BlazBlue Calamity Trigger, on the PS3 at least, came with a DVD explaining how to play fighting games, how to play BlazBlue, and how to play certain characters. BlazBlue Continuum Shift pushed the trend further by including a full tutorial in the game itself.
My question is, why has it taken so long? I recently got Tekken 6, my introduction to the series. It has a tutorial, too, but only for the story mode, which is very different from normal fighting mode. I've played Street Fighter IV which, also, does not tell you very much about the game at all. The problem, as I see it, is that fighting game developers assume that the people buying fighting games have grown up with them in arcades, and were around when things like cancels (which were, at the time, glitches) were just being discovered. They don't feel the need to tell anyone about cancels, kara-throws, combos, wavedashes or anything, because the players that don't know should find it out from other players. No wonder even some game developers think fighting games are just about who can react faster.
That said, BBCS's tutorial isn't perfect. It lets you choose what parts to view and what to skip, which is great. It covers everything from the basics of fighting games in general, to the subtle tricks in BBCS, and includes a specific section for each character. It even allows you to press a button, and the computer will demonstrate the action for you. What it does wrong, is demand that you do a certain action perfectly, and only allow you to do it once before moving on. This is not so bad for the simple things, but if you have, say "perform this combo, that can only be done by using two dash-cancels", it is a real pain if you just can't seem to do it. This was my problem, as I was using an XBox controller, which is completely terrible for fighting games, especially double-tapping a controller direction. No, I don't like arcade sticks either, but anyway...
They way I'd redesign the tutorial section, is to allow the player to press a button to move on in the tutorial. The player could skip something they find hard (especially useful for casual payers), or they could do the action multiple times to get the hang of it, and move on when they are ready. It wouldn't even be that hard. You could keep the code for checking that the player did what they were supposed to, but use it to tell them that they were successful. Then, you could just move the trigger to a certain button press. As long as you've followed good code practices, it should only take a few minutes.
Also, I'd remove Rachel's annoying talking. She's alright in the story, but in the tutorial, I'd like to get to the mechanics and skip her complaints about the person you have to beat up.
Aaaand, I would not give the player an achievement for completing every single tutorial. They should not need the extra incentive, and anyone who's played the earlier BlazBlue doesn't want to sit through being taught how to move forwards and whatnot.
As a side note, the BBCS manual is appalling. There's a page for controls and a page for the bars on screen, and that's it.
21.11.10
Actually, a lot of things are like this...
When you learn to drive a car, you start all nervous on your L plates. You play it safe, ask lots of questions, and drive well under the speed limit by accident. Then you get your P plates (at least, this is how it works in Australia). All of a sudden, you have no supervisor, a higher maximum speed limit, and previously unknown independence. You gain confidence, start to push boundaries, show off a lot, and generally think you're unbeatable.
Then something happens. Maybe a close call, maybe a crash. Maybe just further general experience.
It may not even directly happen to you, but for whatever reason, you suddenly realise you are far more inexperienced than you thought. You slow down, you take your time, you accept that you never stop learning. You are humbled, and what you do next can either broaden your horizons, or close them off forever (in this field, anyway).
I have recently been given some programming code by people who are professionals. I can follow it, even though it's an unfamiliar language, and I'm proud of that fact. However, I can also see a level of professionalism in their work that I have yet to attain. I have been programming, almost entirely self-taught, for over ten years. But, until now, I have never really seen how a professional does it. I am humbled, I realise I have far more to learn than I thought, even after so long. What will I do about it? If I'm serious about programming as a career, I need to use this as a spring-board for my education. I could let it depress me, but then I'd have nothing left. So my only choice is to improve.
And I actually feel pretty good about it.
Then something happens. Maybe a close call, maybe a crash. Maybe just further general experience.
It may not even directly happen to you, but for whatever reason, you suddenly realise you are far more inexperienced than you thought. You slow down, you take your time, you accept that you never stop learning. You are humbled, and what you do next can either broaden your horizons, or close them off forever (in this field, anyway).
