Spore Creature Creator: intro, tips, thoughts

If you don't already have it, you can download the Creature Creator here. I've had the good fortune of being able to play around with it early, so here's an introduction, as well as some tips and impressions.



WHAT IS IT?
The Creature Creator (CC) is just a small slice of the full Spore game, currently dated for a September release (we'll see). Though it is just a slice, it's representative of a core aspect of Spore gameplay. Spore is largely about human creativity. Most of us are not great artists or animators, but we are all creative and capable of great feats when started with the right tools and guidance. The Creature Creator and other editors of Spore offer those tools and guidance.

There are two versions of the CC: a full retail version and a partial free version. The partial version has only 25% of the full CC's options... but that's still a hell of a lot! Here are the options in the full version -- every one of them able to be resized, reshaped, duplicated, and (many of them) placed anywhere on the body you wish:

1 morphable torso with as many or few vertebrae as you wish
40 mouth types
40 eyes and senses
12 arms
12 legs
28 hands
32 feet
24 weapons
40 details

... not to mention the color and texture options. There are 36 presets, or you can combine a base texture with a coat texture and detail texture (36 options each). Choose between 17 colors with 49 hues each (some more distinct than others).

Again, all of these options can be morphed and applied in interesting ways after they're added to your creature. The number of possibilities is astounding.



A DEEPER LOOK
You'll notice DNA points at the bottom of your screen, as well as a creature complexity meter at the top-right. In the full Spore game, your creatures will have to earn DNA points through survival tasks (eat, mate, conquer, etc) to evolve into a more complex and efficient form. In other words, if your creature does well in its ecosystem and survives to the next generation, you can alter or add to the next generation with DNA points. Spore is about creativity, but it is also a Montessori-like learning tool to explore the basic concepts of evolution, biology, astronomy, and other aspects of the real world.

Basic parts offer basic abilities, like sight from eyes and grasping from hands. Beyond that, you can choose from a variety of abilities (or combine them) to create a theme for your creature. Abilities include charm, jump, sprint, sneak, health, glide, charge, spit, strike, dance, speed, pose, bite, and sing. Abilities fall under the categories of Attack, Socialize, Speed, and Health (brain power improves health... because smart animals are better at staying alive, I assume).

The mouth you choose determines whether your character is a carnivore (meat-eater), herbivore (plant-eater), or omnivore (eats anything).

Aside from Build mode and Paint mode, there's also a Test Drive mode (you can toggle between them at the top of the screen). In Test Drive, you can easily move your creature around, spawn baby versions to see what they will look like, and command your creature to perform any of 24 different actions (divided into basic actions, dancing, mate attraction, and moods).



In Test Drive, you can take screenshots, create an animated avatar (.gif file), and record videos for YouTube. If you change the background to black, then the background will be white in the screenshot. You will be automatically prompted to upload your video to YouTube, but you must have an account with YouTube to use that feature. If you do have an account, recording a video is as simple as clicking on the "Record Video" button once to start recording and once again to stop recording. Go to Options -> Settings -> Capture Settings to improve your screenshot and video quality. Screenshots can be emailed from the CC by clicking on the film icon above the screenshot command.

If the EA servers ever have trouble, don't worry... you can play offline. You just can't access Sporepedia offline.

Click on the Name panel at the bottom-center to create a name for your creature. There's a dice icon that can be clicked to randomly generate a name. Include or don't include a description as you please. Tags are used to help players find creatures of the type they're looking for.

At the bottom-left of the CC is the Sporepedia. This includes Spore news, a MySpore Page (your Spore account name, a picture of you or one of your creatures, the number of creatures you've made, etc), the Spore Catalog, and an encyclopedia of all creatures made by players around the world. In the top-right, you can search for specific creatures by title, creator, type, and time created.



TIPS
Whenever you start the CC, it creates a randomly shaped and colored torso for you to begin with. This can act as inspiration. Begin a creature with the provided shape as your starting point, or keep clicking the "New Creation" button until the CC provides you with a torso you like.

Adjusting the shape of an object can be tricky and sometimes frustrating. The key is camera angles. Use your middle mouse button to adjust the camera. Generally, adjust it to be perpendicular to your action. For example: if you're trying to stretch a leg up or down, move the camera to a side view of your creature; if you're trying to stretch the leg width-ways, use an overhead camera angle.

Hold down the "Ctrl" key, click on an arm or leg, and drag it to remove a joint from that limb.

Hold down the "Alt" key, click on any object and drag it to copy that object.

In paint mode, there's an option at the bottom to "Paint Like" a creature from the Sporepedia. If finding the right textures and colors for your creature is becoming a headache, then just browse the paintjobs of other players' creatures and apply those patterns to yours.

Don't think you have to use every option type, or that you can only use one of each. If you want, give your creature eight eyes or three mouths. Or make a creature with no eyes, no arms, or no weapon. My creature at the top of this article has feelers instead of eyes.

Try counter-intuitive ideas... like placing ears where the nose should be, eyes on the knees, or antlers under the chin. You won't like every weird thing you try, but you'll eventually stumble on something interesting.

Pay close attention to mouth types. A particular mouth might fit visually with your creature, but remember that it also chooses its appetite (meat-eater or plant-eater). Are you creating a weak carnivore or ferocious herbivore?

For tags, I always include whether my creature is a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore. You can also include distinctive body parts (horns, wings, pincers, etc) or general style (scary, cute, etc). I've also used tags like "short", "small" and "jumps" (one of my creatures can jump incredibly high).

Click on the "Guide" button at the bottom left of the screen (it looks like a "?") to access tutorials.



IMPRESSIONS
Overall, the Spore CC rocks (as I expected). At times, you might feel limited, but there's an amazing amount of possibilities.

Am I crazy? How can anyone feel "limited" with so many options?! Well, it depends on how you approach the game. I'm an artist (composer, writer, sketch artist, etc), so it's natural for me to dream up possibilities beyond what the CC offers.

For example: I tried to create a starfish-like creature with a mouth in the center (on top) and six limbs that acted as both legs and food-graspers. Unfortunately, Spore's procedural animation assumes that one side of the creature is its front, so my creature moved more like an ant than a starfish. The CC also has a hard distinction between legs and arms, so putting graspers on all "arms" resulted in a jittery, displeasing walking animation (apparently, creatures must walk on "feet", rather than "hands" -- though I could be wrong). My Haparu has horns on its tail, but won't swing them to strike (like an anklyosaur) as I originally intended.

I certainly don't hold it against the CC that it's not capable of everything I could dream up. But I think that basic situation will affect most Spore players at some point, whether they're very imaginative people or not. At some point, you'll probably want to do something with the CC that you can't do. When that happens, try to think of how wondrous our real world and imaginations are that such a great number of possibilities barely scratches the surface of all our knowledge and dreams.

You can glide, but you can't fly. That's going to bug a lot of players only because the CC includes wing options.



Development of your creatures is an emergent process. You generally won't know exactly what you're going to end up with, and you'll occasionally be pleasantly surprised by some emergent look or behavior. My latest creature, the Zacaren, can jump incredibly high. I hadn't even considered jumping when designing it, so I was completely taken aback when I clicked the "jump" command. When I first commanded my Isawk to laugh, I loved the way one of its heads would tilt back and chuckle before tilting down and letting the other side rise for a laugh.

The name generator apparently works procedurally (the names are created by an AI, rather than directly inputed). This results in a variety of name styles, but it also means that you'll occasionally get a real word or name (like "Molly", for example).

This is already long enough, so I'll stop there. If you have any questions about the CC, ask and maybe I'll have an answer.


All the pictures in this post are my creations. Post your own, and let me know what your Spore account name is so I can look up your creatures in the future. My Spore name is hallower.

simple yet lasting

This came up in my ongoing discussion with Scott in the comments of my last post.

When I was a kid, I used to wander around by a creek in the woods and throw rocks at sun-bathing cottonmouths (also called water moccasins -- a venomous snake in my area).



