Competitive Gaming Reflections

I just went back over my post from a couple years ago and noticed that I largely got it right back then. I provided a list of 3 things that I would add to every online competitive game to make them more enjoyable, and right now I would like to suggest a slight modification to that list to change the emphasis. My new list is as follows:

1. Build in rewards for players that behave well.
2. Provide training(tutorials) for players to encourage good behavior.
3. Humanize other players through lobby or cooperative gameplay.
4. Provide punishment for misbehaving as necessary.

In this new list, I switch my emphasis slightly to leave punishment as the last resort. So many times, we see bad behavior and think, "I should punish him for being mean." It's quite easy to identify bad behavior and focus on dealing with it, however I believe the more important thing is to focus on the good behavior. If you give rewards for being nice to others, and treating them with respect, you are likely to condition your players appropriately. In addition, the majority of players will leave your game with more happiness in their life, not less.

Another useful technique includes the humanizing of other players. Once you realize that everyone else in the game is another human being with a life and emotions, you will be much less likely to insult them and put them down. If I'm going to spend 30-50 minutes of my life with a group of 4 strangers in League of Legends, I would like to feel like I brought some sort of positive experience to their lives and increased their happiness. May we all be better people, even when it comes to our online interactions with people we don't see face-to-face.

One Game a Month

I've decided I want to be more involved in game design in my life. To that end, I'm going to attempt to participate in the One Game a Month program, where many game developers attempt to complete one game in each month of the year. I plan to follow the theme for march, which is "Rogue" and create a rogue-like of some sort. I'm not yet sure what platform I will target, but I do want the game to be electronic. I may just make something quick and easy in python using a command line interface. Or maybe I'll follow this tutorial to create a roguelike using the libtcod roguelike library.

The setting for my rogue-like will be a world invasion of giants that you must defeat, based losely on the futuristic sequel I'd imagine to the recently released movie, Jack the Giant Slayer. I plan to use a lot of procedural generation of content, which is something I have wanted to do for a while. We'll see how far I get in the month, but this is definitely a game I want to do.

Sona Support Game

I've been playing some League of Legends over the past few months. Most of the games have been ranked. Last night, I played a game as Sona, and I got to support Varus in bottom lane. The game ended up being pretty fun for me, despite the times that my team members got mad at me for stealing kills according to them. It's times like this that I hate the "last hit" practice that is often used in games.

Why should one person get greater credit for a kill when clearly that event was a team effort? There are times where a kill might deserve special recognition, but I believe the vast majority of team kills should be recognized as being a kill generated by the team only. I do believe that Guild Wars does a pretty good job of recognizing true contributions to the team goals, though I need to pay more attention to describe what they do. Anyway, here is my Sona game from last night if you are interested:

Thoughts on farming casual games

I've spent some time tinking lately about farming style games and what I think of them. The basic gameplay in these games is almost exclusively clicking on something once to initiate a timer until you can click on that same thing again. This waiting game naturally provides some excitement as the moment of clicking approaches. Then you get a brief feeling of joy as you click and the reward for the action pops out.

This basic gameplay is actually a fairly good representation for a number of real world activities. For instance, in a real farm, you perform a brief action of planting a seed, then after some much longer period of time, you perform another small action to reap the reward of whatever that plant produced.

However, the vast majority of farming style video games these days seem designed almost entirely to separate the player from their money as efficiently as possible. Many gamers are offended with the genre because of this commercialization, but I don't believe that the design has to be monetized in that way. In fact games like simtower were very similar, but had a more traditional monetization through a one-time purchase.

If I find the time, I may design a game using this play style, but a much more reasonable monetization.

Wizard Fight Race Steam Greenlight

Back in March I made a post about about Wizard Fight Race 7II, a game I made with a few friends in 72 hours. While we have a prototype as a proof of concept for the game, I believe there is still a lot more that could be done to improve it to the point where people might be willing, and interested in paying money for it. To that end, I made a concept page on Steam Greenlight to encourage community interaction and feedback. If you're reading this, and you feel like you'd like to give me a thumbs up (or down) or any sort of suggestions and input, then head on over to the Wizard Fight Race project page to leave comments and discuss the possibilities for the game with other interested steam users.

