DESIGN SINGULARITY

Enemy Design

2011-09-20T12:30:00.001+02:00

Usually AAA games don’t have particularly interesting enemies, especially nowadays because of increasing cost of production and mindless ride towards oversimplification. The situation is even worse if we talk about enemy progression, because most of the time only hitpoints/dps are increased and the player is left to battle the same type again and again, only on different scenarios.

If you want a definition, enemies are often just a collection of stats, so you may decide to line-up a series of encounters that basically represent an escalation of numbers related to their attributes; doing that way, chances are that you end up with a pretty dull experience.

My way to make interesting enemies is by mixing them with other game mechanics. Giving them a role or function allows the player to decide how to deal with each one, and offering meaningful choices is always good in any game. If the player has to adjust the way he plays because of an enemy, then we make our game a dynamic experience.

If your core set of mechanics supports several kinds of challenges (puzzles, information-based, skill-based, etc.), then you can come up with situations where you see the mechanics crossing. That’s true in general and in reaching the final point of making interesting enemies.

A start is considering the basic types: snipers, heavies, spawners, skirmishers, etc., but then I elaborate on that integrating multiple kinds of mechanics, or better, I try to create specific boundaries, to test specific combinations of the mechanics involved.

Placement is another important factor, because making them interact with the layout transforms the navigation of the level from a type of challenge to another (from information to skill-based or puzzle).
An example of that is the rolling enemy in side-scrolling games: you want to jump on a platform but you have to take in consideration where the enemy is moving.

In a 3d game you could have a fast-moving but slow-turning enemy that requires the player to zigzag while running, if he wants to elude him; the challenge is meant to test the ability of the player to dodge and not only proceed straight.

If I have a swinging mechanics (think Bionic Commando, Metroid, etc.), I could introduce enemies that deny me to attach to certain spots or are able to cut my rope. If I can swim and breath underwater, I could have enemies that bite me and make me lose part of my reserve, until I drown.

This having pro and con is part of what makes interesting an enemy to battle with, just like “conflict” makes for an interesting character, from a narrative standpoint. (read here)

We want depth in our encounters, but not excessive complexity. It’s important to not mix too different kind of boundaries together and too quickly. Think about the progression in Portal or in Super Mario Bros.

This leads me to another important point: give the player all the information he needs to decide how to react. In one word: feedback.

As far as I enjoy complete immersion in games, I recognize how abstract interfaces enhance the experience and the comprehension of the rules. Think about the proximity ring in MGS or a visible cone of view to detect where an enemy is looking.

If the player never knows about the different functions generated by the enemy, the lack of information makes for a random encounter without base for his actions.
Without resorting to trial&error, we could showcase a certain behavior with the player in a safe place or with enough space to react: in the case of the fast-moving slow-turning enemy, the player could be surprised and chased in a tight corridor with the unique option to escape back; then an opening offers him the chance to sidestep the chaser that continue forward its ride.
(I’ve seen this same scene in the recent Hard Reset, but it was too late in the game to be of any insight for the player)

Usually, confusion arises when an enemy is clearly designed with its appearance in mind first and by its function later. I usually prefer to start from what the enemy actually does, because you can always adapt it later.
An example is the Fallen Shaman in Diablo 2 who resurrect his minions killed by the player: he clearly casts a spell and then a dead minion returns to life.

This approach easily leads to abstract functions, usually incompatible with a real-world setting, so the oversimplification hinted at the start is partly comprehensible.
Fantasy worlds and alien dimensions are the best choices to be free to brainstorm crazy original behaviors, and for me are the best in general, since I think games are more than often enjoyed for the possibility to experience things impossible otherwise (thanks Will Wright for disproving me).

2011-07-27T12:26:00.000+02:00

As I previously said talking about Design Singularity, I’ve a list of games to learn from: games that marked a design frontier, games that defied expectations, games that raised the bar for everyone else.

These games did something with greater effect, intensity or depth than its competitors, and should be considered because of their importance, for being released at the time, innovating in a certain manner.

I know there’s a lot of good lessons even in bad games, but here we’re in for lesson-rich games - useful resources for designers to learn about how certain problems were solved.

Angry Birds
Assassin’s Creed
Bejeweled
Bioshock
Braid
Call of Duty Modern Warfare
Capture the flag (mod)
Chess
Chrono Trigger
Counter Strike (mod)
Diablo 2
Deus Ex
Dwarf Fortress
Doom
D&D
Dune 2
Fallout
Farmville
Gauntlet
Gears of War
Go
Grand Theft Auto 3
Grim Fandango
Katamary Damacy
Half Life
Half Life 2
Halo 3
Herzog Zwei
Homeworld
Ico
Little Big Planet
Mass Effect 2
Minecraft
Mirror’s Edge
Planescape Torment
Poker
Portal
Puzzle Quest
Quake 3 Arena
Resident Evil 4
Shadow of the Colossus
Sins of Solar Empire
System Shock 2
Splinter Cell Conviction
Starcraft
Street Fighter 2
Super Mario Bros 1
Super Mario World
Super Mario 64
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Meat Boy
Team Fortress (mod)
Team Fortress 2
Tetris
The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion
The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time
The Sims
Thief
Ultima
VVVVVV
World of Warcraft

Mind that’s far from a comprehensive list and it's slightly biased, but I’ll fill the gaps with more time.

Now go to ~~play~~ study.

10 mechanics

2011-05-15T12:35:00.001+02:00

I notice I’ve not exploited the “top-10” cliché yet, so I’ve written a list of some game mechanics that I’d like to see used more often. I hope it will offer some good design suggestions to you and me as well.

1. Asynchronous co-op: I was reflecting about less expensive options for developers (indies) who want to implement a multiplayer/co-op component, so I thought about the common ghost-car mechanic and how a player could load the playthrough of his friends in his own game. The player sees only the ghost of the character (no items nor enemies) but can interact with it in some way.
He could load multiple ghost at once too, recreating something like the replay feature of Super Meat Boy, but useful beyond creating a cool sequence of fifty deaths.
Obviously asynchronous gameplay exists already out there (ex. Farmville), but asynch co-op?

2. Asymmentric co-op: I mean the asymmetry of the playground, where the second player isn’t exactly in the same place of the first, though they both play the same game at the same time.
Super Mario Galaxy is a decent example where your partner shoot star fragments from out the screen. A better example is Natural Selection 2, where there’s a commander who oversees from above the soldiers in first person view. Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is another, if there’re a different player swapping the tiles below.

3. Replay without restarting: I appreciate when a game has replay value, but I rarely have the time to restart it to try new paths or characters. I’d like to see the “what-if” part integrated in the gameplay, like in Fahrenheit you’re allowed to see the same scenes from different perspective. Providing a menu to easily select the various missions of the game is just the start (though we often don’t get that either L).

4. Combat without killing: I’d like to see more games where your only option isn’t to kill enemies to win. Yes, I’m aware of the existence of stealth games, but I mean more ways to interact with characters: incapacitate, stun, confuse, blind, terrorize, make them dance… (Ratchet&Clank series). A monster you have to make cooler to slow down and warm up to make it move faster?

5. Different level themes: it’s related though not a mechanic per-se. Space, lava and ice levels are common since Super Mario Bros.3, but I would appreciate better variety and fantasy, since Psychonauts has proved it’s possible. Even the last Castlevanias for DS are capable of it.

6. Less final exams: Portal2 is structured in a way that you play a section with a dominant mechanic, that then is dropped to introduce another one and so on. They mix them up only at the end.
It’s not about stop using it when it’s interesting anymore, but stop after teaching without testing the player to death. I was entertained by being instructed in the various uses of a particular mechanic without having to repeat everything in harder sections.

7. Change of scale: similar to point 2) but here I imagine the player being able run like a human a moment, then tower buildings and watch people beneath his feet another, then sneak like a snake through tiny passages, etc. It’s about the change of perspective to improve the sense of place.

8. Interactive “cutscenes”: Half Life 2 did it so well that it’s incredible that there’s still games (FPSs) that steal the control from the player to inoculate their plot (Hydrophobia!!!). Gear of War slows down the character and it’s still irritating, because the imposition is evident, while Left4Dead1-2 win in providing story insights even without enclosing the player in limited spaces out of perils.

9. Avatar maneuvering: I appreciate how more games introduce parkour mechanics to make the player movements more varied and nuanced, though it’s still close to its roots (Doom).
The problem is the interface, since you can press only so many buttons, in fact you hit W to go forward instead of controlling both feet. Standard keyboard and controller can do more, but I’ve better hopes in Kinect, where a decent swim mechanic doesn’t seem impossible.