I have recently been given some programming code by people who are professionals. I can follow it, even though it's an unfamiliar language, and I'm proud of that fact. However, I can also see a level of professionalism in their work that I have yet to attain. I have been programming, almost entirely self-taught, for over ten years. But, until now, I have never really seen how a professional does it. I am humbled, I realise I have far more to learn than I thought, even after so long. What will I do about it? If I'm serious about programming as a career, I need to use this as a spring-board for my education. I could let it depress me, but then I'd have nothing left. So my only choice is to improve.
And I actually feel pretty good about it.
30.10.10
Whatever you do, Don't Die.
I have, just now, released a new game. Entitled "Don't Die", this is an epic tale of a red ball with a face that can throw flying robots at each other!
Ok, it's an arcade-like game, not an epic tale. But there's nothing wrong with that. :)
Don't Die is a score-based game. Leap upon and grab the robots, then throw them at each other to cause chain reactions of robots knocking each other out of the sky! You can wall jump as much as you like, but you have a limited supply of mid-air jumps, which is boosted for every robot you kill. There are a number of different ways to kill robots, each adding it's own multiplier to your potential score. Landing will add your potential score to your total, but also reset your multipliers. So, for the really big scores, you will have to try to stay airborne for as long as possible. But beware, getting hurt will halve each and every multiplier, devastating your potential score.
Also, there's no dark secret in this game. Nope, none here.
Just, don't die...
Download here.
If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it. Have fun. :)
14.10.10
Graphics does not not equal gameplay.
(yes, there are two "not"s there)
The most obvious change is when something becomes visible or invisible. If you can see something, you can react to it. If you can't, you have to either rely on clues around it or on guesswork. A similar-yet-different change occurs when the graphical shape of something does not match its hitbox. While hitboxes of complex characters rarely match their shape, and we are used to this, slight adjustments to hitboxes of less-complex objects can mean the difference between frustration and joy. One example that comes to mind is the awesome one-button game Canabalt. The hitboxes for the buildings were just a little bit longer than the buildings themselves, giving a slight, but welcome, benefit-of-the-doubt effect on the part of the game when you just missed a jump.
This is not the difficulty I'm having, however. (Actually, I have this one enemy with its hitbox in a really bizarre location to get it to work properly, but that's not a problem anymore.)
There is the oft-discussed topic of character silhouettes in games. If you have a collection of common characters in a game where rapid identification is key, you can check if they are visually distinct enough by reducing them to just a box with sticks for arms and legs, and another box for the head, and give them their most basic colours from their textures. If you can still identify them easily enough, then you're on the right track (probably because this is what they'll look like when they're far away on a screen).
Thing is, the background is also part of this. You may be able to easily identify six different colourful characters on the white background of paper, but it will be harder in a busy festival. Or floating in a psychedelic, trippy void-thing with fireworks.
Also important, and probably a reason you often see a character wearing the same clothes every day (unless they're all similar or the player is either notified or is the cause of the change) is that if you change the clothes of a character, or worse, change what something looks like entirely, the player has a little trouble keeping up. Be fair, the longest games run into a hundred hours (excluding grand strategy games and the like which can go nearly forever), which isn't really much time to go from being new to a game, to highly skilled, to never playing it again. If the player has been fighting robots, and suddenly they are not robots (and you have not made the change explicitly clear), the player is going to feel confused at first, and when they figure out what's going on, they'll just think the developer is lazy for not changing the gameplay too.
So the thing I'm having to carefully consider at the moment, whenever I want the background or foreground to change, is whether it makes the scene too busy, thereby making it harder to identify the important elements of the game. Similarly, some gameplay elements are going to visibly change, so I have to make it clear that they are changing, otherwise there'll be problems playing it.
(Incidentally, I'm actually writing this post because doing the graphics is getting very tedious, and I need to give my brain a little shake before going back to it).
11.8.10
Redesign: Mirror's Edge
When you give a game to testers, you have to be critical about the feedback you receive. They aren’t programmers, nor game designers (probably). So what they perceive to be, for example, a problem in one area is actually a side effect of another problem elsewhere.
Sometimes, I like to look at a game I enjoyed, but thought could be better, and carefully analyse why it didn’t work. One of my favourite games to do this with is Mirror’s Edge, because so many people* seemed to believe the controls were a problem, when I think the real issue lies elsewhere.
*No research, I just remember some reviews and people talking about it.
