Motivating Design

After spending some time on TED.com I've been intrigued by the concepts and ideas of defining human motivation.

This video in particular by Dan Pink (embedded below, go watch it now.) he talks about motivation and how to get the most of your employees. In addition to being an excellent speaker, the topics he covers are very interesting to me and relate to game design.



He introduces The Candle Problem developed by Carl Duncker and the concept of Functual Fixedness, then introduces an incentive into the equation. The results are not what most people would expect. They found that when giving people a problem requiring creative thinking, any form of incentive produced negative results. Compared to the positive results of the same problem without incentives. While performance based on non-creative problems, incentives work great. This boils down to extrinsic motivators vs intrinsic motivators and their relations to creative vs routine work. The simple conclusion of the video and the experiments is that rewards narrows focus.

While the study, topic, or intent has nothing to do with gaming directly. I feel that the concepts can be applied, especially in the MMO world. Anytime a problem or a path is set in front of a player we, as designers, are asking them to provide us with a solution. We've given them the problem and we are asking them to resolve it. By no means is a player forced to resolve anything. It's a video game, the player can turn it off at any time, they have the option of just getting up and walking away. Of course, we don't want that. We want players to rise to the challenge and to enjoy the process, such is the art of design.

Now, with the perspective that we are giving the players problems to resolve, we have to next look into how we are going to incentivize the resolutions, which ties back into the statement on motivation. Many of the problems we assign to players are so minor that we often don't even realize we are asking something of them, or they don't realize that they are being given a choice. This is wonderful in most situations, as the purpose of a game isn't to 'bog us down with choices' but to 'enjoy an experience'. In order to help players to enjoy their experience, we need to correctly identify their motivations and try to mold those and control them into the desired pace and purpose.

Extrinsic motivation is the easy part. Taking in the lessons from Dan Pink, this type of motivation can actually increase results when it comes to non-creative problem solving. "Shoot the clown 100 times and get a reward" would be an example where an extrinsic motivator would give us drastically better results. This can be seen with grinding in the MMO world. With these mindless repetative tasks, giving us "shinies!" is an easy solution.

Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is much more difficult. Luckily, Mr. Pink again gives us some information that help us to build and nurture intrinsic motivation. He briefly touches on the topics of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, as the three pillars of intrinsic motivation. In order to fully understand this, we're going to have to look at each one of these individually.

We'll start with Autonomy. This can be defined as being independent or self-governed, using the straight dictionary definition, anyone can argue that as a person they are Autonomous. Within the world of games though, characters are often designed to NOT be autonomous. This seems logical, as the social dynamic is one of the key draws to an MMO environment. So in the gaming world (or at least the MMO world) the question becomes "How do we build autonomy and still require social interaction?" The answer here is accountability. Even in a group, each character has to feel attached to their own roles. They have to feel autonomous within that role. I have to know that, as a healer, these are my responsibilities and I am accountable for those. Every person needs to feel that they are in charge of their own situation at all times. I have to know that I am capable of completing my task, and that every single tool needed is provided for me. Autonomy is one of the easier pillars to design for. Why? Because the game is typically designed around this without people actually thinking about it. Would you design a mechanic into a game that was impossible for a player? Surely not. The simple desire to not punish our players forces us to design with Autonomy in mind.

Pillar number two is Mastery. The ability to have expert knowledge or skill at your chose task. My peers have argued that the ability to achieve mastery is always present to all players and is something that's to be left fully in the players' hands and not something that we should design for. I disagree. I think that players should always feel that they have the tools and information to obtain mastery available to them. Due to be constantly surrounded by hardcore gamers (and being somewhat hardcore myself) the idea of going to a website for strategies or spreadsheets doesn't seem odd at all. While it's wonderful that the community has banded together to provide these resources to itself, it also limits these resources to a small number of players. In order to provide players a path to mastery, we have to give players access to information and a way to use that information. Practice makes perfect, we've all heard the age old saying, and it rings true now as much as ever. Players have to be given a way to practice, a way to develop mastery without breaking the immersion or flooding over into the real world. We have to facilitate and nurture growth if we ever want a player to obtain mastery. Information + implementation = mastery. You see a lot of this in fighting games, with full moves lists, practice modes, and challenges, all of which are designed to give players an avenue to explore and achieve mastery. While we can't force everyone to explore this route, more players will if the path is right there in front of them, rather than them having to go out and seek the path out first.

Purpose, the third pillar. Here's the kicker. A sense of purpose is often times a motivator on it's own. Purpose is the reason you are doing what you are doing. In games, this can be the story, the group, the raid, anything that connects us to something larger than our lonesome. Games have tried everything in the book to attach with the player, to give them a feeling of purpose. This is also such a unique niche from person to person. If you actually break it down, it seems a herculean task. How can I make a person really connect with pixels? This is heavily dependent on the audience you are appealing to. People who play fighting games religously probably don't need a lot of story to get them into the game. These players feed on competition, their purpose IS the mastery and using that mastery to triumph over another player. Compare this to your typical action adventure gamers, these players are often interested in the story itself. They want a main character that they can relate to, someone that they can see some semblance of themselves in. Taking this character (that they relate to) and going on fantastic adventures and completing impossible tasks gives them a sense of purpose because they feel intimately attached to their characters. Next we see social gamers. The people who play because all of their friends play. These people need to have the tools available to them to allow them to really connect with other players and to get their "social fix" from the game. Of course, the world isn't limited to these three classifications of players, what's important here is that we define who we are designing for, then we can flesh out the purpose and design with that in mind. If the purpose is meaningful to your players, they will embrace it lovingly.

Perseverance

I just want to share a link to a short story today : http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/522/entrylevel_video_game_.php

It's the story of an amateur designer who landed a design job right out of college. There's some good advice on page 3 for anyone who's interested in pursuing Game Design.

Perseverance is key.

Nash Equilibrium and the art of Yomi

I've been playing a lot of Fighting Games lately. See we have a Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter cabinet at work. A few people who work on my team here have been into this game for awhile and pushing me to try it out. Being a good gamer, I of course wanted to experience this game that I've never played before. This game isn't new, nor revolutionary by an means. It simply addresses the issues with previous games, and makes things a bit more flashy. It's an iterative game without a doubt, but it's a solid fighter and a good amount of fun to play with co-workers when you get a break. This progresses for a couple weeks of casual and fun play and me losing every single match against these Street Fighter adepts.

After a few weeks of playing, I decide that I'm tired of losing and that I'm going to start playing the game a bit more seriously. Of course, my muscle memory improved, and execution becomes easier and easier with practice. And things just started to make more sense. After a couple of months playing the same characters, with the same people, we've started to see the effects of a building Nash Equilibrium within our world of constants. (I say "starting to see the effects of", because the true act of achieving this equilibrium across the board at a single game could take years) Now, this is a very loose definition, technically, if we really wanted to get into it, we could say that choosing the same character every time was destroying the equilibrium, thus we are actually worlds away from it. While that could be a compelling argument and a great topic to converse on, it would draw this post out far, far too long to keep anyone's attention. (I fear it's already far, far too long as is)

Back on point! What the heck is Nash Equilibrium? Put as simply as I can, Nash Equilibrium is the state at which all parties involved are making the best possible choices, while taking into account the other players simultaneous decisions. It's when you know your opponent/teammate so well, that you know exactly what they are going to do. And they know what you are going to do. It's that level of teamwork you see that causes cooperative players to work together in perfect harmony without a peep to one another, or the two world champion tournament fighters who don't dare get overly aggressive because they know exactly what tricks the opponent has up their sleeves. When any two people are playing on the exact same level because they know the level of the opponent, the equilibrium kicks in. 

With competitive games like Fighters, the equilibrium is the factor that makes these matches less appealing to audiences. If you've ever seen any fighting game tournament footage, you've undoubtedly seen the "projectile fights" that happen. While these encounters aren't thrilling for the audience, being in that position knowing what you've got, and what they've got can be pretty tense. The equilibrium doesn't allow you to get flashy or risky, it keeps you grounded, safe, and smart. These concepts are something that need to be taken heavily into account when pursuing any form of competitive design. (Ha, you didn't think I'd loop this back into design huh?)

So how does this factor into other games? Let's take WoW for example (surprise!) Are players in these situations making decisions based on what other players are doing? Of course they are. Anywhere that decisions affect other people, and their decisions affect you, there's potential for this equilibrium to be achieved. These concepts can work in both directions, competitive play, and cooperative play. 

Keeping the equilibrium in minds, a major factor to consider in design is randomness. Developing a level of equilibrium when every ability has random properties can be very difficult. This effectively blows out the number of possible scenarios and makes attempting to predict what's next, and operate within those constraints, infinitely more difficult. This is designing against the equilibrium. But is this a better option than designing for the equilibrium? 

