Japanese take on the hardcore (handheld!) space sim.
Silent Hill Shattered Memories:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/silent-hill-shattered-memories-hands-on
I'm on the Silent Hill 2 respect train, though I wasn't especially excited about any of the other games in the series. But I see potential in Climax Games' interesting re-imagining of the original Silent Hill as a combat-free, iced-over, player-tailored nightmare factory. The two big draws are a game where the player's only recourse against threats is to run like hell-- aim your flashlight with the Wiimote and use a PDA to scan your surroundings and take photos; look for clues to find your lost daughter; and when the town of Silent Hill flips to its alternate dimension of frost and ice, and a flayed horrorshow gets up in your grill, you turn tail and get the fuck out as quickly as possible. Vault over fences and skid around corners, then hide in a closet or under a bed if you can, hoping one of the ghouls won't sniff you out. It seems to be taking inspiration from the rest of the survival horror canon-- Fatal Frame and Haunting Ground come to mind-- but it doesn't stop there. By giving the player a psychological questionnaire at the outset and monitoring their playstyle along the way, the game attempts to tailor the experience to fit the particular player's profile, switching character alignments and setpieces on the fly. Dynamism and a unique mechanical aesthetic? I'm pretty excited... though Climax hasn't really proven itself yet with its prior time in the Silent Hil universe. I'm hoping this will be their time to shine.
Dead Rising 2:
More Dead Rising? Hell yes. No Frank West? And the game being developed by a fairly unknown studio that's mostly made baseball games in the past? Well... things are looking up regardless, if early trailers are anything to judge by. Starring what seems to be a stunt dirtbike rider from a Vegas extreme sports show, the player tears through a zombie-infested entertainment complex featuring casinos, theatres, restaurants, hotels, amusement park rides and more. Having apparently installed the duct tape mod, the player can tape chainsaws to either end of a mop handle for some Darth Maul action, or to the handles of his dirtbike to shred hordes of zombies while burning rubber. Could a new protagonist and new developer suck the soul out of Dead Rising? I'm worried that maybe so, but hopefully my worries will end up unfounded.
Theoretical/rumored games:
The next Hitman game:
http://ioi.dk
As noted, the Hitman games, particularly Hitman: Blood Money, are some of my favorite games of all time. Blood Money may not be the most polished, technically flawless experience you'll ever have, but god damn if the possibilities and emergence it presented weren't endlessly entertaining. The end cutscene of Blood Money (which I've been half a dozen times now) promises more adventures for Agent 47, and I feel like I've heard "Hitman 5" bandied about by Eidos once or twice, but details are nonexistent yet. Like the "outright sequels" above, I'd happily take nothing more than additional levels for Blood Money-- the sooner the better!
The new Syndicate game from Starbreeze:
http://www.starbreeze.com/
So there's supposed to be a new Syndicate game in the works. And it's supposed to be made by the team behind Chronicles of Riddick and The Darkness. And now you've pretty much described my dream game. Syndicate is one of my all-time favorite titles, having delivered a dark, violent, emergent open-city experience to my IBM-compatible some 8 years before GTA3. The tone of the property fits perfectly with the grim, gritty aesthetic demonstrated by Starbreeze's games, and the time is ripe for a rebirth of this seminal M-rated IP. Would Starbreeze take a more classic, squad-based approach? Or might you control some sort of lone saboteur skulking in the shadows of Eurocorp? Whatever it is, I certainly hope the rumors of this production turn out to be true, and can't wait for an official unveiling.
ThatGameCompany's next game
http://thatgamecompany.com/
Flower made me a believer in ThatGameCompany. Now they've got Robin Hunicke onboard as well. What will their third game for Sony be? Following the rousingly understated triumph of Flower, I'm as interested as anybody in finding out.
Xeno Clash sequel
http://www.aceteam.cl/
I'm rooting for ACE Team-- Xeno Clash was born of an earlier project called Zenozoik, a first-person open-world RPG set in a fantastically surreal world. But the featureset was too unwieldy and they put the project on hold, focusing it down to the linear first-person brawling of Zeno Clash as a proving ground. Now that that title has been released on PC to great acclaim, and ACE Team is in negotiations for an XBLA port, they're planning to revisit the enormous scope of Zenozoik as a "sequel" to Zeno Clash. Sure it could easily buckle under its own weight, but the sharp design sense and pragmatism shown by the team through Zeno Clash makes me hopeful that they'll pull it off... and I'll sure as hell be along for another mind-twisting ride through the heads of the three brothers Bordeu.