Kickstarter — Aries (FPSMMORPG)

I for one am very interested in crowd sourced funding for video games (and other projects). After the hugely successful KickStarter campaign from Double Fine, I think a lot of independent developers have awakened to the possibilities of having the game paid for by the end user rather than some publishing organization. The benefits of such a technique are numerous and I won't go in too much depth right now, but the biggest merit is that the developer is able to maintain autonomous creative control over the final product.

Many of the projects on kickstarter are very small in scope and only ask for a modest amount of money, perhaps a few thousand dollars. Occasionally there is a project that I come across that appears to fundamentally defeat the purpose of kickstarter in my mind. The Future of First Person Shooters- Aries (FPSMMORPG) by Derrick Smith — Kickstarter: is one such project in my mind. It comes from a guy who is "a recent graduate at University of Phoenix with [a] BA in Business Development specifically in Organization and Innovation." He also "use to play football" so he must know his stuff.

Regardless of his qualifications as a businessman, this particular project is already "pre-funded." I get the impression that they really just want to collect some of the free money available on KickStarter and aren't doing something that is truly crowd-funded like Double Fine Adventure. Obviously they are within their rights to start the project and see what interest they get. I think the numbers speak louder than I can about the interest in this particular FPSMMORPGWTFBBQ game of videos. As of the time of this writing, there are 64 hours to go and they have 15 backers for a total of $950 of their $275,000 goal. If you are reading this post, I implore you to not support this project and put your money somewhere that they actually need it. Aries will eventually happen or not and I don't believe any kick-starter money will have an affect on whether they complete the game or whether it will be any good at all.

'via Blog this'

Wizard Fight Race 7II

Last weekend I had a few of my friends work on a game that we started from scratch and brought through to a state of completion. A lot of the ideas were things we had been discussing for a while, but the concrete plans came into being during that 3 day period. If you want to see what we made, the game can be downloaded or you can play it in a browser (assuming you install the right plugins). For the record, the title of the game is Wizard Fight Race 7II, and the number should be pronounced "seventy-two".

If you download and try it and want to provide any feedback, feel free to send me messages at my twitter account, @cordoro1, and I'll try to get back to you when I can. I feel like this experience was something that I needed and that it helped me remember how fun it can be to rapidly prototype a game when using the right programming environment. We used Unity as our game engine, which we had barely touched before we started this project. I'm impressed with how much we got done, despite the fact that the game might feel a little unfinished (the whole thing was done by only 2 programmers/designers in 72 hours).

Games Made in a Weekend

I think the development of a game from scratch in a very short time is an interesting way for new ideas to end up as games. If you're interested in checking one out, take a look at https://sites.google.com/site/72hourgame/

There should be more content appearing there shortly.

I beat Portal 2!

So last night I beat Portal 2 on my stream and I must say, the game was a great experience. The first thing you notice when the game starts is that it has a great sense of humor. The script is very well written and the voice actors execute it extraordinarily well. Even when I wasn't laughing, I felt like I was enjoying myself with my virtual friend in the game. Another game that similarly has good writing and makes you feel like you're rarely left alone is Uncharted 2. I think the technique that both of these games use to keep the flow natural and enjoyable is to play the voices at times where you are platforming, allowing the player to do a little bit of multitasking by advancing story and gameplay simultaneously.

In terms of the levels, I believe the design team did an excellent job of keeping the objectives clear while still providing challenge and opportunities to think about how to solve the puzzles. Nothing is more obnoxious than a level where there is no clear goal, but Valve avoids those problems for the most part. The various features available in the game build on each other as you progress, so you are never presented with a huge jump in difficulty, but there is always a new challenge to deal with, so it never feels boring. Beyond the level design, the environments are varied and interesting, and span a large amount of Aperture Science history, giving you a look into the past for the lab you are being tested in. Portal 2 is a game that I highly recommend to everyone that has any inclination to play video games. If you'd rather just watch someone else play it, you can check out my playthrough on my Portal 2 youtube playlist.