That's a simple, easily-repeatable experience that many kids might have had. It's such a small experience, yet I still remember it and include it in my personal story (the memories I choose to describe my life when reflecting) because it says something about my personality at the time (that I did things just for the hell of it, that I didn't think too hard about consequences, that I liked being outdoors, etc).

Small, simple experiences which are not inherently personal or deep can have great personal relevance and depth.

playing for someone else's story

I'm a writer. Since I was very young, I've written poetry, short fiction, long fiction, philosophy, analysis, and just about any type of writing you can think of. In fact, I'll be extremely disappointed with myself if I never publish a novel, a book of philosophy, and a collection of short stories.

So it's ironic, to say the very least, that story has never been my primary interest in a game. Games are about my choices... how I, as a player, decide to use and mold my character. I loved Deus Ex. But do I remember much of its story? No. Mainly, I remember the few times it let me decide what happened next. All I can remember of KOTOR is the robot who hates meatbags. In a game, any game, it's about my story.

So I'm surprised to find my mind made up about purchasing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed because of this video teasing about the game's narrative. I was, and remain, cautious about the game, because the thrill of playing with the physics technology could easily be short-lived (if LucasArts fails to include other dynamics or if they stage every encounter rigidly). But now there's no question that I'll be buying the game. I will. I'm buying it just to see what happens between Episodes III and IV in the Star Wars saga. I must know, and I don't want to simply read a summary or transcript online.

This begs the question: Are only Star Wars and LOTR capable of so powerfully compelling a gamer like me through story hints to buy a game? Could an IP not belonging to books or films entice me so strongly with story alone?

I don't know. But I can say this much: if such an IP is possible, it sure as hell ain't Halo or Tomb Raider. ;)

accept limits

I just want to point y'all to a great post made by Sanya the other day.

Lesson #1: Design for the tech and audience you have now; not what you might have later.

Lesson #2: Be humble enough to really listen to experienced designers (hunt them down if you have to)... including when they're wrong! Whenever someone is wrong about anything, you can at least learn from asking why they believe what they believe.

Lesson #3: Artists can meet deadlines, too. Many deadlines shouldn't be written in stone, but they shouldn't be completely malleable either.

there are goals in combat?

As I said in response to Geoff's post about MMOFPS games, I don't think combat needs any goals if it truly is engaging.

I don't mean that goals are not necessary to gameplay. They are, of course, regardless of a game's genre and style. But good combat can be enjoyed for its own sake.

Halo offers players a clear goal: reach the end of the level to advance the story. Yet players are generally more focused on enjoying the battle at hand than moving forward. The same occurs in LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth II, Star Wars: Battlefront, Street Fighter II, Neverwinter Nights, and many other great games.

Sure, maybe your MMO isn't just about combat, and a depthful and dynamic combat system (which includes fun, dynamic enemies) requires a good bit of time and resources. Games like Halo and Street Fighter 2 can concentrate more exclusively on battle. But if the majority of time playing your game involves fighting (as in most MMOs), then there's no excuse for a lackluster combat system (as most MMOs have).

Grinding is the obvious result of focusing on goals to the neglect of the journey. When the journey is basically just filler between goals, I consider that disrespectful to gamers.

Liberty City hospital

The Game Dame recently pointed me to comedian Demetri Martin. One of Martin's many great jokes is that he wants to play a game that lets him act as medic to all the characters injured in other games, like the guy who was "shot 57 times in the head".

Thankfully, I'm not so far lost that I was wondering how such a game could be done while Martin moved on to the next joke. But I am wondering about it now.

And I feel pretty confident that the basic concept could be made into a pretty sweet game; fun, hilarious, and long-lasting.


The main requirement for such a game to be fun is that it must be cartoony. The boardgame Operation proved that surgery can be fun if you pay little mind to realism. And the only way you can include such ridiculous (and ridiculously fun) notions as a patient who's been shot 57 times in the head is to leave realism at the door.

The second element is a variety of goals and interactions. Include some over-arching track for progression to connect the smaller systems, of course. But don't try to pin down specific gameplay systems too early. Start with all the funny, ludicrous examples of game violence you'd like to fit into the game. Then divide the victims into categories and ask which types could be the foundations of gameplay systems that relate to each other. It's important that all the parts of any game contribute toward a unified impression.

That's unless you're basically offering a collection pack of mini-games; in which case, you shouldn't bother trying to contrive a shared foundation for them, because the player would rather jump to his preferred mini-games quickly, easily, and at any time.

The third element, to provide replay value, is variety within each player activity. For example: Lying next to the guy with fifty bullet-holes might be a guy who has been beaten into a shapeless blob with a baseball bat. Perhaps both victims are objects of gameplay that requires the player to rejoin fractured parts into a correct shape. In this case, they each represent an archetype with many possible variations, enabling an endless stream of victims for the player to fix.

Last but not least, the game must be funny! It would be easy to lose sight of the basic concept's humor while trying to design systems that fit each victim type. For example: the "rejoin fractured parts" system hinted at above might be fun as Bejeweled is fun, but could it keep the player laughing by somehow reminding him of how ridiculous the situation is? An alternative system might not stand as well on its own, but provides a better overall experience when mixed into a humorous setting and filled with rotated jokes.

What would a cartoon character look like, and what would he say, if he had been shot 57 times in the head? Perhaps he's happier than before he was shot, because he's certainly an "airhead", and "the happiest person is the village idiot". Perhaps by fixing him (putting his brains back in place), you're condemning him to misery, like the robot-genius in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Perhaps he talks while under anasthesia, and you're encouraged to laugh as his comments gradually shift from innocent contentment to enlightened depression.

What other archetypes of game victims might this game include?


Speaking of the funny and ludicrous, this mock footage of game developers in the 70s is hilarious!

classic stories vs mere entertainment

This started out as a response to Monique's article over at Write the Game, in which she stresses the importance of relationships in game dramas.

I think every classic novel and film is fundamentally about human beings and human relationships ( with others, with nature, with God, with past and future generations, with technology, etc). Classic stories are about us. Through the story experience, we, the audience, understand a little more about ourselves and how we as individuals relate to the world.



When we watch the movie Alien, for example, we're fascinated by the monster; but it's the human responses to the alien that make the story memorable. Otherwise, the Sci-Fi Channel's original movies would be worth watching. ;)

Consider this: Comedy (by which I mean "humorous narrative", as opposed to the literary critic's definition) has been around since the dawn of acting, literature (including oral literature), and art. Yet how many comedies are considered classics? The comedies that last beyond generations offer more than mere resolution. Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream explore relationships that cannot be fully defined or explained because they are truthfully-imagined human relationships, rather than mere stratagems in entertaining plots.



What attracts so many to Da Vinci's most famous painting every year, what is mentioned time and again in the countless critiques it has received, is the mystery of Mona Lisa's smile and gaze. The painting stands on its accurate representation of the beautiful subtlety and mystery of human emotion.

Entertaining stories leave us with answers; with certain conclusions. Classics leave us with answers, but also questions -- questions which, despite their universality or social focus, are deeply personal. Classics can be appreciated over and over again because we're never entirely sure of our own responses to them. We notice things the second time around that we didn't notice the first time. Classics grow with us. Our individual personalities and experiences, our cultural, geographical, and technological points of reference, our exposure to other artistic works -- these things change us, and so change what we see in and how we respond to those great stories. Every time we read them, listen to them, gaze upon them, play them... every time it's new, because we also are new.

Where does a soldier find the strength and immediately-present love to jump on a grenade so his comrades might be spared? What do you do when a child points a gun at you with intent to kill? Is it a betrayal of friendship to ask for romance, not knowing the nature of that friend's thoughts of you? When are you obligated to reveal your feelings, and when are you obligated to be happy or brave for another person?

Those are the sort of questions classic stories raise. They are questions without certain answers. We've been asking them for thousands of years, yet still we have only incomplete and often unsatisfying responses. Classic works often provide those partial answers. They hint at the truth we know, and motivate audiences to keep searching for the rest.

