Category: On Games

these games I play

It had been a little while since I had last sat down and played any game for more than a couple of minutes, but this week’s Humble Bundle broke that streak. It was Proteus that really sold me, though I had enjoyed a couple free weekends with Awesomenauts and was curious about the gameplay of Hotline Miami despite the graphic violence, so I figured it a worthwhile purchase. And so, reserving Proteus for a special day, I put a couple of hours into the other two. And I’m not sure how I feel about having done so.

Awesomenauts has a familiar structure: two small teams of diverse heroes push across a symmetrical map with the eventual objective of destroying the other team’s base. It’s Dota, it’s League of Legends, it’s another multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), to use the generic term. What leads me to play this game more than those ones is the fact that the interactions of the player are run through an entirely different sort of interface. Rather than the top-down RTS-style that is the genre standard, Awesomenauts plays out as a side-scrolling platformer. This, like the first-person-shooter based MOBA Super Monday Night Combat, makes a far more attractive experience for me. They’re each a perspective I have greater comfort with and, perhaps because of their partial reinvention, each takes the liberty of juggling some of the genre conventions. I appreciate the shorter rounds, the limited (but still varied enough to be interesting) hero selection, and the streamlined item/ability purchases. They’re easier to get into, easier to get out of, and a bad game only costs you 10-15 minutes. Huge improvements, in my opinion.

So I played Awesomenauts for about an hour. It’s pretty to look at, and the characters are satisfying in all the different ways they run and jump and shoot and change the game up, but after those 4-5 games, I didn’t really feel any more content or excited than I did when I had started. I felt that in each of the games I played, I was just running the pattern that my character dictated. Pretty trivial, really: advance, retreat, or use one of three powers. There’s not a lot of strategic depth; instances of cooperation seem limited to the incidental, and the whole thing just feels like I’m stepping through a program. Maybe a bigger game like Dota would better succeed in this area, but in my experience that comes at the cost of a tremendous learning curve and very unforgiving play. Either way, I’m finding that I come away from MOBAs depleted and occasionally irritated. I just don’t think they can provide the sorts of experiences I’m looking for.

I moved on to Hotline Miami, which I had long been curious about but avoided purchasing because I didn’t like the explicit violence and the fact that the gameplay was predicated entirely upon it. But here it was in my hands, with a tidal wave of recommendations behind it based on its tightness of play, quick and visceral feedback, and brilliant sense of style. And it was exactly what I’d thought it would be. Very clean design; quick, satisfying iterations on established mechanics, and a growing sense of tension and dread the further one gets into it. All in all, quite well put together. Yet I am troubled. Similar to how The Binding of Isaac grew to make me quite uncomfortable in playing it, I felt that Hotline Miami crossed a certain line. Rather than exploring the central topic of violence, Hotline Miami relies on it as an end in itself. The only interactions you have available to you are to shoot, beat, or eviscerate the inhabitants of the game’s central levels. The gameplay is completely sustained by this and I recognize that, in wishing it otherwise, I’m dreaming of a completely different game. And so, of course, I’ll find one. But it’s worth considering what it means to willingly engage in these sorts of simulated violent actions.

I can’t deny that Hotline Miami is engaging, challenging, and viscerally stimulating. I’m loathe to say “fun,” however, because every moment I spent with the game was tinged with a certain disgust: “Why am I doing this? Why would I, as a player, willingly put myself through this which I find objectionable?” It highlights for me the darker side of games, that which compels people to continue playing in spite of themselves, that compels them to push past the point where they were having fun and into the realm of chasing the next drop of dopamine. Perhaps there’s some message at the end of it all, a clever remark about how you, like your character, never questioned your instructions, always dutifully carrying them out in the most direct way possible. But that, for me, is not enough to justify the patterns of graphic violence laid again and again over my brain in playing the game. Hours of firsthand experience are not undone by a critical epithet.

So I return to my own work.

<Boy, what expectations I’ve set for myself here…>

beyond gamification

As yesterday’s Barcamp wound down, I had a conversation about the limited reach of conventional gamification and the difficulties in designing game systems more intrinsically linked to a desired pattern of real-world behaviour. I found myself less than articulate in speaking to my views and ideas and went home running them over and over again in my head. Here, then, is my second attempt.

