underwater RPG

Our oceans are so vast, so beautiful and full of wonders. Yet so little of that has been made into gameplay which reflects that beauty and wonder. I long for an underwater RPG.


Not an RPG with human beings and our limited technologies, with glass panels and wetsuits between us and the water. I mean an RPG that lets players experience some of what it would be like to be a true ocean-dweller.

Not just swimming through a lagoon or tracing a single reef. I'm talking about a game with many areas, many encounters... lots to see and do. Think of games like Oblivion or Fallout 3... immense worlds with months of content to explore and interact with.


So much untapped potential.

focus on setting

In literature and film, the most crucial storytelling element is the characters and interaction between them. Compelling characters make up for a lot of slack in plot and setting. Just look at the most popular TV shows -- they're all driven by interesting characters and the hooks involve those characters. Ask a person what they liked about a book, and they'll probably begin by describing a character or a character-defining action. In novels and movies, the audience experiences things sympathetically. We follow someone else's journey and think/feel with that character.

In video games, the most crucial story element is setting. No matter how good the plot may be, the heart of a game always lies with the decisions and skills of the player. The main job of the developers is to create a great setting, and to define how and why the player will interact with that setting.

That's true even in plot-driven games. Plot is undeniably important in the Halo series. But the primary purpose of that plot, effectively, is to make the player feel like a hero and anticipate escalating challenges. There are few exceptions... mostly Bioware games (which I often describe as a blending of mediums -- game and film).

Characters are important in many games, but they are typically used more in line with cinematic goals than gaming ones. They're actors in a script for players to receive, rather than set pieces for players to experiment with and affect.

As Raph Koster has stated many times, play is fundamentally about learning through action. Plot and characters should serve the setting. In a game, the primary value of any character is what the player can do with that character or how that character affects the setting. Plots in a game provide inspiration and change the rules of play (ex: now, you must go this way, use this weapon, etc).

I appreciate games mixed heavily with cinema, like Mass Effect or Ghostbusters, but it's important to recognize such games as a blending of mediums. Games are not about being taken along on grand adventures. Games are about going on the adventures, yourself... your own adventures.

skipping tutorials

More than a few times, I've introduced someone who doesn't regularly game to a game and that person chooses to skip the tutorial. Sometimes, they skip the tutorial right away. More often, they start the tutorial, then become impatient and skip to real gameplay.

It mainly has to do with pace. A tutorial shouldn't be too much slower than normal play. It must be fun in its own right.

In some games, it can be better to start the player off with the full palette of actions among easier enemies and challenges. Allow the player to learn through experimentation, rather than overt instruction. That's not feasible in all games.

In any case, all tutorials should be true play -- not a precursor to fun, but actual fun.

bring back the fog

In the early days of video games, fog was often used to compensate for limited draw distance. Since that technical hurdle has been overcome, mists have gone out of use. It's a shame, because fog can be useful in other ways.

Often, weather can change the way we perceive our environment. It affects mood and focus. Trees and other objects take on different colors. Shadows from clouds can make a patch of forest dark and ominous, or make a stream of water cool and inviting. When a road is marked with shadows and not just one unbroken color, it can make the journey seem faster and more interesting (for the same reason rollercoaster designers place trees and other objects beside the tracks).


Fog, in particular, has a magical quality. Things often don't seem as real in a fog. People and animals become like ghosts. A boat on the water seems to glide on air. The world is full of sounds that the listener can't place and identify, inspiring the imagination to conjure fanciful explanations.

Bring back the fog.

avoiding multiplayer maps

I've played both Frontlines and Modern Warfare on my 360 this past week, and the differences between them are staggering. Each game has advantages over the other. Many of the differences are of style, rather than quality.

One key difference is serving hosting. In Modern Warfare, players host the games, so games are often interrupted or ended before they even really begin. It's very annoying, but that's not what I want to talk about. What quickly becomes clear is that hosts often end a game short because they do not like a particular map. In any competitive multiplayer game that moves automatically from one map to another, players complain about maps. But that people cut games short, knowing they'll get an earful from those their playing with, shows just how much a map can be disliked. That begs the question:

Is it not possible to give players complete freedom in which maps they play?

Of course, a player can simply leave a current host when a bad map comes up, but he'll have to leave again with whatever host he finds next. It's annoying. That would also mean abandoning the fellow players who he has hopefully been building a rapport or rivalry with (a skilled enemy player can be similar to a "hero" or "boss" enemy in single-player gameplay). The ideal would be to enable a player to have an unbroken play-session without any content that player dislikes.