I believe that all human beings are called to perfection. None of us can be perfect, but each of us is capable of amazing feats. We should strive toward the amazing, reach for the miraculous. That calling is present in every aspect of our lives, and it includes making art. Few of us will ever create a masterpiece, but we should all aim that high. The place to start is within ourselves -- the questions that drive our lives and define our actions. We all ask classic questions. A master storyteller shares such thoughts in a presentation that does them justice.

more on IPs

Expanding on the topic of IPs, MMOCrunch wrote a brief article asking why WoW and Lineage 2 sold so much better than MMOs based on LOTR and Star Wars. I appreciate how the writer is careful with his conclusions, since it's definitely not a clear issue. Here are some of my thoughts on the subject, in response to MMOCrunch's article.

Using a film / book IP and using a game IP are different. The Warcraft RTS games had millions of fans, and asking them to try a Warcraft MMO was like asking fans of the Star Trek TV series to go see the first Star Trek film. The mediums are close enough for the audience to feel a relatively smooth transition, whereas book-to-game or film-to-game is generally not as fluid a transition. It's easier for a game to hook fans of a game IP than of an IP of another medium, because audiences don't participate in other mediums in the same ways they participate in games. There are similarities, certainly, but a game is a fundamentally different type of experience.

It's also significant that Blizzard has become a highly respected brand. A lot of gamers who would not have normally looked at MMOs tried WoW, or payed attention to its marketing, primarily because it's a Blizzard game. Company brands have much the same marketing effect as established IPs. WoW particularly benefited from this because Blizzard was made so important in Asia by Starcraft (which has whole TV channels devoted to it in Korea). And if Asia has more potential MMO customers than the Americas and Europe (I have no idea if that is so, but it's worth considering), then Blizzard's brandname takes on even more significance.

Yes, there's a difference between initial sales and continuing sales, but a significant portion of late sales are directly and indirectly consequences of initial sales. First, you have word-of-mouth. The greater the initial number of customers, the greater the spread of interest and the faster it happens (talk of any product spreads more quickly when that product is new than when it is old news). Second, retailers are encouraged by a product's strong sales to increase advertisement and availability of that product. WoW dominated a lot of shelf space and Walmart advertisements mostly due to its strong initial sales.


TRANSITION
Another possible reason for LOTRO's and SW:G's lesser financial success, despite being based on more popular entertainment IPs, is likely due to the IPs focus on specific and individual characters. Sure, Warcraft III has interesting characters, but the Warcraft RTS games are more about armies than individuals. Though LOTR and Star Wars involve wars and other huge struggles, the emphasis even in the battle scenes is on the particular heroes who dominate the narratives. We follow Aragorn, Legolas, and Theoden through the battle at Helm's Deep. We follow Luke and Lando through the battle against the Death Star. Incidentally, the success of Stargate Worlds is likely to be limited by the same effect. The Stargate TV shows (I'm a fan of the Atlantis series) focus on specific heroes... the humor and choices that result from the interaction of those specific personalities.

Which is why Raph Koster and SOE made the right choice to make SW:G about the Star Wars universe and not Star Wars characters, and SOE was foolish to add so many jedi and interactions with famous characters later. That probably sounds like an odd thing to say, after just explaining that the heart of Star Wars was the characters. But what I'm saying is that the heart of the Star Wars movies and books was the characters, while the heart of a Star Wars game must be the world... because the players are the main characters in any game.

On the one hand, that means that, no, the developers cannot count on the films' success to equate the same degree of success for the game. The IP cannot be wholly transferred across mediums. But the game does receive a boost from the films, as it is an extension of the same experience. The IP offers the game an elevated starting point. Then the derived game IP can be developed into a new foundation for future games. The derived IP is, in some ways, separate from the original IP.

So, for example, (1) the LOTR books and films magnify my interest in LOTR games. If two games, one based on LOTR and one not, are designed with the exact same systems, I'll enjoy the LOTR version much more. I've played a couple LOTR-based console games before, but none impressed until Battle for Middle Earth 2 (now one of my all-time favorite games). (2) BfME2 has reshaped my interest in LOTR, helping me to reimagine LOTR as a gameworld apart from the novel / film characters. Legolas becomes less important than elven archers in general. Aragorn fades back into a mass of Rohirrim and Gondor pikemen. Experience with a great LOTR game has helped me make the transition to focusing on new characters in a non-linear adventure apart from the linear mediums. The derived IP has, I believe, made future LOTR games more compelling by separating the LOTR universe from the story's main characters to a degree, thereby enabling greater emphasis on my (the player's ) choices and adventure.

Hence, the first game based on IP should, in my opinion, be used as a stepping stone to a greater work. IPs coming from films or books into games run into big snags, but the transition can be very successful if the story world can be gradually divided from the characters. Just look at the success of the first Star Wars: Battlefront, which almost completely excluded the IP's main characters from gameplay.

wandering IPs

This new Saints Row 2 video is a nice summary of the main point I was making in my (admittedly piss-poor) initial impressions review of GTA IV. My argument was that Rockstar has veered so far from the original flavor of the GTA series that now the Saints Row series is more GTA than GTA. That original flavor was wild, free-form gameplay and downright silly shenanigans. The original tone and over-the-top gameplay of the series seems to have been slowly fading, to be replaced by different values.

I absolutely have no problem with developers changing style. People change. Interests change. And GTA IV is certainly a financially successful game that pleases many gamers. Rockstar did well.

But I do believe any series should remain faithful to the expectations of its audience... faithful to the basic style that defined the first product; for ethical reasons as much as marketing reasons. If you're interested in making a new sort of game, don't realize it by changing an established IP. Start a new IP. If you establish your company as a respectable brand (Blizzard, Bioware, etc), then you can use that to about the same effect as a game brand. Command & Conquer is another series that has wandered quite a bit, though at least they eventually divided it into subcategories (Red Alert series, Tiberium series, etc).

In this case, I think the GTA series has wandered too far from its heart. I sold my copy of GTA IV to a friend.

interactive advertising

There's a lot of hubbub these days about the integration of advertisements into games. Many people think in-game billboards and such will fail for a number of reasons. I doubt they'll fail. The inclusion felt pretty seamless in Hellgate: London, and I expect to see several games over the next year that help advertisers without disrupting gameplay in a similar manner.

The key there is to allow only the right ads. Advertise only products that fit the game's setting, and demand that advertisers tailor their ads to the game and not just the audience. The Nvidia ad above is not tailored to the setting and so is jarring. The comics ad below (on the left of the screenshot) fits the game's dark tone, is a more reasonable size, and is more tasteful in general.


Another form of advertising that I think is genius, and far more successful, is arcade games designed around particular products. The Xbox Live Burger King game was priceless, and the Yaris game wasn't half bad for a glorified advertisement either. The former generated a lot of praise from gamers, and it probably endeared Burger King to many potential customers.

But the form of advertising that I haven't seen yet and think would be the most successful integration with games is a the possibility between in-game billboards and full games: playable products in-game.

GTA 4 could have secured advertising money to include real vehicles in Liberty City. Whether the vehicles move and control realistically isn't as important as whether or not driving them in the game is fun and somehow reflects their general styles (selling points). Most advertisments are less about facts than impressions and associations, anyway.

Lockheed Martin and Boeing sometimes advertise on TV. If the purpose of those ads is what I think it is -- to increase voter approval so they can win government and military contracts -- then they'd probably have more success by touting their products in war games. They should pitch to EA, Ubisoft, or Activision what makes their latest overt products innovative, and I'd imagine that those innovations might often inspire game developers to come up with some fun gameplay. F-19 Stealth Fighter on DOS was an awesome game, as was whatever game I played on DOS with the F-14 Tomcat.