Level Design
I seem to remember that someone more specifically said that the controls did not fit the level design. To me, this sounds as bad as saying that we’ll make the graphics, and build the game around it. Or we’ll write the story and make the gameplay fit that. This is ok, because they aren’t game designers, but in reality, the levels are made to fit the controls. When it becomes awkward to move around a level, the level is often at fault. Sure, the controls can be poorly made and still finalized, but if you are late enough in production that you are making the levels that will appear in the game, you don’t want to mess with the controls, because that will mean redoing many of the maps, which, if you have a deadline, is a great way to get sub-par level design. Since the levels must support the controls, you must be able to detect weaknesses and try to avoid them, if possible. If it’s not possible, then the controls should be adjusted earlier.
If you want to be a level designer, and you haven’t played Half-Life 2, go play it. The level design is superb. Particularly, the skill of their designer(s?) to draw your attention to where they want you to look is admirable. For example, they want you to see an airborne vehicle crash-land, so they put an enemy with a weak weapon in a spot that he can’t reach you from, which happens to be the direction the vehicle crashes from. Sure, he’s no danger, but he gets your attention. In rooms with obstacles, you can often see, and recognise (important bit!), the goal as soon as you enter, even if you don’t yet know there’s a puzzle in the way.
Mirror’s Edge, on the other hand, has very little skill at this. I distinctly remember a room which you fall into, which is around 4x4 meters, with a little passage to a 1x1m room, and even in this tiny area, I remained stuck for almost twenty minutes. I played both the PC and X360 versions of the game, and this room frustrated me both times. You can tell a room is badly designed when you enter it again a few days after solving it the first time, and you get stuck once again. Tip to the ME level designer: nobody ever looks up without a prompt or a hint! There were many other instances that failed to guide the player, and caused me to get stuck on both playthroughs. I suspect they were more concerned with the pretty than the functional.
Controls
That all said, there were a couple of issues with the controls, but only one was really bad at all. That one isn’t even really anything to do with the controls themselves. It’s the problem of precision jumping when you can’t see (or otherwise detect) your feet. Precision jumping is hard enough in third-person games, but in first-person, it’s a nightmare. When you game is based around parkour and freerunning (two different things, by the way, not many people seem to realise) you want to solve this problem effectively. I present two ideas off the top of my head:
1) Use Zelda style jumping. In the 3D Zelda games, jumping was automatic. Just run at an edge and Link would jump at the best moment to reach the furthest. This matches, more or less, how real people jump from an edge. You run, so that you touch (or nearly touch) the edge with your foot, then leap. Many of the mental processes are automatic. To fit with the ME control scheme, let’s say that sliding (crouch button) will let you drop without jumping, and going slowly will let you hang from the edge. The jump button will still function for when there is no edge. Obviously testing is in order before finalization.
2) Add some visual indicator to the HUD, showing how close you are to the edge. This one is a little distasteful, because they did such a good job of removing all other HUD elements (except the timer in time trial, and I found the centre dot annoying, even as I recognized that some people may need it. Glad that was optional). Either an indicator showing general “edge-closeness” or an overlayed, rotating minimap-like thing (except expanded, so that it only appears when you are near an edge). This would allow you an additional top-down view, showing you what your first-person view could not, especially if the centre dot is given the dual use of showing your position too.
Actually, the problem was slightly removed for the PC version, as with a mouse, you can much more easily quickly look down. It’s not ideal, but I had more fun with the PC version in general. In fact, the WASD style was very good for this game, considering that you did not need the control flexibility of a control-stick (forwards to go, and that’s mostly it). The mouse also gave more flexibility than a control stick for something that required it. (I have a rant about how silly direct porting from WASD+mouse to two control-sticks is, but that’s for another time)
Another problem was that, trying to look around when hanging from something was too slow with the X360 control-stick. This can easily be solved by making the camera direction map to the control stick directly when hanging. Actually telling the player you can use the rotate-180 button to look around could also help, because some people didn’t realise this.
Finally, ME could have taken a cue from Trackmania in regards to failure. There was a dedicated button for restarting, and it worked instantly. I imagine adding that feature to ME would take a bit of work; loading may be an issue, and every other object would have to reset, but a good result would go a long way to improving the experience, as anyone who fell from a great height could tell (falling, falling, falling, falling, thud, die, slow fade out, loading screen, fade in, is a great way to break the pace of a game, especially one built around a feeling of flow).