What is missing from motion-controlled shooting games

When I got my Wii way back when it first came out in November of 2006 I was really excited for the new gameplay possibilities it would provide. In particular, I believed that shooters would finally be playable on consoles. No offense to anyone that exclusively plays shooters on consoles, but a mouse just provides much better accuracy and control than a thumb-stick ever will be able to. With the Wii remote, you can just point at the screen and pull a trigger to fire, much like gun-wielding arcade games.

In order to try out the motion-controlled shooting experience, I got a game called Elebits. The aiming at the screen works well, and the player quickly becomes accustomed to pointing to get the cursor to move. The one big downfall of this targeting scheme comes when the player needs to change the direction of the camera. The only way to move the camera is to move the pointer to the edge of the screen and wait there until the camera has moved far enough and then return the pointer to the center of the screen. This method of controlling the camera is just as bad as using a joystick, and in fact a little bit worse. For instance, if you move the cursor just a little bit past the edge of the screen and leave the screen entirely, the sensor no longer knows which direction to turn, so it either turns the wrong way or doesn't turn at all. Maybe that's why all the shooting games in arcades are rail shooter (a game where the camera control is scripted, and the action is always where the camera is looking). Unless something is done to improve the current state of motion-controls for consoles (and most arcade games), rail shooters are the best kind of motion-controlled shooters we will have.

The way I would implement a motion-controlled shooter to make the controls non-frustrating and intuitive would require hardware that is more expensive and perhaps less practical to have in one's living room. Most importantly, the player would need to have a surround display system. I mean that a set of displays, or one large, curved display, would need to be placed around the player to allow for a 360 degree view at all times. The player could then point the wand/gun/whatever in any direction and use a joystick to move relative to that pointing direction. The result would be an intuitive, accurate, and easy to control shooter with motion controls. The only downside is that the display technology is much more expensive than people are willing to pay. One might also want more displays to look up and down in addition to the horizontal directions.

Games vs. Toys

There's some difference between games and toys. Traditionally, games are defined by a set of rules which award points to the players to determine a winner based on some combination of skill, strength and luck. Toys on the other hand are merely an object usually intended for a child to play with. Games provide a set of restrictions on their users that typically increase the opportunity for fun as long as the right boundaries are chosen. Toys on the other hand can be used in any way that the user can come up with. An individual playing a game repeatedly can develop skill or strength, or just attempt to happen across better luck while repeated use of toys allows the exploration of a new world of possibilities each time.

Video games are a relatively modern kind of game, although I believe they regularly fill in somewhere between the traditional view of games and toys. In recent years, there has been a great increase in open-ended gameplay. Sometimes, there are products that are called video games, that are really just video toys. For instance, Garry's Mod (for Halflife 2), is a modification of the Source engine that allows the user to place a bunch of objects and interact with them. Often this interaction is very similar to ones that I had with my G.I. Joe figurines when I was younger. I believe there is great value in the interactions we have with toys, and the possibilities are endless when we are allowed to include our imagination in experiences. While I don't always think that adding more open-endedness to video games is a good thing, I do believe that there is a very useful and constructive place for video toys in our lives.

Darkspore Beta

So I got into the Darkspore Beta by using the "click here" link on the steam page and I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts on the gameplay. The first thing I noticed was that the game was actually and action RPG, which I didn't really expect. I saw that it was from Maxis (known for simulation games) and I expected something kinda like Spore. It was a very pleasant surprise to find that the core gameplay is essentially a hack and slash class-based RPG much like Diablo, or Torchlight. Without going into too much detail on other games, Darkspore stands out in the genre by having 100 different classes to choose from. That is actually a slight exaggeration I believe because they reuse a lot of the same types of skills but mix them up differently for the different classes.