Anyway, you get the idea. Make a product into a virtual toy that fits a game's setting and that interactive product exposure will have far more impact than just a static advertisment or an arcade game that is defined by advertisement (the general thought of "advertisement" annoys a lot of people, so ads are received better when mixed into something else).

exploration vs challenge

I've been playing Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows lately with my visiting sister. She's a very different personality from me, so it's been interesting to see that she appreciates the wandering hack-and-slash gameplay as much as I do.

Most significantly, it doesn't bother either of us that the degree of challenge doesn't increase as we progress through the levels. What makes the game fun is the non-stop action and personal experimentation in combat (nearly all the skills will work in most situations, so you just use whatever skills most interest you as an individual... and combine them according to personal preference). The game is very short -- easy to finish in a day -- but worth replaying.

It's Diablo-style hack-and-slash gameplay, but it doesn't have near the dynamics of Diablo 2. Of course, it doesn't last nearly as long as that game, but I think it does prove the viability of combat systems focused on exploration, rather than achievement. What we're fighting isn't as important as how we feel like fighting at any given moment.

I flip an enemy into the air, set him ablaze, then turn to sweep my axe through three oncomings foes. Meanwhile, my sister's character nearby is sending enemies in all directions with magical bursts. We're not thinking of goals. We're absorbed in the moment, savoring every kill and eagerly anticipating our next opportunity to let loose a new power.

Seven Sorrows isn't a stellar game. But I see in it a brief glimpse of a phenomenal possibility. Combine a healthy dose of dynamics and customization with dramatically-animated combat in a sandbox, and you've got a game of Diablo's dimensions (sales and lasting appeal).

Titan Quest and similar games are fun, but they fail to match Diablo 2 largely by a lack of personal exploration, as opposed to general exploration. They place a little too much emphasis on the latter, and not enough on the former. Don't just let the player discover static treasures and flat skills. Make the player's choices between treasures and skills, as well as the player's use of them, indicative of the player as an individual person. Let the player interact with the world and gameplay in a way that is personal (and dramatic).

And, when making a sandbox, don't let worries about balance keep you from filling your game with dynamics that interact in unpredictable ways. In a game of this style, the degree and stability of challenge isn't nearly as critical as in other games, because these games are more about the player's designs than yours.

women and gaming

I'm feeling brave today.

A long time ago, after watching this GameTrailers interview and having met, for the first time, a woman who enjoys a Real-Time Strategy game, I decided to give my take on the question of women's place in the gaming world. Will games ever appeal to as many women as men? Do women want different experiences or have different expectations?

I forgot about this article for a while, but Brian over at The Weekend Gamer brought it back to mind by highlighting a new study. Incidentally, the scientist's conclusion (that gaming in general is more natural for males) isn't supported by his evidence (which suggests only that particular types of gameplay are more suited toward males).

Anyway, here are some semi-random thoughts on the subject. Much of the information about physical differences between men and women I learned from my youngest sister, who is a biomedical engineer, medical researcher at the National Institute of Health, and now training to be a physical therapist. I'm also fairly well schooled in psychology. And I grew up in a family with two boys and three girls, which means I've been having discussions about these differences all my life. The sister in medicine also happens to be the one who played games like Halo with me for years.



CERTAIN
First, here are the things I'm sure of.


Women are destined for games, too
Every year now, there are new reports of the growing numbers of female gamers. For whatever reason, gaming has been more popular with guys for a long time. But a day is soon coming when a woman playing video games will be no more surprising than a woman going to see a movie or watching TV. Nothing about the medium itself, interactive entertainment, is exclusive or preferential.

And the cultural barriers that deter girls from trying out games in general are slowly but surely being eroded. Those cultural barriers might not disappear altogether -- male gamers might always outnumber female gamers -- but female gamers will at least become nothing to raise an eyebrow at. Groups like Frag Dolls (a group of women devoted to competitive war games) will always be exceptional, but girls will game in some form.


Some games are for us all
Many games are or will be equally popular among both sexes. In my experience, the original Mario Kart on the SNES is such a game. So are some classic arcade games and MMOs. The Sims series is popular with both sexes, as I'm sure Spore will be.


Some games favor one sex
The term "chick flicks" didn't come out of nowhere. Through the many decades of motion pictures, many films have been far more popular among women while other films have been far more popular among men. The same is seen in literature and every other artform. The same will be seen in video games.

Genre alone does not determine the audience. Though guys generally hate being dragged to sappy romance films, there are some romances that are popular with guys, too (French Kiss, There's Something About Mary, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, etc). Action flicks generally draw more male viewers, but some are popular with women (Speed, Rush Hour, LOTR, etc).



CONFIDENT THEORIES
Here's the stuff I'm not certain of but think is likely.


Art Themes
Men and women have different ratios of rod-to-cone light-receptor cells in their eyes. This means that women tend to be physically more capable of distinguishing separate colors than men and have better peripheral vision. Men, on the other hand, tend to have better depth perception and form tracing. This probably affects women's interests in game art the same way it affects women's visual interests in clothing and interior design.

Women tend to have a greater appreciation of vibrant colors and cumulative design (meaning how objects fit together). Men are more attentive to shape and the structural layout of environments. The RTS that my female friend said she loved is Warcraft 3. Without suggesting that she likes it for the visuals alone, that game and World of Warcraft use vibrant colors and a rounded art style. Mario Kart and other Mario games, popular among women, also employ this basic style.

Spore could be a great instrument of study in this area. I bet patterns will emerge in the sort of creatures and objects men design versus what women design. Incidentally, a woman might be the better researcher there, because women more often notice patterns (focus on cumulations, rather than specific objects, is as much a part of female brain development as eye development; male and female brains form a little differently).


Animations
A woman's gait is naturally different from a man's gait; not because of different attitudes, but because of a number of physical disparities in things like center-of-gravity, shape of the knees, and shape of the hips. If a game's visuals are real enough that the uncanny valley is a concern, then this difference between sexes should also be considered. It might be the reason that something doesn't look quite right. But the difference is slight... easy to exaggerate into a seductive parody, so artists should be careful.


Multiplayer
Women tend to be more socially attentive and cooperative than men. Both men and women are often bull-headed, but a man is more likely to insist on his own way, refuse help (instructions, driving directions, etc), and focus on individual gain. So I think women tend to favor cooperative multiplayer over independent multiplayer. That's not saying that women are not competitive... just that they like to explore and compete in a more cooperative way.

All three of my sisters played competitive sports, and it was obvious that they play in a different way than guys. Women tend to focus more on team achievement. Team performance is important to men too, of course, but individual achievement has more relative value for us. Star Wars: Galaxies and Star Wars: Battlefront are good examples of games which favor male-type cooperation. Players can act separately while contributing to a common goal. Everquest and Halo are examples of games which favor female-type cooperation. One player's character cannot survive without the other's direct participation and intervention.

Yes, mostly-male militaries around the globe are based on the latter sort of cooperation, but how many young boys playing war games pretend in a support role? Soldiers fight side-by-side because it's necessary to survive and win; not because it's their preference.


Reinforcement
When I asked one of my sister's about psychological differences between men and women on the soccer field, she mentioned that teammates shout words of encouragement much more often on women's teams. In her own words, "women respond more positively to encouragement". So it would make sense to include such encouragement in a game for female gamers.

On the flipside, I wonder if men respond more positively to the harsh criticism that's typical when coaching men's teams. The warrior instinct might mean this tends to inspire men by challenging our egos. The only video game experience I can cite here in Crackdown, in which I loved the narrator's mocking commentary and challenges.


Genres
As I said before, genre alone does not determine whether a game is attractive to both sexes or one. But some genres are ideally suited for gameplay which favors one sex over the other, just as most Nora Roberts fans are women while most Tom Clancy fans are men.

We might as well start by acknowledging that the division in films and books will translate into games. Romance favors women. We haven't seen many romance games yet, but they're on the way. Mass Effect's choice-empowering relationship play is one hint at things to come.

Women like war dramas, while men are the primary audience for war action. In addition to other features, an FPS game might be made more attractive to women through more personal dialogue between soldiers and more exploration of the protagonist's character. Women might also be interested more in rescue missions and guard missions, since their goals tend to be more about relationships.

