Media links from the 48 Hour Game competition
I spoke to Yug and Matt at the 48 hour game competition, which can be heard on their podcast http://www.australiangamer.com/podcast/176_live_from_48hr_game_making_challenge_2009.html
I also did an interview for Amanda Dell on ABC radio as to why exactly a pro-team would be interested in the 48 hour game competition – MP3 here.
My Mechanical Romance : Mac and PC builds
So, the 48 hour game competition is now done with, and the level of entries was fantastic. I was especially impressed with the efforts of some of the amateur teams – amazing work from people outside the games industry, in crazy timelines, and with a surprising amount of polish. They also tended to sleep way less than us, who for the most part actually got some sleep in the middle there – we’re old men (well, some of us are) we can’t stay up for 48 hours straight making games!
On the nice side, our game “My Mechanical Romance” won the pro team competition. We used the three seed words (Giant, Storm, and Love) to tell a tale of Giant Robots who, after fighting oppression for many years, have finally been allowed to be wed. You control the forces of the wind in order to blow the clouds around Central Park, keeping them away from the Giant Robot Weddings and (once you get to Level 2) into the various groups of protesters who arrive.
It’s a simple piece, but I find the mechanic really interesting, and I’m fascinated with where we can take it. There’s a build below for people who’d like to play it on PC – I’d provide the Mac and Webplay builds, but for some reason they’re huge – I’m going to take a look at that tomorrow and see if I can’t get them smaller.
Edit : Large Intel Mac build now available for your delight!
So, enjoy our little piece of 48 hour pro-Giant-Robot-Wedding touch controlled fun : My Mechanical Romance!
My Mechanical Romance, a literal screenshot
Some quick instructions – hold down the mouse and drag the cursor to blow a breeze across the clouds. Keep the mouse held down for longer breezes. Keep clouds away from weddings, and over protesters. Enjoy having a play!
PC Build : My Mechanical Romance
Intel OSX Build : My Mechanical Romance (40 odd MB)
48 Hour Games Competition
I’ll be at the http://www.48hrgamecomp.com/ along with the gang from Curious Bear. Will be really interesting to see what we can come up with in two short days, as well as how everyone else does. In addition, this will be our first project using Unity and will act as a great test bed to see how that goes. I’ll provide updates over the course of the weekend on Twitter, and then a summary here once done.
Cluck It!
I worked with Curious Bear to help develop Cluck It! – a casual iPhone game of chickens crossing roads. It was accepted into submission last night, so we’re now live and avaliable! Go grab a copy (it’s only a dollar!) and let us know what you think. We’re pretty pleased with what we’ve accomplished, and we’ve had some great feedback so far. Some of it even from people who aren’t our mates!
Shipping an iPhone game is an eye opening process, really. While there are a reasonably large number of hoops to cross, it’s simply amazing how much easier it is than passing any console TRC process, in terms of requirements and amount of work. We probably went to submit about a week later than anticipated, due to finalling issues, but that’s still pretty good.
Cluck It! has some really neat features – I’m looking forward to discussing in detail some of the thinking behind the level design (my primary input into the game, along with the suggestion of keeping it to a one button interface). I was especially looking to build a game that, at the highest levels, captured the old school arcade experience of flow – but that was at the same time super casual. I think we achieved that nicely – especially once you get into the star rounds towards the end.
One of our early stages
The changing needs of the games industry
There are a couple of major trends we’re seeing in the commercial side of game development at the moment (and for the last year or more), both of which have a pretty dramatic impact on the sorts of games that are being funded at the moment. Given the usual development schedule of between 2-4 years, this means we’ll really start to see the impacts of these strategies from the major players show up on shelves in the sorts of titles we have avaliable in the next 12-18 months.
So, what two elements am I talking about?
The first is the splitting of the market in terms of profits. While there used to be a decrease in sales between the number 1 selling game and the number 10 selling game, they tended to (historically) be in the same ballpark. No more. These days, a really enormous blockbuster (think a GTA, or a Halo, or a Call of Duty) absolutely dominates the charts. There’s a huge cliff between number one and number three at any point.
The second trend we’re seeing is the rental market. For every copy of a game that gets sold, it may get resold three or four times – usually at only 5-10% off the cover price! All of the profit from those sales goes to the Electronics Boutiques and Gamestops that are responsible for the second hand market. None of it goes back to the developers and publishers. Again this is something that’s been present for a while, but is rapidly becoming endemic. Often you’ll see second hand copies on sale the day after release! In fact, game stores offer serious incentives for you to purchase and return your copies as soon as possible.