With a game as popular as Modern Warfare, the solution seems simple. Allow hosts to customize a map series by simply selecting checkboxes, then allow other players to see that customized list before joining. With eight or ten maps, there are many possible combinations... and that significantly divides the player population. But with a player population of over a hundred thousand at any given time and fewer than twenty players per map, I doubt it's a problem even with matchmaking dividing players further. That's something Infinity Ward should consider for MW2.

But most games don't have such massive player populations. Even MW will get old and its populations will dwindle. So what's a solution for them?

idols and memorabilia

You can tell a lot about a person or people by who their heroes are; by who and what they memorialize.

I stopped in a Taco Bell in Louisiana the other day, and a few Saints and LSU jerseys were framed on the wall. A local sports team's trophy sat on a shelf. That marks a culture that's long been free of war (at home) and other great struggles, allowing them to focus on entertainment.

In San Antonio, one restaurant has pictures of Pancho Villa and Santa Anna. The salute to old enemies of Texas is especially striking because nobody thinks much of it, marking a culture with strong ties to Mexico.

Another Texas town used to have a bar with a fantastically long rifle hung on the wall, and letters beneath it saying, "This here rifle once killed thirty mescans in one shot." It symbolized a people's pride in winning their independence in battle over a century ago, even though that independence had long since passed.

Some cities have statues of warriors. Others have statues of poets, philosophers, or politicians. Some choose to celebrate history over a thousand years old, while others focus on the recent.

Some persons hang pictures of relatives and ancestors. Some exhibit love for their parents or grandparents culture, rather than their own. Others fill their homes with glimpses of distant lands because they'd rather be anywhere than home.

More could be done in games to define settings and characters through objects.

elevation

I've been having a lot of fun in Battlefield 1943 on Xbox Live. I'll post a full review soon, perhaps tomorrow, but I want to point out one feature in particular which I'd like to see in more FPS games.

1943 makes great use of elevation. Half or more of each map isn't flat. As a result, players are constantly using hill slopes and water banks as cover. The maps are almost entirely exterior, but players are still constantly surprised by enemies coming up from behind, below, or above them... or even right in front of them (hidden by a slope).


Elevation plays a strategic role in anti-tank combat, since tanks are vulnerable to explosives on top, just behind the cannon. A tank can drive onto some raised areas, but then its guns are useless as they cannot aim down.

Elevation also provides for some unique experiences. I once drove a tank up a slope that was barely wide enough for it. Below the end of the incline was a hill checkpoint, particularly hard to capture. Players are used to infantry attacking from the incline I was using, but not used to seeing tanks there. I kept driving forward and dropped my tank on top of an enemy, crushing him. Another unique experience is hearing a plane but not seeing it until it appears from behind a hill and drops its bombs on you.

I'm sure even more could be accomplished when elevation is considered an explicit game feature.

empty space

Take a minute to look at this picture:


Such an impressive image, yet so empty.

Empty is good sometimes. Space without objects isn't always wasted space.

arch enemies

I might be mistaken, but it seems game series rarely include specific, perpetual antagonists... an enemy leader or rival who is always working against the player's character, though other enemies rise and fall.

Lex Luthor is a clear example. Even when Superman manages to catch the criminal mastermind and deliver him to prison, Luthor inevitably escapes and wreaks havoc again. The Joker is another (and my favorite) example. Though Batman faces many enemies, The Joker is a sort of polar opposite and has a way of turning up again after being defeated.

An arch enemy might work from hiding, like the Sith Lord does in the first episodes of Star Wars. Or the character might be revealed early on but is never seen in any overt action, as in LOTR with Sauron.

In games series, it seems antagonists continue on only in generalities. In Halo, it's the Covenant and the Flood. In Gears of War, it's the Locust army. There's no specific figure for the player to focus their emotions and opposition on. The opposition is national or ideological, rather than personal. I'm sure there are exceptions.

Observing that the four IPs with arch enemies listed above are some of the most popular stories in modern history, this seems to be a story and gameplay element worth considering.

selling game assets

I've unlocked most of the regions in FUEL now. It's a massive gameworld. And, since the developers used satellite imagery to guide its design, it feels pretty real.

I enjoy the races and offroad roaming the game offers, but the expansive setting keeps me wishing I had a gun too.

What if game developers sometimes sold their game assets to be used in other games? For example, what if Codemasters sold its great world from FUEL to be used in a shooter-RPG?