Horror seems like a neutral genre, though men might favor the "walk into the darkness" type of horror while women favor the "something is coming" horror (feeling trapped). Men tend to like plans (structure) and predictability, while women are more willing to accept and adapt. Thus, a game like Dead Space probably favors men, while the movie Alien is more a woman's style in this way (the protagonist is unexpectedly trapped with the monster and defends herself; she doesn't seek the monster out). I'm far from sure about this theory, though my sisters generally agree. Also, women probably like their horror more contemplative and relationship-driven (like The Ring and The Grudge), while men prefer battle-driven plots (Predator, The Ghost and The Darkness).


Tone
I think women more commonly choose light-humored entertainment than men. Perhaps it's those confrontational instincts. Men seem to choose dark and severe entertainment more often than women. Women seem more appreciative of silly jokes and behavior. I think that's one reason all of my sisters loved Mario Kart so much. Popular romances are more often comedies than tragedies, it seems (though, again, I could be way off on this).


NO IDEA
These are things worth considering, but I have no idea how they affect women gamers or games for women. They are psychological differences, though, so I think there probably is an effect of some kind in games.


When women fight
Cat fights are notoriously vicious. I wondered if this might be a myth, but the women I know don't think so and its confirmed at least in my own experience. I have no idea what the reason is for this ferocity, but I can't help but think it must translate into gaming somehow. Do cat fights tell us anything about women's perception or approach to any element of gameplay?


Dealing with pain
When studying psychology, I noticed that there might be a difference in the way men and women handle emotional pain. Depressive disorders are more common among women, and aggressive disorders are more common among men. Men seem more likely to project their pain onto others, while women seem to focus their pain inward (perhaps one reason encouragement is so appreciated).


Consolations
When a woman is approached by a friend with a problem (a non-emergency), she's likely to first respond with sympathy. Women seem to value emotions more than men, and when hurt or troubled like to know that a confidant understands the emotional distress. When a man is approached by a friend with a problem, he's likely to respond immediately with advice; to try to solve the problem.


Random adages on the subject
Men never forgive. Women never forget.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
A woman can say more in a sigh than a man can say in a sermon.



Is there anything else y'all can think of? Any other area of possible difference?

Bad Company contest winners!

The time has come for the winners to start blowing stuff up! In the end, there were about 60 entries and a lot of cool ideas. If your idea didn't win, that doesn't mean I don't like it. I had to go through four phases of culling. These are the criteria I used to judge (which, in hindsight, perhaps I should have listed before):

• FUN: Obviously, this is the most important. Would the inclusion of this weapon/vehicle have players giddy with excitement and shouting triumphantly at the screen? Would players be talking about their experience long after it was over?
  

• FRESH: Innovation is appreciated, but I was asking more - Is this something gamers haven't experienced before? Would it feel like only a small spin on an old design or like a new type of gameplay? Remember, I mentioned the Halo sticky grenade as a great weapon, because being able to laugh as your enemy runs around screaming with terror in those seconds is priceless, as is watching that enemy run into a crowd of other players before exploding.

• BALANCED: Is it too powerful? Is its power offset by its limitation(s)? If there are 20 players on the map and 6 of them choose your weapon over other options, would that disrupt the battle?

• DYNAMICS: How much depth and variation does the idea offer? All you can do well with a sniper rifle is snipe, right? But finding good sniping positions, sneaking to those positions, combating the gun's unsteady aim, and choosing whether to wait for the headshot or shoot before the enemy moves... these variables surround the weapon and ensure that you can use it repeatedly and still have fresh, unique experiences. You can use the same gun 20 times and have 20 unique experiences. That's a dynamic weapon. Dynamics prolong a game's life, make experiences more memorable, and give players personal stories to share.

• DIFFICULTY TO IMPLEMENT: So the idea sounds fun... but would it be hell to design and balance? Most developers are willing to put a good bit of elbow grease behind a weapon's inclusion in their game, but some ideas have so many complications or require so much adjustment of the game's other weapons, maps, and other features that the idea just isn't cost-efficient. An idea that developers can implement quickly and easily for relatively great effect is an invaluable contribution, because that clears up their time and money to work on other parts of the game and make the whole product even better.

Looking back at the idea you submitted, perhaps you see how it would score well in one of these five areas and not in others. If the idea you entered isn't listed as a winner below, feel free to share it as a comment here. I'll list just a few of the good ideas that didn't win at the end. Anyway...

Here they are, THE WINNERS! and in no particular order:

Chris suggested a portable mortar. Trajectory-aimed weapons (you have to estimate the angle due to the pull of gravity) are a very unique and fun type of gameplay. This one can be carried and moved on your back, but can only be fired from a stationary position. It can destroy light armored vehicles and infantry. A player could fire it from behind buildings or other visual impediments. Though hidden, the user can be tracked by the following the mortar's trajectory and he would be vulnerable during the launcher's use.

Bryce suggested a gun for hallucinogenic darts. The beauty of this idea is that the hallucination is crippling but not completely incapacitating, but can offer far more dynamics than a flashbang or stun grenade through a variety of possible hallucinations. For example, the affected enemy's screen might temporarily display false damage indicators (shows he's getting hit from somewhere when he really isn't) or a false map. Something might obscure his vision... perhaps even something strange and amusing, as Bryce proposes. The basic concept was proven fun by the tranquilizer dartgun in Perfect Dark 64, and this takes that concept much further.

David suggested a gun with highly magnetic ammo, set by the player to a positive or negative charge, and meant to magnetize other objects. This idea has a lot of possibilities for dynamic use. Deflect or weaken a sniper's shot by spraying metal-repellant rounds between you. Magnetize two heavy objects to bring them together like a massive hammer. Shoot at an enemy above to push him off his perch. Or disrupt a vehicle. There are many possible uses for players to discover, though this one could be tricky to balance.

Luke suggested a G-Force grenade. It's a non-lethal grenade with enough kinetic force to send people flying, disrupt vehicles, clear an area, aid an escape, or help the player leap to a rooftop (like a Halo grenade, but without the damage).

Joseph suggested a gun that causes the shooter and hit enemy to switch places. He knows this weapon needs some restrictions, like limited ammo, and map design would be complicated. Like the other ideas, it opens up many possibilities. I picture a veteran player jumping off a cliff and then shooting an enemy before he falls. :)

Dag dag suggested a gun with the "replay" feature from The Fifth Element. Such a weapon would be dynamic, offer a fresh type of gameplay, and is probably easy to balance by giving it a short range and perhaps tweaking the bullet damage.

Daniel suggested the bouncing betty, a jumping landmine. Dying by mines would be much more dramatic (fun) if they shot two meters into the air before exploding. It also widens the likelihood of being non-fatally injured by shrapnel, and creates the possibility of being injured from across a waist-high wall or other barrier.

Kickflipfreak and darkman both suggested (and both will receive codes for) the CornerShot. It's a real gun that can shoot around corners by bending and offering vision through a camera.

And finally, Tom suggested the Mole Cannon, a user-guided subterranean explosive device. It's powerful but, because guiding it requires the user's whole screen, it leaves the user completely vulnerable during use. In fact, if its trail can be seen like a mole's trail, enemy players can track it; thereby forcing the player to constantly move. It could knock players upwards, over ledges, or even through windows. This seems like basically an improved, more balanced version of the Farsight concept in Perfect Dark 64 (which I'm surprised to mention twice in this post). Like the others, it provides dynamic fun.

Congratulations, all! I'll start emailing your codes right away.


There were five ideas that were each suggested by more than one person. Those popular ideas were an amphibious vehicle, the Corner Shot, a sniper rifle with explosive bullets (take out the cover with the explosive bullet, then kill the enemy with a normal bullet), a weapon or device that lets you permanently tag an enemy so they show up on radar (at least until killed), and (strangely enough) a weapon that changes its ammo or enemies into whatever is sampled from the environment (plastic, wood, metal, etc).