Depending on the type of play you are going for, these seemingly minor choice can result in major impact on the players. Let's look at cooperative play, it can be advantageous for a designer to favor and work towards players obtaining equilibrium. The simplest face value method of facilitating this is through total transparency of information. A player can't learn to work in harmony with others if one doesn't know what the other people are doing. You can see this first hand with the modding community in WoW. There are countless mods out there that help you keep dibs on what everyone is doing, especially in how it pertains to your specific role. Take damage meters for example, one of the most commonly used mods in the game. At surface value, this mod is simply a ranking system where people can say "Oh, I'm number 1". Moving beyond "damage done" functionality, this mod can help to create the equilibrium by giving players full disclosure about your fellow raiders. I know that I don't need to worry about debuff X because Player B always keeps it applied. This allows me to intelligently make a decision based Player B's decisions, thus letting me do more to maximize my role, and in turn help the whole; thus moving one step closer to equilibrium. Once each player is at the same level of equilibrium the group gains the ability to function simultaneously as a group and as an individual. Each and every player in an effective group must be fully and wholly confident in each and every member of the group. This equilibrium needs to be achievement to ensure consistent and effective victory. "He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. " ~Sun Tzu - The Art of War.

Working against the equilibrium in cooperative play is, put simply, making it harder to work together. This is very rarely a favorable option, and is typically frustrating for players. Think about running a dungeon in WoW with a group, and not being able to see anyone else's heath/mana bars. Eventually, people would learn to operate within the bounds of the game. It would require massive amounts of practice, but in time people would develop "a feel" for how hard certain bosses hit, and they would learn to watch the game more intently to keep track of what's going on so they can react. This would drastically slow down Nash, but would it make the game more enjoyable? Would it make better players? Would players want to play it? I doubt all three of those questions. I think playing too heavily against Nash in cooperative play will result in player frustration, and a learning curve far too high for people to tolerate. Of course, I'm speaking in an MMO capacity. As there are many different types of games, fighting Nash could result in beautiful play in different genres.  

Now let's look at competitive play. In competitive play, I feel like this equilibrium can have a drastic effect on the fun and the "skill based nature" of these situations. The second one player fully understands another player, and is able to figure them out, the competition against the system is gone, leaving nothing but pure competition between two people. If I know exactly what you are capable of doing, then I have full ability to challenge that correctly. Providing you know the same amount of information about me, the equilibrium is in affect. While knowing the capabilities is great, know exactly what I will pick is called "Yomi" (The ability to predict, correctly, what an opponent will do). These two concepts work very heavily in tandem to produce a very high level of competitive play. It's much like chess, players are often told to "think 3 steps ahead." Looking at past chess champions, it's quite common to hear of players doing seemingly random or crazy moves just to throw their opponent off. To shatter the opponents yomi and keep their dominance on the other player. Once players are no longer playing against the system in any way, they enter equilibrium and yomi becomes the name of the game.

This is often addressed during game development by including a level of randomness into abilities/encounters/etc. Randomness allows player to prepare for some situations, but not all. Turning your Equilibrium into a branching tree of options, rather than a linear path. While Yomi comes heavily in to play in these situations, any unpredictable behaviour makes achiving equilibrium with your opponent infinitely more difficult. Things with "sometimes" or "occasionally" affects to them force players to keep guessing, rather than calculating. The objective here is to continually reset the equilibrium, thus not allowing play to get too predictable. This, of course, can be argued that play itself should be *totally* predictable and that the responsibility of maintaining or modifying the equilibrium is up to the players involved.

This ties back into the original question concerning competitive play. Do we design for or against Nash in these types of play? I feel it hinges heavily on your goal of competetive play. Is your goal to really give the players a medium where they are evenly matched and the game itself is simply a vessel to allow two players to engage in civil combat? Then you want to design for Nash and allow the players to play each other un-hindered in an environment free of randomness or unpredictable behavior. Or do you want players to be allowed to compete, but still be playing against the game simultaneously? Depending on the scenario, it must be defined if the players are playing against eachoter, or if they are simultaneously playing against the game as well.

Despite which type of play experience you are attempting to create, it's something to keep in mind. I think the art of it all is in defining what type of play are you really interested in creating. Both cooperative and competitive play can work for or against the equilibrium. Total transparency of play allows the player to build their equilibrium by careful observation and study of others, be it opponents or team mates. Inversely, the shrouding of information, can hinder the development of the equilibrium.

Is this sad?

I have a full time job at a game company. As well as a Bachelors Degree in Game Design.

Is it sad that I just thought about going back to school part time *SOLELY* so I could have a shot at getting a design internship at Blizzard?

Ebb and Flow

Anyone who knows me, knows that my passions are in encounter design. Anyone who's had one, just one, white knuckle moment while playing a game knows exactly what I'm talking about. That rush, where you can feel your blood pulsing through your body, you're so tense as you approach that kill with your army of friends behind you. It's pretty incredible, it's a similar rush to what athletes experience, only with way less effort. I want to be able to deliver that moment to people, even if I can only do it once. Knowing that I was able to give that experience to other people is a feeling I can't describe.

This is, unfortunately, not something that designers can deliver with every encounter in the game. Let's be realistic, if every single moment of a game put you on the edge of your seat, it wouldn't take long before that became stale, and you needed to one up that to scoot back forward on your seat. There are games that have done great jobs of putting players on the edge of their seat a lot, but you simply can't do it all the time. Shadow of the colossus comes to mind. The encounters in that game were epic. Really Epic. But a huge part of the game was spent just running around. It's a very karmic concept, that if you make the whole experience intense, it ceases to be intense and becomes the norm. So how can we control these situations for our consumers? How can we keep the highs really high, but keep the lows still high enough that they don't hurt the game?

Controlling the pacing is something that I feel many designers overlook. While it's important to view the whole package as one large event, you've got to make sure that each of those events are meaningful. You can't have a low point, if there's no reason to have a low point. Of course, the inverse is also true. I see so many games that market to the high adrenaline craziness fall flat on their faces for exactly this reason. Sure racing at a billion miles per hour in space is awesome at first, but after doing that for 3 hours, it gets kind of old. If your selling a game with that alone, expect only people with severe ADD and Alzheimers to enjoy it.

There's even further reasoning behind this logic. Player fatigue is a real thing that happens. Games take effort to play. I'm not saying that it's equivalent to playing sports, but effort is exerted none the less. If you pack your game with too many challenging puzzles, players will get tired of them. If everything in the game goes a mile a minute, players will get tired of that. It's a fine line to tread between boredom and frustration. You can peak and dip into each of those categories lightly (slow times dip into boredom, and high moments peak into frustration), but you can't allow your game to spend long enough in either area that a player is overwhelmed by that feeling.

You've got to balance it. We've got to inject meaning into those 'low points' so that they turn from low points, into 'less-exciting but meaningful points'. People are happy with low impact, low adrenaline moments providing they are working towards something bigger. This is something you see a lot of in console rpgs. How many times have you gone back and intentionally spent time leveling up and went back to the easy, light play of overworld creatures, just so you'd be prepared for that next boss? Or Gran Turismo, how much time have you spent in the garage tweaking your engine for that perfect race? How much time have you spent farming money to buy that epic mount?

Slow gameplay isn't bad, as long as it's meaningful. In fact, I feel that the slow gameplay is equally important as the big epic moments. It's the build up, it's the act of working towards something bigger and better. While that culmination of effort is an incredible feeling, all the time spent farming is where personal connections flourish. Who would have cared that Aerith died if you didn't have the past 20 hours of play getting to know her? Would that victory over Ragnaros really mean as much if you didn't spent oodles of time gearing up for it? How epic would you feel killing arthas if anyone who just hit 80 can prance in there and take him out?

It's gotta make sense!

So today, I was leveling yet another character in World of Warcraft. If you haven't leveled a second or even a third character, I advise you do. If you go through it and pay attention to what's going on around you, it's incredible. You can visibly see the improvement and growth of the designers through the game. Go through it again, look at the characters. Look at the gear, the monsters, the environments, the quests, anything and everything. Then compare that to the content we are being delivered now, it's really night and day.

With early vanilla wow, it feels somewhat haphazard. A lot of the what you see only makes sense because, well, because it is. The quests lines don't exactly feel like they are all tying into something bigger, the monster abilities are fairly similar across the board and the zones themselves feel very repetitive. I remember going from westfall to red ridge and feeling like I was in the same place. This makes sense if you take into account the real world as a whole, places that are adjacent to each other are likely going to be fairly similar. But that doesn't make for thrilling gameplay. Same thing goes with Thousand needles into Tanaris, it just felt like going from one desert to the other, then you get a nice break in un'goro and back to the desert in silithus. Even into the raid game, why are we killing this big ass fire demon guy? oh yeah, cause he's a big fire guy with purples in his pockets. Roger.

Luckily, blizzard is ever growning. You can see that things become more and more sensible as vanilla progresses. The opening of the gates of Ahn'Qiraj were incredible. I remember farming non-stop as a deputy for my guildie to open that gate. And when we did, I felt like a million bucks. I knew what I was doing, and why I was doing it. I think this is why I remember that as my most fond moments in vanilla wow. Once naxxramas loomed over Easter plaguelands, everyone in the world knew exactly why the argent dawn was ramping up. We didn't all know why Naxxramas was there, but we knew that we were fighting against it. This is the feeling that we didn't get from Molten Core or from Blackwing lair.