10. Recursive world: you can create incredible worlds and the craziest thing you come up with is inverted gravity? Well, I like it anyhow, but I appreciate much more attempts like Fez and Miegakure that impose/require to reconsider how you look at things.
I was thinking about the recursive backgrounds of 2d games and how having this recursion in 3d could lead to neat results (ex. player fires rocket but misses the target, it’ll return from behind, constituting an additional treat to dodge).

Sequel Two

2010-07-05T14:47:00.006+02:00

I ended the previous post like that just to speak about this:
Is it a good idea for an IP to introduce a new style/gameplay instead of a normal sequel?

Short answer: No.

(Not so much) longer answer: No, unless you want to try another direction or make a reboot, but still no.

Third option: No, unless your target audience is young enough to not being able to remember the previous incarnation (XCOM fps).

Before continuing, I've a question for myself: do I like normal sequels?
Yup!! Sequels are kind of a confort zone for me, I know what to expect and I know the way they might surprise me; moreover sequels are stronger games usually made by a team more experienced on the matter.

Unfortunately, those two reasons are not enough to assure success, because the concept becomes familiar and the edge wears off, even if all is polished like a charm.
To be honest, for me it's still ok this way, but I think I also may opt for a DLC instead of a full fledged sequel.

The first question implied the possibility for an IP to explore different new games, while keeping its edge in spite of the number of releases.

What Mario seems to do with extreme ease isn't affordable for example by the Halo IP. Halo sim golf??
Halo franchise is completely militarized and so confined to a narrow set of new affordable styles.
The same goes for the vast majority of IPs, like Gear of War or Final Fantasy.

I don' think is impossible to do that (obviously from the very start), but I've doubts on maintaining the same "feel" across different sequels.

Possible solutions? IPs minimally defined, with a little set of constraints or a broad theme - actually the contrary of all nowadays IPs.

Sequel One

2010-07-05T14:31:00.004+02:00

Finally I'm back after a big break caused by personal reasons I don't think you want to be bothered with.
Is something gonna change? Well, no; I'll continue to mix thoughts on gamedesign and general rants on game related topics, as well as a good sequel should do: be the same but still awesome.

Loving NPCs?

2009-02-19T13:17:00.000+01:00

In my free time I’m working on a mod with little robots as main NPCs (you’ll end to see a lot of them). While thinking about the narrative component, I was worried about what makes me care about a character in a videogame if it isn’t playable.

Personally, I use to care at least a minimum to my digital companions, but most of the times it’s because I try to be part of that world, in despite of the poor job of the developers.

So, it’s not about my personal attachment, but the kind of effort that as a developer I can in put in my creation, because in general the good examples are very sparse.

Speaking of robots, two good source of inspiration could be WALL-E from the homonymous Pixar movie and the companion cube from Portal.
They are both robots but they pertain to different media, so they have to adopt different approaches.

You know, movies can use real people so a big part of the problem is automatically resolved, but in games, with the actual technology, it’s the opposite: you take for granted that the NPCs is unreal.
Here I think that the uncanny valley is responsible for this lack of credibility, in fact it’s difficult to take something seriously when it’s so damn pixelated!

Actually the ongoing graphical improvements will permit us to create stunning works of art – some high profile games such as Crysis are a good insight; nevertheless, the overall components of reality doesn’t scale relatively. Characters might seems “real” but they don’t act properly. I argue it’s a problem of interactivity.

Characters who moves in our same environment inside the game are limited to a finite set of actions, designed once forever by the developer. This is a strong remainder of the fiction you are playing in.

However, sometimes a limited interaction could enhance the realism and consequentially the immersion.
I think about Cleverbot, an AI to dialog with by writing sentences on a command line. It’s enough reliable until you understand how to trick it (one minute), but it’s fair.

Returning to the examples made above, WALL-E is far to resemble an human, however it can express a varied range of feelings, and stimulate others in the viewer too.
In this case, it’s mostly useful as a reference on the design of the robotic character: I really like how it’s eyes can change expression simply rotating. The same is valid for all the rest of the cast, where none have big anthropomorphic round eyes stamped upon.

The Companion Cube of Portal is said to create attachment in the player, even if in effect it’s only a clever gimmick that plays with a player’s common behaviour.
Surprising, what I find remarkable isn’t the time that you spend with it, but the part when (spoiler alert) you have to leave it behind, incinerating it too. Actually, it’s an undoable action.

In modern games you can quicksave, regenerate your health using medikits, take advantage of checkpoints, and so on. It’s ok to respect the player by not forcing him to spent more time than he wants, but in our daily reality there are no do-overs. Maybe it’s why we consider NPCs not so seriously.

I pretend to think that narrative in games have not to be linear, thanks to the interactive nature of the medium, to fully take advantage of it. Having a character to merely instructing us about its life is a passive method typical of movies, that works on building empathy with the viewer.

Games more commonly motivate players to care about NPCs by having them to give at your character items, quests or experience points. This seems to me like promoting a relationship with a drug-dealer. You are probably going to like him, or dislike him if he doesn’t feed you. Pretty dull indeed!

What I’ve understood is that we should not treat NPCs like peaces of a puzzle. They should not be part of a problem that the player has to solve or something superimposed.
The dog of Fable II now comes in mind. I thought from the previews that it could have been a great chance to create a credible relationship, but it ends up being immortal – the player can’t dispatch or leave it behind.
It’s even worst if the NPC has different skill than you have, obviously assigned to be exploited to solve puzzles and pass locks. The character appears merely as an extension – an appendices.

The NPC should be a “source of choices”.
From a designer point of view, problems serve to guide the player, instead of choices that serve the purpose to diversify/enrich the experience.
When you start thinking of a NPC on the base of its stats or its role in the game’s economy, no deep connection could appear. You are implicitly not treating him like person, but a cog in a machine that you want to work as efficiently as possible.

As an alternative, if the character is part of a choice of yours and, for example, something bad happens to him by your fault, then a stronger feeling could arouse. Actually you are losing an useful companion that you have chosen to be such, and as you can see this imply a certain degree of not linearity.

This lead to me to think that the NPCs could depend on the player, instead of the contrary; moreover, they could choose to not join us or maintain a certain distance, based on our attitude towards them.

In my mod, having to do with little robots, this seems to work fine. They could be innocent, indefensive, maybe a bit childish, and so dependant on the player. I could also build a mutual relationship – they serve to me as I serve to them.

Any good example not already cited here?

Clean and lean design

2009-01-30T14:43:00.000+01:00

I use to divide the design cognitive process in layers, where each is an abstraction or a specialization of the other one, depending if you start from the up or from the bottom. In the former, you start from an idea, that you contextualize and elaborate to find the core features, that are translated in basic mechanics and actions available to be performed by the player.

During the experience, new actions are introduced, developed and finally exploited. These actions or sets of actions form a pattern, that serves the purpose to keep the player’s interest.

Usually in games you have nested patterns: when the player masters a pattern, a new one is introduced and so on.

In the best games however, all these patterns are critical and interact with a reactive gamespace, i.e. that changes during the play, to create a clean and lean design.

More than difficulty curve and learning curve, this is about interest curve. Any given pattern or loop has only a limited space of maneuver, before the player becomes bored of it. For example, in an FPS there’s only a bunch of situations funny with the same weapon and same enemies, in fact the loop is soon expanded to add in variation, commonly providing different enemies and equipment.

Gamespace is pertinent in defining which part of the loop is accessible to the player: at the beginning the protagonist has a single gun and only then he increases his weapons count.

This has to do with the learning curve, because managing so many guns from the very start may be confusing, but is also about the difficulty curve, because for the same reason may be overwhelming.

In this discussion however, restricting access is the functional approach to handle the interest curve.

A play loop can have a series of variations, but only few will be fun to be played. For example, arming the player with a chaingun and putting him in a level with only snipers *may* not be a real source of fun, even if having to do with chainguns and snipers separately is a real joy.

The restrictions force the player to focus to a subset of the whole possibilities – those interesting permutations that can be showed before having to change loop.

This leads to fun games but that are capable to hold interest only for a limited time before running out of loops for the gamespace. It does not creates a clean and lean design as mentioned at the beginning. It simulates it and works great, but only within tight restrictions.

In the best games, loops are tightly bounded together, eventually feeding back to themselves in meaningful ways. Think about Tetris for example: it has the single loop (falling blocks) that feeds back into itself smoothly.

Katamari is another great example: it has two loops (maneuvering and collecting) linked together, because you have to move to collect, becoming bigger and continuing to move; moreover, Katamari has a dynamic gamespace that changes every time a variations is presented. When a loop is mastered, it simply turns back to an altered original play loop, instead of presenting a new one. There’s no need to slice a subset of the loop to maintain the interest, it’s a reactive gamespace, something that entangle without resorting to pile up secondary loops on secondary loops.

