Lets Play: Design Goldmine on YouTube
So about two years ago I discovered the Lets Play phenomnia on YouTube thanks to Kikoskia and his awesome X-Com playthough. Which was a game I love and have played many times. I quickly discovered this is a design goldmine.
Go to YouTube and search for "Lets Play" right now.
Key Uses
- Discover or Investigate Games
- First Timers: These are pre-compiled amatuer focus test.
- Experienced: Shows you details of the game you would have never seen.
- Low Investment: Financially and Time-wise
Some tips on how to best use these.
Save Time
My primary use is for games I don't have time to play, or old games I missed out on and don't have the system for. I try to play as many games as I can but time being so precious it's hard. I find I can watch these while doing other things at home. Also the information is richer in many contexts. Though you do miss out on the first hand experience.
The Commentator is the best Source
Switch Often, Sample as many as possible. Whether a game veteran or a first timer their stream of conciousness is so useful. Seeing parts of the game they are frustrated with or just don't click with is so brilliant. Also with experienced players you get so much value out of the community in such a condensed format. I watched playthrough of Cave Story which exposed me to so many things I was unaware of having played the game myself.
Don't Read the Comments
It's a waste of time and in some cases will make you super sad. Seriously stay away. Maybe read the top rated comments, and that's it. Too much time wasted.
Games you Suck at or Don't Enjoy
Well these guys do enjoy them, and are the audience. So let them get you excited about it and watch their skills show you the game as it's played by the community.
Volume low but audible, Treat it as work
The fact of the matter is most of the production values are terrible and the voices are not brilliant. Sometimes I hear a grating American accented voice (Sorry USA but you are high pitched in some parts of your country). Also sometimes the profanity gets bad and I have to just stop, but hey there are loads of clean ones out there.
These are your audience, not your Peers
Okay firstly that's a great thing because the raw opinion is so useful. Though as a designer you've learnt (or will learn) to apply a sanity filter to raw consumer feedback. Remember to apply it in this case, and if you need to learn how well this is a good place to start.
Overall I cannot recommend this trend highly enough to designers as a useful research tool.
Question: Any other designers watching Lets Play videos as research?
Nano, Leads and Projects
Level Up - Scott Pilgrim style
On reflection of this month my NanoWriMo project which I was really keen on is just not going to fit into my spare time at the moment.
In better news I'm now Lead Designer at GameLabs Jagex. Wooooot! All quite amazing to be honest. Some amazing and exciting stuff is on the go there now. Wish I could say more, and a bunch just happened.
So it means my time is getting sucked up. Hence no NanoWriMo and my October project falling by the wayside. I do want to carry on tinker but they will be things I can finish in a day or maybe a night or two.
So until I have some tinker bits to show 
P.S. Those blog posts I was sitting on are not going to be published. Not comfortable with them at this stage. Needless to say there is a lot I want to say and some of it may anger people.
Imperfect Information
I'm loving Starcraft 2 at the moment, and it got me thinking about my love of imperfect information in games design. I strongly recommend A Game of Thrones (board game) and Frozen Synapse, which also introduce blind simultaneous action which make it even more interesting.
So in a game with Perfect Information such as Chess, you know all information about the current state. Rock-Paper-Scissors is the simplest example of blind action. It's such a stupidly simple game but with practice and knowledge of your opponent you can increase you win chances. Balancing intelligence gathering and predicting other players actions are such deep interactions.
This is also what makes Poker so exciting is the reading of the little tells, something which is only possible face to face. So the meta game becomes part of the game which is so interesting. I notice this more and more watching high level Starcraft games. What I like even more is the option to use in game resources to gather information.
That balance between a blind massive push and a much small precision strike is so invaluable. It's what makes war such an interesting study.
The thing which makes games dull is when they become solvable. Introducing randomness makes the task more difficult by introducing probabilities but chance can counter skill leading to a less interesting game, in some cases. Imperfect information is a much harder solution space to map, and once the meta game interacts we go onto a whole new plane of interactions.
Currently I'm working on my Data Driven Dialogue system which at present is a perfect information system. Though there are planned and roughly sketched modules for dissemination, deception and mutation which I'm squeeing with joy about whenever I run them through my head. It's doubtful that those modules will be done by the end of the month but I plan to make them core components of a game I'm planning.
So next time your playing an imperfect information game, especially with people you know well. Stop and think how much information gathering your doing in-game and how much is on a meta level based on your opponent's psyche.
Do Tutorials suppress Play?