A feature that Darkspore borrows from the original Spore game is the character editor, although it is much more restricted in Darkspore. Each class has a preset structure to it, but the player can customize many of the features in the same way that creatures in Spore could be modified. The textures on each monster that you control can also be varied, making it possible for each player to use a set of avatars that are entirely unique to that player. The one downside to this huge level of customization is that, with 100 classes, the player can quickly feel overwhelmed with the huge number of things that must be done to play all of the classes.

Another interesting thing about Darkspore comes in the way you choose which classes to use in a given level. Each player chooses 3 classes, and those classes can be switched to from whichever is the active one on a relatively short cooldown. That means that there are 100 choose 3 possible class combinations for a player to pick from on a given level. It also means that for a player playing the game alone, he can bring a healer, and tank, and a damage dealer class all together and switch between them as needed.

Probably the best thing about Darkspore is the automatic matchmaking system. If you want to play a game, you can choose to have the game pick people for you to play with, and the game quickly forms and starts. That also means that you don't have to dig through pages of password protected games just to find one that you can get into. I believe that automated matchmaking is a must for a title to be a quality multiplayer experience these days. Maybe I'm just spoiled because of how easy it is to get a good matchup quickly in other recent online games.

Minecraft's Appeal

I've been playing a lot of Minecraft lately and there are reasons for it. A big part of why I play video games is for the social interaction. While the social tools in Minecraft aren't nearly as good as they could be, playing on a server is very much a social activity. I made a server so that I can hang out and play with all my friends that are interested in exploring, gathering materials, and building awesome stuff. And before you ask, no you cannot have access to my server unless you actually know me.

I have heard some complaints that Minecraft has bad graphics and just doesn't have enough of a point to make it an interesting game. Those complaints come from a lack of understanding of what Minecraft is. You, as the player, can come up with the point of the game for yourself, or you can depend on the other players if you have a multiplayer server to inspire your actions. And if you think about it, the collection of parts and construction of objects is very much like playing with Legos. The blocks in Minecraft are restricted to cubes (and occasionally half cubes), which is slightly different than the Lego restrictions, but similar enough to the basic building blocks from a set of Legos. Of course there are custom blocks made for specific types of building projects, such as light sabers for Lego men to hold in the Star Wars sets. I argue that those pieces are similar to a player holding a sword.

It is also for this reason that I do not want to install the iConomy server mod to my minecraft server. I think that adding a currency to the game is perhaps a little bit of overkill. There are already tons of resources to collect and use for various things. Depending which projects you are working on, you might want to trade the cobblestone you've collected to someone else that has surplus iron. On my server, however, the barter system has almost entirely been done away with in favor of community drive building projects. A couple people get an idea, and everyone that hears about it wants to contribute. It's really a good feeling to have a game that is almost entirely cooperative to contrast with all of the other popular games that tend to thrive on being competitive.

What I think makes League of Legends good. Part 2

Last time I covered some of the design decisions that went into League of Legends and why I think those decisions were good ones. Today I continue my analysis with the following topics.

Learning Curve:

The first thing I noticed when I played League of Legends was how easy it was to get into the game. I was a new player to the genre, although I had played RTS games as well as games like Diablo 2, so the control scheme was familiar. The game got me right into the action after a short tutorial (which I will talk about next). I was surprised that I was able to just play the game without really having a clue what I was doing or what any of the terminology meant. For instance, there is a list of recommended items for each character which isn't terrible. If a new player just sticks to that list, they won't be at a huge disadvantage, to many of the other players with more experience.

Speaking of experience, League of Legends uses it as a representation of how much a player has played the game. That means that as you play more, they advance your experience level. With that level advancement come additional gameplay mechanics, such as more summoner spells, additional rune slots, and more masteries to pick from. A beginner has little to worry about besides picking his or her character, while the more experienced user can spend the time customizing his masteries and selecting a rune page to match. There is however a side effect of this system, and that is that more experienced players have a noticeable advantage by having these additional features unlocked.