What does this mean for publishers? It means they’re changing the sorts of games they’re making in response. The first point means they’re focusing on hits and putting all their energy behind guarenteed blockbusters. Which basically means we’re seeing huge campaigns promoting sequels and followups, as they’re safe bets. We’re also seeing a lot of studios following the EA Sports model of yearly updates. If you want to put your big cash behind the safe IP’s, then you want to make sure they’re coming out nice and regular.
Of course, it takes new IP’s to build franchises which can be exploited in this fashion – but that’s a different topic for a different time. It is worth noting that Ubisoft seem to have found an excellent balance however – there were a couple of years there where they were leaning very heavily on Prince and Splinter Cell to drive their sales, but that’s relaxed to a much broader strategy where they try to bring something new to the table each time a major franchise sees a new release.
Secondly, we’re seeing a focus on strategies that either reduce resale or get some cash coming in even if there is a copy is resold. In other words downloadable content – either free or paid for, and multiplayer content. The DLC helps to keep you playing (or grabs some extra cash from you even if you’re playing a secondhand copy) and multiplayer content is notoriously sticky.
However, the rush to multiplayer has it’s own perils – because multiplayer content is only sticky IF it’s got a huge community behind it. Which moves us back to the problem of following hits yet again – players flock to best in show multiplayer, but tend to ignore anything other than the best.
I don’t necessarily have an easy answer to the current hard questions facing the pointy end of the business. That said, I do think this makes clear a set of opportunities developers have these days.
First and foremost – take risks and lots of them. The potential reward is huge if you succeed – a new francise is a licence to print money, if it’s a hit maker.
However, take *cheap* risks. There are a lot of places to prove out a concept other than a 50 million dollar headline title. You can make a lot of smaller XBLA or PSN games for that sort of cash, and in the process find the ones that catch fire for you. It’s not as simple as that alone, of course – but we’re definitely seeing the payoffs for the studios that are focused on building IP rather than simply resting on their headliners.
Exercising the Creative Spark
Had a great chat with Janine Cahill of Future Journeys today in which we covered a great range of interesting topics. The one that stood out to me was creativity exercises and the various approaches to creating a workplace with a sense of fun and spontenaity.
I then brought up Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies, and the more recent example of similar thinking, Jesse Schell’s Deck of Lenses. Both of these represent a great way to integrate some new thinking and perspectives into your routines, especially in places where you might get stuck – either in a rut, or just stalled completely. There’s a difference in approach between them – but they’re more similar than they are different.
What I find most interesting about these sorts of approaches (apart from the ease with which they conceptually adapt to technological solutions) is the potential benefit to our thinking of adding a random element, especially when you’re working in a creative field. Of course, I tend to think all fields are creative fields, but that’s my bias showing through. Enforced randomness is something that’s hard to find in the whirl of day to day business, but there’s nothing wrong with planning fortuity. One of the things I do is add appointments to my calendar that say things like “Take a step backwards and look at things differently” – which is a great opportunity to utilise a tool like the Oblique Strategies, or to look over Noah Falsteins 400 project which even without an update for the last 3 years or so, still remains a great list of things to think about.
inFamous and Prototype : A comparison
So, I’ve been playing a bunch of both of these open world super power games recently, and they make for an excellent comparison of choices that you can make in developing an open world game.
It’s a little sad that they’ve both been released at the same time, bringing the inevitable comparison and competition. Add platform exclusivity into the mix, and you’re guarenteed to get heated discussion on both sides. Nothing I write here is to outline ways in which one performs better than the other, merely the ways in which different choices take you to different places.
Prototype and inFamous are both excellent examples of the new breed of open world games, and the fact that they’ve both metacriticed in the mid eighties is a clear indication of how high the bar is when it comes to open world development. The amount of work involved in making an open world at this level of polish and amount of content is simply boggling – many times the amount of work involved in a classic FPS, or even a linear third person platformer.
Pacing and powers:
It’s worth noting that the classic open world game (GTA) doesn’t unlock new abilities in the fashion most games do. In fact, it’s avowedly open world, in that even those abilities granted by gaining new items (planes, missile launchers, etc) are available if you know where to go to get them. Both Prototype and inFamous take the more normal game approach, teaching the player new abilties as they progress both to add variety to gameplay and to allow them to learn as they progress.
inFamous utilises pretty classic platform game pacing. New abilites grant new power, which often grant access to new areas of play or movement through the neighborhood. With relatively few new powers (there are about 17 that actually provide new functionality, with many of those having three levels of upgrade) the overall game progress feels relatively gently paced.