A sample of other good ideas: an APC with blind-firing, a gun-controlled sonic blast, an E-SMAW, a defibrillator, an entrapping but breakable force field, a shrapnel arrow, a wench gun, a SPAS-12, a throwable-retrievable bayonet, and a tag that emits colored smoke only when the enemy is in close proximity with other players (revealing where they're hiding or where the battle is). There were many more cool ideas.

I hope y'all agree with at least some of my choices.

not quite yet

The contest isn't over just yet. I'll still be accepting entries for another half-hour.

I'm just posting now to make clear that I won't be able to finish judging until all the entries are in (I've received 60 so far!), and the winners won't be announced for another hour or so after that. Y'all submitted a lot of good ideas, so it has taken me until now just to widdle the list down to 30 potential winners.

Sadly, there can only be 10.
--Highlander

signs of life

I'll admit it: I'm easily impressed.

When I played Crackdown recently, I was about to start climbing a building when the light went on in one of the windows. Nothing else happened. There were no shadows of people or even lamps or couches near the glass. But it was cool anyway, because it inspired my imagination to believe there was life on the other side.

Active NPCs generally offer the most powerful impression that a gameworld is alive, but you can use inanimate objects and the simplest of looped events to great effect. Window lights, a trail of paw prints next to a trash can, a chair knocked onto its back, an abandoned car with the hood up, a fire burning where nobody is around, a sign with graffiti over it, etc.

The key is that these simple objects suggest actions; that they let the player invent stories to explain a happening. In contrast, the layout of a room or a building's architecture offer information about culture and personality -- adjectives, rather than verbs. If you start the audience with a verb, any related adjectives are much more interesting. A fort naturally hints at a need to guard against enemies, but a fort with a broken gate and charred arrows still sticking in blackened rooftops hints at a recent battle... which makes the threat of enemies more relevant and interesting.

Players already, without any coaxing, want to believe that your gameworld is depthful and alive. It takes so little to feed their imaginations, so fill your world with little things.

play Battlefield: Bad Company early!

Much to my surprise, EA has given me 10 codes that unlock the Battlefield: Bad Company demo on Xbox Live and PSN. The demo will be available to everyone on June 5th, but here's your chance to download it and starting blowing stuff up a week early!



I've come up with a little contest. Because of the short notice, I'll simply give the remaining codes away if too few have entered the contest by Friday at 7:00 p.m. (Central time; GMT minus 6 hours for you non-Americans).

To enter the contest: All you have to do is to submit your idea of a cool weapon or vehicle that you've never seen in a game but think could make for some great fun. If you want to point to a real weapon that just hasn't showed up in a game yet (an FSF-1 Sea Fighter, for example), that'll work; but preference will be given to original ideas. The best ideas are things that can single-handedly change gameplay, like the sticky grenades in Halo or the FarSight in Perfect Dark 64. Email your idea (one per entry; one entry per person) to me (Aaron) at hallower1980@gmail.com. On Friday night, the 10 winners will be emailed their codes to unlock the demo and the best weapon/vehicle ideas will be posted here on my site.

Again, this contest is only open until Friday at 7:00 p.m. CST, at which point all of the codes will be awarded. In the case of too few entries, remaining codes will be given away. So, for example, if only eight people enter the contest by Friday night, then those people will automatically win codes and I'll give the other two away.


The demo includes an early look into the single-player quest for Gold with Bad Company and, of course, multiplayer. Multiplayer takes the form of Gold Rush mode on the Oasis map (featuring land, sea, and air vehicles). It includes the ability to reach rank 4 and unlock an exclusive in-game weapon.

In case you've forgotten or haven't been watching it, Battlefield: Bad Company is a game by Dice that allows 24 players online and is all about destructible environments: "Create sniping positions by blowing out a piece of a wall or drive your tank straight through a small house."

War in a sandbox. Blow up the box. :)



Clarification (edit): I'm not a DICE or EA developer. EA was just generous enough to give a simple blogger like me the opportunity to host this contest.

And your weapon/vehicle idea doesn't have to be for Battlefield: Bad Company specifically... just something that a similar war game could use.

RPG intros must have variables

Cameron gives a good ramble on the early levels of Age of Conan in his Player versus Everything column today. Predictably, many of the games shortcomings are typical to MMOs. One mistake, which Cameron mentions, that's made by seemingly all MMOs is a shortage of variables in the early game experience.

Damion Schubert spoke once about how important a player's introductory experience is. The further into the game, the more an MMO player has invested in the game (time, money, friends, work, etc); and so the more likely he is to continue his subscription. Players are most likely to leave in their first month, and are also likely to speak to a friend or on a blog about the game. The introductory experience also sets the tone for the entire game. It shapes how the player will perceive and approach future content.

Damion was talking primarily about quality, but just as important is variation. I'd bet that the vast majority of MMO players either create characters in addition to their main or start over when bored with their main. A significant portion create more than one alternate character, and some players (like me) put a lot of time into those alts. So the early game, more than any other part of the game, must be replayable.

Frankly, the replayability of most MMOs sucks. The main variable is the player's new choice of class and/or race. Games like EQ2, WoW, and CoH offer a choice of starting locales and low-level enemies. And then there's limited choice of gear (limited because there's usually an objectively optimal gearset which most players gravitate to). All of these dynamics are admirable, but they don't add up to a very fresh experience.

Why? The same combat strategy applies to all enemies. The loot is predictable and varies little within an enemy group. Experience points are always rewarded. Weapons and other gear have different numbers, but basically play the same. Locales offer different views, but little else. Nearly all quests are identical in goal and method. All factions work the same way. Every character's basic goals are the same. Level progression, gear progression, area progression, skill progression, faction progression... all progression is completely predictable and generally familiar to the player. There are new elements, but little to be surprised by and get excited about. In short, there's no adventure.

There could be.

fishing

I wrote this on Vanguard's forums years ago. Fishing is included in many MMOs as a bonus; but when it is, it's about as engaging as tying your shoes. It doesn't have to be that way. Anyway, my old post:


I think fishing is an area where some realism could make it a whole lot more fun. Now I haven't done much fresh-water fishing and I've never fly-fished, so I'll leave those to someone else to work out. But I have done saltwater pole fishing and spear fishing, so...

Give us different types of poles, lines, weights, baits, etc. There's only a point to this if you make fishing into something that involves practice and strategy.

When fishing off a saltwater shoreline, you have to monitor the tugging on your line very closely. The trick is that the waves and the current tug at your line too. So you often have to use experience and luck to discern when a fish is nibbling at your bait and you need to yank back on the pole to hook it. Sometimes, you'll mistake a wave or current for a nibble and you reel in your line to see the bait still on your hook. Other times, you reel in your line because it's been sitting there a long time...and sure enough, something stole your bait (damn you!).

A thicker pole won't break on you, but you also lose some of your ability to feel what's going on with your line. Stronger line is always better, just more expensive and often unnecessary. Weights are used to keep your hook and bait from being tossed to the surface by waves and currents. But you don't want to use too heavy a weight or your bait will be sitting in the mud...so there's a lot of wisdom and guesswork involved in picking a weight (assuming the strength of waves and currents on that shoreline vary). I can't say I ever used artificial lures (they don't seem to work very well with saltwater fishing).

Baits are a fun part of fishing. You could just use the shrimp, squid, minnows or whatnot you bought at the store. You might use your last catch in hopes of grabbing a bigger fish....perhaps cutting it up into small chunks. There could also be room for experimentation. My cousin, brother and I liked to catch and use sandfleas.....small crustaceans that burrow into the shoreline. In an MMO, it would be very cool if players could experiment by catching creatures like that and using them for bait. Catching sandfleas isn't always easy, so catching bait like this could be it's own mini-game.


Here's where all of this comes together.