Match Making:

The way League of Legends gets around the experience advantage is by using their matchmaking system. When a new player decides to play a game, the system attempts to match that player with other new players, thereby keeping the overall balance of runes and masteries even between the teams. Even when a new player queues with a more experienced friend, the matchmaking system does its best to find players that will keep the teams balanced. The result is a game that is generally more evenly matched and enjoyable for everyone involved.

Tutorials:

Even before a player begins their first game in League of Legends, the client suggests that the player go through a short tutorial. This tutorial is well designed and teaches the player some of the basics of the game on a simple map with only one lane and scripted events that walk the player through the required steps to win a match. A voice guides the player and provides positive reinforcement that is very welcoming, and encouraging. After the tutorial, the player is offered a choice to play a practice game against some bots. This practice game provides quests and optional advice that teaches the new player a lot of the terminology that is regularly used in the game. The result is a player that is at least partly familiar with the things he or she will hear from other players in normal games.

Map Design:

I'm going to focus on Summoner's Rift, the standard 5v5 map that I spend most of my time on in League of Legends, for this discussion, but I believe the general design applies to all of the maps that Riot has made for their game. In warcraft 3 one of the main resources that players would collect is lumber. This meant that trees were easy to add to the map as obstacles for DotA, and that it was easy to add ways for those trees to be destroyed for gameplay purposes. The main downside of this is that the map ends up with a lot of small features that allow a short cut to happen that aren't readily apparent to the new player. League of Legends takes the approach of making the impassable terrain immediately discernable to even an inexperienced player. There are still some "short cuts" that cater to the players looking for a bit more of depth in game play, but the spell that gives all characters the ability to jump over certain spots in the terrain isn't available until level 12, after the player has time to complete quite a few games.

Persistant Rewards:

All most of the hero-based games like League of Legends are role playing games (RPGs), and involve the development of skills and abilities for the hero. League of Legends has an extra level of character progression that extends beyond the progression of an individual battle. The summoner is the term for the persistant character who summons the champions to battle each time, and has the ability to prepare two spells for use in assisting the hero with his or her combat against the enemy. The summoner is the one that gains experience and levels. The summoner is able to unlock new champions and skins permanently. The summoner gathers runes into run pages that heros can use to improve their fighting abilities.

The idea of RPG-like persistant character progression is not unique to League of Legends and has been a good reason why games such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft have a tendency to really draw in their customers to keep playing. In all honesty, it could be seen as a negative feature for a game to use this technique to draw in players for more and more time as they accumulate the various rewards available to them in the game. I think there is still a good amount of enjoyment that a player can get from the sense of accomplishment that these little checkpoints provide.

What I think makes League of Legends good. Part 1

Currently, League of Legends (LoL) is one of the games I play the most. It is a game in a category of games that they call MOBA and I like to call Hero Arena (HA) games. Basically, each game of this type has a set of heros (or champions) that are placed on teams. Each hero has some abilities that can typically be improved as a match progresses and the objective can be a few different things. The most popular objective, and the one used in LoL, is the destruction of the enemy base after the progressive destruction of a series of defensive structures. In a standard 5 vs. 5 game of LoL, there are 3 "lanes" each with 3 turrets defending an inhibitor (a building that prevents the enemy from spawning "super minions") and then 2 more turrets defending the main base building (called a nexus). Periodically, minions are spawned that follow a set path down the lanes towards the enemy base and it is the job of the heros (controlled by players) to influence the battle of the minions to cause the destruction of the enemy defensive structures.

There are a few things that attract me to the game including the accessibility of the game, the transparency of the developer, the colorful, stylized graphics, and the enjoyable voice acting. Today I want to write about the things I like about League of Legends in terms of game design, and particularly what is good about their decisions and how they generally make the game easier to get into for the new player. I'm going to do my best to focus on the decisions they made in designing League of Legends, and try my best to avoid talking too much about other games competing with League of Legends in the same genre. To some extent this is unavoidable because they are all based on DotA and some of the decisions are in direct contrast to the decisions their competitors have made.