At first, I was thinking it would be cool if other types of gameplay could be incorporated into the same game, but there's only so much any platform can process before you have to start sacrificing things like field-of-view. The next best thing is to use the same setting for different, separate gameplay.

Selling game assets (objects, scripts, etc), rather than just graphics engines, would help offset costs for the producing developer. It could also shave off production time for the buyers and perhaps help them focus on their strengths.

There are some downsides, of course. Having a unique visual style, for example, definitely helps in marketing. But can't the sale of game assets at least be a feasible option?

civilians and facing mistakes

I'm happy to see civilians running around in Modern Warfare 2's latest trailer, as well as fighters in civilian clothes.

I can only guess the scenes with people running away are during battles and not between. If there are civilians present during battles, with actual risk of civilian casualties, I consider that a big leap forward for first-person war games. War is never just between soldiers.

I have played games before in which it was possible to shoot the wrong people and be punished for it. Anyone who has played the Call of Duty games has been forced to restart from a checkpoint after shooting an ally. I believe that's the wrong way to punish such mistakes.

A reset means the offending action never happened. It's like a deleted scene or an expunged record. For mistakes to truly matter, they must remain part of the player's journey, an irrevocable moment which demands reflection and penance. If that moment can be erased, even in a punishment like a reset, then the player is not made to face it and reflect.

Civilians are important to war simulations (as opposed to arcade shooters) because they epitomize the moral complexity and uncertainty of war. Some civilians are hostile but not threatening. Some are dangerous in their foolhardy support. Some who would run away and seem harmless are dangerous, not by will, but due to the information they possess that enemies could gain by interrogation.

Fun over simulation -- I understand. But such complications of real warfare can make settings and stories infinitely more compelling, and potentially add replayability. Civilians are not a vital element for war games, but represent enormous untapped potential.

what you know

I'm going to try something different today. Instead of droning on and on with my thoughts, I'm just going to pose a quick question. Then y'all can respond to it and I'll respond to your thoughts. So...

A common bit of advice for writers is to "write about what you know". Surely, this advice has some relevance for game designers. How so?

the uncanny in sci-fi

Science fiction is fertile ground for the uncanny. As I've explained before, uncanny describes objects and situations which are simultaneously strange and familiar, often disturbingly so. This is typically manifested in a character or object that is familiar in all ways but one.

I thought of this while watching the Skynet infomercials (clever ads for the Terminator: Salvation film).

The characters in this video have an oddness about them. The man seems like just a poor actor. But the woman's head movements, facial expressions, and repeated touching of her earpiece suggest something disturbing about her.

Anyway, while watching that video, I realized that robots become creepy when they resemble creatures that don't move like robots. For example, one wouldn't expect a robot to move like a snake or a fish. The eye-scanning robots in Minority Report were creepy because they moved like spiders.

But if there's not enough familiarity, then it's not disturbing. For example, the cybernetic tree in Too Human is equally like a tree and like a computer, and so it simply looks cool. A cyborg is more unsettling when it is mostly human than when it is only half human.

One could design a good sci-fi horror story by filling the world with uncanny technologies.

illuminating characters

In the recent "Blinded" episode of Lie To Me, an interesting thing happens (spoiler alert).

Throughout the show, a support character demonstrates no skill or productivity. He's driven by anger, not by reason, and that anger doesn't help. He's nothing but a burden to the team. One could almost say he's unimportant.

But at the end, a situation arises that suits his aptitudes. Suddenly, this character is the saving grace. In moments, he reveals a few profound insights that lead directly to the team's victory. The sudden departure from his past image is surprising, but believable.

This is a great example of what round characters should be. Authors should know more about their characters than they reveal. It's interesting to audiences when characters make sense but are never entirely known and understood. And character actions are more interesting when they can't be traced to a single origin.

Surprises like this can also encourage the audience to expect surprises throughout the setting and story, to wonder if they've misjudged other characters. Watch that episode sometime to see what I mean.

fill those buildings!

I was thinking of games like The Godfather II, Saints Row 2, and GTA IV... about how the cities are so big but also full of empty buildings. For every two-story structure you can enter and enjoy, there are dozens of shops, homes, and skyrises that are locked and might as well be stage paintings. That's understandable. Open world games like those already offer a lot of content, and a huge world with limited content placed amid stage props is often more fun than the alternative.

But perhaps there's a way to have our cake and eat it too.