Clean and lean design.

Yeah, it’s not easy :D

Guess What?

2008-12-13T19:35:00.004+01:00

+=
New side project, due to be released *soon*. Guess what?

Skill trees I used to enjoy

2008-11-24T13:34:00.003+01:00

I used to enjoy a lot Diablo 2 at the time, but now a find myself incapable of the same joy.
Well, I had this same feeling also at the time, but it was somehow mitigated by the amount of time at my disposition.

Actually I feel very punished by RPGs that let you choose your upgrade path in a skill tree.
Sooner or later you understand that the path chosen makes your character suck or it’s not as efficient as it could be.

This becomes a painful issue when you can upgrade each level, but you can’t take back and correct your previous decisions. Usually I end stacking up points after points until I decide a meaningful path. This is utterly bad, because most games scale encounters and challenges to your level, so I mostly play under-powered.

The natural attitude to maximize is trapped in those skill tree that let the player choose a “bad” ability. The apparent variety of option lets you image that you could create an equally variety of builds, but it’s more like a series of right and wrongs choices.

RPGs works in such a way: you try a path and then you understand what’s could be bettered the next time, so you restart the game from scratch. This isn’t replayability, it’s annoying trial and error, because I have to lose my progress to enjoy the character I would.

With Mass Effect I finished the game with 11 points to arrange yet. It’s a shame, even if there wouldn’t been sensible changes in the gameplay.

Now, World of Warcraft and others give you the possibility to rearrange all your points, and it’s good, but it’s more an issue with games that in general does not let you work to gain points.

If the new level simply unlocked a new set of skills and the player had to do something (kill stuff, etc.) to buy them, levelling would be only a matter of time.
This soften the concept of error, because the player does not take back from a misstep, but he has to spend more time to develop another path.

This appears to me a rather fairer solution, and also states that now I really prefer to experience the character than perfecting its build.

Left 4 Dead is "multiplayer emotion"

2008-11-21T13:27:00.005+01:00

L4D lacks of the usual static scenes of scripted narrative, but has a bunch of fragmented dialog bits that get recombined algorithmically. Characters' lines are context-sensitive and no more activated by triggers, but the big difference with the standard FPS does not lie in that.

Multiplayer emotion is based on shared resources.

MMOs and LARPs are pretty confident on this practice. L4D is more similar to the former, where primitive emotions are generated by sharing survival resources. In LAPs usually storylines are shared between players, producing a wider set of emotions.

Emotions pivot around constraints, such as how difficult resources are to obtain; in fact, an independent character is likely to express less emotions out of a situation.
In L4D you can heal by yourself, but you absolutely need your teammates to escape from the tongue of a Smoker. It’s not their job to help you, they’re not medics, and it’s generally your fault if you need another aid-kit to continue. You’re going to be thankful, at least.

In MMOs difficult situations lend to two digits groups of people, but relationships are inevitably watered down, because you can’t precisely say who helped you.
L4D provides a more tight experience, because actions and errors are more visible in a squad of four elements. Moreover, the game constantly highlights who helped who, the most generous player, the most active one on killing, etc.
Psychologically speaking, this transparence lend players to be polite and not acting like a jerk.

L4D offers multiple levels of shared resources to lock players together and to cause the emotions desired. For example, the same teammates are resources, because they can advice about an incoming threat (Bill: “I heard a Boomer around here”).

These resources need to be in a divenendo and difficult to preserve, otherwise they lose their interest. From the example above, single missions start with four aid-kits, one per player, but the infected zombies are likely to force you to consume them all, so you strive to reach the next outpost, helping the others to help you to stay alive.

Multiplayer emotion is dynamic storytelling.

Again, the dynamic dialog system has a tangential importance, most because it’s a bit unused in the game.

L4D makes a little step back and a great step forward: Half Life 2 elevated ingame narrative integrating cut-scenes with the gameplay, but eventually the whole structure and pace were pretty static. This heritage is forwarded by the secure rooms, filled with writings on the walls and spare discussions between the survivors.

In L4D, storytelling is more on the vein of Doom and Quake: the plot is not a big deal, usually it’s merely outlined, while the real story is lived directly on the field.
The series of events that happen to the characters forms the story; informations are no more inoculated to a passive audience, but conveyed directly through the gameplay.

This system is obviously more centered on the characters, because the story resolves essentially on what happens to them, but there’s also space for background stories, though very marginal. Take the example of a corpse lying one the ground, covered by a cloth: it says that there were other survivors before, that they had losses and that they had the consideration to cover their friend, but the need to keep going forward.

The big step consists in making these events dynamic.
The usual structure of the story is distilled to obtain single moments, capable of delivering the desired emotions. Those moments are then instanced at will by the AI Director, that analyzes a wide set of parameters to calculate the best moment to cast an event.

Players end to experience different stories each time, made of the same basic events rearranged. For example, a sudden threat on a team-mate (the attack of a boss-infected) causes the short-term goal to save him – what may be labeled as “rescue-event”.

For a good reason, L4D singleplayer campaign is less incisive: without real mates, there’s no social play that sustain cooperative storytelling and interplay emotions.

Tempus Fugit

2008-11-05T13:49:00.003+01:00

I’ve resumed this old draft for its pertinence with the previous post.

When I first played The Sims, I was upset by its time conception.
You play this simulation with little characters, hurry to carry out mundane activities in quarters that equals to real one hours.

The time compression is particularly common in games with small characters. The idea is to make the experience denser and bigger than the real life. You may put the whole playtime in a slider, where interesting tasks make the things bumpy: more the thinks per hour more the fun.

Implicitly, it’s said that those activities are too long to be enjoyable in a game. Cooking pasta takes 15 minutes? Let’s do 5 seconds. Running on the beach? Only 2 minutes, otherwise you starve. Travel from city to city? Just a click in the map.

Is always the destination more important than the voyage?

In The Sims I had the impression that time was my enemy: I couldn’t listen to music o play sports freely, because the game forced me to go to the bathroom! Obviously I wasn’t playing in the “right way”, as the game wanted me to do.

The Sims seemed to offer the possibility to play another me, but with that time pressure I wasn’t able to immerse myself in the role. I guess that this perfectly fit our modern life-style, full of tasks and dealings (…thanks to Numa Pompilio’s calendar), but it hinders the focus on the character.

The The Sims example well served me to criticize the general tendency to make recreative events efficient. It’s not by accident that you lose the knowledge of time during pleasant activities.

Lost in Blue for DS followed the same design practice. You are in a beautiful island wondering for a place to fish, but a constantly ticking clock reminds you to move forward. For me, this pressure is unsuitable and ditches the impetus to walk around and talk to people.

On surface Bully by Rockstar seems like a GTA-clone but its open world is regulated by a clock in the upper right of the screen. I’ve appreciated the whole system, unfortunately you have no ways to judge how much a task will take, nevertheless, if you’re yet around for 2 am, inevitably the character falls down exhausted (andthe active mission is aborted).

There’s a good reason why there’s no clock in casinos! Would you remind someone who’s giving you lots of money that it’s late to play?

Efficient Worlds

2008-10-15T13:24:00.005+02:00

What makes the difference between a vivid virtual world and a mere agglomeration of polygons? Is enough to reproduce every detail and hope that the life springs out magically? In other words, what else do you need other than the sum of the all parts?
It does not to be efficient!

I’m going to help me with examples from the Star Trek universe.
The TNG series used to build a story around every element, from the ignition button of Data to the flute of Captain Picard. This made the experience pretty fake for me.

In the real world, a stone is only a stone. We don’t bother about the story of that particular stone, except if it’s set in circle at Stonehenge, and it's right this that make them so relevant: there’s no other equal stone structures*.
Uniqueness is such thanks for an amount of other non-unique stuff. In the same vibe, we can define what is alive by defining what is not (do you remember Eraclito of Efeso?).

The DS9 series of ST is different: it’s a live world full of insignificant details, maybe thanks to the fact that is not filmed in the same four stages of the Enterprise starship.

Being efficient is part of the development philosophy, because making a game is very expensive, but the urge to fill more content in the same space is counter-productive, if you’re going to build a seamless world.

In Oblivion (or Fallout, GTA, etc.) you have a primary quest and a bunch of minor ones. Why could we not have only one massive quest?
Well, not only it’s not time-wise player’s friendly, but it’ll end seeming like a castle built in air.