2K Boston's next game
http://www.2kboston.com/
You'd think I might have an inside line on 2K Boston's next project. You'd be wrong. Like everyone else, I'm incredibly curious to find out more about this ambitious new project that Ken Levine has hinted at. I was a fan of BioShock, of course, before I started working on BioShock 2, and a fan of System Shock 2 and Freedom Force and Swat 4 before that. So naturally I can't wait for the next project that the team in Boston's got brewing. Viva Irrational!
Well, enough of that. The great thing about all this is that I know I've skipped a bunch of games that I'm not personally psyched on, but that plenty of other people are excited for. No matter what kind of gamer you are there's something thrilling waiting just around the corner. When your head's wrapped up in the development of one particular game all day, it's useful to get a concrete reminder of all the amazing stuff that's being worked on by other teams out there. Good luck to all the folks working hard to get these titles onto the shelves!
5.21.2009
Cult of Rapture podcast
I appear along with Level Architect Alex Munn on BioShock 2's official podcast #2, available now from the Cult of Rapture, both in audio and text transcription form.
5.17.2009
5.05.2009
Single-A games
Ever get that feeling? That optimistic, uplifting feeling that despite the economy, torture, and global pandemics, a few little things might be going right in the world? That's just how I felt upon completing a couple of notable independent games this past week: The Path and Zeno Clash. They made me happy that engrossing, novel, invigorating games are occupying that middle ground between retro/lo-fi and triple-A blockbuster, now more than ever. It's something I've been talking about for years, and to play such vibrant examples really makes me excited for the future.
Single-A games
The middle ground I'm thinking of is hard to pin down, but a few common properties describe it: the games have smaller teams and budgets than your standard, triple-A retail shelf title, but use similar, modern graphical technology (full 3D, modern rendering techniques.) They're bigger productions than single-author, bedroom coder, 2D/Flash/ASCII efforts that one often thinks of as the definition of "indie" but explore similarly outre themes and aesthetics compared to most mainstream fare. They use many of the same design, structural and representational elements as big, triple-A games, such as immersive first-person or third-person direct control over an avatar, a fully navigable 3D gameworld, voiceover and scripted sequences, but are generally shorter in length and lower in rendering fidelity. Basically, they are like a triple-A production that has been strategically and drastically reduced in scope, allowing them to focus on specific, and less conventional, mechanics and aesthetics, and smaller target audiences than their mass-market counterparts. They benefit greatly from the reduced overhead and plugged-in audience that digital distribution channels like Steam and Direct2Drive provide.
Putting one's finger on just what to call these sorts of games can be tricky. I've used "game noir" in the past, but that has too specific an aesthetic connotation. I've tried "B-games," like B-movies, but that has negative implications of quality, even if the most vital films of the mid-century were often B-movies. So I'll try this: Single-A games. They're like triple-A games, but trimmed down and tightened to fit a smaller team, smaller scope, and usually a smaller audience-- to try new, interesting, and exciting approaches that the baggage of a triple-A production can almost never allow. Single-A games: they're what we need more of, and The Path and Zeno Clash are two outstanding examples.
The Path
Created by Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey, The Path takes the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale as its jumping-off point. The player chooses one of six girls, each named with a different synonym for "red" (Ruby, Scarlet, Ginger, etc., except for Carmen, whom I'm guessing might be a reference to the opera heroine? A commenter below suggests a play on "Carmine.") The player's stated goal when choosing a girl is to lead her to Grandmother's House, and to "stay on the path." This is simple--the path leads straight ahead to Grandmother's House, and the player need only hold the 'walk forward' button to succeed. However, upon ignoring the game's directive and leaving the path, the player is immediately lost in a deep forest, where a variety of strange objects and characters are waiting to be found. Each girl has a different reaction to these points of interest, which bit by bit builds up the individual character of your chosen charge.
Two other characters can be found wandering through the woods-- the girl in white, an ethereal figure who plays without a care and tends to lead the player to interesting things, and the Wolf, who takes a different form in each chapter. Upon leaving the path, there is no way to return to it-- the only way to escape the woods is to find the girl's Wolf. A sort of compass leads the player to the Wolf's location, but figuring out how to draw the Wolf out can take the form of a point-and-click style puzzle.
Upon either walking down the path or finding the girl's Wolf, the player enters Grandmother's House, which takes the form of a garish, off-putting virtual installation art piece. The most interesting thing about The Path is experiencing each chapter through the lenses of the different girls' personalities, piecing together their mindsets through the snippets of reactions they have to the world, and discovering the forms that their different Wolves take. Grandmother's House is twisted a different way for each girl, presenting a very subjective environment informed by their individual traits, and the experience you had in your own playthrough with that girl.