Give players some sort of visual and audial means of detecting stress on the pole and line. In real life, I fish most by feeling movement....but in a game, you could watch the pole bend as well as watch a meter that simulates the feel...and you could hear the pole creak I suppose. A series of quick jerks usually means you've got a nibble...though not always. The player would also have to watch how the jerking relates to the waves. When a wave comes in, the part you don't see underneath is going the opposite direction and tugs at your line. So being able to see where your line enters the water is important.

If you put on too much weight, your bait will sit in the mud or get picked up by bottom-feeders (which could be good, if that's what you're fishing for). If you put on too little weight, your bait will pop out of the water or hang near the surface (which, again, can be good for particular fish).

If you use a thicker pole, your feel meter isn't as sensitive and your pole won't bend as much...but it won't break. And vice versa.

Different baits will attract different fish. Also, different baits can withstand different amounts of waves and tides. So if you didn't have wave variations in the game, you could use certain baits over again 3 times while others could be used 5 times, etc. You could have bits of shiny metal as spoons (heck, i imagine they got that name because people used to use real spoons; so why not do that?). With spoons, you're constantly casting and reeling in so the bait stays near the surface (so it can shimmer in the light) and simulates a swimming fish. In deeper waters, catching fish in the same spot for a while might attract sharks from all of the blood when you hook fish, so there's such thing as accidental bait. A funnier example is when people in small boats tie a big fish along the side (because they don't have room in the boat) and a shark will grab it. A Great White did that to some poor folks in the Gulf of Mexico years back and nearly tipped them into the water with it.

Lastly, I'd like to see fisherman catch a lot more than fish in a game. EQ had it so that you might fish out junk fish or just plain junk. In reality, that happens a lot (saltwater catfish, seaweed, driftwood, etc). But you also might catch rays (some sting you, some shock), eels (morays are poisonous, others shock you pretty badly), crabs (the little punks hang onto the line with their claws and let go at the shoreline), starfish and sand-dollars and urchins (no, they don't tug the line), octopi and squid (those suckers can hurt...and some squids have claws in every sucker), sharks (yeah, you're careful taking them off your line, haha) and plenty of other things. Plus, if it's a fantasy game, why not throw in a lot of stuff we've never seen before? Look at prehistoric fish (from the Devonian and Ordovician periods in particular) -- very different from today's sea life and very cool.

And I'd like to see fisherman get stung, bitten, shocked, and such on occasion. Most of the time, it should be nothing serious. Saltwater catfish in the Gulf of Mexico have stingers in their fins filled with a poison that makes it hurt more. It would be funny if something like that or a crab had the chance of hurting a character and making them hop around uncontrollably for a little bit. Other stuff, like highly poisonous fish (moray eels) and shockers could potentially kill you. I think it would be a cool addition if players could (rarely) die from fishing. Wouldn't that be a great tale to hear in the tavern one day?


But before I conclude my book of virtual fishing(TM), let's talk spear-fishing and deep sea fishing.

I haven't done underwater spearfishing (freediving) -- that's a whole other topic. But I have done spearfishing off the shoreline. It would be another cool mini-game. The screen turns into a first-person view, looking straight down into the water (perhaps seeing your bare feet below....different for every race (troll feet are nasty, I imagine). Different fish would move at different speeds across your screen. Plus, the water refracts the light a little bit, so you have to aim a little to the side of where you're seeing the fish (optional feature). If you've ever played the game Amazon Trail, that's basically what I'm talking about and it's very fun.

My cousin once caught a stingray with our spear. It was our first real catch with it, so it took a moment to recover from the shock before we realized the pole was moving out to sea!

As for deep-sea fishing. It would be cool if a game's boats could go trolling. You drag fishing lines behind you and fish bite the moving baits. It's simple and easy, and probably a great way to entertain players while traveling on boats. Some might even do shark-fishing with chum.


Just think... If I was more familiar with fresh-water fishing and fly-fishing, this post would have been twice as long. ;) I think most, if not all, of it can be worked into an MMO to make fishing more fun and create a couple quality mini-games. You'll notice that the pole fishing system in particular introduces personal customization, strategy, and reward for individual experience.

why is AoC so popular?

This isn't a review. I've never played Age of Conan, and haven't even payed much attention to it since I decided I'm not going to play another MMO with great graphics until I have a computer that can do it justice. These are just my guesses (and they are only guesses) at why Age of Conan has become one of the fastest-selling PC games of all time and has done particularly well in the North American market.

First, the combat is fast-paced. Note that the pace in World of Warcraft is also faster than the typical MMO. There's certainly no shortage of gamers interested in turn-based combat. But let's face it... more people watch football than play chess. Not everyone has the reflexes of a tiger, but Americans in particular are generally lovers of action, and patience is not an oft-praised virtue in our culture. Combine that with the MMO industry's dogmatic adherence to queu-form combat, and it's obvious how MMOs with more real-time combat will attract attention.

Second, the setting isn't watered down. Even parents who aren't fascinated by half-naked bodies and blood get tired of watching cartoons with their kids all the time. Nobody watches comedies exclusively. We all long for a little seriousness at times, and Conan provides a cold, stark, and serious setting. Like the fast-paced combat, this sort of setting is rare among MMOs and so immediately attractive as something fresh.

And why has the game done so well in North America in particular?

Western art and Western themes. One might call the art style gritty realism... very unlike Asian aesthetics. The Conan myth was written by a Texan during the Reconstruction period (the time when the victors of the Civil War were making life hard on Southerners) and inspired by European barbarians like the Picts. Asian cultures have their own barbarian ancestors and hard times, of course, but storytelling and thematic focus are immensely different on this side of the Pacific.

Then, of course, there's the Conan books and movies. I don't know how widespread the series is outside the USA, but I expect that it's sold well in Canada and Europe. The game's advertising is certainly helped by beginning from a decades-old and universally recognized IP.

Age of Conan certainly won't halt WoW's momentum, but it I bet it will steal quite a few WoW subscribers since they do share certain aspects. Regardless, it will significantly affect the MMO landscape by injecting some rare elements and exhibiting some post-WoW success for an MMO.

Wii versus 360 and PS3

My friend Darren repeated something often said about this batch of consoles: the Wii is the only truly next-gen console, while the 360 and PS3 are not really very innovative. I disagree.

As I told Darren, he's in good company. Will Wright, my favorite game designer, has made much the same claim. But I think that view is a failure to look beyond the obvious. It fails to recognize that a simple increase in processing and memory can and often does have a huge effect on gameplay -- not just evolutionary change, but also revolutionary change.

I only have experience with the 360, so I'm going to focus exclusively on that console. And let's be clear about something: this is not a fan post. If I had the money to, I'd own all three consoles. This is in no way bashing the Wii. I just want to explain why the 360 and PS3 should not be accused of failing to innovate.



Even the Xbox 360's first batch of games hinted at the new possibilities unlocked by the console's power. Kameo, a game by Rare that reminded me a lot of DonkeyKong 64, proved the different type of fun that could be had from charging through an endless horde of enemies. Gears of Wars 2 will apparently explore that idea further.



Oblivion could not have happened on the Wii. The visuals in that game are not fluff... they're an essential part of the experience. The massive gameworld, which requires a lot of memory, is essential to the experience. Something else that's essential to Oblivion: complex controls. The Wii remote and nunchuk are cool, but they're not capable of as many control options as a single 360 controller with two pressure-sensitive analog sticks and 19 buttons (including being able to click the analog sticks and push the d-pad in 8 directions) aside from the Start button.



Could the lighting and shadows of Dead Space, combined with the game's strategic dismemberment feature and its zero gravity environments, be done on the Wii? Or the water effects of Bioshock? How about the flurry of AI and animations for LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth 2? Or the detailed cities and motion-captured animations of Assassin's Creed?



Star Wars: The Force Unleashed will be released on every console, yet the 360 and PS3 aren't getting the multiplayer component that the other versions get. Why? I don't know, but I think it's probably meant to make up for the better experience the more powerful consoles are able to provide solely due to their power. One of the devs explicitly mentioned that the 360 and PS3 inspired them to make such a game. I'd be willing to bet that there's more than merely a difference in visuals between the game versions (but I could be wrong).