Combat
I wonder how many people would have preferred the game without that. It wasn’t actually bad; the system itself made sense, as the protagonist wasn’t good at fighting. The problem was when they forced it upon you. Giving someone with no weapons (and little skill with them anyway) a fight against multiple shotguns, is a great way to frustrate them. It should have been an option at all times.
Actually, I suspect the only reason why there was combat at all is the same reason they put boss fights in stealth games. They (whoever “they” are in this case) might have thought that the game would not sell if there wasn’t combat. Maybe the poor, mindless gamers won’t be able to cope if a game is a little bit different from normal. Either that, or it was there entirely because of the story. I know that many people will disagree with me, but I think a story should be created to fit the gameplay, not the other way around. You’re selling interactivity, not story. The point of a game is the interactive experience, and the story should support that. If not, you’ll be making bad design decisions because otherwise the story won’t make sense, oh no!
Commercial soundtrack
The final problem I found with Mirror’s Edge was actually with the soundtrack you can buy of it. I wasn’t going to mention this, but I’m here now. If people like the music of a game, and you release a soundtrack, make sure the soundtrack is of the music in the game! You’d think this was simple, but no. For example, I was really disappointed with the Rez one, because my favourite music had been remixed, and wasn’t as good. ME goes worse. The game had 11 remixes of the same tune, which was actually fine because, while not vastly different, they at least appeared different enough (or more specifically, the game had only the parts that were different). The soundtrack had the entire version of each remix, revealing that they were not, in fact, different enough. That starts to get repetitive on its own, but every song had exactly the same singing! And you get so sick of it! The soundtrack was not worth it.
In the end, though, Mirror’s Edge was a good game with lots of potential. It just made a few too many mistakes that weren’t picked up on or solved. I kinda hope there’s a sequel, and that the controls remain largely the same.
Edit: What a coincidence. A couple of days after writing this post, I won Mirror's Edge for PC. It occurred to me that, now that I have my own copy, maybe I can try to mod in my ideas or something. Not that I've ever modded before. Must investigate. Anyway, I tried out some user-made levels, and it just hit home that, no matter how poorly I think the official levels seemed to be designed, they still show a level of expertise that is hidden by the fact that all the levels were made by the same people. The fan-made levels bring forth the aforementioned expertise in comparison, as all of them are exercises in frustration. Common problems include tiny platforms that are hard to stay on because of momentum, situations in which one fall will send you far back to the beginning (exasperated by the fact that most don't have checkpoints), and a general failure to direct the player as to where to go next. That last one wouldn't be a problem if the levels weren't linear, but they are.
Speaking of which, one thing I find odd about Mirror's Edge is that it is so linear for something based on parkour, which is so non-linear. The actual destination is often far less important in real life. Storywise, it makes sense, though. Just like how Half-Life 2 wouldn't be better non-linear. I saw a vote on this forum on what should be in ME2, and "Free Roam" was at the top. Which is odd, because nobody in the community is making a free roam level... Must be difficult to do. If you don't want your level to be boring, you need some kind of challenge or goal, but that defeats the purpose of free-roam in a game about movement. Unless the level is designed with multiplayer in mind... Sorry, I'm just think out loud now...
Sometimes, I like to look at a game I enjoyed, but thought could be better, and carefully analyse why it didn’t work. One of my favourite games to do this with is Mirror’s Edge, because so many people* seemed to believe the controls were a problem, when I think the real issue lies elsewhere.
*No research, I just remember some reviews and people talking about it.
Level Design
I seem to remember that someone more specifically said that the controls did not fit the level design. To me, this sounds as bad as saying that we’ll make the graphics, and build the game around it. Or we’ll write the story and make the gameplay fit that. This is ok, because they aren’t game designers, but in reality, the levels are made to fit the controls. When it becomes awkward to move around a level, the level is often at fault. Sure, the controls can be poorly made and still finalized, but if you are late enough in production that you are making the levels that will appear in the game, you don’t want to mess with the controls, because that will mean redoing many of the maps, which, if you have a deadline, is a great way to get sub-par level design. Since the levels must support the controls, you must be able to detect weaknesses and try to avoid them, if possible. If it’s not possible, then the controls should be adjusted earlier.