The idea of gamification, as I’ve seen it most commonly applied, refers to systems of incremental reward and recognition for following particular patterns of behaviour. As World of Warcraft grants you better and flashier items the more time you invest into it, in a real world workplace you might find stickers added to a chart when passing progressive milestones. Perhaps there’s something at the end of all of it (e.g. “Collect all the stickers and take a 3-day weekend.”) or perhaps seeing your progress visually tracked is the only provided reward. Either way, the promise of some reward is often enough to keep us going when we might have otherwise abandoned the effort long ago. “Just a little bit further, just do one more sequence; you’re so close to the next level.” Though these patterns do tap into some of our more primal processes (and are often incredibly effective for such), I think games are generally done a disservice by being reduced to such a shallow system of reward.

When thinking about what it is that games can do for us, one of my favourite rubrics is that of Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics (or here for Extra Credits’ more digestible video review of the topic). To highlight a few of my favourite axes from it, why do we limit our thinking on the compelling aspects of games to simple progression when we could harness people’s desires for fellowship? For creative expression?  For a sense of wonder? Could we change gamification from what it is in the present to an involved process by which people might derive satisfaction beyond a slow dopamine trickle? And, to extend the question slightly, can we harness these more meaningful exchanges to greater real-world ends?

Here’s where things start to branch out. There are those games that impose a system of interaction around real-world issues, having the player address problems in relatively direct ways. There are those that attempt to educate the player through simulation and immersion. There are those that exist to challenge your patterns of thought. This is certainly not an exhaustive list, but it does provide a starting point for thinking on the ways in which games can extend beyond themselves and beyond shallow patterns of reward. This is where I think attempts at gamification tend to come up short. I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to class this as a question of intrinsic versus extrinsic reward, but I feel like interactions in which your actions have a critical and more consequential effect, when they’re linked to a real-world topic, will see a greater internalization of the intended messages. Contrast this with a “game” that simply gives you a jellybean for each paragraph of a news brief that you read. There’s a marked difference between rewarding process and rewarding completion, and I think the latter fails to meaningfully tap into what makes games unique as a medium and compelling in entirely their own way.

So how do I hope to carve my path in this world of games? Can I make something impactful/meaningful/thought-provoking that simply couldn’t be done if it weren’t a game? Ha. There’s the million dollar question. For now, I think I need to hone my craft and just make games mindfully. If they’re fun and nothing else, I’ll be glad to have made a start, but certainly I hope to grow from there. Can I educate? Can I encourage? Can I inspire? If I don’t design explicitly for these objectives, can I still accomplish them? Hm.

rose-t(a)inted

It’s been far too long, so tonight I’m headed to a friend’s for some SNES and N64-era multiplayer gaming. Split screens, absurdly shaped controllers, and Nintendo fanboyism abounding. I have a soft spot in my heart for all these things; they each played their role in making me the game enthusiast I am today. So why is such a group reminiscence so occasional an event?

Well, I’m not sure nostalgia is enough. Many times I’ve gone back to the games I treasured when I was younger. Games like Ogre Battle 64, Diddy Kong Racing, Yoshi’s Story. And once I’ve peeled back the heavy layers of fond remembrance, I find that they’re not really all that good. Sure, there are some good bits: some neat mechanics, some memorable storylines, but overall they don’t really stand out (and certainly don’t warrant another playthrough today). The truth is, they were the games I had. I played the hell out of them because they were there for me to do so. And the more time I put into them the more I convinced myself that it was all worth it. And, at the time, it might have been. But now I’ve a world of game experiences at my fingertips and comparatively less time in which to explore them. So I tend to consider any purchase for a while before I commit and even then I don’t play most games for very long at all. More often I pop in, have a look around, and then set them aside. It’s not enough, anymore, to just have a game. I have to have the right one. Maybe this is why I’ve been spending more and more time on development?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that some older games have stood the test of time and are exceptional in their technologically-bounded simplicity. There are gems, to be sure, monuments in gaming history, and these are what I tend to play when such an opportunity like tonight arises. But, all the same, I don’t want to play them every day. Maybe not even every week. I want to take those experiences and all the warm tinglies I associate with them and build them forward into new expressions. To provide games that know their roots and grow forward from them; further advancements in interactivity and emotion and engagement.

