Game Design Sketchbook

Zero Feedback: Henry David Thoreau's Walden: The Videogame (TheDustin)

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:26:26 -0700

Zero Feedback: Henry David Thoreau's Walden: The Videogame (TheDustin):

“I don’t have the guts to complete this game. Do you?” — February 28, 2010

Noyb’s remarks: “Nor do I. But as I’ve said before, creating a game you don’t intend a player to win is a valid way to express oneself. Instead of trying to simulate and digitally replicate Thoreau’s…

Love it.

Reblog if you're a game developer

Sun, 05 May 2013 14:16:01 -0700

callmemonamiral:

Whether you’re indie or AAA, for consoles or computer, I want to follow you and get to know you !

So sorry for the long period of quiet, everyone! I’m very busy working with my team on a new...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:45:00 -0700

So sorry for the long period of quiet, everyone! I’m very busy working with my team on a new game. Unfortunately this has more or less meant death for some of my older projects, and a major slowdown in critical theory output. I don’t have enough stuff together to make a real announcement just yet, but look for one soon! Expect this next game to be bigger, more interesting, and far more of an undertaking than anything I’ve made yet.

Rich Games

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:43:00 -0800

So here’s a definition: The richness of a game is a measure of its emergent properties, where games that produce more frequent, significant, chaotic, and patterned emergence (during gameplay) are more rich.

And an opinion: Richer games are more beautiful, interesting, and exciting.

And a thesis: Games that demonstrate greater interdependence of parts (systems, objects, players) tend to be richer.

Below the cut: a (partial) explanation.

I’ve been playing a good amount of tabletop games recently, and some the people I play with have been getting more interested in game design. I was asked to defend my low opinion of Red Dragon Inn and my high opinion of Settlers of Catan, and it helped me to think through some of my personal aesthetic preferences with games. And that’s all I’m comfortable calling it right now—an aesthetic preference—because even though I don’t care for Red Dragon Inn too much, I find that many people absolutely love to play it and even ask specifically for it when they come to our apartment. It seems inappropriate to call a game bad when people love playing it.

The thing about Red Dragon Inn is, most of the actions you take in the game essentially do a flat amount of damage to a single player. These actions do not change in meaning or significance too much until the final blow is dealt to a player—until then, each action means just about the same thing as the last. The changes that they make to the game state are ones that do not affect future decision making very much, and so the gameplay dynamics remain largely the same over the course of a game. The pattern of gameplay is stagnant and the (small) variance in dynamic between games results largely from the shuffling of cards instead of from player-triggered sequences of events.

In contrast, actions in Catan like building, trading, and moving the robber significantly alter the game’s possibility spaces for players. For instance, a new settlement for one player means changes in resource availability, routes for expansion, and robber movement that affect every player in the game. Even two players trading resource cards likely results in an eventual change to the future state of the shared map, thus affecting everyone’s game. As the map evolves, options and therefore strategies and therefore gameplay patterns shift in ways that I find highly interesting and maybe even beautiful.

The key to richness is the interdependence of parts. In Catan, players’ actions both rely on and alter a shared game space. Each action changes tremendously in meaning and effect depending on the current game state, and also changes the game state enough to affect following actions. This is also true in Red Dragon Inn, but it’s a matter of degrees. Catan has a significant factor more interdependence of parts than does Red Dragon Inn, and therefore is significantly richer of a game.

P.S. - Not only are rich games beautiful and interesting to watch and play, but they also require players to think on their feet more than their less rich counterparts. Because the strategies in rich games rely heavily on the unpredictable game state, players of rich games must be ready to evolve their strategies at a moment’s notice. This makes for more active, more exciting gameplay.

femfreq: Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:19:03 -0800

femfreq:

Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games

This video explores how the Damsel in Distress became one of the most widely used gendered clichés in the history of gaming and why the trope has been core to the popularization and development of the medium itself. As a trope the Damsel in Distress is a plot device in which a female character is placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her own and must then be rescued by a male character, usually providing a core incentive or motivation for the protagonist’s quest.

ABOUT THE VIDEO SERIES
The Tropes vs Women in Video Games project aims to examine the plot devices and patterns most often associated with female characters in gaming from a systemic, big picture perspective. This series will include critical analysis of many beloved games and characters, but remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects.