Bioware forever changed the gaming landscape by including their Aurora toolkit with Neverwinter Nights. The intuitive software Bioware used to create the Neverwinter campaign was given to players so that anyone could design further adventures using the same assets. To date, literally hundreds, if not thousands, of adventures have been crafted by amateur designers with the Aurora toolkit. And while much of that content is basic and shallow, a community has arisen that recognizes the best designs and encourages quality contributions.

A long and deep, but ultimately finite game, was made infinite and ever new by enabling players to design additional content using developer-provided assets and tools.

Why can't games like GTA and Saints Row do that?

In the case of these games, players could expand not only out but also in. It's time to fill all those empty buildings. That can be accomplished by sharing the load with creative players. Design your big city or vast countryside. Polish it. Complete it. But then let players fill in the gaps.



Bioware has already demonstrated how this can be done efficiently -- create and maintain a player community that weeds out the bad input and sublimates the good stuff. So what if the game is for the 360 or PS3? The professionals designed it on PCs, right? Is there any reason content created by players in a PC community can't be transferred to the consoles as DLC?

Keep in mind, I'm not talking about MMOs. I'm talking about single-player and limited-mulitplayer games being fleshed out by a player community, ala The Sims 2. The idea has been out there for years. I'm just wondering why is hasn't been applied to some genres of games.

Chasing Churchhill

I watched an excellent documentary last night by the granddaughter of Winston Churchhill, called Chasing Churchhill. It avoids retelling all the old stories of Churchhill's brilliant leadership during WWII, and instead focuses on the man as an adventurer and painter. I couldn't find an online gallery quickly, but I highly recommend taking a look at his paintings. They're beautiful and serene. He had a great sense of colors.

The documentary showed many of Churchhill's paintings. Surprisingly, all of them were pleasant. That impression might just be due to his granddaughter's selection, but I don't think so since she said he rarely painted during the great war. The man endured many conflicts. He experienced bullets whizzing by his head in battles, scenes of a hundred war-torn bodies and groaning men, assassination threats while walking foreign streets, and much more. Yet those experiences are not reflected in his painting. He chose to paint, or was moved to paint, only the pleasantries of life: beauty, hope, light-heartedness, etc.

It got me thinking: How many big, triple-A games are so? How many games are about beauty and joy to the exclusion of all conflict and darkness? I can think of many arcade games and small titles like that, but it seems there are few blockbuster titles of this sort besides sports games.

What do you think? Does the industry for big titles tend to emphasize struggle and strife? Do many games celebrate beauty and the lighter side of human nature? Or is it hard to stay joyful and keep your eyes on beauty while writing code?

war, off the battlefields

I've always wanted to play a game about war away from the battlefield.

If you watch a lot of movies and documentaries, you start to associate war only with soldiers and epic battles. But what's war like for civilians? What's it like for the small groups of soldiers in between and separated from major battles? There's a little of this in films like The Longest Day and The Scarlet and The Black.



Well, it looks like Pandemic's open world game The Saboteur might offer me a taste of that experience. From this Unscripted 360 interview with Lead Designer Tom French (I can't believe nobody has mentioned the irony of that name): "you can drive straight out of the city limits [of Paris], into a sweeping French countryside, on to neighboring French chateaus to other towns and even across the border into Germany".

This isn't a game about a soldier charging into enemy emplacements with helmet and orders. This is a game about an Irish racecar mechanic with a grudge against Nazis, ala Indiana Jones, stuck in occupied France. And it's even inspired by a true story.



I'll be most interested to see how the "Will to Fight" feature works and how the lives of the oppressed Parisians is portrayed. In any case, wandering around a war-torn country without being a formal part of that war should be fresh and exciting. I'll see if I can interview someone form Pandemic sometime to learn more about The Saboteur.


edit:
Another upcoming game, Velvet Assassin, developed by Replay, has a surprisingly similar setting. Also inspired by a true story (Violette Szabo), it's about a civilian in Nazi-occupied France killing Nazis. It seems to be a more linear game focusing on stealth kills and a dark, gritty atmosphere. IGN has some info on it here.

when friends are enemies

Writers learn that characters can be flat or round (stereotypical vs complex, mythical vs factual). But conflict is seldom discussed in terms of flat or round. A round character has both good and bad aspects, and the audience is expected to consider both. A round conflict similarly invites the audience to pick a side without wholly rejecting or supporting either.