Prototype, on the other hand, accelerates unlock pacing to absurd lengths. There are no commercial games I can think of that provide this many game changing power-ups this quickly. I haven’t had so many things unlock since Burnout Legends (and there, most of the unlocks were cosmetic and not functional). Prototype contains about EIGHTY different abilities (and that’s only counting ones that add a new function – not those that boost stats or damage) and hands them out like candy.
Combat and movement :
Both games feature great moment to moment gameplay, with really differing intents. Prototype has a hugely extensible “mayhem” focused combat system. In general the goals seem to be ultraviolence and freedom of movement, and it achieves this in spades. That said, there’s not so much in the way of tactical decisions throughout the combat, nor is this the goal.
In contrast, inFamous is a study in small scale combat. While you have a decent range of abilities that cause destruction, they are heavily limited in terms of usage (they deplete your powerbar as you progress). This, along with the cover system and fragility of the main character, all lead towards short term tactical usages of power, and pop and shoot gameplay much like many other current gen shooters.
As a result, inFamous has much better thought out combat puzzles. Environment is key to inFamous, both for combat and movement – in combat, it plays more like a Gears of War, and in movement more like a classic platformer (not surprising, given the developers pedigree). In contrast, combat in Prototype leans towards Devil May Cry combined with Spiderman. These choices define the sorts of tools the designers have to create interesting content – and as a result, each game plays distinctly differently, despite surface similarities.
Side Missions :
Prototype lost me very quickly with it’s side missions (called events) – each of the ones I picked up felt unmotivated (there’s no real dialog or cutscenes to set them up) and on top of that, they were unrewarding. This is as much down to my personal play style as anything else – I like to see variety, and I like rewards to move me forward. I tried out a few events, and in each case completed them without scoring high enough to be rewarded. This turned me quickly off them – there was a lot more instant gratification on the mainline game path, and thanks to the huge whack of powers you get anyways, I never felt I needed to grind the side missions to get more.
That said, I returned to the side missions after a few hours of play (and after upgrading my abilities) and found it much easier to achieve success and medals. They still weren’t as compelling or varied as I’d like, but nonetheless the difficulty felt much better placed once my powers were at the appropriate level. While new events get unlocked all the time (and I presume that the events unlocked increase in difficulty as the game progresses) there’s no way to tell which events are appropriate for your current skill / upgrade level.
In effect, the way events have been established against the framework of (the already discussed) power unlocks in Prototype makes balancing them delicately almost impossible. Each one has its own difficulty and power requirements, and may shift from too difficult to too easy depending on the load out the player currently possesses. In this situation, the player really needs tools to understand which are appropriate for their current skill level. That said, I suspect most players will follow my course, and simply ignore them – which isn’t actually a bad thing. Prototype is a better game in terms of content engineered to the players skill level without them. The difficulty ramp feels much more reasonable and the main plot line is put together very well.
I do get the sense that some elements of the main plot line are intentionally made overly difficult (for example the sequence where you have no powers, which represented a difficulty spike for me) in order to encourage you to go back and grind side missions for more XP. I’ve yet to meet anything that requires it, however.
Getting around to inFamous – largely a study in contrast. Side missions are set up with a bit of character work, and have a meaningful reward at each point – they actually change the properties of the environment you’re in (Hive and Military base sidemissions do this for Prototype – and as a result are the only ones I played). On completion, you’ll get a bit of feedback (again, from characters or watching the TV’s in the world) as to how people are starting to view you differently. While it seems like a small thing, this combined with the length and accessibilty of the side missions makes them appealing. It’s always worth five minutes to me to see some progress in the world – and the missions are so well checkpointed that I can quickly progress through to conclusion.
UI :
A quick note on UI. The generic “hi tech” interface used by Protoype I find generally unappealing, especially the small text in dialog boxes. The whole thing comes across as functional, and being functional I want to get past it ASAP. I find inFamous generally more appealing and interesting. A small thing, but I do think it has an impact on how willing I am to browse menus and sidemission screens.
Wrap up :
Mechanic decisions in an open world game determine (to a large degree) how exactly you can build content, and by so doing, what sort of play experience the gamer gets from your game. Prototype and inFamous are both excellent examples of this – with very similar (in theme and surface detail) set ups, they go to very different places in terms of moment to moment play experience.
Radio National
You can hear myself and Lee Sheldon talking about Serious Games on Life Matters from Radio National. Check the program for 11th June 2009 to hear us wax lyrical on games in general, and serious games in particular.
Welcome
The paint is still drying on the good ship HMS ICBF, and things will change a bit over the next few days. Nonetheless, pull up a chair and make yourselves comfortable!