So I was listening to Another Castle interview the extremly interesting Eric Zimmerman. They were talking about the subverssive nature of play when my brain started drifting to tutorials, thinking about Limbo. Then I realised that not once on Glo did we ask, do we need tutorials?
Now I know the indie and art games scene has been promoting this concept of subversive play for a long time but I ask you how many developers question the need for a tutorial?
Too many paths
Back in the NES days we had a d-pad and two buttons. The exploration space was tiny and welcoming, the modern game-pad or keyboard offer too many options of exploration. Think of giving a child a set of water-colours, oil paints and pencils along with a blank piece of paper. Often the huge scope scares them and if it doesn't bore them the resulting mess is epic. Think then of a child with a small set of crayons and a colouring book with rough outlines. They are much more keen, the results are better and often they will totally subvert the original drawing.
The rise of the touch interface, a very natural playful interaction and hopefully Kinetic give us a much better understandable scope of play.
Meta Rules vs Mechanical Rules
We made Petanque for the Wii in which we implemented the strict meta-rules of Petanque. Now these rules are very conceptual, like don't step out of the circle or don't throw the ball out of the white lines. There is no real feedback for breaking these rules so there is no way of learning them through play. If you give kids a football they will learn to kick, run and pass through play. It is only months or years later that they are introduced to the stuffy artificial rules we make for the game.
Now imagine instead of white lines we had a massive cliff going into lava, and instead of a circle we had a massive ball and chain. Mechanical rules and feedback, which we could implement in the game space. Now the rules of the game can be learnt much more easily through play.
But I'm confused
I suggest that tutorials are often compensating for overly complex rule sets which are not consistent or evident. For instance in Glo many people struggled with the Frogs. By the end of the project the art and behaviours of the frog were much more clear, and the levels better at exposing them. Though when we first hit the problem the obvious solution was to make sure the tutorial was better and clearer.
I now think we could have removed all the tutorials in Glo, provided a help section if people got truly stuck and removed the post level feedback screen. It would have resulted in a much stronger experience. One in which you can play and explore the game freely.
But the publisher
As Braid pointed out they had a nightmare getting their menu system accepted because it subverted accepted established systems. Mircosoft's stance is understandable, even praise worthy in its goal to keep a consistent experience but ultimately Braid was better for its exploratory nature.
Publisher's will often request non-expertianal things like stats screen, known mechanics, and tutorials. This is not because they are evil but because they wish to reduce risk. It is a games designer job not only to convince the development team of these new ideas and methods of subversive play but also the publisher.
What do you think?
This has all exploded in my brain today, coalescing from many different sources and I still haven't finished processing it. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Gun ho Gimmicks
There is no magic, silver bullet, secret recipe or hidden formula. These words have been spoken many times by more successful, intelligent and thoughtful people than me. Yet people still seem unable to listen. Quality is the primary thing. It can be called passion, drive, craftsmanship or love but the result is the same.
Back in high-school I remember everyone readying their final year pieces. The really amazing pieces looked practically finished by the half way point of the year. Yet they did not slow down, they just worked harder. You thought it couldn't get any better they would work for hours improving a spot here, a line their. Blending a few more colours there. In the end the work shined with the effort.
The only talent or magic that is needed is experience, and a desire to polish. The ability to put in hours on hours on a work without halting.
So next time you are working on something, or someone suggests a feature. Ask yourself if it adds values. Next time you think something is finished, search until you find the flaws. No work is ever finished, and yes money, time and sanity requires we end a project at a point. So let's keep the love and quality and leave the gimmicks to cheap and tacky.
Thoughts...?
GUI Work
GUI Work
The big choices I’m facing at the moment and playing around is on two fronts, GUI Behaviour and Render Pipeline.
Fighting through some choices… will post more shortly
Eternal Struggle
I have been struggling with this concept ever since I was eight. Narrative vs Ludology. By Narrative I mean story-telling and Ludology I mean pure game play.
Introduction
You see when I was around six my brother took me through my first roleplaying games and shortly afterwards I tried to run my own game of Dungeons & Dragons box-set. My epic story never left the village and bells were rung, chickens chased and silliness ensued. I played endless choose your own adventure books but non of those tales stick in my mind like other stories I read.
You see from a very young age I always had two ambitions, to perform and play. I've always wanted to make games since typing in code into C64 out of magazines. I've always been a story teller, directing my first public play when I was eight (it never went ahead but we rehearsed filthy rhymes, "She whipped her pistol from her knickers."). I started programming for the first time (for real, not copying) when I was eight in C.
So this struggle between playing and telling has always been present. Now I should say meta-narrative or player narrative is fully compatible. The conflict comes in delivering a story with that game. So back to the key point role-playing.