The art is at times both lovely and disquieting, and always quite accomplished-- the world and the characters, and especially the Grandmother's House installations are wonderfully realized. And though less overt, the systems are interesting in their somewhat combative dialogue with the player. It's a game that wants you to play it in a particular way-- slowly, contemplatively, and aimlessly. You can feel the designers witholding information and control from the player to this end: if the player chooses to run instead of walk, after a few moments the camera lifts up as if on a crane to look straight down at the girl, and the screen darkens with gloom to the point that seeing where you're going is impossible; spending most of your time walking is the only feasible approach. A sort of map exists which plots your trail through the woods, but only appears each 100 meters that you run, and only fades in for a moment-- it allows you to periodically readjust your heading, but denies the player the ability to check their map constantly, encouraging the feeling of being lost. Compass indicators pointing to the Wolf and the girl in white are ever-present on the screen, but update so slowly that the player is required to stop and wait for them to "catch up" if they want to use the compass at all. It can be frustratingly transparent, and in some cases makes the systems completely unreadable (I didn't know until I looked on the game's Steam forum that the compass indicators were anything but artsy embellishment-- they update SO slowly that without a tutorial, I didn't realize they meant anything at all.) But the core systems of movement, interaction and camera control are so transparent and solidly implemented that such examples only make the hand, and the intent, of the authors that much more noteworthy an aspect of the experience-- these are systems with purpose, based on a calculated thought process, which is more than can be said for many games.
The Path is the sort of unique, personal, and affecting experience that subsequent single-A games might aspire to match. It's only $9.99 on Steam, Direct2Drive, or direct from Tale of Tales.
Zeno Clash
Games boast the potential to transport the player to worlds completely removed from our own. And yet we so often fall back on tired or blase settings that when a truly unique, unprecedented gameworld appears, it's a real rarity to be celebrated. Enter Zeno Clash, the creation of the brothers Bordeu-- Andres, Carlos, and Edmundo. The land of Zenozoik is a completely novel invention, a gameworld unlike any you've seen before. It's not just crazy and new, but strikingly beautiful to behold.
Coming off of a string of intriguing mod creations, some overambitious for the size of their team, ACE Team decided to focus on "one or two innovative mechanics," resulting in Zeno Clash, a very linear, constrained game all about close-range arena battles decided by melee combat and primitive firearms such as muskets and slingshots. The game's protagonist is Ghat, a man who, as the game begins, has killed Father-Mother, a towering bird-like figure who's raised hundreds of children that populate the land. The game alternates between depicting the events leading up to the assassination of Father-Mother in the past, and Ghat's long, arduous journey through Zenonzoik as he flees Father-Mother's territory, pursued by her assassins.
The wonderful thing about Zeno Clash is how every presentational and gameplay element compliments every other-- the world itself is fairly medieval in its level of technology, which lends itself to the raw, small-scale fisticuffs of the core gameplay. The story of the protagonist's flight provides the rationale for a rapid tour through all different parts of this amazing, alien world, allowing the developers to show off environment after stunning environment, showcasing the sheer breadth of the creators' imagination. The first-person perspective gives the player the viewpoint of an actual inhabitant of this place, surrounding them with every strange detail, making this imaginary place all the more real. Consider Zeno Clash from an elevated third-person perspective: the gameworld and characters, having so little relation to our own, become that much more artificial, like scale models. Approaching this fantastical architecture and the unbelievable inhabitants of this world at eye level is what makes it all feel so real.
Mechanically the game is a joy (though my one major complaint would be that the game defaults to Hard difficulty, and even Normal, the lowest setting, exhibits some serious difficulty spikes. How about an Easy mode, guys?) Every impact of fist and swing of bludgeon feeling weighty and solid. The player's attacks really seem to make contact with their targets, creating a strong illusion of physical connection between the player and the occupants of this place, as opposed to the disconnected floating viewpoint of some other first-person games. The combat system is deep enough, allowing the player to dodge, parry and counterattack strategically. Selecting a particular weapon is a meaningful choice, as each has its own specific advantages and disadvantages. But much like a standard FPS, the core mechanics of Zeno Clash are fairly constant throughout; what makes the gameplay really interesting is great, creative level design that changes up your situation continually over the course of the game. One level might be a fairly standard arena battle in a city square, while the next challenges the player to fend off hostile creatures on a wooded path; the next might send you hunting for scurrying game in the underbrush, or defending a boat as it's rowed down a stream, or keeping a torch lit in a pitch black netherworld to keep shadow creatures at bay. The variety in gameplay challenges handily matches the ever-changing scenery and twisting, surreal storyline.