To be clear, the Wii is capable of impressive visuals, physics, and greater things than we've yet seen. But it's indisputably not capable of many specific designs.

One might argue that these new types of gameplay all could have been seen in PC gaming. But so could the Wii's motion controls. There's nothing any of the consoles have done that could not have been developed for the PC.

AI: beyond logic

Human beings are not logical. Or, rather, we're not only logical. Every one of us makes choices that depart from what we consciously perceive to be the best, most rational options. A person who exhibits no emotion is called robotic, because emotion is also an essential aspect of humanity. Some might even go further and say that the will is neither logic nor emotion, but something else.

My own view is that emotions are based in a sort of logic. Happiness is a response to communion with the things we love; togetherness. Sadness is a response to being apart from those objects. Anger is a response to injustice. And other emotions are generally some mixture of basic emotions like those, filtered through our own personal perceptions of what is truth, what is love, etc.

Regardless of what one theorizes emotions are, we are incapable of completely predicting human behavior. We can't even fully predict the behavior of many lesser animals.

Viewers of horror films often remark that particular characters are unbelievable because those characters act irrationally. I don't think the audience truly expects an absence of impediments to logic, such as fear and anger (or even varying degrees of intelligence). Instead, the audience is responding to the characters being too neatly fashioned... too predictable. Of course, she's just going to hide and cry until she's found and slaughtered! That's what they always do, right? Audiences generally expect characters to have half a brain, but the actions of depthful characters always contain surprises. A truly depthful character is not completely knowable, because no human being is completely knowable.

So where is all of this leading? When depth is a goal, AI should include self-contained variables. A character's actions should not be determined solely by a "personality" type plus environmental circumstances. Within that personality, there should be a variable range.

The same person placed in the same basic circumstance will often respond differently. In reality, this doesn't happen willy-nilly; it's in response to a change in internal circumstances (distraction, drowsiness, recurring thoughts due to individual values, new ideas conflicting with conditioning, etc). But trying to mimic the endless intricacies of a human personality is a lost cause. So a simulation meant to give the illusion of true depth should contain internal dice... doing for personality what the Euphoria engine does for physics, albeit accomplishing that illusion in a very different way.

Minor variables can have big consequences, as I'm sure AI programmers are very aware. If an enemy hesitates in combat for just a second, all sorts of things could happen in that second. The player might gain an advantage. The enemy's companions could arrive and start shooting. The wind or waves could change, pushing a vehicle slightly off its intended course. That moment's hesitation doesn't have to be exactly described by the programmers or animators, because the player's imagination will fill in the blanks. Perhaps it was fear. Perhaps it was a sudden realization. Perhaps it was his back going out of alignment (speaking of simulation... the problems of getting old!).

One thing game developers could learn from old movies (40s and 50s) is the benefits of innuendo and incomplete information. Scenes are most powerful when not everything is spelled out for the audience. That includes combat scenes.

Anyway, I think the future of storytelling in games lies largely in the development of better AIs. This is one way.

gold farming is criminal trespassing?

Apparently, breaking a site's terms of service might soon be considered criminal trespassing under federal law, as defined by a judge (they're legislators, too, these days). Zubon summed up the news perfectly, but I'd like to add one thing that's often forgotten: a law doesn't have to be reasonable or good to stand for decades in the courts. If the idea that breaking a site's TOS agreement is criminal trespassing sounds ridiculous to you, don't believe for a second that something ridiculous and unreasonable can't be made into law.

I have no idea what the judge will decide or what the response will be, but this is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

GTA 4: initial impressions

I'm finally back. Sorry for the long hiatus, but I was staying with a 90-year-old and, like most 90-year-olds, she doesn't have internet. Life without internet (or even a computer!)... I could hardly remember what that was like. Really, it's not so bad. Try it sometime. It's like camping. ;)


Anyway, I picked up GTA IV last week and thought I'd offer my initial impression of the game.

I haven't played it in a while. Instead, I've been playing Call of Duty 4. That's partially a testament to how great CoD4 multiplayer is, but it also reflects my relative boredom with GTA IV. Honestly, I'm wondering if I should have bought it or just saved my money for the plethora of other great games being released this year (two of which I've already pre-ordered). If you haven't seen Zero Punctuation's review yet, you might want to watch that before reading further. Like most of his reviews, this one mentioned many of my own thoughts.

I both like and dislike the realism. I certainly love it in the visuals. Driving in the rain or fog is a thrill. I like the gritty story. However, I agree with most of the points Zero Punctuation made.

Being able to go bowling, play darts or play pool with another character is great. For a sandbox-focused game, more options is good. But Rockstar made a mistake by having those characters call Niko on his phone. That makes the world seem more real, but it also deters the player from enjoying the sandbox by constantly turning the player's focus toward the linear content. It's partially a problem of pacing. Sandbox adventures (meaning small series of explorations that the player subconsciously connects into stories) take time to develop, and the player needs time to become immersed in that exploration. The invitations to hang out by Niko's companions disrupt that exploration and prevent the player from connecting happenstance events into personal stories. There's not enough undisrupted time to wander through the sandbox and find one's own crazy series of events.

The TV channels are funny, but why do I have to sit in my apartment to watch? The billiards, darts, and bowling could have been designed so that the player could watch TV between turns. I'm a fan of world-type games, but who wants to roleplay a couch-potato? The TV stations should have been enjoyable while doing other things, as the radio stations are. There was more humor on the airwaves of early GTA games, but the music is still good. It would be nice if the radio turned down/off automatically when Niko answers his cellphone, but that's the sort of attention to detail that's often lacking in GTA IV.

The vehicle handling is awful. In this case, the move toward realism was a very bad idea. There's nothing quite like racing creeping away from cops in second gear because your car can't handle turns at higher speeds. This is how your grandma would evade police. Perhaps Dukes of Hazard -style chases emerge with faster cars later in the game; but if that's the case, shouldn't driving be fun in the beginning of the game, too? Driving in older GTA games was a blast, but not so in this one. And wouldn't it be more fun if passengers responded to wild driving and accidents more like those in the intro scene of The Darkness demo than like old Miss Daisy yelling at you to slow down? This is GTA, afterall -- players should be encouraged to act crazily, not like prim ninnies.

The control scheme for gunfighting on the 360 is strange. There doesn't seem to be any reason the typical FPS setup wouldn't work, except for shooting while driving. And in that case, shooting while driving is a chore as it is, and should have been done differently. Wouldn't it be more fun to let a companion NPC or an AI for Niko handle the driving or shooting controls while I handle the other? Wouldn't a close-camera chase or gunfight like that be more fun anyway than combining the two into less visceral, less fluid experience?

I hate for this early-glimpse (many hours of play) review to all be negative, so let me reiterate that the visuals are impressive, the story is good, and add that pressing "B" while driving to activate a cinematic camera is an awesome idea (too bad Microsoft still stupidly fails to offer Xbox 360 gamers the ability to take screenshots). The bowling, darts, and (especially) pool are all extremely well designed, though I do wish pool and darts included the same swinging use of the thumbstick that bowling does (to add that visceral feel). The physics is great, but more for its applications to animation (pedestrians moving and getting knocked around, vehicles colliding, etc) than applications to gameplay (driving, gunfights, etc).

GTA 2 and Vice City were better games. They let the player off the rails immediately, kept the pace up, allowed wild and silly fun while wandering every which way, and strived to be over-the-top in gameplay more than in libertine shocks (ex: yes, the hookers in GTA IV are funny, but the production time would have been better spent on further dynamics in combat and driving gameplay -- i.e., content that improves the game's lifespan / replayability).

I'll put more hours into GTA IV at some point. But my early impression is that Saints Row is as good, and Saints Row 2 might end up being a better game. Hold out for that one, if you haven't already bought GTA.

I'm looking forward to trying out the game's multiplayer modes. Perhaps that's where GTA IV really shines... though that would be strange, considering that the GTA series has always been about the single-player sandbox.