That mass of secondary quests appears as the background for your main adventure, it let you remember that there’s something alive outside the boundaries of the “dungeon where you’re battling”.
For the same reason, I usually don’t play a lot of side quests, because if I finish them all, the world instantly lost its realness.

Mass Effect turns mainly around its big quest, substituting side stories with secondary activities. You can land with your MAKO tank on a planet surface and gather resources, and that's all.
It take no time to understand that those sections are pretty disjointed and, in the end, fake. What happens there does not affect your main voyage in any manner. Fortunately, the main quest is good enough, so you don’t bother much about the lifeless void left outside.

Far from being the only reason, inefficiency seems paramount for a real virtual world… or have you named all the stones in your courtyard?

*it's the same for other megalithic sites in Armenia, Scotland, Germany, etc.

Space Matters

2008-10-01T12:39:00.003+02:00

Personally, I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about the implications of rendering space, structure and relationships in games.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth century we had systems which altered or augmented perception. Take for example the diorama and the camera lucida - both examples of representation machines. From the same point of view, we could read the spatial qualities of games as a testing ground for exploring perception, physics and geometry.

Far from being enough, the results of that exploration should lead to impact the gameplay, because games are about navigating space, with only few exceptions. From the open levels of a first person shooter to the restrictive dialog tree of a RPG, it’s such a deeply integral element that it’s natural to tweak and explore its possibilities.

The very act of moving around the game world and looking around is mostly the first thing to have in place, at the beginning of the development.

It’s meant to test the design, but actually it remains the same whereas other gameplay loops are exploited (shooting, building, collecting experience, etc.).

Many games treat space too generically, without taking advantage of rules and tradeoffs inherent in it.

In those games, space is treated as very generic, because the only difference between here and there is that here is closer to that arbitrary point, chosen by the designer.

I’d like to cite few examples to further explain the point.

Chess has a space as a set of hard and chunky coordinates, meant to be “explored” on a turn-base. Then Pong combined those chunky coordinates with a real-time speed. And became so popular! …Do you know Pong right?
Now, its addictiveness is almost faded away because it’s no more a brand-new way of navigating space that few people had conceived of.

Gauntlet is another milestone in its take about space. You can see much further than you can walk (compare it with Super Mario Bros.), so you have a big reaction time but, being in a maze, you really don’t know which way to go.

Sonic the Hedgehog is almost the opposite. It’s fast and presents complex levels.
Usually it’s compared with Mario, but the pace is pretty different and much of the content could only be explored racing through at top speed.

Soul Reaver had a fascinating way to represent space, having two different versions of the game world, connected to overcome obstacles and enemies, because moving through one moved you through the other.

I’m not going to cite only popular titles to sustain my point. The truth is that these kind of twists about space are really fun to play with. In fact, there’s a bunch of more recent games that revolve their focus on navigating space, and springing the fun out of it.

Prince of Persia, and its spiritual successor Assassin’s Creed, allows you to do fantastic acrobatics in same kind of space, where your run of the mill FPS allowed you only to walk forward and jump.

Psychonauts twists and breaks the norms of navigation in a lot of its levels. Moreover it manages to have a kind of variety and novelty in themes that we can find only backtracking to Super Mario 3.

Echochrome for PlayStation allows to direct a mannequin through levels that resembles an impossible construction of Oscar Reutersvärd. Each level is an isometric projection and is navigated through perceived geometry rather than actual geometry. Optical illusion is the essence of the navigation.

The indie-game Fez is another title which explores the idea of a reconfigurable vantage point. It’s a side-scroller in which the camera can be rotated that extends the representation shifting meme, much like Paper Mario and Crush made.

Portal revolves around the use of wormholes to shoot into surfaces, allowing you to pass and cut through space in a non-linear manner.

All these games, and many others, change the ways you look at and move through levels. It’s their tweaking of the everyday norm that sets them apart from other games.
I can’t advice any reason for not continuing to tweak this way, a lot!

Indie-games have an easier life experimenting about changing how you travel, how you think of distance, even the nature of space itself.

For example, Determinance and Parabox try with different extents to do that, one letting the player fly instead of walk, the other allowing the player to rotate the world to fall and move forward.

A logical solution, to make the way a player perceives and travels through space intrinsically linked to some part of gameplay, is mapping space to something besides space.

Both my solution and recent trope is linking one or more parameters to space. The idea is that changing the position changes the game dynamics.

If you think about it, falling is basically that – a simply modifier on z-axis: you understand that moving here (ex. upon a pitfall) sends you there (ex. down to death). Absolutely nothing nearly complex.

Another similar example, taken from the real world: as you walk higher a mountain, oxygen gets fewer and it’s harder to breath. Translating it in a game context, there is this relationship that affects your gameplay in an interesting way (challenge for climbers).

You’ll find out that the trope where you stand affects how you play is capable of so many dynamics.

Imagine a game where space is mapped to daylight circle. Walking right you can see the night, walking left you illuminate the environment. If this was the case of a side-scroller, it could reveal enemies that usually hide in shadow. Then you might have to dispatch them, who are invisible when you are near enough to shoot.

How about a game where moving right means changing your evolution state, from larva to homo-sapiens?
You can really map space to anything, from the gravity to the health-points of your opponents.
I can’t bother about increasing in complexity if amazing-ness continues to seems so proportional.

Then, we haven't even touched different ways of viewing space. I’m trying just that in Parabox, representing the forth dimension of a 3d game-space, in 2d.

Mirror’s Edge is in touch with that too. The protagonist Faith possesses the ability for reading the geometry of her surroundings. In the playfield, objects and surfaces that comprise the environment are colour coded according to accessibility. Considered how architectural elements are demarcated, the city becomes an huge text to read to navigate. The gameplay revolves around wayfinding and spatial problem solving rather than button pressing bravura.

The example above of Super Paper Mario is also one of this kind. Space is portrayed in 2d and suddenly you learn to carve a third dimension in the scene that opens to you other possibilities.

Then, think about the vision mechanic of Metroid Prime. You can extrapolate different information from the environment, based on which lens you equip.

Obviously there’s a lot of space for improvements.

I remind Collage Rebus II from 1970. In his drawing Daniel Libeskind delineates an interiority that is more about arranging linked rooms than rendering plausible spaces. Curvilinear walls irrationally subdivide the assemblage of rooms, ladder lead to nowhere and edges ends in white space.
This hypothetical design describes unbuildable architecture. It’s an interesting example of spatial reasoning devoid of interactivity. Collage Rebus is frozen in motion without any navigable configuration.

Then, the field of Augmented Reality offers good suggestions about how to change your view of the reality, maintaining interactivity in real-time.

Well, I have a lot of thoughts on this matter. More to come in part 2.

Singularities and Demakes

2008-09-05T12:31:00.004+02:00

Reading about the Bootleg Demake Compo over at TIGSource, I figured I'd take a shot at explaining what exactly I meant for, when I coined 'Design Singularity'.

I start with an example: the Half Life 2's Gravity gun is such a singularity!
Its revolutionary mechanic impacted greatly in the FPS panorama, and in games in general, promoting the addition of the physic-based gameplay. The weapon itself is been copied countless of times, as magical powers or mere clones with different graphic.

Now, think about Codename: Gordon, it's that basic idea of Gravity gun well ported in 2d.
This innovative bit of gameplay could be easily been done in some much older systems, with minor tweaks, but it haven't come up. We had to wait until Valve came around.

This is what I call a 'Design Singularity' - a real novel idea, as truly innovative as so rare, capable of influencing our perception of what games can be/do. Commonly it's said "it raises the bar higher than before".

Theoretically, that core idea could have been done almost 10 years ago. This is the ultimate consecration and proof that it's a Singularity. New ideas pioneer new territories and reveal new points of view.

The concept of demakes is so funtional to mine: the same idea could seem primitive compared to the actual standards, but it maintains its greatness, or potential, if it's too ahead of times.

Obviously, there're ideas that need technological improvements to be shaped, and we should step them down for such aspect.
Think about it: actually, you don't need a fancy graphic for Chess or Go, neither for Tetris or Pac-man.

Now, it's not my intention to write a comprehensive list of singularities (although I've mine), but I'm quite sure we can find some singularity-that-weren't, looking at the Bootleg Demake Compo, and that's interesting too.

P.S. take a look also at the Retro Remakes 2008 Big Compo.

EDIT: I'd like to assure you I've not understimated the tech. issues of developing cool ideas. Sure, in the beginning, hardware wasn't good enough to have more than a single screen worth of game; in fact, successful games optimazed for a compelling experience, playable again and again from the start (Robotron, Asteroids, etc.).

But, it's not completely fair to hide behind the excuse of hardware (or marketing) limitations, and saying that 'those ideas' were surely thought before means to deny merits that due to inventors.