Then came outlands. A huge jump in the quality of zones here. Outlands really was fresh and new from Azeroth. Being that it's a completely new planet, the designers are freed from the shackles of the old world. I remember the first time I saw Netherstorm, I was blown away. Outlands succeeded wildly in the feeling of fresh and invigorating visuals, the zones were all very unique, from the landscapes to the creatures to the abilities they used. Each zone felt like a self contained world of their own. This also led to, what I feel is, the failure of the story.

I'm a big fan of story, I want to feel like what I'm doing, I'm doing for a reason. I want my work to be moving me forward to something bigger, something more meaningful. Outlands didn't feel this way at all to me. Late shadowmoon valley started to push in the right direction, but only took you part way. Again, the raid game brought something together, but also pulled a few apart. I don't know anyone who could tell me why we were storming karazhan. Or why gruul had to be killed, other than he's a big ass guy with purples in his pocket. Black temple moved into the right direction, with the intertwining storylines with shadowmoon valley, but it didn't get good until Quel'Danas. There were some wonderful strides with the introduction of Isle of Quel'Danas, of course, it was a small island that was covered almost fully by the raid instance. Though I never felt like there was any question as to why we were here, why we were doing the quests to break into sunwell, it just seemed to make sense there. Overall though, I didn't feel like there was a sense of a larger purpose in outlands. Yeah, we're killing the burning legion, cause they are bad. OK?

Finally, we get to northrend. From the moment you step off the boat, you know where this is going. Arthas. I love the northrend questing model. You get intimately involved with arthas from the get-go. I don't recall ever asking "why am i doing this" in northrend. I knew that I was doing this, to get closer to arthas. I was helping out the red dragonflight cause malygos went crazy. I always felt like I had a sense of direction, and a sense of reason. Even most of the monsters made sense, Vrykul are under arthas control, and theres no question with any undead. Even look at Scholozar, the reason WHY is clear as day in this zone. Why? because arthas' army is coming over the damn mountain! I think this feeling stems in large as to the feeling that we are not the aggressors in Northrend. In vanilla, i felt like I was attacking other people to take their stuff, no other reason. In Northrend, I feel like my hand is very much forced. Arthas is stirring up the pot, we are trying to save it. This contributes heavily to my understanding of the story, what's going on, and why I'm doing it.

Of course, even northrend isn't perfect. There were a few moments here and there where I had to ask some questions. Mostly with the npcs. Do you remember the "raven lords"? What the hell are these? Have you seen any ravens in northrend? I don't understand these mobs, they make no sense to me. Apparently, there's tons of ravens in northrend, they are just all under the control of shadow priests. Or the Brunhildar area. I thought this area was initially cool, then on my second play through I said "So... there's a village full of chicks.. and they never leave the village.. None over here, none over there, all right in this one spot!" I don't know about you, but I don't know any woman who would be ok with that.

Of course, one could argue that I'm getting into a "nitpicky" area here. But isn't that the idea? I'm not saying that Northrend, and wrath as a whole isn't incredible. What I'm saying is that if I had these thoughts, then someone else did too. The state of the MMO has come so far, and blizzard has set the bar so high, that I can't wait to see what's next! If cataclysm has half of the improvements in design, story telling, npcs, and features that the previous expansion have had, then we are in for a real treat.

I for one, can't freakin wait for it.

*edit: So a few friends mentioned to me that they felt like this was a 'bashing on wow' post, I didn't intend for that. This simply supposed to be my observations from going through the multiple expansions. Jeesh, don't be so touchy, I bet the devs look back at their work and say "wow, wtf man. We can do so much better."

For the noobs!!!

The noobs.

Most of us know them, we all love them, and we all hate them. But what does this term really mean? Until recently, I don't think I fully understood. You see, I've been a gamer as long as I have conscious memory. Some of my earliest memories are of my Father whooping me at Q-Bert (He cheated. He turned the controller 45 degrees to make the control more logical, a brilliantly creative idea to a child.) I remember watching my Brother player Super Mario and swing the controller around as she jumped and moved the character, seemed silly at the time, but look at the success of the Wii. Being a gamer from birth I've surrounded myself with like-minded individuals, thus "noobs" were not common in my circle.

I honestly don't think I really understood what's going on with noobs until very recently. You see, recently, my mother started playing World of Warcraft. It's been a wonderfully illuminating experience for me. To watch her as the gears turn in her head making the connections as she goes. It's similar to watching a child learn something new, seeing the look on someone's face when everything lines up and makes sense is amazing. Unfortunately, that expression is one that most people aren't willing to work hard for. There's a point where frustration no longer becomes worth the effort of searching for the Rosetta stone that makes everything work.

Thanks to my Mother, I feel I now have a deeper understanding of the noob. I've witnessed her frustrations with the game, and her triumphs when things click. As in typical fashion, this got me thinking about design. More specifically, design for noobs. World of Warcraft is not very noob friendly. Taking a player who's never played a game before and putting them in a position where the world that is completely alien is a pretty traumatic experience.

I'm sure many people would argue that there's no need to address this. "WoW has over 11 million players! It's fine!" is a statement I've heard a few times talking to my peers about this. And a statement I agree with, WoW is fine. But "Fine" is a pretty low bar for a game in my opinion. The second a designer stops thinking about how to improve on what already exists, they stop being an effective designer. With a game like WoW it's important that the game continues to grow at every stage of its life. A part of the game that, in my newly emboldened opinion, is sorely lacking is the approachability for noobs.

How can we address that Trauma? Speaking from the eye-witness account of my mother, there are quite a few things that could help. First and foremost, WoW assumes that a new player is aware of the controls. This is not ok. With today's internet, digital distribution is more popular than ever, you can't rely on anyone having a manual or instructions. Your game is obligated to teach a person how to play it. The only assumptions I feel that can be made to a new players, is the fact that they know how to use a mouse and a keyboard. Presumably they logged into the game, and made a character, so these are assumptions I feel safe with.

"But what buttons do I push?" is an exact quote from my mother. And it's a question the game should have answered for her. She stood there; in a mass of polygons where she wasn't able to identify the character she just spent an hour making. With no clue as to what she should be doing, and overwhelmed by the intimidating world in front of her. She moved the mouse around a little, and tried clicking on things, but her character didn't move a smidge. Had I not been there to help her, I feel that a customer would have been lost right there. I explained to her how to move with the arrow keys (We later moved to WSAD) which went pretty well for a minute or so. After running around in circles, the next question came "OK! Now what do I do?" It never occurred to me that guy with the exclamation point over his head wasn't something that someone would instantly go investigate. But she didn't seem to notice it, she was too focused on her character and making sense of the pop up windows asking her to duel.

Blizzard already has the perfect tools in place to build an experience for the noobs. Phasing. You can see this technique used wildly in the Death Knight starter zones. As well as all through the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Take a second to think about it, think about your mother playing wow. Or even your grandmother playing, picking the game up with nobody there to help them. How hard would it be to create training grounds within WoW? A simple phased area where all players would start. The phased area could be completely skippable, and would go over the controls and how to make sense of the interface. You start all alone, and standing next to a <insert race here> with a box over his head that says "Right Click Me!" From there, this gnome could say "Use the W key to run forward! Run to me and right click on me again!" The game would actually teach you how to play it. The gnome could provide direct instruction to the player and help them understand the basic controls and interface. You would run through a quick battery of movement, camera controls, your inventory, how to use items, drinking/eating, basic melee combat, Just enough that you can confidently drop a player into their starting zone and be confident that they can actually play the game.

After spending 3 hours as the tutor for my mother, she was finally off. She killed the wolves for Sten Stoutarm and her adventure had begun! Three days later, she eagerly told me about how Sten had made her some gloves for her troubles in killing the Wolves, as well as how she covered for the mail delivery because Sten didn't have time to deliver them (she guessed because he's too busy making gloves for everyone.) As well as her stint as a rum runner, and the brutal defeat she suffered from the notorious Vagash. She had gotten hooked, and she loved it. She is likely a long time subscriber now, and it was so close to being lost without an in-game tutorial. I'm happy I was willing to stick it out, but I think it's something the game should have done for her.

Hell, it could even be extended further! A quick little Machinima could be made for each castable ability in the game. Some of the tooltips can be radically confusing, especially to players who don't know the game. I know my mom would have loved to see a quick cut scene from the trainer that gives her the run-down on the benefit of sheeping. Or the advantages of having frost armor up.

I'll leave you with this. 10 days later, after her trial has expired and she has committed to purchasing a full copy, in addition to monthly fees, I said "SO! Now that you're going strong are you going to get your friends to play too?" her reply was "Nah, It would be fun to play with the nurses at work, but I don't think they'd be able to figure it out." Now, only if she felt the game wasn't hard to figure out, Blizzard would likely have at least 10 more customers. And she tells two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on, and so on.