If you want to be a level designer, and you haven’t played Half-Life 2, go play it. The level design is superb. Particularly, the skill of their designer(s?) to draw your attention to where they want you to look is admirable. For example, they want you to see an airborne vehicle crash-land, so they put an enemy with a weak weapon in a spot that he can’t reach you from, which happens to be the direction the vehicle crashes from. Sure, he’s no danger, but he gets your attention. In rooms with obstacles, you can often see, and recognise (important bit!), the goal as soon as you enter, even if you don’t yet know there’s a puzzle in the way.
Mirror’s Edge, on the other hand, has very little skill at this. I distinctly remember a room which you fall into, which is around 4x4 meters, with a little passage to a 1x1m room, and even in this tiny area, I remained stuck for almost twenty minutes. I played both the PC and X360 versions of the game, and this room frustrated me both times. You can tell a room is badly designed when you enter it again a few days after solving it the first time, and you get stuck once again. Tip to the ME level designer: nobody ever looks up without a prompt or a hint! There were many other instances that failed to guide the player, and caused me to get stuck on both playthroughs. I suspect they were more concerned with the pretty than the functional.
Controls
That all said, there were a couple of issues with the controls, but only one was really bad at all. That one isn’t even really anything to do with the controls themselves. It’s the problem of precision jumping when you can’t see (or otherwise detect) your feet. Precision jumping is hard enough in third-person games, but in first-person, it’s a nightmare. When you game is based around parkour and freerunning (two different things, by the way, not many people seem to realise) you want to solve this problem effectively. I present two ideas off the top of my head:
1) Use Zelda style jumping. In the 3D Zelda games, jumping was automatic. Just run at an edge and Link would jump at the best moment to reach the furthest. This matches, more or less, how real people jump from an edge. You run, so that you touch (or nearly touch) the edge with your foot, then leap. Many of the mental processes are automatic. To fit with the ME control scheme, let’s say that sliding (crouch button) will let you drop without jumping, and going slowly will let you hang from the edge. The jump button will still function for when there is no edge. Obviously testing is in order before finalization.
2) Add some visual indicator to the HUD, showing how close you are to the edge. This one is a little distasteful, because they did such a good job of removing all other HUD elements (except the timer in time trial, and I found the centre dot annoying, even as I recognized that some people may need it. Glad that was optional). Either an indicator showing general “edge-closeness” or an overlayed, rotating minimap-like thing (except expanded, so that it only appears when you are near an edge). This would allow you an additional top-down view, showing you what your first-person view could not, especially if the centre dot is given the dual use of showing your position too.
Actually, the problem was slightly removed for the PC version, as with a mouse, you can much more easily quickly look down. It’s not ideal, but I had more fun with the PC version in general. In fact, the WASD style was very good for this game, considering that you did not need the control flexibility of a control-stick (forwards to go, and that’s mostly it). The mouse also gave more flexibility than a control stick for something that required it. (I have a rant about how silly direct porting from WASD+mouse to two control-sticks is, but that’s for another time)
Another problem was that, trying to look around when hanging from something was too slow with the X360 control-stick. This can easily be solved by making the camera direction map to the control stick directly when hanging. Actually telling the player you can use the rotate-180 button to look around could also help, because some people didn’t realise this.
Finally, ME could have taken a cue from Trackmania in regards to failure. There was a dedicated button for restarting, and it worked instantly. I imagine adding that feature to ME would take a bit of work; loading may be an issue, and every other object would have to reset, but a good result would go a long way to improving the experience, as anyone who fell from a great height could tell (falling, falling, falling, falling, thud, die, slow fade out, loading screen, fade in, is a great way to break the pace of a game, especially one built around a feeling of flow).
Combat
I wonder how many people would have preferred the game without that. It wasn’t actually bad; the system itself made sense, as the protagonist wasn’t good at fighting. The problem was when they forced it upon you. Giving someone with no weapons (and little skill with them anyway) a fight against multiple shotguns, is a great way to frustrate them. It should have been an option at all times.