It's been my passion always as it seems to combine both my loves and be social. South African role-playing at cons is much more story based than the conventions I have seen in the UK.
Role-playing Solution
Now excluding the dungeon crawl and roll-playing, those are without real depth. There are two major forms in South Africa. Campaigns and Convention Modules. Unlike US & UK cons the South African modules have pretty strict conventions. Between 4-7 players, almost always 6. All rules and required elements must be included in the module. The player characters are pre-written. The GM only see's the module an hour before the game. The module is run simultaneously in one slot.
The campaign however is much looser but much more complex. Over the years I've learned the secret to a good campaign is to play with the players. Don't write over-arching plots instead make everything character base and weave it around the players actions.
This means you can deal with themes and even setup scenarios but you must ultimately cater to the players and adapt.
Now in a module you have a story and script which you need to stick to. A bit of variation is required. The great modules are spoken about for years, like good films. Also because of the simultaneous play throughs story, plot twist and grand tales have more impact. Some flexibility and deviation but ultimately you tell the story. This is mainly achieved by having pre-written characters which have motivations written. The main ingredient is good players and a gm.
So a South African module seems to be closest to my solution.
Digital Divide
Okay we have two main problems in the digital world. Most game players are uncooperative bastards and we don't have the social backbone to remove their awfulness. Put a few people in a room to discuss a thing and they will be civilised. Put those people in a chat room with pure anonymity and they are awful.
The next problem is a good GM has a very useful toolbox.
- Advanced decision making with social context
- Content generation on the fly
- Multiple detailed player input channels
- Library of social knowledge, experience, dictionaries and research
Okay the first item means we need an AI or system which emulates it which is still years out of our reach. Though not more than twenty.
Content generation, we have some good work in this area but the main problem is method. When using the written and spoken word a sentence can make a vast landscape and a thing does not exists till mentioned. This is used more times than you would think. Unfortunately on an AV display all things must be defined before it can be display. We cannot materialise a door into a wall if the player has already seen that wall.
A digital player only inputs conscious input through a controller. Conscious input is meaningless when measured against the VAST amounts of information you can read in their unconscious signals. The best moments come from exploiting this input. In a digital world we would need a microphone and camera to watch the player (Natal I'm looking at you) but also read and interpret extremely advanced tiny motions. The main advantage here is if we get more advanced we can measure heart-rate, biometrics and brain signals. So for the moment we are behind the curve but in the future??
Finally the library of knowledge. Well that problem is easily solved. We could plug all games into a vaster database than any human could learn in a lifetime. The trick is to get a computer to comprehend the vast amount of data. See the first point.
Conclusion
I do plan to write more on this based more firmly in what is achievable today. For the moment however you see where my eyes are looking and what my motivations are.
Massive Narratives pt 5
News and Bits
Hi All, really working hard at the moment to get that last little bit of polish onto Encleverment. As anyone who talks to me can tell I really do love this little game and want to use every last bit of time I have left to squeeze those little bits and pieces in and shine them up.
In other news I'm going to be back on stage in front of an audience for the first time in five years. Admittedly it's doing improv comedy and not one of my plays but hey it's a big step.
I've also been following an online design course being run over at Game Design Concepts. It's shaping up nicely so far and that's what my next post will be covering. This will be the last Massive Narrative post for a while. My brain needs a break from it. So onto the main event.
Problem: Why Hello there
"I'm the ultimate (fighter / magic user / space ship pilot) in the known universe." Nothing wrong with that statement correct (chosen one problem aside). These skills are embedded in game mechanics and pure numbers. What if a (description of unattractive person removed due to lengthy use of adjectives and possibility of causing offence) stood up and claimed to be the greatest seducer of them all. Red light's flashing in your head? Add a klaxon and you get the casting problem of LARPS.
Right off the bat I will say this. Perfect player's don't need a system, but the truth is there is no such thing as a perfect player. The worse the player and the more meta-game focused the worse your nightmares become and the more complex things get. Sad but true, especially with fuzzy system's such as social interaction.
LARPs are mostly social in nature and not very abstract, so character's with immense social skills can be hard to impossible for socially inept or inappropriately cast player. This however is more than a little unfair, as the combat / power monkey in the corner rolls a dice or draws a card to show their AWESOME MIGHT!!!
It's a tricky problem to solve. I once ran a LARP with a mobster background. The writer had given one character a "power card" which read, "You Trust Me". There was another which was "I've seduced you". I saw the Trust card used once, and the other card never got use except as a laugh after the game. Now player's are accepting of wild fantasy but the act of socialising is so deeply ingrained that over-coming it tricky.