For more examples of the Damsel in Distress see our Tumblr for this series: http://tropesversuswomen.tumblr.com

Visit http://www.feministfrequency.com for more information, videos and a full transcript.

"There are plenty of people who think that playing chess is a terrible thing and that it will ruin..."

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 11:36:00 -0800

“There are plenty of people who think that playing chess is a terrible thing and that it will ruin your life if you get obsessed with it. And they’re not wrong. There is an ethical dimension, but I think that problem is there in every form of aesthetic culture. If you devote your life to playing the banjo and being a bluegrass musician, you also have to confront that – no one says to you, “To what end?” You better have spent your life doing something that has value to you. That is the real question of aesthetics. Part of what we’re saying when we make aesthetic judgements is: “How should I spend my life? How should I spend my time?” It’s not what you’re then going to extract from it to apply to something else to where it really matters. Those hundred hours are what really matters. If you’re not getting something of value from that, even if it’s a pleasure in pain, pleasure from submission to this larger system, a pleasure in destroying some of your leisure time in the same way that someone destroys their money playing the lottery. It all comes down to an aesthetic question: Is it beautiful, is it interesting, is it deep?”

- http://www.edge-online.com/features/frank-lantz-interview/2/

doing some visual development / color exploration for my thesis...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 21:47:19 -0800

doing some visual development / color exploration for my thesis game

Ni No Kuni: The Wizard's Companion

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:22:00 -0800

I’m about 12 or so hours into Ni No Kuni, and have just gotten both alchemy and my final companion. The game borrows from a lot of places (Pokemon), and I have to say there are some things about it that really bother me (awkwardly punishing combat), but the game’s ‘Wizard’s Companion’ is just about the coolest thing ever.

For those who haven’t played, the Wizard’s Companion is a thick book given to your character, Oliver, when he first begins his journey to sage-dom. Apparently, a special edition of Ni No Kuni was at one point available which offered a physical copy of the tome, but for those of us with the regular version it’s perusable through the main menu. It is literally hundreds of pages long, and can be virtually flipped-through page by beautiful page (although a table of contents also allows jumping around quite a bit). It contains sections on magic, alchemy, familiars, and just about everything else in the game, and is generally a mixture of world lore, gameplay tutorial, secrets/hints, and even key gameplay information.

One of the things that blows me away the most about it is the way it interacts with alchemy. In Ni No Kuni, alchemy recipes that are not learned may be used regardless, so long as the player is able to put together precisely the correct formula. And the Wizard’s Companion contains a large section with tons of recipes which Oliver apparently hasn’t put the time in to learn. So here’s the great part: the game doesn’t just give Oliver access to these recipes, just because he has the book. The player has to be Oliver, has to open their book, flip through the pages, compare what’s available with what they have in their inventory, memorize the formula, and attempt to combine the ingredients in the cauldron.

The result is that the act of reading the book and flipping through the pages becomes important gameplay, and the player actually gets to take part in learning to be a wizard. This is true in other areas of the game as well. For instance, by finding a familiar’s genus in the Companion, Oliver (/the player) can find out what that familiar’s favorite food is, which is a mechanically important bit of trivia—feeding a familiar their favorite food has real benefits. The familiar pages also list what kinds of materials different familiars drop, which can be very useful after having read in the alchemy section about a specific weapon you’d like to make.

Even better, mixed in among all of the important/exciting information are actual short stories, written in the world. And little lore-insets, just mingled right in there. And full-page illustrations of historical events, familiars, weapons, famous characters, etc. And awesome secret messages written in the Nazcaan alphabet, a decoder-ring style language with a reference sheet at the back of the book. This thing is awesome.

Ni No Kuni Gameplay Aesthetics

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:49:00 -0800

Ni No Kuni is primarily composed of three major gameplay modes: world traversal, zone traversal, and battle sequences. The broadest mode, world traversal, features an elevated, distant camera, fast character movement, and open areas which contain enemies, collectable rewards, and the entrances to zones. It is beautiful and scenic, but the player is removed somewhat from the characters and the action, allowed to float quickly across the world to eventually focus in on either a combat or a zone.