Actually, I suspect the only reason why there was combat at all is the same reason they put boss fights in stealth games. They (whoever “they” are in this case) might have thought that the game would not sell if there wasn’t combat. Maybe the poor, mindless gamers won’t be able to cope if a game is a little bit different from normal. Either that, or it was there entirely because of the story. I know that many people will disagree with me, but I think a story should be created to fit the gameplay, not the other way around. You’re selling interactivity, not story. The point of a game is the interactive experience, and the story should support that. If not, you’ll be making bad design decisions because otherwise the story won’t make sense, oh no!
Commercial soundtrack
The final problem I found with Mirror’s Edge was actually with the soundtrack you can buy of it. I wasn’t going to mention this, but I’m here now. If people like the music of a game, and you release a soundtrack, make sure the soundtrack is of the music in the game! You’d think this was simple, but no. For example, I was really disappointed with the Rez one, because my favourite music had been remixed, and wasn’t as good. ME goes worse. The game had 11 remixes of the same tune, which was actually fine because, while not vastly different, they at least appeared different enough (or more specifically, the game had only the parts that were different). The soundtrack had the entire version of each remix, revealing that they were not, in fact, different enough. That starts to get repetitive on its own, but every song had exactly the same singing! And you get so sick of it! The soundtrack was not worth it.
In the end, though, Mirror’s Edge was a good game with lots of potential. It just made a few too many mistakes that weren’t picked up on or solved. I kinda hope there’s a sequel, and that the controls remain largely the same.
Edit: What a coincidence. A couple of days after writing this post, I won Mirror's Edge for PC. It occurred to me that, now that I have my own copy, maybe I can try to mod in my ideas or something. Not that I've ever modded before. Must investigate. Anyway, I tried out some user-made levels, and it just hit home that, no matter how poorly I think the official levels seemed to be designed, they still show a level of expertise that is hidden by the fact that all the levels were made by the same people. The fan-made levels bring forth the aforementioned expertise in comparison, as all of them are exercises in frustration. Common problems include tiny platforms that are hard to stay on because of momentum, situations in which one fall will send you far back to the beginning (exasperated by the fact that most don't have checkpoints), and a general failure to direct the player as to where to go next. That last one wouldn't be a problem if the levels weren't linear, but they are.
Speaking of which, one thing I find odd about Mirror's Edge is that it is so linear for something based on parkour, which is so non-linear. The actual destination is often far less important in real life. Storywise, it makes sense, though. Just like how Half-Life 2 wouldn't be better non-linear. I saw a vote on this forum on what should be in ME2, and "Free Roam" was at the top. Which is odd, because nobody in the community is making a free roam level... Must be difficult to do. If you don't want your level to be boring, you need some kind of challenge or goal, but that defeats the purpose of free-roam in a game about movement. Unless the level is designed with multiplayer in mind... Sorry, I'm just think out loud now...
27.7.10
Two sides of the same coin. Inside and outside.
I went to a games convention on the weekend. There was a section with Indie developers, so I decided to go and hand a link to my portfolio around and see if anyone was interested in hiring me ('cause right now I work at a factory, far from what I'd really like to be doing). What I saw there was really disappointing, however. While the games they showed off were pretty, I saw only a couple of inventive things there, and nothing particularly inspiring.
There was a game with a penguin that slid on an undulating surface. There was no variety and the game was not interesting for longer than the time it took for me to fail. There was a stealth game that the developers had obviously put more in presentation and graphics than the gameplay, which had some annoying unfairnesses, such as the cops turning infinitely fast with no warning.
As games to get a little bit of money in to start working on better games, they were ok. Like iphone games. Short, cheap, unmemorable. But I got the impression that it was this sort of game they were aiming for, and no higher.
Something I've noticed of the better games out there (not on my own) is that there's two parts to all of them. There's the side for the casual (or casual-ish, I'm not using the normal meaning of casual gamer here) and the side for the hardcore. A casual player of, say, Bayonetta, will button-mash their way through, even on hard mode, and then go on to the next game. The hardcore will learn all the various useful moves, unlock everything, and maybe even write a strategy guide for GameFAQs if there isn't already one. The casual player of Super Metroid will play through the entire game, maybe even trying for 100%. The hardcore player will try to use glitches, or at least highly challenging tricks, to see how much of the game they can skip, or maybe try a 100% speedrun or something. Even so-called "casual games" can have rediculous levels of hardcore-ness to them when someone gets obsessed with them. It's the same for competative games. Games that don't have room for both casual and hardcore players tend to die more easily. The hardcore player of BlazBlue will be scrutinizing the frame counts of every move, whereas the casual player may not ever even use cancels, and only bursts randomly. Casual players become hardcore players. If you don't have the casual, the hardcore group will be very small. If you don't have the hardcore side, people will get bored after a time and move on.