Denying:

While on the subject of differences from the competition it is important to bring up the concept of denying. To discuss what it means to deny, we must first look at DotA, a game built on the Warcraft 3 engine. (Disclaimer: I have barely played any games of DotA because I didn't find it fun so I could be way off in my description here). In Warcraft 3, a Real-time Strategy Game, the player controls a group of units at a time and gives those units commands. Warcraft 3 made heavy use of heros in its basic gameplay and they functioned similarly to heros in LoL, except that the player also had the control of standard army units, and worker units. All units could be given the command to attack specific targets. As a convenience for when your own units or buildings got in the way, it was possible to order your units to destroy your own allied units. There was rarely a benefit to this practice, but it was allowed for the rare circumstances when pathing wouldn't work, or when you needed food that was being used by a weak unit to train a more powerful unit.

In Dota, a map was set up just like I described for League of Legends. The default behavior built in to Warcraft 3 was used for hero experience and gold, and that is that the hero that lands the killing blow on a unit gets gold for that kill, and every unit that dies in range of the hero grants some amount of experience to the hero, increasing its level and power. Gold is a powerful resource because it is what is required to purchase items for your hero that greatly increase his or her effectiveness in battle. It was quickly discovered that a player could attack the minions on his own side when they were almost dead to prevent the enemy heros from being able to get the gold from those kills. Additionally, gold is granted for killing towers, and once again, you could kill your own tower to prevent the enemy from getting gold for the kill.

Riot Games (the makers of LoL) decided that denying should not be a part of League of Legends. First they say that killing your own units just feels weird, and I have to agree with them on that. Second, I think that it is non-intuitive to a new player that he should kill his own units. As a new player coming to the game, you see the two waring factions locked in battle and so in order to help your team gain an advantage you kill your own troops? That's just silly. Riot made the decision to not allow the player to kill his own units, and instead increase the importance of harassing early in the game.

Harassing:

Early in the game, heros tend to distribute themselves to a couple of different lanes to gather gold from the enemy minions (as well as some from the neutral minions in the jungle, but I'll get to the jungle another time). In DotA, resources for using abilities were relatively scares, especially early in the game. In contrast, League of Legends is designed with slightly higher base resources, and a regeneration of resources that is high enough to be useful. Mana still can run out, but players are encouraged to attempt to deal damage to weaken their enemies to the point that they can either force them to retreat to heal, or maybe even kill their enemies, forcing them to wait a short time to respawn. The higher focus on harassing makes the game feel more like a battle and less like a game to see who can kill minions better than their enemy.

Punishment vs. Rewards:

This is perhaps the most important thing that I think Riot has done in their design of LoL. The entire design of the game seems to be of the mentality that players should be rewarded for playing the game and punishment should be kept to a minimum. One prime example can be seen in the way League of Legends deals with killed heros. When a hero kills another hero, the killing hero gains a good amount of gold and any assisting heros on the same team gain a smaller amount of gold as a reward for doing something good. The hero that has died is taken out of the fight for a short time, but has no equipment, experience or gold taken from him. Other games punish players for death much more harshly, by removing the things they have obtained. Harsh punishments can be depressing to a player, and even more so to a player that is new and has to deal with deaths perhaps a little more frequently than the more experienced players.

Free to Play:

League of Legends is a "free" game. That means that the game is free for anyone to download, install and play as much as they want, with one catch. That is that it is supported by micro-transactions. Each week, Riot sets 10 of the heros in the game to be free for anyone to use. This set of 10 heros changes from week to week. Each hero can be unlocked by playing the game for a certain amount of time, or by paying a small fee to the company to buy permanent access to a particular hero. Also, alternate looks for heros can be unlocked by similar small payments of approximately $4-$14. I'll probably talk more about this topic in a future post, but the important part for my current discussion is that it is easy for people to play the game since there is no cost upfront, which means that you can play with friends whenever you want. For me, gaming is much more fun when it becomes a social experience.

This post is getting kind of long so I'm going to stop here for now. Topics for next time: Persistant Rewards, Tutorials, Map Design and Learning Curve.