Zones (like forests, temples, and cities) occur as nodes on the world map. When approached, the player is brought into the second gameplay mode: zone traversal. This takes place in controlled, twisting paths, with planned rewards in the form of treasure chests, and with sometimes some sort of puzzle element. In addition, zone traversal is given a dramatically different feel by a low, near camera, and a lot of camera-occluding scenery which makes for extreme foregrounds and dramatic perspectival depth. Compared to the world traversal camera, this creates significantly more association with the characters and the actions unfolding. The zones punctuate the more distant world traversal with periods of focused intensity.

Within both world and (frequently) zone traversal, enemies occur as mobile nodes which react to player proximity and power, either by chasing the player, fleeing, or running in a fixed direction. When approached, the enemies will initiate a battle sequence, the smallest of the major modes, and the core, driving gameplay. Battle sequences are made up of (semi) real-time 2-dimensional navigation (around a very small area) and (very limited) spatio-temporal action-reaction strategy. The core of combat is in choosing when to attack (costs some health, does medium damage), defend (preserves health), heal (costs mana or food, returns health), use special abilities (costs mana, does significant damage), or manually avoid attacks (preserves stats).

The optimal flow of combat, so far as I can tell, is to defend when the enemy uses a special ability, and attack otherwise, healing when you are low on health. You default to attack, so your two primary choices are: Should I heal yet? and Should I defend now? To preserve mana and optimize damage dealing (and just for the sake of low patience) the player tends to ride some amount of risk on healing, waiting until they are too nervous about their safety. This creates a regular, looping pattern that breaks apart combat in predictable, player-controlled ways. In opposition to this pattern is defending, which is responsive and therefore somewhat unpredictable. In addition to watching their own health and planning their heals, the player must watch the enemy and be ready always to switch to defend in the case of a special attack. This keeps the player alert, and creates a secondary pattern. Thus, the two fundamental aesthetics of combat are planning/negotiating risk (from healing) and alertness/reaction (from defending).

In parallel to these two main dynamics, the player has the ability to decide the pace of their combat, either effectively halting it through manually avoiding attacks, or hastening it (at the cost of valuable mana) by using special abilities. This is key to making the gameplay responsive and accessible to player desire and mood: the game is fast when the player wants it to be, slow when they need a moment. It is worth noting that the one dynamic that manual avoidance does not suspend is enemy special abilities / responsive player defending. This means that, during combat (unless paused), the player is unable to escape the pervasive alertness aesthetic.

WIZARD BATTLE II: THE WIZENING

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:15:22 -0800

WIZARD BATTLE II: THE WIZENING:

Hey everyone! Here’s the TIGsource feedback page for my newest game! Link to the installer available at the destination.

GW2, WoW, and Perceived World Size

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 21:32:00 -0800

When I first heard about GW2, it was my understanding that it featured a single, persistent world, like World of Warcraft does. I was mistaken about this. The zones are sectioned off, with loading screens between. WoW was my first and longest-played MMO, so I wasn’t aware what a grand feature cohesive worlds are, but Tyria feels so much smaller than Azeroth (even though I don’t think the worlds differ much in size). I believe the loading screens have quite a bit to do with this, but also that ArenaNet made several other design decisions which dramatically limited Tyria’s perceived size: linear zones and pervasive fast-travel.

Loading Screens

First off, why do loading screens affect the perceived world size? My contention is that they exaggerate the borders between zones, which do exist in Azeroth, for instance, but are not quite so crisp and clear as in Tyria. This allows players to section the zones off easier in their minds, and interrelate them more simply, as separate parts instead of as a whole. However, the zones in Tyria are knit together. Players do (or may) move from one zone to another in a way that makes sense spatially. In comparison, there are large sections of the world of Warhammer Online which are almost completely unrelated spatially (outside of being placed in spatial relationships on a world map); these are much easier to section off than Tyria is, and do not actually feel like a single world at all. Tyria’s loading screens act like a less extreme version of this sectioning, but still allow players to perceive the world as a series of interconnected maps, rather than one large map (though I suppose this perception is accurate).

Linear Zones

Another way Tyria reduces its size is through the linear feeling of its zones. Many of the zones in Tyria are elongated rectangles which the player moves across from one end to the other while levelling. In a broad scope of gameplay, the zones end up being 1-dimensional: line segments. The zones squeeze out their spatial nature and (artificially) shrink world size, simply by not forcing the player to navigate the world in a second dimension on a larger scale than individual questing.