Invisible Walls

2008-08-22T14:50:00.002+02:00

This article originally appeared on GameCareerGuide.com and Gamasutra.com.

Immersion is a phenomenon in many kinds of media, though it is particularly relevant in virtual environments and video games. Immersion is a concept largely used to describe the player’s status relative to the medium. However, there is more than one approach to how we define immersion.

Here, I discuss the utility of immersion and the capability of the environment to create it. Other works have identified possible barriers to immersion, and their effectiveness is debated here. I also look at several theories about maintaining immersion, such as the rule of consistency.

Immersion: Le Mot Juste

Being engaged in a video game, movie, virtual reality, or book is described as experiencing deep emotion linked to the medium. Usually this state is called immersion, but it’s not always clear what is meant by immersion and if the meaning is used consistently.

“Suspension of disbelief,” “flow,” and “presence” are terms I use to signify different aspects of immersion, and although they possibly overlap in meaning, they are useful in reaching a more complete definition.

Suspension of disbelief. Samuel T. Coleridge nearly 200 years ago defined drama as “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” It is a suspension of the critical intellectual faculties and a consequent distorted sense of time toward a better enjoyment.

Flow. A hundred years later, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined “flow” as the state in which “individuals are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.” In this case, concentration is important for strong cognitive engagement by the player.

Presence. Presence, defined by Lombard and Ditton, is more related to technology than the human experience. It’s the sense of being there, in a mediated environment that fulfils the stimuli to be perceived. When the perception of mediation vanishes or fails, the presence arises: a physic sense of location, engagement, and participation, characterized by naturalness and realism. “Presence” suggests the relation between a player and her environment through an interface.

Related to presence, immersion does not guarantee the illusion of non-mediation, but it helps. Per se, immersion suggests the need to eliminate external cues, though that alone is not enough to guarantee the illusion.

For the sake of clarity, immersion is meant here as a concept that incorporates all three of the concepts stated.

Factors of Immersion

I have identified the player’s status in a particular moment with respect to the medium, physically and psychologically. However, none of these constructs suggests measurements for how the player is immersed.

Four factors determine whether one reaches total immersion: attention, concentration, atmosphere, and empathy. A game player’s level of immersion is a reference to the number of obstacles that hinder any or all of those four factors, so it is implicit that at intermediate levels, the player is not able to be fully immersed. In games, however, this is not always the case (which I will discuss more thoroughly later).

There are at least three types of immersion in games: short-term, long-term, and narrative.

Short-term immersion is physic and immediate. It arises when the challenge is simple and only a few seconds are needed to make a choice. A very intuitive and reliant interface is needed to support short-term immersion because clumsy controls and chaotic gauges are the main obstacles, as well as sudden changes in gameplay, such as a single stealth mission in an action-oriented FPS.

Long-term immersion is more cerebral and related to path recognition, an innate ability in humans. The player searches for paths to victory and assesses their efficiency, just as a chess player foresees a series of moves ahead of time, not just the next move. Being so immersed becomes a moment of watchful observation and deduction. The main obstacles here are illogical or aleatoric (chance, random) behavior -- things that prevent the player from formulating a long-term strategy.

Narrative immersion is more closely related to the kind of immersion found in literature and film because it is involves attachment to characters, actions, and plot. Unconvincing dialogue, unrealistic characters, and incomprehensible plots are the main deterrents.

The Purpose of Immersion

What is the point of immersion and its role in virtual environments and video games? Games are closed, formal systems that represent another world, according to Chris Crawford (1982), who also calls games “a subset of reality.” They are simulations based on a limited set of rules, possibly different from reality.

These closed formal systems create a simplified representation of emotional reality, says Crawford.

Games are an interactive medium experienced with the body, which is our main interface to the reality of game. The stimuli in the simulation are what we use to judge the quality of the experience.

Realism arises in part from the player controlling a character or other on-screen representation of himself. If his actions render the expected result in the game, the player feels in control and perceives the game as real.

The actions are perceived as “real” even when carried out in a fictional world. For this reason some kind of realism is important: the brain needs to be told that the virtual world is somehow genuine for the brain to decide how it should act and react.

If the player feels immersed and present in the world, his actions matter more than the mechanisms of the game. The player begins to act in the environment consistent to what he perceives in that environment. The environment becomes real per se and is no longer viewed as a set of stimuli and an interface.

Invisible Walls

The realism of the representation does not assure that a game player will achieve total immersion due to certain barriers, or invisible walls.

It’s an emblematic situation. The passage seems clear -- nothing is in front of the player; and yet it is not possible move forward. For example, in the recent Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, a ‘clearly’ open gate represents the exit that has to be passed to complete that game mission, but is not passable until the game says so, and eliminates the obstruction.

These invisible walls are sometimes considered errors of level design because they are unforeseeable, irritating, and nonsensical. I extend the meaning of “invisible walls” to include all barriers that limit immersion, including those within the game system that are present without being visible.

However, I question whether all invisible barriers should be avoided in the first place for the sake of immersion. Some examples are common physical obstacles, gauges on the screen, stylistic and narrative solutions -- anything that constitutes a layer between the player and the game space. Are they the deterrents to immersion that they seem to be?

Other authors writing about video games have correctly noted the discontinuity in immersion in games because of these obstacles. But what follows is a number of examples of invisible walls that seem to support immersion as much as they detract from it.

HUD. A recent trend in game UI has been to remove some of the heads-up display elements on screen. The idea is that HUD elements distract the player’s view from the focal point, because they are typically placed on the screen’s periphery. The more the screen is overloaded with HUD elements, the more built up the layer between the game and the player is. Few games have gone so far as to remove all or most HUD elements, though Metroid Prime and Doom 3 are examples of games that shifted toward this.

Obviously, this trend has its pitfalls. HUDs are familiar interfaces to game players, and a total lack of this interface leaves the player without necessary information for play.

The main concern is not questioning that HUD elements help immersion, but that having some of them do not harm immersion, as many authors have agreed.

Even when the elements are integrated, the player still has an awareness of them, though this awareness become implicit when his focus shifts to the action. The HUD is therein accepted.

Locked doors. Another barrier to immersion is doors that cannot be opened. Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row are open-world games that have hundreds of buildings and thousands of doors. But not all the doors can be opened, usually for technical and gameplay reasons. This is often addressed as an immersion problem. However, in the real world, people do not have free access to all the doors in their cities, so why should players expect it in games? The real problem is the player’s knowledge that there is nothing behind the closed doors in these games. All this is known among gamers, but usually not among casual players and non-gamers, who have not yet discovered the tricks implemented to reproduce so wide environments.

A closed door does not break immersion; it is only a supposition. It’s possible to make clear visually whether a door can be opened, but this only helps improve player usability, not immersion. Believing in the illusion is up to the player.

In Call of Duty 4, a series of barriers is used along the borders of the levels to limit the playable area. The player is not able to jump over the barriers. However, the same barrier shows up again in the middle of the level, where the player can jump over it. Players know this because the game explicitly informs them that by pressing the space bar, they can leap over it.

Perhaps using a different style of barrier for the jumpable object and for the borders would have been a more elegant solution, but this slightly inferior solution doesn’t totally destroy the illusion of the world. Players know when an area is closed off; using barriers for that purpose is a known and accepted convention. Only usability is harmed in this case because there the only thing that differentiates the two types of barrier is an icon, which is quite a minimal distraction to an engaged player.

Glimpses. Usually in linear games, the player gets glimpses of scenery beyond their immediate environment by looking through windows, grates, and over walls. These are fake panoramas used to support the notion of a wide-open game world. Experienced players know it’s only a trick and that nothing exists other than what’s immediately visible. But conventionally speaking, these glimpses provoke the player into finding a better vantage point.

This happens in Half-Life 2, although in that case, the game has skilfully enhanced the situation. The player can see locations through grates and windows, but before or after he arrives there physically, increasing the sense of reality through moments of recall.

When we play games, our level of immersion changes based on real world contexts, too. Playing Doom or Quake today leaves us with a much lower sense of immersion than it had in the past, based on our level of expectation for an immersive game experience.

Anachronistic content break immersion as well, in the sense of suspension of disbelief. On the other hand flow might remain intact regardless, because gameplay ages at a slower rate than graphics. Nevertheless, there’s no denying certain cases of dated gameplay, particularly in games that had a poor balance between the challenges presented to a player and the player’s assumed skills.

Hit points. Another example of something that might break immersion is hit points. Hit points are the predetermined number of hits to complete a task; for example, slaying a demon might require exactly 10 hits with a sword to die, or killing a soldier requires two hit with a shotgun.