Boy, I really tend to set myself up, don’t I?

face to face

Most of my board gaming happens with only one or two other people and as such, I’ve played a lot of 2-3 player games. I’ve enjoyed getting into the mechanics of each with relatively consistent opponents and refining our strategies over time. But the other night I played a few games with a group of 5, which not only let us play a few games that don’t often hit the table, but opened up a whole other axis of gameplay.

Our games for the evening were Santiago, Mall of Horror, and a cobbled-together homebrew version of Skull and Roses1. Perhaps it’s just coincidence that we ended up with these three, or perhaps it was inevitable given the lively spirit of the evening, but each of these games is interaction-heavy in a distinctly social way. Each lays down a set of mechanics that bring the gameplay off the table and into the space between people. Though you’re still considering board position, potential point gains, and the like, the majority of gameplay takes place socially through negotiations and bluffs and open proclamations of hubris. Rather than spiraling deeper and deeper into the board as the games went on, I found myself looking more deeply into the eyes of my opponents.

It’s a departure from my usual approach to design, but I’m very curious to explore this sort of interaction space. Some truly wonderful things have been done with it lately. But it requires a completely different sort of approach. Rather than thinking “how can these elements interact?” it’s the much more open-ended question of “how can these people interact?” It presents nearly limitless possibility in a direction I had only cursorily considered until now.

I suppose I’ll put it in the old rock tumbler for a bit and see what comes out.

—

1<If these were digital games, I’d link to the designers’ pages to ensure they got the traffic. But given the board game industry’s heavy reliance on the manufacturing and distribution benefits conferred through partnering with publishers, the designers often don’t have a prominent online presence apart from those of their publishers. So these links are all to the games’ respective BoardGameGeek pages, where many of the designers tend to hang out.>

entwined

Today is a quiet day. And so the world, conspiring to suit this, has presented me with There Ought to Be A Word, by Jeremy Penner. Try it out; it won’t take long. Even if you’re not the gaming type.

Wasn’t that nice? Well perhaps “nice” isn’t the right word. Worthwhile? Meaningful? Human?

I enjoy the explorations that Twine facilitates. Personal stories and isolated moments, unfolded one piece at a time. But what I like most about it is its unique ability to chase tangents of thought while staying on course. The above does this to an extent, but my favourite example of it comes in Michael Brough’s scarfmemory. In having the option to expand various aspects of a written scene, the reader can look more deeply into the elements that intrigue them without losing focus on the narrative. Or, if they’re so inclined, they can breeze on by and let the story carry them along undistracted. By giving the reader control over what zephyrs they chase, a story emerges primed to be read in many different ways.

So why not give Twine a try and go tell yours? It’s easy.

<I am serious. Are you an accountant? Write a short story about being an accountant. Are you a mom? Awesome. Write about it.>

don’t let the money make you

I was reading again Daniel Cook’s thoughts on pricing and the model he chose for Triple Town. His focus on achieving long-term sustainability as a developer is an interesting one. Certainly, a product that you can never actually buy that instead asks you periodically to pay for boosts has a longer financial lifespan. And, in the case of those that might choose a particular game as a “lifetime hobby,” as he puts it, you’ve got a more-or-less linear correlation between time people spend playing a game and the income it generates. I think he’s on to something.

But then I look at myself. Living rather simply with only a minimal income, I keep an eye out for game sales and generally avoid spending more than a couple bucks on any one experience. But in any of the various free-to-play models, I will almost always choose non-monetary progression paths over spending money on a temporary boost. There’s a psychological block for me in purchasing something that doesn’t last. The consequence of this, though, is that I end up not contributing anything to these devs I so appreciate!

I’m also a creature of novelty: as much as I reminisce fondly about games I’ve enjoyed, I seldom go back and play them again. There are so many new experiences emerging all the time and there has never been a game I’ve not grown tired of at some point. And so it would appear I’m not one of those “lifetime hobbyists” with any one game, either.

Am I anomalous? Are these models just not suited for an errant consumer like me? Or would it serve my future marketing efforts to more fully embrace these approaches? “Games as services” still feels strange to me. It’s a marked departure from the history of non-video games. Is it what people want? Or is it what the market requires to ensure adequate compensation for developers?

Ack; I just want to go back to thinking about design.

dreamspace

  • “What would this game be like if I had that sweet item?”
  • “What could be behind that mysterious curtain?”
  • “What if I could do x and y and z?!”