Whether or not other games fail in this same way is arguable. But WoW’s zones do tend to be more square in shape, and have more circuitous (and therefore disorienting and harder to reduce in dimension) progression-traversal lines. In general, I believe this results in fatter, more 2D-feeling zones in Azeroth.

Fast Travel

GW2 does not have mounts, like WoW does. This makes normal world traversal longer, and walking on foot across Tyria takes quite a bit of time. Of course, this means that Tyria is effectively larger, at least in feeling and as relates importantly to game mechanics. However, perhaps in order to allow convenient travel across the map, perhaps to act as a money-sink, GW2 players are permitted to pay a fee to portal immediately to almost anywhere they’ve travelled before. This completely annihilates the grandeur of Tyria, because players are always effectively just about everywhere they’ve ever been. Moreover, this form of travel has almost no spatial relationship (admittedly, travelling further does cost more, and this does help a bit). Tyria has been shrunk to an infinitesimal size.

The analogue in Azeroth, flight paths, which allow relatively fast travel between cities, do a much better job of preserving world size. For one thing, unlike teleportation, flight takes time, and takes longer for longer distances. For another, it takes the form of literal travel, in the game world. Moreover, the player can watch as their character moves across the world. If anything, flight paths probably exaggerate the spatial relationships and terrain of the map, although they do still reduce the effective size of the world, in terms of travel time.

Thoughts on Halo 4's Campaign

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:34:00 -0800

343 didn’t need to do much to succeed with Halo 4, and although they have some areas that lack, they did a few things right. For one, they have a good basic tutorial section, making the player learn to look around, interact with objects, move, melee, and shoot, all in controlled environments before allowing progress. And while the ladder-climbing section of this tutorial was extremely odd, I believe it’s justified in the end of the game (though still awkward). Unfortunately, the story, while perhaps not badly written or acted, was based on a bad premise, featured stunningly lame characters, and an overall rather disappointing plot; but I don’t want to spend my time on critical discussion of non-game-bound features like these. More importantly, the story given to move gameplay forward was composed primarily of obviously meaningless trivial tasks, in a classic, Doom-style key/door set-up.

Red Key / Red Door

Throughout the entirety of the game, but especially in the beginning, it is only the distant, large-scope objectives that matter—find the Infinity, stop the Didact, gigantic, obvious goals like that. One level lower, we find things like ‘turn off the shields,’ and one level lower than that, ‘destroy the three shield generators.’ What it becomes is a huge story that we kind of care about, but are disconnected from, and then a lot of techno-babble-justified little tasks we have to do to move forward. And honestly, it feels like they may as well just tell me to find the three pieces of the key to open the door to move to the next room. 343 even lays out the levels as three portals leading to three areas to complete three identical objectives, followed by the opening of a bridge or elevator to the following zone. It’s exhausting, obvious, and boring, and it drains the meaning from my actions.

Climbing the Ladder

Early on in, in the first few moments of the game, the player has to climb a ladder using quicktime-esque controls that seem contrived and tacked-on, like something that shouldn’t be there. The perspective changes, you have to dodge falling obstacles (so not relevant to Halo’s gameplay), and in cooperative mode, the second player is temporarily removed from the game. For a long time, it seems like that first intuition is right: if there are more events like that throughout the game, I don’t remember any until the very end. It isn’t until the final moments that the ladder scene is vindicated; because the final boss fight takes place in an extremely similar style. And that’s what I think the ladder scene is for: preparing the player for the final boss, priming them so that it is the first scene that feels out of place, and not the last.

But why make the last boss quicktime? For one, most shooters don’t lend themselves well to high-health enemies, especially not Halo, where a lot of the design revolves around making you feel like an unstoppable badass. But other games have done it: Borderlands does it, so what’s the benefit to the quicktime boss fight? Well, one complaint about game narratives is that while most narrative media (novels, films) speed up as the plot moves forward, the opposite tends to happen in games: they instead become more difficult, resulting in the player being stymied more as the story becomes more intense and their desire for narrative satisfaction increases. It can be extremely frustrating to be at the final dramatic moment of a game for days, or even weeks, while you are unable to defeat that last boss. Worse, people will quit games right at their climax because that last boss is just too hard. It doesn’t get a lot more disappointing than that. And often, that most difficult final moment will require dramatically different skills and play-style than the rest of the game has inculcated—generally a bad idea in game design.