Theoretically, hit points should break immersion, but it’s probable that a majority of players don’t mind it. Likely players are accustomed to the logic of the gameplay, or they have not come across an alternative way of accomplishing the same goal.

Repeated obstacles. It would seem that objects and obstacles that re-appear frequently in a game would make a player aware that she is playing a game. However, the brain is able to cut out peripheral details, when and how it is needed. If a player is motivated enough, repeated obstacle and objects can be assimilated and accepted. For example, when a player finds yet another invisible wall in Killzone or Battlefield 2, it doesn’t come as any big surprise, and he moves along.

Style. Another type of barrier is related to style. The postmodernist effects in Metal Gear Solid remind the player that he is playing a video game. These self-indulgence interferences from the designers into the player’s experience have no clear advantage for immersion. While the player is supposed to be deeply immersed in a deadly struggle to prevent a disaster (see MGS plot), the designer irrupts to tell that ‘it doesn’t really matter, after all’. In theory, the immersion that might result should be completely broken, because of such external messages inserted during the gameplay.

In books, it’s easy to immerse the reader using similar tricks; in games it’s much more difficult. Rather, it’s easier to break the “pact” than it is to maintain it.

The narrative style of Metal Gear Solid is not new. “Breaking the fourth wall,” as it were, permits us to explore the nature of fiction. Postmodernism seems to break the narrative immersion, but it can make the gameplay more engaging by the very act of breaking immersion.

Silent Hill is an example: It has clumsy controls and grotesque images that heighten frustration and fear. The same is true of Call of Duty 4, when the player’s viewpoint is temporarily limited, which decreases his freedom of movement. These kinds of disruptions can contribute to a more cinematic style, and they prove that immersion doesn’t have to always be seamless.

In Devil May Cry 4 red web-like barriers appear magically from the ground and seal the area, until all the enemies are defeated. Players of the genre have become so inured to this incident and others like it that the loss of immersion is minimal. Their minds have accepted implicitly the excuse that it’s magic.

Resurrection and the disappearance of corpses from the ground are two other major clichés in games. “Rapid decomposition” is often used as an explanation -- and no matter how hackneyed it seems, it is in theory at least somewhat believable, and the player accepts it.

Immersion and Perception

Achieving and maintaining immersion is the result of many factors. An effective interface has to supply multi-sensory and reliable information, accurate and quick responses to user actions, and provide feedback in the form of virtual results that is coherent and consistent in the game world. Audio effects play a part as well, helping to create a credible environment.

Increasing the number of senses used does increase immersion; increasing only visual information is not enough. The Nintendo Wii has moved toward goal by incorporating more of the body and its actions in the on-screen play.

Yet immersion can take place even with poor immersive interfaces, such as keyboards and mice, thanks to other factors: emotive investment, attention, empathy, coherence, and naturalness. The semantic content of environments has been found to supplement perceptual and technological factors. A good story can cover for a lack of perceptual wealth, as is demonstrated by Mass Effect -- there are no bathrooms in any of the apartments, and it doesn’t matter.

The combination of sensory clues, embedded in the features of the environment, and well-known conventions can steer the player through a set of responses: the boundaries of play are established in terms of expectations of physics, agency, and context. This contract is needed in order to maximize the play experience and minimize processing capacity. For example, a combination of cues keeps the player aware of which objects are open to manipulation and which are not, without appearing to restrict exploration too much. The gap between virtual and real world is filled, and could be controlled the degree of freedom of action within the environment.

A full recreation of reality is furthermore undesirable. The “rocket-jumping” in Team Fortress 2 is a clear example of altering physic to heighten gameplay. Provided there is consistency, the contract between player and game is not violated. With such departures from reality, one of the key factors is the naturalness of the interface, because unexpected outcomes to user actions may hamper immersion. The player’s expectations have to be evaluated.

Immersion and Affordance

A player’s perception is mapped to the rules of the system rather than the limitation of the interface. The environment affordances are more important than the manipulation of mouse and keyboard.

Affordance is a technical word referring to the property of an object and the action that it seems to allow the player. A floor affords the action of walking and a door affords the actions of opening and passing through. It has been noted that the greater importance of the expected affordance, the greater the expectation of agency.

Often in games, the worlds are completely fictional and without much logic. In reality, things that happen in games are often not possible in the real world, but the affordance is overwritten by the convention. So for example, a character can “obviously” move an enormous slab of stone.

The player’s experience as a gamer should be taken into account. Is he aware of similar actions and physical licenses in other games? Definitely games should render their own rules, because as Crawford’s definition implies, players require an explanation of differences with reality.

Immersion and Consistency

Immersion happens thanks to the brain’s willingness to forsake some knowledge of what’s real and what’s not. Consistency is a crucial aspect in game design. Consistency means that every element, background, key features of gameplay, artistic and technical direction, has to be coherent across a title.

Coherence helps the relationship between the player and the system. Incongruence may harm it. Playing a game is an expensive activity in terms of cognitive work -- to learn the environment, the characters, the mechanisms, the objectives, etc. For this reason, games follow conventions and make use of tutorials, thereby reducing their average difficulty and lessening the cognitive strain.

Inconsistencies waste the player’s time and shock the player’s attention, often shattering the sense of immersion. But if that were true, every usability issue would be disastrous to a game, and they’re not. We have a certain threshold to account for usability. The concept of flow explains how the simple engagement allows for a cognitive, though possibly no less visceral, immersive response. During this state of immersion, minor usability flaws are no more detrimental. Further research is needed to establish the threshold at which the immersion is truly interrupted.

Immersion and Credibility

Consistency is not always enough to maintain immersion. I content that “credibility” is more relevant. Credibility pertains to the story as well the actions of the player. Actions must occur in a context that’s capable of tolerating a certain amount of improbability before the credibility ‘budget’ is exhausted. Excessive use of unrealistic elements can ruin the player’s immersion; there is a limit to incredibility.

A universal and accurate definition of immersion is difficult to determine, even considering the constructs and the exceptions seen in the cases examined. Although other studies have (correctly) indicated that certain barriers can shatter immersion, my theory proposes a different perspective that shows unexpected counter-results.

Once achieved, immersion may help the player overcome other usability issues in video games.

Do we need invisible walls? Likely no, but their appearance in games is not as detrimental to the player’s experience as they once were believed to be.

Easy Peasy Killing Spree

2008-08-19T23:41:00.004+02:00

Scattered thoughts on the theme of Death (in videogames).

The human body lacks any biological weapon as lethal as claws, pricks, glands with poison or heavy jaws. In comparison with other animals so well equipped, humans are really weak, unable to inflict lethal wounds, if not with a huge effort.
Obviously nowadays the combat method is completely different from the primitive disarmed one. We are far more effective than any other species, thanks to modern weapons, guns, cannons, etc.
These inventions have produced as critical as catastrophic changes in the actions during a battle.

The power of our attacks constantly increased, starting from sharp stones to explosive devices. We have no more the need to submit our enemies, because we can simply kill them.

Furthermore our attacks could be unilateral. It isn’t guaranteed that both the adversaries are equally equipped. That condition represented somehow an inhibition, which is completely removed in the human armed combat. If the power of a side can be easily greater than the other one, the fear of revenge is extinguished.

Our efficiency is also improved, so less effort is requested to strike a lethal attack. The big muscular effort of the old method is substituted by a delicate action, like “bending a finger to send a bullet in the enemy’s body”.
Strictly speaking, killing with a firearm isn’t a violent action. The effect is violent, but the action is delicate such as pressing a button.

The great distance and accuracy of our weapons make likely possible to not distinguish the enemies in detail, so we can deal death without actually see any face expression. The combat become more impersonal, and without any foreseeable sign of submission, which constituted the typical inhibition in the feral combat.

Finally the power of our weapons allows us to kill several human beings in a fraction of a second. The action has become completely non-violent (commonly pressing a button is enough) – an act even more delicate than pulling the trigger.

In videogames it’s rather easy to kill without a second thought, because the experience is often edulcorated, and the visual representation is imperfect. Pushing the button of a mice is similar to pulling the trigger of a pistol, but the big difference lies in the layer between the player and the game - the interface (mouse, keyboard, HUDs).

“Kill the enemy” is the new paradigm, rather than “winning the combat”; from the necessity to beat a single opponent, now we have the possibility to destroy multiple invisible “targets”.

Fortunately nuclear bombs have compensated this huge gap, because of their intrinsic treat. In fact, their destructive power could injure both sides. The aggressive impulse springs again a deep fear in the attacker, just like happens in the animal combat.

“Obviously” the player has no such inhibitions, because in games bombs are fake, the treat is fake, and also the fear is fake, having him nothing to lose.

