Tag Archive for 'Gaming'

The Rules of Engagement

Published on January 28, 2010 in Gaming. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

One of the greatest failings in game design is the failure to properly explain the rules of a situation to the player. When this occurs, the player can find themselves repeatedly in a game’s fail state through no fault of their own. Games can explain the rules of a situation in several ways. The Legend of Zelda series springs to mind as perhaps being slightly heavy handed regarding this in some situations, though it is not exempt from this failing itself. In general though, the series tends to let the user know what is required through a set of visual and audio cues; more often than not a camera zoom / pan and/or audion jungle. The other main way in which games can help in this regard is to force the player past the solution in the environment, before activating the obstacle.

I recently played through Dead Space which failed in this regard on a number of key occasions. I say key occasions because they had a detrimental impact on my opinion of the game. On one occasion I was left repeatedly dieing and on another wondering around aimlessly due to the game not being able to impart crucial infromation about how a situation was supposed to be tackled. The result is that there were a number of occasions where the game was unnecesarilly frustrating, meaning my opinion of the game as a whole was damaged. In this case it left me feeling that the game was just good, falling short of greatness by some small margin because of these failings.

It’s particularly heartbreaking when a game commits this sin as it’s something which could be solved quite easily with an adequate level of playtesting. Often the game designer is in a uniquely poor position to determine if the game is adequately explaining the rules of a situation to the player, as they already know and understand the rules. Adequate playtesting can account for this however. It’s no surprise that the developers which carry out the highest levels of playtesting rarely fail in this regard.

On Geometry Wars

Published on September 2, 2008 in Gaming and geek. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Geometry wars is gaming at its purest and game design at its best. A bold statement surely? Well following on from my last post, here is my explanation for that bold statement.

Geometry wars is a brilliantly balanced game, built on a few rules. It’s a twin stick shooter, so you use the left analogue stick for movement and the right analogue stick for shooting. This gives you remarkable freedom in both movement, and direction of your shots. Importantly you don’t need to be facing in the direction in which you are shooting. You start with 3 ships and 3 bombs. Bombs are your only other weapon and clear the screen when used. You gain an extra ship every 75,000 points and an extra bomb every 100,000 points. This naturally makes bombs a scarecery resource, but not necesarilly more important than lives. You see, as you destroy your enemies; you gradually increase a score multiplier. Upon the loss of a ship this multiplier is reset to 1, decreasing the value of each enemy you kill; making a high score more difficult. That’s all you need to know about you and your ship.

You have a rectangular area in which to move around in. This is importantly marginally bigger than the size of your screen, meaning occasionally enemies will spawn out of sight. (But not as I will reveal later, out of mind). That’s the play (or should I say game?) area defined.

Enemies. Enemies come in a number of different types, which I will outline below. Firstly though, it is important to note that each enemy has its own unique sound which plays as spawns.

Wanderer: A purple enemy, shuriken like in appearance. Moves slowly and randomly about the level. Worth 25 x multiplier, points.

Grunt: A blue diamond like enemy. Moves relatively quickly and directly towards the player’s ship. Worth 50 x multiplier, points.

Weaver: A green square. Moves quickly towards you, but is scared of your bullets and thus dodges them. Worth 100 x multiplier, points.

Spinner: Pink square. Moves quickly towards you, but splits up releasing small spinners when you hit it with bullets. Worth 100 x multiplier, points.

Small Spinner: Smaller variant on the spinner which is released when a Spinner breaks up. Moves qucikly towards you, in an orbit around the spinner’s original trajectory. Worth 50 x multiplier, points.

Gravity Well: Does not have a gravitional effect until activated by a bullet. It then starts to pull in other enemies (and your ship if you aren’t carfeul). Eventually explodes upon swallowing enough enemies, unless shot by you. Worth base points modified by number of enemies eaten x multiplier, points.

Proton: Small blue circle, released when a gravity well explodes. Very fast. Worth 50 x multiplier, points.

Snake: Orange snake with blue head. Can only be destroyed by shooting it in the head. Moves towards you in a snake-like fashion. Worth 150 x multiplier, points.

Repulsar: Red enemy that looks like another space ship. Very fast. Moves directly towards you and has a shield in font, meaning it is easier to kill from the side. Worth 150 x multiplier, points.

Mayfly: Tiny enemies, which swarm from all four corners of the play area at once. They move fast and come in huge swarms. Worth 10 x multiplier, points.

That’s it. There are a few little touches, for instance the gravity well gets smaller as you shoot it, everutally to the point where its force of gravity bends your bullets around it from distance, meaning you have to get closer to finish it.