With Halo 4 though, the lead-up to the last boss, that last level in the Didact’s ship, instead acts as the high-point of difficulty. Since it’s a relatively long level with many checkpoints, the player can progress incrementally through it, unlike in frustrating boss fights. Additionally, it continues the gameplay structure of the rest of the game, requiring only an incremental improvement in the skills required for every other level, rather than an entirely new skill-set. And when we do actually reach the Didact, instead of putting the narrative on hold, 343 makes sure that the final moment plays through, smooth and intense. Like the flag-jumping and castle-entering at the end of a Super Mario Bros level, much of our control is removed, and we are allowed to watch as we’re rewarded with a narrative capstone.

Overall, the end scene feels right, and it does wonderful things for the narrative flow of the finale; but the ladder scene still felt so wrong. Was it worth it?

the forest is coming along nicely! :D

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 23:28:38 -0800

the forest is coming along nicely! :D

Thoughts on Moving from Mass Effect 1 to 2

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 20:29:00 -0800

Level Design:

> Levels feel more tightly guided, with clearer indication of where to go next (arrows literally drawn on walls).

UI:

> Loading screens, mission success screens break immersion up (miss the elevators).

> Minimap pop-up and objective compass greatly augment linearity in level design.

Gameplay Systems:

> The combat has been made much more intense in terms of game feel (see gun noises, for example).

> Combat has also been made much smoother, with far better controls for squad management making the ring-menu less important and less frequently accessed.

> Combat has also been made less frustrating, with much more warning given before a player death.

> Combat has a more sustained pace, with the quick recharge of powers.

> Combat is more interesting, with level designs that require differing strategies and adaptability.

> Conversations have been made more active with paragon/renegade interrupts— the moral world exists in real-time now, and it’s way more realistic and engaging.

Narrative + Narrative Structure:

> Does a good job with narrative justifications for changes.

By showing your death and allowing several years to pass, ME2 provides a good reason to take your squad away and update your ship (and many other aspects of the game), and it makes it feel very genuine, touching, like everything they let you keep from the previous game is a huge boon instead of something you deserve.

> The overarching narrative structure feels more branched/complex, at least at first.

With classical games like chess the rules of the game are clear, elegant, systemically based. ME’s combat is like this—there are rules for how Shepard can interact in combat, and knowing the rules means knowing your options at any given moment. ME’s conversation systems are different. Like interactive narrative in general, the conversation system gives you your options explicitly, rather than having you derive your options from some system of rules. This generally is not as fulfilling as a player, since your options often feel arbitrary.

Mass Effect’s overarching narrative structure adheres to neither of these structures. It sometimes appears as a rule-based system, presenting Shepard as being able to do anything that would make sense in the context of the story. Unfortunately, at base, Mass Effect actually gives explicit choices. This leads to frustration in two ways: firstly, the game seems to make promises of rule-derived options, but then doesn’t follow through. Secondly, as an explicit-option system, the available options often seem arbitrary.

Story Delivery in Bioshock

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 23:09:00 -0800

Level Design
The levels in Bioshock are usually strongly directed, whether linear or branching. The direction and linearity are overwhelming in the tutorial section (as only makes sense). Later they become less obvious (though still frequently linear)—players are often thwarted from proceeding in what appears to be the forward direction, forced instead to take what seems to be a side-path until they find some important object, at which point they may return to pass through the locked door. Overall the levels are very highly polished, and serve mostly to create a well-guided tour through the world with a relatively small amount of player freedom. Unfortunately, what freedom is given tends to result in lost, confused, and frustrated players. This may be because frequently it’s not a true freedom (lack of primary objective), but more a lack of information. As such, Bioshock does best when its levels are well-controlled, with obvious indication of where to go next.

—

Story Organization
Bioshock’s story is organized largely around themes, side character story-threads, and locations. It is told primarily through audio diaries, wall art, scripted encounters, and cinematics.

—

Themes
Ayn Rand/Atlas Shrugged, industry & capitalism, art & science, free will & determinism, prosperity, celebration, desperation, depravity, progress, the unnatural …
Much of the story in Bioshock is guided or told through themes. For instance, constant references to Atlas (e.g. via the statues or the character) keep the Ayn Rand/Atlas Shrugged theme alive, and the overall sense of the world’s being a party gone wrong emphasizes the dualities of prosperity & desperation, celebration & depravity.