In the modern human condition, the depersonalization of the attack is combined with the tendency to cooperation and teamwork. The loyalty toward our allies caused many attacks in name of a militant chauvinism. In History, merciless leaders asked their followers to fight only to save their allies from terrible sufferings.

For the same reason, players "have no problem" to slaughter thousands of people, labelled as enemies, when the game ask for it.

The act of aiming and pushing the button is too much simple, at worst it's quasi instinctive.

Usability seems to work against us: designers strive to make everything easy, approachable and flawless, but I think this is a major factor in violence de-sensitization.

'iGames'

2008-08-19T16:27:00.007+02:00

Recently I’ve been looking at iPhone game development.

There’s plenty of different opinions out there, discussing the theme from many perspectives. For example, Chris Tompkins suggested that the iPhone's gaming potential 'might finally put the lackluster Java-based cell phone gaming market to death’, while id Software co-founder John Carmack praised Apple's iPhone as an emerging force in mobile gaming industry.
Actually, I think that the main vantage point against DS and PSP lies in the possibility to release without a certification, in contrast to what Microsoft and Sony do with their consoles and digital services.

F ew issues have been pointed out concerning ‘unfair’ limitations of the device, but the success of Super Monkey Ball (and the incoming Spore Origins) should remove any doubt on the worthiness of the iPhone as a game platform.

For instance, I have been really inspired thanks to its designtastic features (multitouch, full six access motion controls, accelerometer, etc.), so here’s my two cents:

Entrée (GCG's Game Design Challenge: iPhone Game Winner)

Finger Factotum (iPhone advergame submission)

EDIT: it seems that Edge-Online dropped definetely the contest before declaring even the entries.

Images of 'Parabox 2d' (code name)

2008-08-12T16:08:00.013+02:00

Early studies (February). More will follow.

Trial and Error Aftermath

2008-07-21T14:42:00.005+02:00

Recent games have the bent to be easier than in the past: challenges were tougher, enemies were tougher, also lives were tougher… to find. Mine is a disputed assertion, I know, but there’re undeniable differences between old games and those you can play today. It’s argued if games become less difficult as a way to appeal a wider audience, nevertheless the current trend is to make the player have fun with fair effort, instead of submitting the fun to the challenge.

Well, the “simpleness” is not meant to be achieved by making dummy-proof games, but by improving usability, for example. Developers want gamers to complete their games, even better by surviving rather than by dying every minute.

Death in videogames usually equals to failure, and, let’s face it, everyone hates losing.
Old games had “losing” in their DNA, because of the Trial and Error paradigm: in a given situation where several choices seem equally good, there is just one subjective solution, while the others are bound to fail. Picking up the wrong one will penalize or eliminate the player, who cannot usually foresee the outcome of his choice, until it’s too late.

Arbitrary Trial and Error* does produce desirable effects no more, so why we can still find it in modern games?
Who is interested in casual or browser games may have noticed certain types of them, which use this paradigm.

Is still fun our main goal? A study revealed the capability of failure to stimulate positive emotions. There’s more pleasure in active failure than in success; moreover, attaining a goal decreases player arousal and interest. At least, passive experience of failure makes player disengage (Niklas Ravaja et al.).

Said that, apparently Trial and Error should be an incoherent choice: this method of problem solving pertains hardcore style of gameplay (guess and check) that usually casual gamers don’t have time for.

“Know your audience” could be an answer, based on the masochism needed by this one.

Game Design Challange Galore

2008-07-10T18:38:00.008+02:00

GameCareerGuide.com hosts a series of weekly challanges, mainly dedicated to game design.

The last challange was about "Crates"... yes, crates!
Go and take a look to the last results.

The Quicksave Dilemma

2008-06-23T16:30:00.008+02:00

By tradition, PC games are given for discounted to offer the possibility to save or load everywhere and at any moment, freely, at the contrary of the (old-gen) consoles, where also storing few kbytes was a problem.

Nowadays this hardware limitation is only a memory of the past, but the problem remains, with players fighting amongst themselves in order to confirm their own point of view (ok, it’s no so dramatic).

By a designer standpoint, quicksaves are source of great pressure, because the player can replay the same situation knowing everything, even if he did poorly.

It’s a problem for the thickness of the gameplay, if all the part of resource management are workarounded: the experience is surely compromised, without difficult moment to balance the game. For sure, there is no more need for resources, using the quickload.

The problem is huge for games based on surprise, where a big slice of the gameplay is stumbling into obscure areas and having to fight for an escape. Here the use of quicksaves ruins every effort to scare the player.

Maybe it’s for this reason that currently many games neglect the resource management, instead concentrating on the moment-to-moment action in order to pump up the adrenaline (see Bioshock and Doom3).

Personally, I have never loved mechanisms different from the one up to now cited, because they remains extremely costrictive toward a free use of the game.

Luckily, there’s a bunch of ways to iron out the problem of the quicksaves.

The less effective solution is to use automatic quicksaves, arranged in several key points of the level (see the life-chamber of Bioshock). Well, it’s not a real solution, but at least the enemies stay injured.

An other (imperfect) solution is to reduce the amount of damage done to the player and distribute it in small doses, so at every encounter the player is damaged, but not a lot, just the right amount to prevent the quicksave, because trying to do better would be insignificant, using a quickload. The player will continually be hurt a little, and even if that starts to add up he get used up too.

Practically, the game succeeds to draw resources, although the player can use the quicksave.

It’s an imperfect solution, as I said, because some people are so addicted that they will quickload every time they lose something.

In the past the situation was fairly better, when a quickload was not so quick, but demanded various seconds. This was a good compromise. If you recall, there was System Shock 2, where every enemy was likely to attack in the amount of time it took you to defeat them, and they all suck up precious bullets. There the experience remained absolutely terrifying, in spite of the virtual possibility for the player to sabotage it.

Saying this, I am not astonished that still exists who makes use of counted saves or checkpoints.

For sure, these are player-proof systems for the designer, but they are also a symptom of surrender to imperfect conventions.

Working on Parabox 2...

2008-06-03T23:14:00.015+02:00

Is it time for a sequel, while not even the first one is in sight? Ok, I missed a "d" somewhere... the right title is Parabox 2d and clearly it's the bidimensional version of my original project.

For the sake of clarity, I'm not going to discard my 3d concept, but there's a bunch of pros behind the choice of cutting a dimension:

shorter development time

indie/casual appeal

sort of prototype to hype/explain the 3d version

The port is not trivial like you would suppose, also because it's not a real port. I've added many nuances in the game mechanism and few new effects (read: space deformation).

Stay tuned.
.

Parabox wins

2008-05-20T11:50:00.011+02:00

Few months ago I've applied for a gamedesign challange held by GameProg.it
I had the luck to win and speak about it at the first national conference of developers - Game in Italy. A good experience indeed.

My submission was titled Parabox, a puzzle Portal-like game, as defined by the challange jury. From my own document: "Parabox is a first person puzzle shooter where you have the power to manipulate the space around you, rotate it of 360 degrees, change the order of its rooms and the weather inside, to overcome whatever hamper your movement toward the exit".

You can find everything about the contest as well my complete document and a video of my lecture here at Gameprog.it, while this is the link of GAMECON, the main event that held the Game in Italy conference the last december.

I've also received some coverage from the GamePro and the TheGameMachine magazines, but I actually lack any reference (if you can scan and send me those articles I'll put you in my hall of fame of resources-I'm-too-busy-to-collect-myself provider).

A big thanks to Luigi Fumero (Managing Director of Impressionware), Matteo Sciutteri (Lead Designer of Milestone), Giovanni Caturano (President and CEO of SpinVector) and all the staff at GPI for support and advices.

__________
P.S.1 Feel free to contact me for an updated version of the design doc.
P.S.2 Are you curious to know the status of development? Have you a billion deal for me? Just call me!

La logica del gioco... ha senso?

2008-03-13T20:11:00.012+01:00

Una delle "cattive abitudini" più radicate e pervicaci nel mondo dei videogiochi è l'abilità di certi personaggi di eliminare orde di avversari, ma essere completamente incapaci si scavalcare un muretto, senza una scala o un appiglio predefinito.

Si tratta di una delle tante assurdità di cui sono infarciti i videogiochi.
Se non ci avete mai fatto caso, significa che il gioco in questione ha fatto un buon lavoro oppure siete veramente assuefatti alle logiche virtuali.

Niente paura, queste idiosincrasie sono così comuni nella mente dei giocatori di vecchia data, al punto che anche nominarle non è facile.
Pensiamo ad esempio a Super Mario Bros. 3: ricordate le colline, solide balzandovi sopra, ma trasparenti se approcciate di lato? Sembra la cosa più naturale, ma solo per via dell'abitudine!