Thank you Mom, you've helped to broaden my personal design opinions.

The MMO Connection

First, I'd like to apologize for my lack of updates. We've recently been shifted to new schedules at work, so I'm working overnights and find my schedule to be much less dependable at the moment. So while I'm adjusting to my new life of not worrying about the harmful effects of UV Rays, I'm also finding it hard to scheduling in blogging. But I assure you, my faithful readers, that this blog is one of my highest priorities, so I will continue to update it as often as possible, as well as with more regularity once everything normalizes for me.

So I've been thinking about the social aspects of MMO gaming. It's quite interesting, and looking into human behavior, it appears that this topic alone could be the source of books. Unfortunately, this is not a sociology blog, nor do either of us have the attention span for a post like that. What I do want to talk about though, is how can make the social aspect of our MMOs better. How can we get more people to stay online in our games?

It's not rocket surgery to understand that the more people you have playing a game, the more people you are going to appeal to. Word of mouth is the best advertising you can get, and it's a huge part of WoW's success. WoW's success grows due to its huge success. I know that sounds like a catch 22, but it makes sense. If all of your friends are doing something, you are likely going to participate in it as well. It's human nature to be social; we have an innate desire to connect with other people. When the people we are already connected to are doing something, we are likely to follow suit simply to nurture those connections. MMO games are extremely social, which is one of the major factors of their success. In addition to providing a level of entertainment to someone, you are also providing them with a social vehicle that allows them to connect and meet new people.

The connection aspect is something that I think a lot of MMO developers aren't appropriately nurturing. Players need to be able to connect and interact in order to build an attachment to the world. Developers themselves need to make decisions with this in mind. An MMO should make connecting with other players second nature; it should be fluid and easy. Look at something as simple as the chat interface; it absolutely needs to be streamlined and accessible. If it's difficult for players to communicate with each other, then they are less likely to do it. In-turn becoming isolated, and if that's what we want to give to our players, we can do this without spending millions on servers. This is why you can see wild popularity for add-ons (another topic that I'd like to dedicate a whole post to) like "WoW IM", that gives players windows for each conversation, akin to an instant messenger program.

As developers of an MMO, we need to build the game in such a way that it can fill multiple roles, one of the more important roles being "a glorified chat room". So how can we further nurture social connections and interactions beyond what we see in MMOs now? First, is that all of our social features need to be instantly understandable and accessible. This is one reason I'm a big fan of the "IM Style" system. Who doesn't understand a box with chat that has a blinking cursor at the bottom? Anyone who's playing a modern game can figure this system out in a split-second.

I haven't seen what I feel to be an acceptable attempt to facilitate player communications. Nearly all MMOs have the same formula of a chat box in the corner that is all encompassing. While this may be great for your UI, or for screen reality, it's neither efficient nor welcoming for heavy social interaction. A system like this works fine for chatting with 1 other person, or for chatting in a public room (guild/party/etc), but anything beyond that (god forbid both at the same time) and it's simply too much. Let's give our players real social tools.

Open up the world of communication to our players. How hard would it be to give players a familiar IM style in-game chat client? This system could be integrated across multiple servers or even multiple games. What if you could even piggy back it off an existing technology? I want to see an in-game client that allows me to stay connected to my real life networks from inside the game. I want to be connected to AIM and MSN while I'm in Azeroth. How about a standardized IM protocol for ALL online games?

Think about how people find friends on social networking sites like myspace or facebook. Give me the ability to build a social network in game. Let me see who my friend's friends are. Let me flip through pages of bios that people can create for their characters in-game. Give me a comments section, where my friends can post me messages. Not a clunky mail system where the only use is to send items. If our MMO games can really absorb and integrate these amazing social tools, this lets us be more connected with those around us. There are millions of people playing these games as we speak, let's connect them and give them a true MULTIPLAYER experience.

Just imagine it. A real gaming network. I want facebook for Azeroth. I want to be able to explore my fellow gamers. I want to use the information in XhunterX's profile to find out that he loves internet spades as much as I do, and use that to schedule a game with him. Then connect and play internet spades without having to disconnect my voice chat, or even leave Vana'diel. I want to be able to spend countless hours browsing profiles and looking at screenshots from peoples' digital lives while I man the shop in Courscant, all without having to leave the game. To be able to load my group's statistics on how often they die in the fire, or to have a guilds web portal available via an in-game guild profile system. Think about recruiting for your guild and saying "Hey, we're recruiting for new-dungeon-18! Looking at your profile and schedules (that you've made publicly available) it looks like you may be a good fit. Click this link to find out info about us and our guild from your in-game profile system!" The level of connections and networking we can provide people is beyond anything we've seen so far. Hell, this could even be expanded out to cell phones and portable smart devices. I want to be able to browse these sites, and keep in touch with people without having to be at the computer. I'm not saying I want to be able to play the full featured game from my phone, but I damn well want to be connected to the world and my friends, from anywhere.

If we really want our persistent online worlds to be successful, we have to model them after human behavior. This behavior has shown, time and time again, that its desire is to connect. In real life, people have a million ways to connect, especially since the inclusion of the internet. Let's help usher this forward, and allow people a huge number of ways to connect, so that THEY can pick the best for them and I assure you, people will use it. Hell, people are using our archaic connectivity tools already. Just don't forget to include the anonymous feature as well, we all need our alone time once in awhile.

Raiding and Decision Making

I just spent some time reading a brilliant discussion on the Elitist Jerks forums concerning raiding theory and approaches toward dealing with raids. (http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t41700-raiding_theory/ )

This thread got the ol juices flowing in my head about raids within WoW, I'll be honest, my non-Wow raiding experience is limited, but as wow is the current gold standard for... well... everything MMO related, I feel comfortable discussing the topic.

Early in the thread, the typical formula for addressing an encounter as a player is defined as follows "1) Develop. 2) practice. 3) kill." I think is pretty accurate. Looking at raids from a player's perspective, the general conceptual ideas when dealing with an encounter within the game are fairly limited. There isn't a whole lot of thought or decision making that happens during encounters within WoW, as much as it's about memorizing the appropriate reaction to whatever the boss is doing. This approach and playstyle is acceptable within WoW, and it works. Anyone who's done any raiding, whether on the edge of content, or just been pulled through by 39 (yes 39, I miss the bigger raids) more knowledgeable players can tell you that knowing the fight is the path to victory. Humans are interesting creatures, by nature we define goals and where we want to be. The issue is that today's society of apathy and entitlement has led us into a position where we all know what we want, and when we want it (now!), but we all expect someone to tell us how to get there, rather than figuring it out ourselves. None of us can say we are immune to this, It's just so much easier to say "I want to be an astronaut." and get a reply of "OK! Let's go to space camp." Rather than spending the time figuring out how, on your own, to be an astronaut.

The later two steps of the aforementioned three step process to addressing raid encounters is exactly that, it's a set of instructions that the masses can blindly follow to obtain a desired result. I know, that every time I put a dollar in this machine, I'm going to get a soda. I have my desired result and clear instructions or previous knowledge on how to obtain this. The trick with this is the first step, the development. Once you have that ice cold soda in your hands, you have no concern what-so-ever with how it worked, who cares? I got my result, I'm happy. The development of this "how" is what separates the professionals from the consumers. This is very clear within the WoW community. There are a handful of cutting edge guilds that spend the time figuring out the gimmicks and the steps to the dance, once the equation is solved, they mass produce the results via videos and strategies to the rest of the world. Once the syndication of the answer happens, the rest of the world simply practices group1's dance steps, scoops loot, and walks away happy. The question is: is this fun?

I've been raiding in WoW since bandages were mobile,Teir 1 and 2 were un-completeable, and Shazzrah forgot to talent into blink. In the beginning, guilds heralded strategies and didn't share their tactics. This, in large, comes from the mentalities of Everquest. Without instances, competition for raid bosses became an issue. Based on this, having a strategy to dispatch the boss was of the utmost importance, as it gave you a leg up on others attempting to claim the loot. Equally important was the need for secrecy. Giving up your strategy was a poor move, as you'd be giving away your edge. Raiding in WoW soon after launch was a completely different game from what we see today. 'Step 1) Develop' was a raid-wide task. A raid night wasn't about learning the dance moves, it was about figuring out the moves.

I remember my first venture into Molten Core, everyone with their shiny blues. The first mob destroyed us. We had no preconceived notions about how to handle it, or what the mob was going to do; we were 100% winging it. The Forelord spewed Lava spawns and we off tanked them. This sounds insane to anyone who's been into Molten Core, but with no idea what we were getting into, we forced ourselves to react, learn, and develop. There was nobody on our realm to seek advice from, no websites with all of the answers, we figured it out on our own. These sleepless nights in college led to some of the most rewarding and fulfilling encounters I've ever experienced. Working together with a group of people toward a mutual goal and everything coming together resulting in victory is a feeling I can't begin to explain. Going in with absolutely nothing, and molding the group into what the situation called for completely on the fly is a beautiful thing.