Story Threads
A secondary organizational tool Bioshock uses for its story is having many parallel, linked threads following many different characters. These threads are achieved mostly through audio diaries, which alternate between different characters’ stories/narration, revealing chunks at a time.

Places
Finally, spatial locality is emphasized by chopping Rapture into obvious regions (Medical Pavillion, Neptune’s Bounty, Fort Frolic). This organizes especially the play-narrative by chunking it into the narrative of each individual region. But it also provides linkages and chunking for the historical narratives, whether those linked/chunked narratives are told through wall art or audio diaries. The most important spatial relationship a piece of wall art or an audio diary in Bioshock can have is its status as a historical object of one or other of Rapture’s districts.

—

Audio Diaries and Wall Art
   > Spatially located
   > Optional, but obvious (modest design: these stories are not pushed on players)
   > Integrated w/ gameplay only in that they must be found in the world
   > Story structure: You found an audio diary and listened to it / There was something on the wall and you saw it

Scripted Encounters
   > Spatially located
   > Less optional, more obvious
   > Integrated with gameplay only in that they must be found in the world, observed, and then that some enemy must be killed.
   > Story structure: you found some splicers or whoever arguing or talking about or doing whatever, they noticed you, and you had to kill them

Cinematics
   > Spatially located (particularly so in Bioshock—videos in elevators, animated scenes in inaccessible but visible rooms, etc)
   > Mandatory
   > Non-integrated with gameplay (unless mere observation is to count as gameplay)
   > Story structure: some thing is happening and you are watching it

—

Bioshock seems more controlled and filmic, less impressive than I used to think.

Tell me why I’m wrong.

Can Art be Games?

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 14:07:23 -0800

Can Art be Games?:

udknovice:

A brilliant article written by the awesome Sophie Houlden. It explores the important question of whether Art will ever be as significant as games.

Narrative in Mass Effect

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 12:26:18 -0800

Narrative Structure:

> Overarching storyline: Commander Shepard hunts Saren

> Central sub-narratives (e.g. Noveria)

> Objectives (e.g. Get to Peak 15)

> Means (e.g. Reboot V.I., Reconnect cables)

> Gameplay: Combat, Conversations, etc.

> Optional sub-narratives

> …

Sub-structures frequently have a branched structure, so that, for instance, there seem always to be many sub-narratives which may be chosen between. All narratives eventually boil down to the use of central mechanics (or sometimes weaker mini-game things) for their actually enactment. The deep, nested narrative structure lends tremendous meaning to the gameplay.

Story Delivery Methods:

Story is primarily delivered through the two central mechanics of the game: combat and conversation. Playing a military commander with a significant amount of political heft, it makes sense that the two main mini-narratives that are played out are:

> Combat: which tells fast, dramatic, high tension stories about Shepard’s battles, and

> Conversation: which tells slow, deliberative stories about people and their complicated issues (especially moral ones).

These two narrative types are both spatially located in the same universe, and so resonate off of each other in important ways. All combats and conversations add and draw from the same world history, and are connected in a very physical way. Because of this connection, the physical World Design becomes very important in the telling of the story. This is especially obvious in the Citadel, which does such a good job with its physical layout, as well as its associated visuals and sounds (I love the city-at-night loading screen).

The world history is further augmented by the presence of the Codex menu option, which gives more explicit explanations of everything. Importantly, codices are only unlocked by finding a relevant, spatially located trigger (e.g. looking out the ship windows to get the codex entry on what FTL travel looks like). This helps to link them more clearly with the physical presence of the world.

I would argue that compared to many other games, especially FPS games, level design takes something of a back seat in the narrative here. It is primarily relevant only for combat, which is only half (or less) of the gameplay. And even in combat, spatial awareness is relatively less important in Mass Effect than many other games, since (as an RPG) there are a significant number of non-spatial factors to combat, like cooldown management, squad selection, stat allocation, and gear. Regardless, the layout of levels certainly does influence play narratives in ways that are worth noting. For instance, it modifies the flow of combat so that designers can achieve fast pushes or stagnant firefights, and can modify the amount of pressure on the player at a given time.

Finally, there are relatively frequent cinematics throughout the game, primarily after the completion of a narrative sub-structure or as setup for an event. For instance, cinematics tend to bookend important boss fights, first setting up the importance of the event, then giving some scripted narrative resolution to the preceding task.