A ben vedere, buona parte delle assurdità è relativa all'incapacità del personaggio di interagire con l'ambiente. I più smaliziati replicheranno che si tratta della logica del gioco, che ha bisogno di regole arbitrarie per funzionare. Sono completamente d'accordo, ma a volte assistiamo a situazioni talmente paradossali da non poter essere ignorate.

La condizione necessaria per mantenere l'illusione del giocatore, la sua impressione di muoversi in un ambiente reale, è che le regole devono essere coerenti ed "oneste". Il giocatore implicitamente deve pensare "si, questo lo accetto", pena la disillusione e la presa di coscienza dell'operato del designer.

In genere questo tipo di errore viene circuito da un accorto level design e da una adeguata granularità della simulazione.
Nel caso dei famosi "muri invisibili" la soluzione è semplicemente aggiungere un vero muro invalicabile, ma per il resto non è così facile: come decidere se ad esempio una spada possa essere usata per tagliare o anche per alzare un oggetto, sfruttandola come leva?
Se prendiamo in mano una scatola di cartone, possiamo lanciarla, ruotarla, schiacciarla, ma con la GravityGun di Half Life 2 non è possibile tutto questo!

Ripeto, l'importante è restare coerenti, e aggiornati aggiungerei: se ai tempi di Quake era naturale premere i pulsanti gettandovisi contro con tutto il corpo :), oggigiorno dovremmo darne parecchie giustificazioni.

Oppure imparare da Assassin's Creed.
L'interazione ambientale di questo gioco è la sua carta migliore, che spazza via ogni inconcepibile limitazione all'interazione, anche la più semplice, vista nel corso degli anni.
La meccanica di gioco, ispirata al Parkour, che trasforma il protagonista in una sorta di Uomo-Ragno, è invece cosa rende il gioco semplicemente tanto realistico.
Niente più mura insuperabili e palazzi inacessibili, ora possiamo andare davvero dappertutto (onestamente non è così, ma si tratta di dettagli insignificanti).

Questa nuova interazione rende il mondo di gioco inaspettatamente vero, perchè tangibile, concreto sotto le mani del protagonista, capace di toccare quasi ogni centimentro della città dove si muove. E' un modo intelligente di rendere credibile lo scenario, di vendere il mondo di gioco al giocatore.

Il passo evolutivo è paragonabile a quello della GravityGun, perchè ora è quasi insostenibile l'impossibilità di interagire con ogni oggetto sparso per lo scenario, che non appaia saldamente ancorato al terreno.

Quale sarà ora il prossimo "muro invisibile" a cadere?

Empatizzare l'Omicidio?

2008-02-27T17:13:00.009+01:00

In questo articolo della rivista Emotion, un esperimento ha visto una serie di studenti alle prese con James Bond 007: Nightfire, controllati da speciali apparecchiature in grado di registrare le espressioni facciali e l'attività fisiologica. L'attenzione era focalizzata sulle reazioni all'uccisione di un nemico e all'essere uccisi.

Contro la logica comune, è stata segnalata una certa ansietà e/o rabbia quando i giocatori ferivano o eliminavano gli avversari, mentre emozioni positive sono state segnalate nel momento della loro dipartita.
Lungi dal criticare la metologia dell'esperimento, preso per buono in questa sede, lascio spazio ad alcune considerazioni.

Dal punto di vista del designer, eliminare l'avversario rappresenta il conseguimento di un obiettivo, una delle condizioni per la vittoria del giocatore. In quest'ottica non ci si attende rabbia, ma quantomeno appagamento.
Dal punto di vista umano, eliminare un avversario è un atto implicitamente negativo, nella maggior parte delle società moderne.
E' probabile che un tale desiderabile risultato sia la diretta conseguenza della tipologia di giocatori scelti per l'esperimento, piuttosto che dei meriti di Nightfire (senza nulla togliere, ma anche giochi decisamente superiori non raggiungono tale risultato).

Da qui scaturisce il dubbio: è corretto imporre l'omicidio come condizione di vittoria, quando da tempo i giochi si sforzano di suscitare emozioni?
Di fronte ad una costante, gratuita e sterile violenza il giocatore viene desensibilizzato, ma questo non è forse in contrasto con le aspettative del designer?

Preda del Potere

2008-02-26T22:17:00.004+01:00

Quando parliamo di "potenziare il giocatore" intediamo molte cose, ma in generale la condizione per cui sia lui stesso a prendere le decisioni, o perlomeno crederlo.
Senza scomodare studi di psicologia, è facile notare come l'uomo sia facile preda del potere se non sa chi sono i suoi nemici, meglio ancora se si convince di non averne. O se crede di poterseli scegliere e combattere guerre fittizie, armato da genuina supponenza.
Non è necessario proiettare features su features sul giocatore per raggiungere lo scopo, in questo caso la narrazione è un potente alleato.
Un limite della narrazione interattiva videoludica è quello di dover essere "essenziale" per funzionare a dovere. Costruire un intreccio con qualche pezzo mancante, in modo da stimolare la fantasia a riempire i "buchi", è un trucco fra tanti.
Il gioco deve mantenere il giocatore nell'illusione di vivere in un "giardino felice" (o eden), protetto dai pericoli esterni*.
Questo è un tipo di recinto presente anche nella vita reale, un Kindergarten senza nemici, dove scannarsi per futili pretesti.
Cosa accade al risveglio? La paura per l'inaspettata rottura della bolla di sapone protettiva!
A cosa serve dunque orchestrare questa farsa?
In SCOURGE (titolo provvisorio) avevo bisogno di creare un forte attaccamento del giocatore per i propri poteri, dovendolo porre ad un bivio alla fine del gioco, se sacrificarli o mantenerli. Questa impalcatura narrativa è stata essenziale per ottenere questo risultato.

* Di come introdurre il fattore sfida/rischio parlerò in seguito.

Parabox

2007-12-31T23:59:00.004+01:00

1st place entry in the GPI Game Design Contest 2007, Parabox was presented during the Game in Italy, the first national conference for developers, hosted by the GAMECON07 at Naples.

From my own document: "Parabox is a first person puzzle shooter, where you have the power to manipulate the space around you, rotate it of 360 degrees, change the order of its rooms and the weather inside, to overcome whatever hampers your movement toward the exit".

The complete document and a video of my lecture are hosted at Gameprog.it

Parabox 2d

2007-12-31T23:58:00.003+01:00

Parabox 2d (working title) started as a 2-dimentional version of the original game.

By the time, the idea demonstrated to be capable to incorporate other interesting mechanisms, and now it stands out with its original feature-set.

The game is currently in development. There's no release date yet.

EDIT (05/05/09): I've to put my beloved solo project on hold, because of many vacancies on two of the teams I use to collaborate with (NeBULA and the Breaking Point guys).
It's not the case "if you want something done, do it yourself", but "if you want them to work harder, give them someone to imitate".
I'm not going to forget you, Parabox2d, I swear :D

Rorschach Forest

2007-12-31T23:55:00.005+01:00

Rorschach Forest is a psychological survival adventure for PC, based on my original concept Coma.

~~I'm carrying out the development in collaboration with the external team NeBULA (commercial).~~

EDIT (05/05/09): during the past monthes we've suffered slowdowns on the schedule because of several departures on the team, mainly from those that have also a school career to pursue.
I suppose that's the kind of situation a small (but really focused and determined) indie-team have to deal with at least once.
For this project we're enterely self-funded, but using freelancers is not a workable solution at the moment.
We hope to come back to the past regimen as soon as possible.

Breaking Point

2007-12-31T23:50:00.008+01:00

Breaking Point is an unsettling solo-coop game, featuring a squad of four space marines, controlled in first person by the player, who are striving to survive in a wrecked space ship, swarmed with ostile alien beings.

The gameplay is 'heavely' based on cooperation (coop with yourself), featuring for example a great number of combinations between the characters' skills and weapons, that creates new emergent abilities, instead of 'placeholders', merely to increase the count.

A new mechanic 'bounds' two characters together, rising the tension in combat and stepping forward the typical squad-control systems of the FPS-RTS hybrids.

The game is not publicly available yet.

EDIT (05/05/09): during the past monthes our team have suffered several departures for motivations completely extraneous to the project (study in primis).
Unfortunately a merge with the NeBULA team is inapplicable.
We hope to come back to the past regimen as soon as possible.

Time Crawler

2007-12-31T12:12:00.002+01:00

Nonspatial casual NetHack?

TC is a solo project for PC and iOS.