In the playing of so many games, I spend a lot of time thinking about where I’m headed: what to do next, how my character/avatar will develop, and what the consequences of my decisions will be. I’m invested in the progression that the game has laid out for me, that series of goals either explicit or tacitly allowed by the mechanics. And as long as these goals keep coming, as long as their promises of the new are novel and exciting, I’m likely to keep playing. But if there’s too much in the way that doesn’t reward me in some way (my favourite rubric here; longer but well worth it for the imagination fuel), I’ll never get there. I’ve spent countless hours thinking about possibilities within games that never did (and in some cases never could) amount to anything. But that doesn’t diminish the pleasure I experienced in dreaming of them.

It’s an aspect of games that is not often discussed (at least not in these terms): the degree to which they stay with us and impel us to dream within their worlds. It’s the root of longitudinal investment in (loyalty to?) a game and, as with most things, can be leveraged for good or for evil. It can come from setting or system or story and last even beyond the point where one has put the game down for good. I still think a lot about Dark Souls.

And so it is with ideas in general. Dreaming up games is the fun part, from conception to those design discoveries that transform the way you think about the whole project. Where I get bogged down is, again, in those long stretches devoid of reward. The critical difference here, though, is that I can make sure that the treasure at the end is worth it. Or, as I seem to be doing lately, I can work on a million different projects at any given time so I’m constantly dreaming about something!

(but not making much progress on any one of them…)

to put a sword in my hand

Just over a decade ago, the game running constantly in the background of my mind and the one that I would rush home from school to play was Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. The single-player campaign was forgettable (especially in comparison to its predecessor); what had me hooked were its online duels. Forgoing the more chaotic free-for-all arena fights, duel servers were set up to rotationally allow two players to duel, lightsabers only, while everyone else watched. The winner stayed to fight another round while the loser was swapped out with the next player in line.

For a time, this seemed incredible to me: switching fighting stances on the fly, moving/jumping/rolling all around the arena, and always keeping your finger primed to mash if you got into a saber lock. I was caught up in this simulation of swordfighting: the responsiveness, the dynamism, the viscerality of it all. I felt it was the closest I’d ever had to a “true dueling experience.” And then I realized the absurdity of it all. The best players were not good duelists, they were simply good at entering the button sequences required to pull of special moves and exploiting their opponents when they fumbled in doing so. When this realization settled in, I felt silly. Here I was, thinking I was experiencing the thrill of swordfighting when all I was doing was mashing keys.

But this isn’t an entirely fair assessment. What I had more accurately been doing was experiencing some of the thrill of swordfighting through abstracted engagement. A click of the mouse is a far cry from swinging a sword, but if the effect is the same (albeit in a simulated form) and its consequences believable, surely it’s not without some of that responsiveness/dynamism/viscerality that swept me up in the first place.

This week I’ve observed a similar pattern in myself playing Infinity Blade II. “I can dodge and block and parry and it’s all so intuitive and natural!” But still all I’m actually doing amounts to taps and swipes on this tiny device in my hands. Yet I’m excited by it: I’ve been given the opportunity to swordfight competently without any of the usual investment or risk. I’ve got enough options ready at my fingertips to feel like I’m responding smartly and dynamically to any given situation. And then I can watch someone else heft the weapon and take the hits and pretend that it’s me.

But it’s a delicate balancing act: take away too much of the player’s investment and consequence and they no longer feel engaged. Pile on too much of these and they feel overwhelmed. There’s a thin line to tread in simulating experience and what we want, I think, is to have the bulk of an experiential payoff available to us after a relatively trivial exertion of effort. This is why Guitar Hero caught on as it did: by reducing the guitar-playing experience to timing and button presses and tying correct execution to rock-out soundtracks, I can feel like a rock star without having to climb that ladder.

It might be “better” to actually learn to swordfight or to play the guitar; these real-world pursuits have auxiliary benefits that aren’t captured in game simulation, but it’s a whole heck of a lot less accessible. And what of the more fantastical? I’ll never have the opportunity to fight a dragon; that’s something I’ll only ever be able to enjoy through simulation. Perhaps, one day, when we achieve fully immersive virtual reality, I’ll have to reexamine this topic. But for now I am content with a little abstraction. Are they still games if they’re indistinguishable from reality?

consequential

Picking up the slightly older King of Dragon Pass the other day, I’ve been just delighted by the intricate relationship of all its moving parts. If you’re not the link-clicking type, the game is one of managing a clan of fantasy barbarians, guiding their larger governance decisions as they navigate a world of god magicks, tribal relations, and tradition. I’ve been drawn in deeply in part by its rich setting, but much more so by its patterns of delayed and often obscured consequence.