Games are not Movies, they are Games

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 13:04:34 -0800

guilelessmonk:

Movies have a lot to teach games. Movies, like games, are a medium that is a composite of other mediums. Music, writing, photography, theater all are part of movies and yet it is its own thing. In the same way games are a composite of so many different arts forms and yet we need to remember that they are not them. It is important to learn from them, but it is also equally important to remember what we are actually making. So often games try to be movies, and it just makes for a boring game.

In movies, the central conceit is “Show, don’t tell”, which basically means don’t tell the audience something but show that thing happening. Don’t have the characters say “We sure are best friends who would never betray each other”, show that bond. Show them joking with each other, trusting each other with secrets or sharing knowing glances. Games have a different central conceit, “Do, don’t show”.

Read More

I wonder if this is always true. I’m not positive the Castle end-of-level scenes in Super Mario Bros would be improved if the player walked through them on their own. Obviously I might be wrong, but I think that the sense of accomplishment is augmented by the loss of control. On the other hand, I think it would be a mistake not to let the player jump onto the flag on their own. Hmm…

I'd argue that music can deliver a story as well, although it's mostly up to player interpretation. Playing a sad theme in a normally happy area conveys a different message than cheery music would. Interesting tumblr btw

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 08:13:28 -0800

Hey, thanks for the reply. This is interesting, I forgot about music entirely. I’m thinking that color and texture are mechanically very similar to what you’re talking about: some passive tonal (non-gameplay) presentation that modifies player narratives. I’m gonna try to add it to the list!

Methods of Delivery for Story in Games

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 14:12:00 -0800

(A partial list, probably)

1/ Cinematics:
> passive (not alterable via interaction)
> mandatory (come without the player having a real choice in the matter, are expected to have attention paid to them)
Also fulfilled sometimes by text, as in the end of Doom E1.

2/ Journal/Codex Entries:
> passive
> optional (given in a very unassuming way, and are not necessarily expected to be read)
Essentially optional cinematics.

3/ Core Gameplay:
> very active
> frequently spatially located
> frequently highly emergent (relatively unplanned, highly reactive to player input)
Core gameplay is the delivery method by which the player is told their own story, the story of their own gameplay session, or of the moment-to-moment existence of a character they’re playing.

4/ Level Design:
> sometimes active
> spatially located
> mandatory
Level design uses spatial or temporal arrangement of gameplay elements to impact the player’s experience of the core gameplay.

5/ Conversations:
> active (alterable via interaction)
> frequently optional
> frequently spatially located
Conversations may also be a core gameplay feature, in which case there may be more mandatory conversations. However in general a game with mandatory conversations will usually have many more optional conversations.

6/ Missions:
> usually mostly passive (the overall narrative of the mission is not alterable by the player)
> frequently spatially located
> may be mandatory (main missions) or optional.
Even though the player must act to unroll mission narratives, and even though the relatively unimportant details of how the mission is carried out are highly active, overall mission narratives are usually very rigid and unalterable (farmer asks you to kill 10 wolves, you kill 10 wolves, farmer gives you 50 silver in return).

7/ World Design (architecture, flora & fauna, geography):
> passive
> spatially located
> optional (player doesn’t have to intellectually engage with it, although they might have to look at it)
World design tells the story of a place through the design of the place itself. The stylization of architecture, or the layout of geographical indicators and local flora, tells the player something about the place they’re in. Depending on the game and the player, that story may be very lightweight, or it may have a lot of depth.

8/ Books/Wall art:
> passive
> optional
> spatially located (exist persistently in the environment of the game)
By being located in the world, these objects are able to reflect on the world in a more natural, physical way than cinematics and journal entries, which can locate themselves in the world only indirectly. A more focused, potentially richer sub-section of world design. Also, very similar to journal entries, but spatially located.

9/ Tonal Presentation (thanks, heartvine):
> passive
> non-gameplay
> mandatory?
E.g., color and music. Tonal elements modify the way players understand the content of the stories they are given, whether the stories being modified come through core gameplay or through other, embedded means like cinematics. They may also tell stories on their own, without content, but those stories are likely to be highly abstract. Tonal elements are so hard to strip away from the remainder of the experience that they may be seen as a mandatory/forced delivery method.

Let me know what I’m missing, or where I’m wrong.