The strategists here are the minds behind it all. They are forced to reverse engineer the equation. They know the intended result, they also know the input they must use to obtain that result, the question is how to make it work. How do I turn this dollar bill, into a cold drink? How do I turn this group of 25 people (yes, I gave in) into a dead boss? Asking the question alone can cause a myriad of thoughts to rush through anyone's head. This is where, in my opinion, the most fun is truly derived. This, of course, hinges on your definitions of fun, but MMO games are about far, far more than simply 'pure fun' (should that get it's own topic? Hmm).

Being a former guild leader, I've had my fair share of raid-wide brainstorming sessions, as well as memorization of the song and dance. Once guilds realized that sharing their strategies didn't give the rest of the world an advantage over them, it became the way to show your superiority to the rest of the world. It no longer became about who killed the boss first, but who released the first strat video. At this point, the only way to appease a guild of people foaming at the mouth for loot was to facilitate their desire to have this loot now and not spend countless hours solving the puzzle that we can find the answers to online in 30 seconds.

Anyways, the point I'm trying to get to here, is that the first phase of a player approach to successful raiding is the most enjoyable and fulfilling. It also happens to be the one that reaches the smallest audience and is the hardest to design for. It's also risky. With such a massive audience that WoW has, it's obscenely difficult to try and keep some of the players happy, let alone most players, and just flat out impossible to keep them all happy. This approach can be seen as something the developers have respectfully tried to tackle. Players in WoW have options most other MMO games haven't even dreamed of. Do you want to PvP? OK! Arena, Battleground, World, or duel? OK, which battleground do you want? Oh! You want to PvE, great. 5 man? 10 man? 25 man? Normal? Heroic? Hard mode? I mean, you have to respect the developers attempt to give the players everything they want.

With the options available, I'm interested to see an option that dives more into the first phase of the raiding formula. I believe this phase to be the strongest as well as the most progressive. Let's give our players a situation that a strategy can't answer for them. Instead of saying "These dance moves will always result in a victory." Let's say "Here is the tools, go to work." I think that this is an area that the Developers have tried to dabble in. The Nefarian fight in Blackwing Lair comes to mind (I know it's old content). Yes, there were formulas that ensured easy victory, but there was also a level of forced reaction and brainpower needed on the part of the player if playing the encounter without Battle Shout (buff aggro ftw). The initial phase where the colors of the drakonoids were unknown would lead players to address it in one of two ways: to accept a wipe and identify the colors, thus allowing strategy to be put together. Or to setup your tanks, and tell your dps'ers to react and go to the appropriate color once they are discovered. Giving the majority of your raid one decision, just one, allowed for the raid wide feeling of confidence to be taken to a new level. I'll never forget the first time my guild tried it, we gave it a few seconds, made the call, dps fanned out accordingly, and we won. It was incredible, after a few weeks, it wasn't even a spoken strategy. People identified the decision, and made it. Whether they made the correct or incorrect decision, it was THEIR decision, they made it, and they likely won't make the same one twice.

We can see further exploration of this within the Prince Malchezaar encounter. This one is infamous as being a hated encounter. Why? Because it forced player thought. There was no define steps to take in order to resolve the issue. Every encounter was unique, this required players to not only have somewhat of a plan, but to make decisions as a group to ensure success. The result was millions of wipes, and strategies that border on exploitation using the door. Despite the resistance to it, actually completing the encounter legitimately, without praying for "good infernals" was a rush. Groups that were capable of doing were, unfortunately, few and far between, but pulling it off once where everyone moves correctly and experiencing the elegance of the encounter was amazingly fulfilling.

Moving forward, I hope to see more of this in future raiding content. With the introduction of hard modes, and the proper incentives to complete hard modes, this is something that developers can start to foster and grow within the playerbase. Normal mode encounters would require the raid to memorize the dance steps, while hard mode requires a bit of decision making and logic.

A great way to do this is by the introduction of random elements. A random element completes a few different key objectives. The most impactful being, that random elements give players the opportunity to make decisions. As stated above (you thought I was just rambling huh?) random elements include an inherent risk of frustrating players. With the introduction of 'hard mode' encounters, I feel that this is an acceptable risk. Hard mode is clearly not for everyone, hard modes ask for more from the player in turn providing the player with a greater payoff for success. Let's stick with the previous example of Prince Malchezaar. Normal mode for the encounter features roughly the same mechanics, only the infernals drop in a predictable pattern. This would allow for the 'going through the motions' approach for your average casual players, while still maintaining the random mechanic for the advanced players in search of greater reward. Of course, for this fight specifically some additional tweaks would be required (infernal damage on normal = low, hard = huge. Hard mode spawns extra axes, etc, etc) but this would provide the players seeking the extra gratification and more in-depth experience an opportunity to not only overcome greater challenges, but to be forced to think, and be rewarded for thinking.

In conclusion, I think that the recent developments we're seeing out of WoW are a step in the right direction with raids. Making them high accessible for the masses, but providing the advanced players an envelope to push. It's been a long time in the making, and I think it still has a lot of growth left to do, but letting the players decide their pace, in-turn selecting their rewards is a direction towards success. Let's hope that the future patches take this to the next level, and that the players passionate about the problem solving aspects get their fill.

Death to the Game Industry

Today, I stumbled upon and incredible article called "Death to the Game Industry" by Greg Costikyan. This article outlines the inherent flaws of the publisher-developer relationship, as well as goes into Greg's opinions on where the industry should be going, in stark contrast to where it is going.

Read it here : http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_8/50-Death-to-the-Games-Industry-Part-I

Of course, this article was published in 2005, i think we've seen some excellent movement into the direction that Greg is pushing. I'm not saying "YAY! The industry is fixed!" by any means. But, with the introduction of low overhead game creation tools and websites, open source engines, and communities like the xbox live arcade, I think that gamers finally have a shot at expressing themselves again. Opening this up, and giving people a method of expression is the future of games. Not pretty graphics. I think we are moving in the right direction. It's important, at least to me, to remember that games are an art form, and need to be constantly pushed and explored. Not a device that exists solely to fill up the publishers' deep pockets.

Trash Talkin

I got into an interesting conversation tonight with one of my co-workers about the affectionately named "Trash" in endgame dungeons in World of Warcraft.

My coworker argued that trash is a waste of time, and that developers should be using their time to make more boss fights and less trash. Personally, I feel that trash is an important part of any world. Trash in the virtual world is equavilent to the normal inhabitants of our everyday lives. Think about when you go shopping, your goal and interest has you dealing almost solely with the employees of the store itself, sometimes not even with employees (I love self checkouts). All of the other people roaming around are not part of your overall goal, nor are they a requirement for you to obtain your ojbective of going to the store. But they do add to your personal experience, you may see people doing something funny, or see someone purchase an item that makes you remember something that you need to pick up. Be it good experiences, or bad, they are a part of your adventure to the store. Not to mention, they make it not so creepy. Ever been in a completely empty store? It feels kind of creepy.

Anyways, trash does a lot to flesh out the world, making it more logical or realistic. In a real world, there are lots of other living beings around. If there weren't, it would be a pretty boring world. Let's say you were storming a castle in real life, would you expect the castle to be empty and desolate except for the king sitting on his throne? Of course not! The second someone saw that you were attempting to raid the castle with your 50 friends, every person in that castle would be up in arms defending the castle with their lives. The same would be true of nearly any dungeon within WoW. Once you've entered into someone else's domain, they aren't going to respond happily about it.

Trash can be used in so many ways, to do so many things. Besides the ability to make sense of the world, trash also serves as a pacing mechanic. Releasing content for an MMO is basically a developer trying to extend the life of their game. If no additional content ever came out, the game would become dull and stale rather quickly. While the content is designed (hopefully) to be interesting, enjoyable, and a challenge, the financial part of the equation is that it's there to keep you playing. In an MMO environment, the company wants to keep you playing and, in-turn paying. I know it sounds kind of corporate and cold when I say it like that, but it's not. All producers and developers know that the best way to keep you playing is to keep you having fun. Developers want you to keep playing because you have having the best experience ever! Any developer worth their salt wants to make the best damn game they can. Can you imagine the feeling of accomplishment releasing a product that makes millions of people happy? A developer wants you to have the best time in the world with their game. The corporate side of it, on the other hand, wants your money. Luckily, the relationship works out great, because consumers are willing to pay for a good product.