The novel gameplay paradigm and highly unorthodox setting, likely too risky for a triple-A production, perfectly suit the single-A scale and direct download platform chosen for Zeno Clash. In fact, it's the sort of game that most likely never could have existed without the viability of this middleground. I hope that ACE Team is successful with Zeno Clash (and perhaps they are-- apparently the game was Direct2Drive's #1 download this week) and that other small, innovative development teams will be encouraged to stage their own wild experiments following this model. Zeno Clash is available on Steam and Direct2Drive for $19.99.
So What?
Alright, so I think these games are great, and you should play them. So what?
The point is that they demonstrate the amazing potential in the single-A space for individuality, experimentation, and immediacy. They sidestep many problems that normally plague boxed triple-A products-- problems like unfocused design, "safe" (boring, juvenile) settings and mechanics, overlong campaigns that nobody finishes, and inflated price tags-- delivering fresh, unique, and easily-digestible experiences that can reasonably be dived into, enjoyed, and completed over the course of a half-dozen hours or so, all for less than the price of a used copy of that big-budget blockbuster that came out a couple months ago. If the single-A space could expand from the current slow trickle of releases to dozens of titles released every year-- or every month!-- then single-A games might act as that bridge between bedroom indies and corporate blockbusters, giving emerging talents a place to shine, and all of us more, different, inspiring experiences to enjoy.
Is this a natural progression as more funding for independent teams becomes available and the barrier to acquiring the means of producing immersive 3D worlds is lowered? 15 years ago, pixel art side-scrollers were our triple-A blockbusters; now the one-man productions using this model are innumerable. Hopefully games like Zeno Clash and The Path (and Gravity Bone, and Flower, and so on,) are early glimmers of the successful intersection of immersive 3D and the indie mindset. And hopefully they're to be followed many, many more.
4.19.2009
Reorienteering: spatial organization in BioShock
Level design is communication. The constructed space itself needs to communicate the player's options-- where they can go, what they can do, how to progress. If the space doesn't adequately convey useful information, the player is lost.
Some games have less of this sort of information to convey than others. The player can assume that in a very linear, tunnel-like game, continuing to move forward is always the way to progress. As long as the designer communicates which way is forward (which door the player must exit through to continue) then the player will not be lost. On the other end of the scale are open-world games. The designer must clearly landmark destinations in the world, and the mini-map can be relied upon to lead the player there.
What about a game that lies more in the middle, like BioShock? Open-construction levels that the player can freely navigate, but that are made up of smaller, enclosed individual spaces result in a sort of ant farm arrangement. How does the designer keep the player oriented, and give them the information they need to easily navigate from one side of the level to the other?
These are my personal observations having spent a lot of time examining the levels from BioShock, and not any kind official process or information. These points mostly refer to the core systemic levels of BioShock: Medical Pavilion, Neptune's Bounty, Arcadia/Farmer's Market, Fort Frolic, Hephaestus, Olympus Heights/Apollo Square, and Point Prometheus.
Hubs & spokes
The most common high-level organizational strategy is the hub and spoke-- a large, central space from which smaller, self-contained spaces radiate. A straightforward example of this is the Medical Pavilion hub. You'll remember it as the place you first find the work of Dr. Steinman, and fight your first Big Daddy. The pavilion itself is large and open, with exits to the dental wing, surgery wing, funeral parlor, and so forth split off of it to all sides. However, the space is large enough to be partitioned throughout so that only a couple of possible exits can be seen by the player at any given time, as not to overwhelm them with too many simultaneous options.
As the player passes through the hub, they choose one possible exit and explore the space beyond it. Once this spoke has been explored, the pavilion acts as a reorienting space-- the player may think "alright, I'm done with this area. How do I get to the other parts of the level?" They backtrack through the spoke arriving back at the pavilion, which is easily identifiable. At this point the player only has to walk around the outer edge of the hub space to find exits to the rest of the possible spokes.
In this arrangement, minor spaces are always closer to major spaces than they are to other minor spaces-- the player always passes through the hub to get to another spoke. The player never proceeds directly from spoke to spoke, getting lost without an identifiable anchor space to reorient themselves by. The terminal point of any small explorable space is always just a short lifeline away from the major anchor space.
Consider this in contrast to an even distribution of small spaces that are all interconnected: if the player is on the far side of the level and wants to return to the place they started, they must pass through a succession of small, evenly-weighted spaces to return there. How does the player know whether they're making progress? How do they keep from getting turned around? The player must essentially memorize how each spoke is connected to every other. Even distribution of space results in a labrynthine construction that works against the player's sense of direction. Hub and spoke construction guarantees that even if the player is wandering blindly they will soon arrive at a large, recognizable space they've seen at least once before, and can reset their navigation from there.