The game is very explicit in its presenting the player with choices to be made, but keeps its hand hidden as to where each choice will lead you. Many of the game’s internal calculations are concealed completely and I’ve found the best way to succeed is to understand the beliefs of my people and act intuitively based upon them. Does that not sound brilliant? This system forces the player to invest in the lore of the game and honestly think through each decision, not knowing if it’s a trivial one or if it will come back to haunt you several years down the road. This leads you, as a player, to justifiably feel as if each decision is a critical one.

Playing too Michael Brough’s (excellent) prototype 86856527, I’m reminded of how a well-made roguelike will force a similar gravity on a player. You must keep the rules of the world in the forefront of your mind as you make each move, else you’ll fail swiftly and irreversibly. What distinguishes the structure of King of Dragon Pass is how these rules are tucked away within the legends and the history of the world setting. Only by buying into your tribe’s religion and dogma can you hope to act in their best interests.

It makes me think about how educational games might improve upon their frequent block-of-text/minigame alternations. It’s not enough to force a player to regurgitate learned trivia; where meaningful engagement comes in is when a deeper understanding is required to progress. It’s a real art, though, to wed this with compelling and rewarding game mechanics. But King of Dragon Pass does this and I now know more about their fantasy barbarians than I ever learned about those of the real world. Perhaps it’s the roleplaying aspect of the game which provides the backbone for this investment: by requiring the player to get into the head of their avatar, the learnings are based less on the system of the game and far more on the content. A victory, perhaps, for games as storytelling devices?

What would this system of consequence look like applied to other genres? What if Mega Man’s every shot could be tied to some potential future consequence? Would they come back four levels later to haunt him? Would the player start to think about their actions? How could a designer obscure the system enough for a player to look beyond the obvious patterns and deeper into the world setting? Ha! Perhaps Mega Man isn’t the right vessel to support this. But for games with a rich setting and tomes worth of lore, forcing the player to act in accordance with the rules of the world — as opposed to the rules of the game — could do a lot for their buy-in as well as the lasting intellectual impact of the game.

keep it simple, Sinbad

Playing Vlambeer’s Ridiculous Fishing (just released today!), I was reminded how unnecessary it is for games to be complex to be enjoyable. A simple concept coupled with satisfying feedback mechanisms can just as easily sweep a player up as an intricate story set in a nuanced and intriguing world can. They’re different satisfactions, certainly, but the interactive core of a game is perhaps more integral in the former.

So how does one take a simple concept and make it appealing? Well, in the case of Ridiculous Fishing and, if I may expand the discussion slightly, Super Hexagon, it has everything to do with execution. An idea is only as valuable as its realization, and in both of these cases a simple concept is tightened down to its core and then exhibited flawlessly. The graphics in both titles serve the gameplay, which is intuitive, quick to respond, and viscerally satisfying. You jump in and are instantly caught up in the interaction, equal parts challenging and rewarding, that leaves you playing again and again. And all this from mechanics that are, at their core, familiar ones! Dodge-based gameplay of both sorts has been around for a while, but seldom has it seen such polished vessels. And this is what makes both these games great: the developers understood how to best go about packaging these mechanics, making the experience a new and more rewarding one in doing so.

I’m led to the question, then, of how much of a good game is in the system of it and how much is in that developer oversight, that ability to see not only the system but everything else carrying it along. The sight, the sound, the feedback. The shiny bits. How should I, as a developer, balance my time between crafting systems and tuning in these little bits of polish? Ah, but with that question I’ve lost sight of how inextricably linked all of these elements are! Each serves the others and, were they developed in isolation, would only combine to make a mess.

So again I arrive at a familiar spot: just make games. Bear in mind all of the nuances that make the greats great, but above all just start putting things together. It’s when you dabble a little bit in every aspect that the really curious interactions start coming out. The mechanics might have initially stemmed from the theme, but in time the theme might shift to suit the mechanics. And so it is with art and sound and interface and every other tiny piece that goes into a project.

So the glorious tumult that is game design tumbles on.