Anyways, I strayed off topic there. Let's get back to trash and pacing. Trash is a very important pacing mechanic within a dungeon. A dungeon has to accomplish a few things. First it needs to keep you occupied. If you dinged level 80 in wow, and there were no dungeons, you'd be done. You would either have to start a new character, or move to a new game. There would be nothing left for you to do. Luckily, the developers are smarter than that, there is so much content at 80, that many people feel that hitting max level is only the start of the game. This holds true of each dungeon as well. Getting access to the dungeon (wether travel, or attunements) is where the experience starts. Completing the dungeon is the enjoyable part of it. The trash allows the developers to define how long this experience will last. There are many quick kill dungeons, where you go in, fight a boss, and leave. But these are designed this way, often times these types of dungeons are either insanely hard, or insanely easy, and have rewards that match appropriately. In order to really make something last, you've got to keep players interested and involved in it for an extended amount of time. This is where trash helps. Each pack of trash is like a miniature checkpoint within the dungeon. Due to the long respawn times of trash in WoW, the portion of the dungeon you've already cleared, stays cleared, allowing you to keep your progress. Using trash as a pacing mechanic ensures that the experience lasts the designed amount of time.

A dungeon also needs to be a challenge. When games are just too easy, they aren't fun. Human nature is to overcome challenges, when something is not a challenge, it become monotonous and uninteresting. This level of challenge gives players a series of goals, a number of obstacles in their way, each one being a short term goal, contributing to the larger, ultimate goal of completing the instance. Each trash pull may not be the biggest challenge in the world on its own, but if you don't do it right, you will have problems. You could back into another group of mobs, or not interrupt the mobs heal, or just not be geared enough to handle the instance. Either way, defeating the trash can be a challenge, and can give you a sense of accomplishment. Thus, allowing players to ride this feeling of accomplishment for the whole instance if they are able to do so. We've all been in positions where an instance is just insanely hard, once you complete it, you feel like a million bucks, really feeling like you've accomplished something substantial. On the flip side, I think we've all gone into an instance and just crushed it, every pull went smoothly, and every boss was executed perfectly. This gives us a litmus test to see how we, as players of the game, are performing. Using trash to further define and set this level of challenge, allows us to be more confident that the test results are accurate. Anyone can get lucky and kill a boss once, but when your group takes out every pack perfectly, you may be on to something.

Trash can also serve as a training mechanic. In order to keep the game interesting and evolving, developers are continually trying to bring new and exciting ideas and mechanics to the game. Introducing new mechanics and styles though, is difficult. Players are inherently resistant to change; learning new things can be difficult, especially if they seem to be dropped on a player all at once. Trash can be used to soften this blow and help to ease players into new and exciting mechanics. Take for example the Moam encounter in the ruins of Ahn'Qiraj. This encounter required a group to aggressively drain the mana from the boss to prevent him from exploding. With no precursors to this mechanic, many groups would suffer greatly trying to figure out the gimmick. Luckily, the designers placed Obsidian Eradicators in the instance leading up to Moam. The eradicators used a very similar mechanic, requiring a group to control and manage the mana of the trash mob to prevent it from doing a huge attack. Having the group go through a number of these trash mobs before reaching the boss, the mechanic now becomes immediately recognized, but still amped up to make it acceptable for a boss. In this way, trash is a training ground for the players. Preparing them for what's coming. If you don't get the mechanic right away on the trash, the consequences are minor, some AOE damage, and you try again, on the Moam himself, the stakes are higher resulting in instant death. The training mechanism here is very forgiving and allows players to ease into it on their own terms. Until they reach the boss of course. This can be seen used quite extensively and intelligently within WoW. Look at the introduction of the vehicle system for example. This system could have been dropped on a players head all at once, instead you experience this system multiple times before reaching any large epic encounters where it's used.

Another use of trash can be for story telling purposes. MMO games have a goal of presenting the players with a world to experience. As with any functional world, even fantasy ones, there are rules and social dynamics of how things work. In order to make the world more believable, we need to make sure that these characters all have a purpose. That all of their abilities make sense within the world, and that everything is there for a reason. Trash helps to bolster this concept. Nearly all dungeons have a primary antagonist. This antagonist is usually referred to as the boss of the instance. Now, presumably, this boss has done something to make themselves bigger and badder than the rest of the creatures around him. How can we show this off to the players? Trash. Big bad antagonists have to have minions. You can't trouble the lord of dragons to have to clean the walk ways or prepare the food. He's going to have a staff of servants to do it for him. This is something that can be shown with trash. If the ultimate goal is to destroy the lord of fire, then it's appropriate for this creature to have an army of fire based minions that must be cut down to reach him. This can be further explored through creature abilities relating to a fiery theme. Trash helps to set the stage for the story being told. It adds depth and logic to the world around the players.

Now, I'm not saying that we need more trash in our instances. As with most players, I find that too much trash can hurt the pacing and make a dungeon feel like it drones on and on. But, the next time you're in a dungeon, think for a second about how much the trash adds to the experience.

Innovation and Risk

I haven't seen transformers 2. But I've heard it's bad, hat it's riding on the coat-tails of it's previously successful movie.

This, of course, brings me back to video games. This is a trend I've been seeing in games lately that concerns me. I'm not saying the idea doesn't make sense. From a business perspective, it makes a ton of sense. Let's look at it from a few different perspectives.

From a businesses perspective, it makes sense. Would you be willing to spend millions of dollars on a risk? Or spend less money, on something that's nearly a sure thing? Let's say "Super happy island rainbow fighters" was the biggest selling game of the year. Now, the game is finished, and you've got to get started on your next project. So, does it make more business sense to spend less money modifying and tweaking an already working formula into a sequel, or to spend more money working on something brand new that has the potential to fail horribly?

Of course your going to take the safe bet. Same thing with consumers. Being a hardcore gamer who researches games on the internet, constantly talks about games with friends, and who loves to see games do new innovative things, I'm not exactly the common gamer here. But, for the sake of argument, let's try to look at the perspective of the average gamer. The average gamer is a casual player, as well as someone who doesn't enjoy the idea of gambling with their 60.

So, you go to the store, and you're planning on buying a new game. You see "Super Happy Island Rainbow Fighters 2" and "New game you know nothing about", which are you going to drop 60 dollars on? It's simple risk vs payoff, You can take a lesser risk with a nearly-guaranteed partial payoff or you can take a larger risk on something that has a huge potential to disappoint, as well as a potential to payoff.

It makes sense, I can't refute the logic behind it. But at the same time, it crushes my heart. Being someone who really wants to see video games advanced as an art-form, seeing cheap sequels hurts me. I'm not saying sequels are bad, in fact, I think pushing boundaries and attempting to refine what works and what doesn't is a great thing, but at the cost of innovation, is where it becomes a problem. Innovation is what moves art forward, it's making people see or think in a new way. Look at the success of the Wii for example.

Sadly, innovation is a risk, and games are a business. Luckily, we still have people pushing the art further. So I urge all of you out there, to take a chance on a game once in awhile. Support companies that attempt to try new things and innovate. Give that "wtf" game a shot, see what it's about. While Madden Football number 298 might be guaranteed to give you a few hours of enjoyment, that game you've never heard of just might be the best game you've never played.

To Gamers and developers alike.

Take a chance.

The Holy Trinity

Anyone who's played fantasy MMO games can tell you about "The Holy Trinity". Every group, in order to be successful must have three key components. Tanking, Heals, and Damage. While this seems very logical, unfortunately, it makes for boring play. It's a pretty universal concept across not only fantasy MMO games, but most RPG games. They may sub the "Tank" with a "Physical Buff Guy" in a game where tanking isn't really applicable (think Console turn based RPGs), but all in all, the trinity is a staple of MMOs.

The trinity definitely has some benefits. Say you are picking up a new game, and not familiar with all of the intricate details of the game, being a gamer though, you are familiar with the trinity. This will allow you to have at least an idea of what you're getting into before you dive in head first. It can also benefit when grouping becomes involved. It's not hard to build a group around tried and true concepts that you are very familiar with. Everyone in the group knows their job's role, if you are the tank, then your job is pretty black and white. You hold the bad guys attention, and soak up as much damage as possible. If you are the healer… well... c'mon... you heal. And DPS fills in the other holes. Their job is to kill anything and everything in their way.

While the Trinity is functional, comfortable, and familiar, it's also dated. How can we move away from the trinity? What can we do to give players new and interesting ways to play games and interact with groups?

This opens up drastically to different schools of thought. One approach is to slim down the Trinity. Get rid of one or more of the roles and move into a much more homogenized style of design. The first step in this direction seems to be getting rid of the need for healers. You can't directly abandon healing, but eliminating the need for healer characters. There are some games out there now experimenting without 'healers', most of which go with an angle where all player are capable of healing themselves. This does eliminate the need for a healing role, but not by really removing it, it's simply re-delegating the task to each individual player. This works wonderfully for single-player and pvp play. When attempting to introduce this into a PvE environment though, things change. The removal of a healer also puts an overemphasis on the other roles. With healing taken out of the picture, it turns into a game of "whoever has the highest damage wins". This removes a lot of the strategy and tactical play we find in PvP.