I think it's often best to design a game so that both styles of play are valid. Actually, I went back and added the word "often" to that last sentence just now. Most people are not as discerning between well and poorly designed games as I am, and are quite happy with, say, minesweeper (by the way, that game is badly designed. Even very late game, you still have to make completely random choices that could end your game prematurely). But even if some people don't notice your game is well made, a few people could, and that could boost how many people enjoy your game, thus telling others about it, thus getting more sales and reputation, making it more likely that people will buy your next one.
This is why I was disheartened at the developers at the convention. They seemed like they just made games, without thinking about them, and a lack of any hardcore appeal was one of the negative outcomes.
(I learnt some of this stuff from David Sirlin's website. Now there's a guy who thinks about games!)
There was a game with a penguin that slid on an undulating surface. There was no variety and the game was not interesting for longer than the time it took for me to fail. There was a stealth game that the developers had obviously put more in presentation and graphics than the gameplay, which had some annoying unfairnesses, such as the cops turning infinitely fast with no warning.
As games to get a little bit of money in to start working on better games, they were ok. Like iphone games. Short, cheap, unmemorable. But I got the impression that it was this sort of game they were aiming for, and no higher.
Something I've noticed of the better games out there (not on my own) is that there's two parts to all of them. There's the side for the casual (or casual-ish, I'm not using the normal meaning of casual gamer here) and the side for the hardcore. A casual player of, say, Bayonetta, will button-mash their way through, even on hard mode, and then go on to the next game. The hardcore will learn all the various useful moves, unlock everything, and maybe even write a strategy guide for GameFAQs if there isn't already one. The casual player of Super Metroid will play through the entire game, maybe even trying for 100%. The hardcore player will try to use glitches, or at least highly challenging tricks, to see how much of the game they can skip, or maybe try a 100% speedrun or something. Even so-called "casual games" can have rediculous levels of hardcore-ness to them when someone gets obsessed with them. It's the same for competative games. Games that don't have room for both casual and hardcore players tend to die more easily. The hardcore player of BlazBlue will be scrutinizing the frame counts of every move, whereas the casual player may not ever even use cancels, and only bursts randomly. Casual players become hardcore players. If you don't have the casual, the hardcore group will be very small. If you don't have the hardcore side, people will get bored after a time and move on.
I think it's often best to design a game so that both styles of play are valid. Actually, I went back and added the word "often" to that last sentence just now. Most people are not as discerning between well and poorly designed games as I am, and are quite happy with, say, minesweeper (by the way, that game is badly designed. Even very late game, you still have to make completely random choices that could end your game prematurely). But even if some people don't notice your game is well made, a few people could, and that could boost how many people enjoy your game, thus telling others about it, thus getting more sales and reputation, making it more likely that people will buy your next one.
This is why I was disheartened at the developers at the convention. They seemed like they just made games, without thinking about them, and a lack of any hardcore appeal was one of the negative outcomes.
(I learnt some of this stuff from David Sirlin's website. Now there's a guy who thinks about games!)
14.7.10
I forgot to title this post. New site!
So, some people (Ha, I lie. *One* person. I don't have that many players yet.) have expressed dissatisfaction at my continued use of divShare. Well, stuff divshare! I am now the proud owner of a website! A small, free, thing that uses a template, but a site nonetheless! There are no waiting periods for downloads! Yay!
Unless, of course, I run out of bandwidth, but that's 100 gigs per month. Plenty, plenty.
I am now plunging head-first into the weird world of making web pages. It's not pretty. I wouldn't want to live there. But I must admit, I find it interesting.
Here 'tis!
Unless, of course, I run out of bandwidth, but that's 100 gigs per month. Plenty, plenty.
I am now plunging head-first into the weird world of making web pages. It's not pretty. I wouldn't want to live there. But I must admit, I find it interesting.
Here 'tis!
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