Most LARPs solve this problem with casting. On a side note the appearance issue can be solved by virtual avatars for digital versions. The real problem is converting the simulation of social interaction into the game of social interaction. You see games let us do things we would never be able to do in real life whether it be sword fighting, flying or using magic. Games best quality in terms of entertainment is removing that pesky barrier to entry called training.
I will say now I have never seen what I consider to be a workable solution in a LARP.
Power Cards
Cards which are either many use or one off which have a social command on them like, "You Trust Me". Player's often fail to adapt and this leads to de-railing and meta-gaming with bad players.
Favour Tokens
Each player is given tokens, which they can give as a sign of goodwill, trust, or bargaining chip with a player. The player holding said token can call in a favour or action, depending on the number of tokens. The player MUST perform these acts. Once the act is perform the player may elect to reclaim the tokens. This works quite well when combined with a few other mechanics as the social currency gave players a feel for social bonds.
Player's felt better with the token than the cards. They felt more in control, even though some mechanics "stole" tokens. Best friends tended to have a lot of each other's tokens, the court Casanova collected quite a few (quickly spent normally). I also attribute some of their success to players like shines and bags that go clink.
Social Combat
Two player's are socialising and they enter a conflict situation of some sort so they enter combat (supervised by a ST). It can take various forms but it normally has a winner / loser system. This goes TERRIBLY unless the justification is super-natural. Player's just don't like to be told, "you trust him", but they are perfectly okay with. "he has taken control of your mind with his laser, you trust him".
This speaks to the basic problem of experience. Watch a film which has a lot of topic X with a group of experts on topic X. A common reaction is to tear it apart and get annoyed. To be honest I find REAL experts just laugh it off (much like great social players can go with it). We as humans tend not to have experience with elder god possessed cult leader's firing alien bullets across the room, but we all know how to socialise. So most of us need tricking to believe artificial mechanics.
Pre-Briefing
You give all the player's a briefing verbally or on paper about how their character feels about all the other characters. This work's well for a one-off with a new character but is a bit more shaky with persistent games. In a one off a writer creates a platform for the player to build on. Once a player has control they build their own version.
Most player's aren't character experts so while they might understand their character inside and out on a deep level, they might not be able to communicate it clearly. An open dialogue after and before game can allow the ST to influence the character's opinions without removing control from the player. This is VERY time consuming however, and a very fuzzy solution.
Investing in Social Equations
Okay so side tracking from the LARP situation let's move back to the table top roots. Here we have a bit more room for manoeuvring. Let's look at two extremes.
Player: "I barter with the shopkeep"
[Rolls Dice]
GM: "He seems is impressed and gives you a 40% discount."
Ginny: "Al, the mayor want's these bugbears dead. Must be doing horrors to your custom."
Alfred: "Aye, my children need every crumb."
Ginny: "Al, The sword is good workmanship. How about I kill these beasts, then pay you."
Alfred: "If I gave every bit of forest manure, that was once a hero, credit I would be a starving man."
Ginny: "Okay okay, how about I buy the sword, you re-wrap the handle and throw in a few of those throwing knives."
Alfred: "Those knives are a key item."
Ginny: "Nonense! Throw offs, and apprentice fodder. Four knives comped."
Alfed: "Fine fine, you begger me. You tell friends Al gives good deal. Deal."
Ginny: "Deal"
Which did you enjoy reading more? Kinda obvious right. Well I've found most player's can do a happy medium. The GM keeping the social numbers in her head and perhaps doing a few discrete dice rolls. You hit tricky waters when you have a bad GM or a Dan. We are going to ignore a bad GM situation as they are part of the game.
A Dan is harder. They don't want to or are unable to interact in a meaningful way. Usually because they are shy or have trouble identifying with their character.
One "solution" I've seen many people use is to go either hack-slash or chi-wag and exclude the players which don't match the form.
We could let them give you the dry one-liner but then expand it and give it character. Throw in a loose detail or two. This builds a knowledge base for the player to identify with and helps the other players keep in game. So how do we make this into a useful mechanic.
Well we can put a translator in the way. This is a GM solution (or digital with advanced AI) and won't help larps. The player input's intentions then the input is modified by an intelligent evaluation based on the numbers. It's takes a skilled GM but it's one of the best solutions.
Now if only we could compress all the social knowledge and computation a talented experienced GM has into a AI. Feel up to the challenge anyone?
Please feel free to comment or tweet at me (Twitter: EvilKimau)