Why stop with healing though? In theory, any of the three roles could be removed. Removing a tank could result in some interesting PvE Experiences. This would logically remove a level of player controllability of the Environment. While random elements, and making players react on their toes is a good thing, removing an aspect of play that is based around the concept of controlling the environment may not be. Part of the reason people play games is for escapism. None of us can control the real world, but in Azeroth, while tanking, I control that mob. I am the master of my own destiny. Nobody calls the shots here except me. I think taking this away from players would ultimately be a poor decision.

Removing Damage classes could also result in some interesting Hybrid mechanics. Though, without damage combat would be very interesting. One could dream up many different ways to determine the outcome of conflicts without damage, they could be time based, or point based. Unfortunately, as is the nature of MMO games, and the human race, conflict is something we really can't avoid.

We've seen some recent movement to homogenize the classes, and get more people to fit into multiple roles in the trinity lately, mostly with wow. But personally, I think the other direction is a better approach. Blending the classes, and making it so everyone is roughly the same, only gives players less individuality and ultimately hurts gameplay. With Today's WoW, really, what's the difference between a druid and a Paladin? They look different… They can both tank, they can both heal, they can both do damage. Sure there are minor details about how they do it, we can't deny the usefulness and uniqueness of a rebirth, or a Divine Intervention. But their overall job in a group, and their classes are ultimately so similar, that neither is genuinely unique.

This especially hurts the single purpose or "pure" classes. The classes that have no optional roles, they can only do one thing. With wow specifically this only affects the damage dealing classes, all tanking/healing classes have alternate capabilities. A mage for example, doesn't have as predominant of a place in Azeroth as it used to. Let me explain; Every tanking class in WoW is capable of doing reputable damage, on par with all other classes. While they may only be able to do 90% of what a "pure" dps class can do, the versatility is enough to make them more worthy of the spot over a class that has no versatility. Same goes with healing classes, every single class that has the ability to heal, also has the option of doing damage, or in some cases, tanking. With dual specializations allowing the classes to switch on the fly, it's a bad time to be a "pure" dps class. Sure, they can do marginally more damage than a "Hybrid" class, but is 10% more damage worth sacrificing the ability to heal? This is typically justified by including, what I define as, secondary mechanics. Think Crowd control, buffs, debuffs, and wipe prevention, things like that. Things that aren't *NEEDED* but are nice to have. Blending the classes, and making it so everyone is roughly the same, only gives players less individuality and ultimately hurts gameplay in my opinion.

I feel that the trinity is a good thing, but needs some spice. I'd like to see the minor mechanics get more room in the spot light. I remember the Bard in Final Fantasy was an incredible part of the party. Sure, they did a little healing, they did a little damage, but their job was to support the others. A bard would make your group far, far stronger than it is without the bard. Every group wanted a bard, it wasn't even a question, if you could get a bard, then you did, end of story. I know WoW is currently looking at the "bring the player, not the class" attitude, but I feel that this ultimately hurts the classes themselves. I feel that over homogenization of classes takes us further away from the concepts of a virtual world. If everyone is going to ultimately be the same, we might as well be playing a first person shooter, like quake. Everyone is the same, we all start equal, and that's the end of it. In an environment that is designed to create a world, the distinctiveness between the classes is of vital importance.

I want to play a support class again. I don't want to do damage, I don't want to heal, I don't want to tank. I want my job to be making others stronger, or weaker. I want Abilities that make the monster vulnerable to my archer's attacks, as well as make my healer's spells more likely to crit, and make my tank deflect attacks twice as often. I want to cripple the monster with non-damage abilities, and bolster my party with my power. Heck, you could even make classes out of each of the secondary mechanics.

How about a class where the sole purpose is weakening the opponent? Not killing them, but weakening them. A pure debuffer. A class who's able to slow a monsters movement, and make him so vulnerable to attacks that he turns the raging hounds of hell into a puppy that can be conquered by the physcially weak magic user? It may sound kind of hokey, but think about it. It could be a Shamanistic Witch Doctor type class. He specializes in debuffs, curses, hexes, voodoo, etc. He has the ability to manipulate a monster any way he wishes. He can increase vulnerability to a certain school of magic, or physical attacks, this would give him the fluidity to fit into any group. But how can we make this interesting to play? What if these debuffs are short duration, say 15~30 seconds and have to be refreshed often. They can weave 4~5 debuffs at once, this would turn it into a game of upkeep. You could expand on this giving them an auto-attack like ability, that from ranged, adds 2 seconds to the debuff timer for the lowest timed buff. This could be really interesting on multiple mob fights. The debuffer would first have to establish debuffs on multiple mobs, then would have to work with each mob through spell refreshing or quick updating due to "melee refresh" when appropriate.

While I like the idea of pure buff classes and pure debuff classes, merging them into one pure utility class seems the most logical. Having the ability to buff and debuff all at once gives the class good versatility ensuring that they are always useful. Stealing a few ideas from WoW could really make this class shine. Let's take the totem mechanic, allowing area specific buffs/debuffs, and pair it up with the aura ability of the paladin. Allow this class to have these totems attached to their character, with the ability to drop them off wherever they like. This would allow them to remain mobile, and do pre-emptive setup when called for. These totems could do lesser buffs/debuffs while the higher level more powerful abilities would require constant player maintenance and upkeep. This could be insanely useful in an arena or battleground situation as well.

No matter how you do it, you have to give the player enough o keep them busy and keep them engaged. The bard class did it well, with forcing the movement in order to apply specific buffs to specific groups (the magic users stood together, the melee stood together, so bards were always running around like headless chickens). You can't simply cast a spell, then stand there looking pretty. So, let's make these spells a channeling effect, i.e. they have to be maintained in some fashion. In my mind, the goal of a class like this would be to establish the buffs/debuffs, and then maintain them, all the while keeping themselves alive.

This could be done a number of different ways, we could take the FFXI approach and force large amounts of movement on the characters. Having them run around going from person to person, or area to area refreshing buffs. Or we could give them some form of skill stacking similar to the skill chaining idea. Have them build up the power of the spells gradually. This would be great for boss fights, and fights that are longer than just a minute or so. Maybe the spell can stack, and the player gets 10 debuff slots to fill how they see fit? They can stack 10 levels of "Increase fire damage 2%" or they can put 5 stacks of "Weaken attacks 1%" and 5 stacks of "Slow attack speed 1%". The combination of what's possible is nearly infinite. For the short duration fights, it could be possible have instant activate aoe abilities, that only last a few seconds, and have a moderate cooldown. This would be great for "trash pulls "where there's a large number of mobs that are typically dealt with very quickly.

I believe that expanding on the holy trinity could help to bring Fantasy MMOs forward. We could develop types and styles of gameplay that break the molds, yet still remain fun and keep the games fresh and interesting for new players and old players alike.

MMO - Mechanics-Based Group Dynamics

With the recent beta time I've put into Aion, it sparked some thought on mechanics based party dynamics, and how we can make this aspect of party play in an mmo better.

Let's look at a couple of the games that are out there, and some of the things they do.

First, of course, we have to look at WoW. As it's *the* game currently. WoW's party dynamics are, for all intents and purposes, pretty basic. Each player has a role that they are to fill, and there is very little overlap. There's little to no question about what each person does in a party. There's nearly no pre-coordination needed for the group itself. I've played a multiple end-game Healers, as well as End Game DPSers (Can't bring myself to tank again after FFXI). No matter what group I join in WoW, my job is crystal clear. This is somewhat of a double sided sword. First, it makes the system very accessible. Anyone who has played a healer knows, the second they join that group, exactly what their job is from beginning to end. It also allows for a fair amount of group combinations and class homogenization. Because the roles are fairly self sufficient, all you need is someone who can fill that broad role. The downside to this is that it can be fairly uninteresting. I've healed thousands of groups, and I've dps'd thousands of groups. The difference and specifics of each group is fairly minor. Other than knowing where to move for the specific encounter, the party dynamics of pretty much every fight is exactly the same thing.

FFXI is a game I mentioned in the wow paragraph. FFXI's group dynamics were very different. This game was seemingly built around group dynamics. There were skill chains, which allowed all of the members of a group to be involved in one, massive, attack system. This required group coordination and timing, which made the system fairly intimidating for new players and often times too difficult for people to perfect. Though, admittedly, once perfected, it was pretty impressive. This system also threw a monkey wrench into class selection and group creation. Often times, groups would be highly restricted on which classes a group could bring along, if Class Y were incapable of skill-chaining off Class X, the group would be hindered. Having played both a tank, and a healer, this dynamic was interesting for me, as each class could participate in the chain, and add an extra game play aspect to the game. This made the roles much less monotonous, forced my attention, and rewarded efforts with massive damage. Unfortunately, the affects this had on class makeup, paired with forced grouping, really hurt FFXI. Groups were so picky on exactly what they needed, that people often times spent hours, and hours, and hours, looking for a group so they could go get some EXP.