Many stories involve friends who become enemies or enemies who become friends. Few involve characters who remain both enemy and friend. The movies Heat and Gangs of New York are two examples. This rarity is understandable, since it's not common in reality. Human beings are emotional, and it's difficult to openly struggle against friends or associate with enemies; so few do so. But, as those films demonstrate, unbreaking juxtaposition of love and opposition can be a powerful story element.

A milder example is the relationship between Mal and Inara in the TV series Firefly. Their relationship is charged with romantic attraction, yet at the same time they are distanced by Mal's disapproval of Inara's whoring and Inara's occasional undermining of Mal's authority as ship captain. A similar example is the relationship between Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr Stephen Maturin in Master and Commander.

I have no problem with the use of myths -- stories using straw figures purposefully and well. But I would like to see more games involving plots that are less about good vs bad than about the inevitable conflicts which arise from differences in values and perspectives.

Challenge yourself to write a story in which all the main characters are essentially good but conflict arises anyway.

CoD6 suggestions

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of the best games on the 360. But no game's perfect, so here's some changes I would make for CoD6. I'll also throw in some ideas for the campaign.


SINGLEPLAYER

American troops and our allies are stationed all over the world at any given moment. So how about some settings we're not used to seeing (southeast Asia, north Africa, South America, etc)? If the Middle East is again the focus, then possible settings include the caves of Afghanistan or a battle within a single building, such as a school or ampitheater.

Weather is a major factor in warfare. Hell, it has outright won or lost battles and even wars. Show us. Gusts of wind can displace tossed grenades and spread fires. Tropical rain can disrupt vision, slow movement, and make ways impassable. A sandstorm could trap enemies together

Soldiers don't just work and interact with fellow soldiers. Make civilians, combatants and non-combatants, a part of gameplay. In fact, you might include one level in which the player goes on a light-hearted hunting trip with a local civilian, to bind the player emotionally to the town or whatever he later defends and remind the player that war isn't always constant battles. I suggest hunting because that is a civilian activity based on the same basic gameplay (shooting), requiring less scripting and new assets.

Introduce friendly fire and civilian casualties. Both are a part of every war. If well implemented, this could get more emotional investment from the player.


CO-OP

Take your cues from Left 4 Dead. As I've said before, that game has the best representation of dependence and sacrifice of any game I've played to date. Brotherhood is a central theme in every branch of military, and cooperative gameplay is where that needs to shine.

Sacrifice is key. Enable the player to give to fellow players and companion NPCs in ways that hurt his own character and his own playtime. Regarding NPCs, I've written before on empathy. Regarding fellow players, consider the example in Left 4 Dead of one player telling others to leave him or her behind to save themselves... a request which means the person is no longer playing for a while, only watching and talking to the other players (sometimes feeding them valuable intel)... though obviously it's usually better if all players remain playing.


MULTIPLAYER

Every time the player goes to the "Select Class" screen, show a number by each class to indicate how many allies are currently playing each class. That will allow versatile players to fill in the gaps; help us see which roles are needed at any given moment.

Allow us to mute players without having to go to their gamercard screen.

Again, weather. If it was different from battle to battle (the same map), that could make for a fun dynamic.

You might be able to encourage a better social atmosphere by enabling players to vote each other up or down in a leadership ranking, separate from combat ranking. Real militaries do not promote soldiers purely for weapon skills and combat prowess, but also for exemplary social actions... like taking risks for other players, going back for injured comrades, helping others to improve, offering inspiration, and basically providing for the needs of others. How exactly to reward players for such behavior, I'm not sure. But it would definitely be worth it to promote sacrifice and philanthropy in the multiplayer community through tangible rewards, similar to a Purple Heart or Silver Star.

Again, sacrifice. Allow a player to give ammo to an ally, thereby depleting his own resources. Or allow a player to "cry for help", making his icon on allies' maps blink, to indicate he could use backup when he finds himself the only one guarding a flag in Domination or having run out of ammo.


What are your ideas?

subtle settings

Does it seem to anyone else like most game settings have all the subtlety of a wrecking ball?

There's the utter devastation of Fallout 3, Gears of War, and Resistance 2. There's the blatant fascism of Half-Life 2 and Bioshock. Overt alien invasions, war hotspots, monsters, tyrants, blood caked on the walls, bodies lying on floors and hanging from ceilings, etc.

It sure would be nice to occasionally play a game where the conflicts are under the surface, the enemies hidden in plain sight, the outcomes uncertain. Most great works of film and literature contain elements of mystery, complex and rounded characters, and questions left open.