These ingredients are mixed and matched to create organic fights, where you quickly become outnumbered. A game will usually start with a number of wanderers and grunts and ramp up adding enemies roughly in the order they are presented here. The way the enemies all attack you in different ways keeps you on your toes and is really interesting. Instead of being merely a twitch shooter, Geometry Wars quickly becomes a game of strategy. Each new sound heralding the appearance of an enemy has you constantly prioritising and re-prioritising your targets. This extends to the gravity well’s wailing gradually growing to a high pitch which lets you know that if you don’t deal with it soon, it will explode, sending protons your way.

When you combine these base mechanics, with the fact that each enemy makes a pretty explosion when you kill it, you quickly have something really compelling. The amazing light show that is Geometry Wars in full flow is an extra reward for doing well, on top of your ever increasing score. This re-inforcement is a touch of genius. As is the subtle dance track in the background, which keeps a constant pace and rythmn, mimicking that of the eventual game.

The killer touch, is the pseudo-randomness. Geometry Wars is a random game within certain parameters. The enemies don’t spwan identically each time, rather they spawn similarly enough to make the game seem fair; while being different enough to make each game its own experience. The way the simple rules of the game combine within the game to produce dynamic, exciting situations is remarkable.

And the touch of real genius, the thing that shows how much thought went into the game, is the mapping of the bomb on the controller. The bomb is mapped to the triggers, which have a lot of play before they fully activate; meaning it takes a crucial split second longer to unleash a screen clearing, life and multiplier saving bomb. It’s devious genius, but never feels unfair.

This simplicity and clarity of thought is why it is gaming at its purest and game design at its best.

On Games and Play

Published on August 29, 2008 in Gaming. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Humans, more particularly adults, rarely play. Play is unstructured. A good example of this, is that if you give two people a ball they might kick it about. As soon as these people think about structure, perhaps say a scoring system, this becomes a game. The thing is, games are all about rules and possibilities. As humans, we like possibilities. Unfortunately we don’t like infinite possibilities, if everything is possible; there are no rules. With no rules, there are no goals and we like goals much more than we like possibilities. You see goals give us a chance to improve, better ourselves and also to compete. As humans, we like to feel that we have improved ourselves in some way. More than this though, our egos appreciate the opportunity to prove that we are better than other people. Games with rules, allow us to do this. Play does not.

Back to possibilities, it is actually much more interesting to restrict the number of possibilities available. With fewer possibilities it becomes possible to comprehend what is possible and it becomes easier to master the available possibilities. Rules allow this restriction of possibility and many of the greatest games have simple, yet robust rule sets. In reality, chess has very few rules. Chess in fact, probably hits the sweet spot in terms of restriction of possibility. Because the rules restrict what is possible, it becomes not only easy to understand the game, but also easy to predict what may happen. The trick is that it is impossible to know how a game will play out. No matter the standard of two players, they will each have their own unique style. Even accounting for this, there is a certain randomness to even the most carefully considered play.

Rules are the most important thing about games. It’s why our games often have some sort of independant authority, who ensures that the rules are being properly followed. You see if there’s one thing that can ruin a game, it is inconsistencies in how its rules are enforced. Computer games in particular fall foul of this. It is not unusual to find gamers almost universally deriding certain sections of games. This is often because the game has broken its own rules, making its world less believable and breaking the sense of immersion. The best games have rules which are enforced correctly every time.

Not only this, the best games have rules which allow the game to border on chaos, without ever reaching it…

Mass Effect: Revelation

Published on August 27, 2008 in geek and review. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

After thoroughly enjoying both the gameplay and the storytelling in last year’s hit game Mass Effect, I decided to give the prequel novel a try. Several factors affected my decision to do so. I am not normally the sort of person who would enjoy the fiction associated with series spawned in other media. I find that the defining features of a medium generally dictate a certain style of storytelling, this does not always translate well to written fiction. This is perhaps most clearly the case with computer games. Computer games as a medium dicatate a certain focus on action, and interaction, that does not suit written fiction, or indeed any other medium. In this case however I was willing to give Mass Effect: Revelation a shot based on the fact that it was written by the lead writer of the game and also the high quality of the writing in the game itself. Additionally, a recent foray into this sort of literature by way of Peter David’s excellent Babylon 5 novel The Long Night Of Centauri Prime, gave me some faith in this time of accompanying fiction. Again David is an excellent writer, well versed in that source material.