Of course, this all goes back to principles of design for real-world public spaces. A shopping mall is laid out in this way-- short hallways branch off of a central concourse so that the visitor is never far from a large, central space that connects back to all the other minor spaces radiating from it. In BioShock, this is may be most recognizable in Fort Frolic, a large shopping mall in Rapture. Two main concourses are connected by a single passthrough, and all the shops, theatres and attractions branch off of these two major anchor spaces. When the player arrives at a dead end while exploring the tobacco shop for instance, they need only wander back the way they came until they reach the central atrium, from which they are reoriented and all their other options are open-- the Fleet Hall theatre, the casino, the strip club, etc. In Hephaestus it's the circular walkways ringing Hephaestus Core; in Apollo Square it's the large central courtyard containing the gallows, and so on.
The player's comprehension of an open-construction level is like a lifeline trailing behind them. If there's no central reorienting space, the player has nothing to anchor their line to; if the minor spaces radiating out from the anchor are too convoluted or arbitrarily interconnected, the player's lifeline gets tangled and they have no idea how to get back to their anchor point. A successful open-construction level is one where the player can be confident that their lifeline will always lead them back 'home,' from which they can cast out again, safe to explore new territory without being left adrift.
3.15.2009
Exclusive
The April 2009 issue of Game Informer magazine features the first big preview/reveal of BioShock 2. Check out the generous 10-page spread to find out how Rapture has changed since your last visit, who you play in the game, and just what this Big Sister thing might be. Available on newsstands now.
3.08.2009
A worthy model
Flower is a sensational game.
And by that I mean to say that it is a great game, but also that its purpose is to transmit a physical sensation of gliding on the wind. It's successful at this, and certainly worth experiencing for oneself if you've got a PS3 lying around.
The game is unique but not without predecessors, and affecting without being complex. It's a simple, straight-forward experience which doesn't deny being a video game, but manages to instill feelings in the player that few games ever do. It's a game anyone can pick up and play by its very nature. And it's a model worth repeating.
Mechanics focused on transmitting a concrete, sensational aesthetic. Games are uniquely suited to putting the player into novel physical contexts and allowing them to be and do things that would otherwise be impossible. In your natural life you won't ever have the experience of swooping along the tips of the grass like a sparrow, but Flower aims to replicate the experience of gliding on the wind with as little remove as possible. It doesn't start at genre and work backwards, or with a series of plot points it wants to tell, but instead starts with a single core sensation it wants the player to experience-- one that most people have probably had in dreams-- and figures out what mechanical and presentational elements will make that feeling possible.
Discoverable progression elements and intuitive controls. The only inputs in Flower are tilting the controller to change the angle of your flight, and pressing a button to gain speed. The game features no explicit tutorial on how to get to the next level, but the method of progression is quickly and naturally apparent to the player. These are both inroads to legitimate accessibility. Where many games follow genre conventions to fulfill established players' expectations, or tune down the difficulty of their hardcore game to accommodate inexperienced players, Flower's concept and execution lend it that "pick-up-and-play" quality in a way that feels completely natural.
Small scope, high fidelity. You only do one thing in Flower-- fly around on the breeze through different locations. The game takes only a few hours to complete. There is no voice acting or any pre-rendered cutscenes. And yet, it's one of the most beautiful, high-fidelity games I've ever played. The game is a model of focus-- no extraneous mechanics, no interactive side-alleys for the player to spin their wheels in; no grinding or backtracking or punishing difficulty to arbitrarily extend the length of the game; no overreaching visual or story elements requiring player attention or graphical bandwidth to be diverted from the core experience. This restrained scope allows the game to be sold for only $10. And so Flower is a game inexpensive enough that most people might reasonably be willing to pay for it, a game accessible enough that most people might reasonably be able play it effectively, a game short enough that most players might reasonably finish it, and a game beautiful enough that most anyone might reasonably praise it in comparison with even the biggest AAA productions. It manages to be a budget game without going retro 2D or looking cheap, thanks to a singular focus on reasonable scope of design.
I would love to see more games that use Flower as a model, not in the copycat sense of being "flying games" or "games where you're the wind," but in the high-level approach that the production implies. Smaller, shorter, higher-fidelity, more focused, more sensate experiences that are affordable, accessible, and digestible. The primary obstacle to one designing a game with these principles in mind seem to be finding an engaging core sensation that fits the constraints. I can't wait to see the results that this challenge brings.
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