What I found, was pleasantly surprising in some respects; but also entirely what I expected in others. It is fair to say that the plot involves more than its fair share of action, perhaps a necessary evil, but I could have done with a little more story in around some of the action section. The story takes place a number of years before the game and focuses on the Spectre (a kind of intergalactic police man who is almost above the law) Saren and David Anderson, a member of Earth’s Alliance Military. As ever in these stories, we have a united Earth as part of a galactic Council made up of a number of different races. This offers up the standard pot shots at racism that you’d typically expect to find in such a novel. There was also the First Contact War, which involved the humans and Saren’s race; the Turians. Stop me if this is sounding a little too familiar…

For what it’s worth though, the story is quite interesting in parts. It really does set up the game’s plot in a fantastic way, with a lot of foreshadowing, particularly as the book reaches its closing stages. The book starts out with an attack on an Alliance colony and our hero David Anderson just happens to be part of the response team sent in to deal with it. From there we go to alien bars, alien planets, have the odd politics section and finally end up at the part of the story that’s alluded to in the game. David Anderson being considered as a member of Spectre, but being teamed up with Saren. Essentially the mission goes very right for Saren and very wrong for everyone else. Saren then goes on to pin the blame for the incident on Anderson.

In an odd way I’m fairly sure this prequel book is designed to be read after the events of the game have taken place. There’s a lot in the book that wouldn’t make sense without the context of the universe and I’m not sure that the book does enough to establish that universe by itself. The book reads well as something akin to a flashback sequence, filling out the backstory. I suppose that makes it a successful piece of accompanying fiction, but I can’t help but feel the story could have been expanded upon more in this form. I think it was perhaps slightly constricted by the fact it was being written as a prequel to a computer game, rather than a book.

Overall though, it was an enjoyable read. With the context of the events of Mass Effect it’s certainly veyr entertaining and succeeds in its task in revealing more about what happened between Anderson and Saren. It also sets up the events of the game very well, dropping just enough hints at what is to come to make things interesting. I’ll certainly keep an eye out for any future accompanying fiction for Mass Effect.

How Nintendo Got It Wrong

Published on July 1, 2008 in Gaming and geek. 2 Comments Tags: , .

This may seem like a strange post given that Nintendo are currently riding high, winning both the console and handheld wars and reaching out to a new market. Indeed that Nintendo made it out of 3rd place at all in the home console “war” is remarkable. However, all is not well. Increasingly traditional gamers, that’s consumers who have been purchasing games consoles since long before the Wii, have been feeling that the company is no longer making games for them. Indeed it would be easy to quote Shigeru Miyamoto himself to back up such a claim; I don’t have the exact quote to hand, but he said something like “I’m no longer making games I consider to be fun, but making games I think my wife would like.” This is exemplified by his recent output, made up largely of games like Nintendogs and Wii Fit.

It is this sort of game that is Nintendo’s problem. While the Wii is selling well, it is well known that the system has a relatively poor attach rate (number of games sold per console sold), largely because a lot of these games are little more than the latest fad. Wii Fit in particular is an offender here, I wonder how many non-gamers have bought a Wii for Wii Fit, only for the Wii to now sit unused after the initial novelty wore off.

While this is happening, traditional gamers are starting to feel left out. Beyond Super Smash Bros. Brawl there has been no Nintendo game which has elicited that old feeling of joy from me. Even the much vaunted Super Mario Galaxy left me cold. While I may be in the minority on the latter, few can disagree when it is noted that Nintendo have been lax with their output recently. Twilight Princess was okay, but it was a Gamebcube game, not a Wii game. Mario Kart Wii felt dumbed down and can be played almost on auto-pilot. Metroid Prime 3 (not strictly a Nintendo game, but overseen by them) had too many people in it at the start and felt generally diluted. Metroid Prime was noted for its feeling of isolation, among other things, introducing too many non-player characters was just a flat out bad idea.

What of the horizon? What is to come? Well, unless E3 has some serious surprises; Nintendo has nothing of interest to show to the traditional gamer. The big rumour I’ve heard is Kid Icarus, an update of a NES game nobody really cares about. Nothing new has been brought to the table by Nintendo in terms of genuinely interesting IP of late. As a more traditional gamer you can’t help but wonder how Nintendo got it so wrong. When did their consoles become host to little more than dressed up gimmicks and experiences that are game like, but not games.

In reaching out for a new audience, Nintendo have seemingly abandoned the old audience they once catered for. They have done this with no evidence that their new audience will show a sustained interest. It is a brave, if perhaps foolhardy move. It does however recall their original move into computer games, after having originally set up as a company that made playing cards. I don’t get the feeling this move will continue to be as successful though.

But is it really that they got it all right? (Stay tuned for the next post in this series; Where Nintendo Got It Right).