So what's a better system? I think Aion is really taking a great stab at a better system. While the game is still in beta, and details on "group chains" aren't released yet from what I've seen, the potential is there. First, they have a solo chain system. Use ability 1, it unlocks ability 2 for 5 seconds. Use ability 2, you have option of chaining abilities 3 or 4. It's pretty simple, intuitive, powerful, and allows for some really excellent game play. You don't just spam abilities until the boss is dead; you save your abilities, and use them in a specific order to produce the desired results. With the addition of the context buttons (The icon for 'ability 2' pops up in the middle of your screen after ability 1 is used) the system is also approachable and easy to understand/execute. If this system can be expanded into a group dynamic, it could result in some really interesting play. Of course, they would be wise to avoid having the chaining system being overly restrictive, as doing so will result in alienating classes and the inception of an "optimal group setup" which, once defined, will become the "ONLY group setup."

As much as I think Aion is moving in the right direction. It doesn't sound quite perfected yet. I think most of the pieces are there, but they aren't necessarily in the right place.

I think each class needs to have a generic "level 1, level 2, level 3" abilities. IE any player can initiate the 'group chain' by using a level 1, then any player can use a level 2 to continue the chain. Making these generic will help to prevent any class stacking or forced grouping. You could even use a window system. Say the tank initiates the group chain with a combo move. The non-invasive-yet-still-very-clear indication method (ability popups on screen / graphical animation on monster / pick your method of feedback here) would make itself apparent on each member's screen that the chain was initiated. From here, there is an 8 second window where any level 2 abilities can be performed. At this point, anyone in the group can unleash a level 2 ability, which would, of course, unlock the window for level 3 abilities (once the level 2 window is closed). Rinse and repeat. This would allow anyone in the group to get involved. A healer could have a level 2 ability that would do moderate damage to a target, yet provide a damage buff to the rest of the group, and would continue the chain. This lets every member of the group get involved at some point, allowing each and everyone to be involved, productive, and impactful to the greater chain.

A system like this could be easily implemented. Even into current WoW. It could be engineer to use buffs / debuffs as a pacing mechanic. Say the Mage throws a "super level 1 fireball of doom". This puts a debuff on the target, each other class has an ability that can only be used when this debuff is present. Once that debuff is consumed by the rogues "crazy backstab level 2 murder move" this time, it applys a buff to everyone in the group for 10 seconds, letting them use level 3 abilities. One of which, of course, would place a debuff on the target, allowing the process to continue, or to start over. The system wouldn't even have to "flip flop" between debuffs / buffs. Doing debuffs only could make the job of say, the healer, more interesting as well. As often times, healers in current WoW don't interact with mobs at all. The buff system, on the other hand, would lend itself to using these 'chains' for more than strictly offense, and allow very powerful restorative magics, or protective magics to be included and chained.

With systems like these, we would allow players to chain off each other, thus increasing the group dynamic somewhat, as well as preventing group restrictions. But it sounds simple at this point. We could go further with this, simply adding a cooldown to the chains could allow groups to add some level of planning and setup beforehand. Giving the groups a more structured feel, as well as allowing players to build the concepts of teamwork, timing, and decision making. Say using a level 1 skill locks out all higher level skills for 30 seconds. Each member of the group would only have 1 opportunity to participate in the chain. This way, it would be wise for the group to define "Tank starts, dps goes 2, healer 3, second dps 4" though, if someone did mess it up, the chain could be continued, and completed, though may not be as impactful as defined. This would let novice players participate, and still have a feeling of their place in the group, while allowing advanced players to really pick it apart, analyze it, and come up with their best for the situation results. Giving the system enough depth where the chain order could control type of damage, or element of magic, or pretty much any mechanic that can be used to control it in order to allow the advanced players to use it in the most powerful way. All the while, the less advanced players still get a noticeable benefit, just not as optimized.

I think it's important to make the system deep enough for the advanced theorcrafters to really sink their teeth in. But make the system accessible enough that anyone can dabble in it, and still have some noticeable results. We've all seen wow's success, and we've all seen that accessibility is the secret ingredient. But I don't think we should let the advanced aspects that appeal to the really hardcore suffer in the name of accessibility. Video games are truly a world where players can have their cake and eat it too. So let's make it happen, gamers are hungry.

Building a Better Bad Guy.

Today I was thinking about villains and bad guys. I suppose a big part of this was that I recently watched the movie public enemies. While watching the movie I was really disappointed with the character development. Especially the development of Christian Bale's character. I suppose for the purpose of the movie, it was important to under develop the authority figure in order to force the audiences attachment to Johnny Depp's character, either way I found it horribly frustrating.

This brings up the topic of bad guys and villains in video games. More often than not, I see that games put in a bad guy, and he's the bad guy because…. Well…. He's the bad guy! I think that in order to build a better bad guy, we need to really look at how we can develop a connection between the player and the bad guy.

What connections can we build? How can we build them? Let's look at one of the most important, long running, and incredible bad guys. Magneto. What makes Magneto such an amazing bad guy? First, we understand him. Looking at his motivation, and his ultimate goals, it's easy to understand him. He simply wants his people to be properly respected and represented. We can all relate to the desire to be accepted and heard, everyone wants to be treated fairly and represented equally.

Second is the blurred lines. There are times where Magneto isn't a bad guy. He's close friends with Xavier, the beacon of light in the series. He has the same ultimate goals, and wants mutant progress, same as Xavier. He's even stepped up and taken over the school in Xavier's absence. His goals are not what makes him evil, but his methods. He believes, whole heartedly, that he is righteous. This reminds me of the Firefly episode 'Heart of Gold' where Malcolm's instincts are to flee rather than fight, because the villain (Ranse Burgess) is "a believer", and that "there's nothing worse than a monster who thinks he's right with god." Whether or not you believe in faith, you can't deny the power it can have. If someone believes, whole heartedly, that they are right, the lengths they will go to protect those beliefs are endless. "He'll kill each and every one of ya and sleep well that night."

Magneto is cruel. The second someone no long serves a purpose to him he will cast them aside with no concern or care. Personal attachment means very little to him, remember the scene in X2 where mystique lost her powers? She no longer served a purpose, and she was abandoned. Despite their time together, and all the hard work she's done for him in the past, she is nothing more than a tool to him, no emotional attachment at all.

He's insane. Sure, he's not nearly as insane as many other villains, but he's insane enough that he cannot be reasoned with. The greatest fear of the human race is the fear of the unknown. Someone who's insane cannot be fully understood, our inability to understand them gives us no capability to reason with them. Our only option here is to stop them. I think the art of building a strong villain is an area that video games have been failing. The majority of video game villains are pretty hollow. Even the most famous ones. Often times we are pushed to kill an adversary for no reason, other than… well… they are there...

Video Game villains definitely have the cruel and insane aspects covered. But these only build villains that are easy to hate. If you are interested in a cheap bad guy where you just need an excuse for a conflict, this works great. But if you really want to build a truly evil and impactful enemy, you've got to do more. How many games can you recall that you really understand the villain? I mean really, you can relate with what they are going through, with their goals, with their motivation? Who was the last video game villain that honestly scared you?

In order to really grip a player, you've got to attach them to the villain. You're villain has to be a reflection of the player. The villain is the embodiment of everything dark and wrong inside of each and everyone one of us.

So, let's push the boundaries. Let's make better bad guys. We can do so much better.

Control Issues

Controllers have come a long way in the gaming industry. (you can check out an awesome controller family tree here) From the classic joystick of the Atari 2600 to the motion sensing wonders of today, control has always been an important piece of how we play our games.

This year's E3 gave us some interesting controllers from Sony and Microsoft (Microsoft's Natal and Sony's ....blinking... wandy... thingy). Jumping on the Nintendo bandwagon and trying to give us the next best method of playing games not with a controller, but with our bodies.This brings forth some interesting concerns.

Motion sensing technology is clearly doing very well in the markets. The Nintendo Wii is a hugely popular system that everyone and their dog seems to love. The system brings in a new level of approachability and natural game play that has brought new markets to gaming world. No longer are people intimidated by a device with hundred of confusing buttons on it. You just pick it up, and swing it like a tennis racket, and boom, you're playing. While Sony is seemingly playing catch up and pretty much mimicking the Wii, but with more precision and horsepower. Microsoft is trying to take this one step further, completely removing the controller element all together, but is the a turn for the better?

The natal has no controller at all, while that makes for a great presentation, how does that translate to real gaming? In the interview with Miyamoto, he states "As someone who thinks of things from the perspective of creating interactive experiences, I really think that you do need something. I don’t think as a creator that I could create an experience that truly feels interactive if you don’t have something to hold in your hand"

This is an angle that I don't think many people have looked at. In talking with all of my peers, I've only heard excitement concerning the natal, no concerns what-so-ever. I think this hinges heavily on what people want from their play experience. We've all seen the multitude of interactive software for the Wii, much of which has broadened gaming into many (somewhat) new areas. There are games that help you to work out now, there are games that help teach you to cook, help you learn new languages, or even teach you how to put on your make up (Hey, don't ask me, I saw it at Best Buy).

A controller often serves a double purpose in games. Not only does it give you a method of controlling what's going on, it also connects you with the system. The controller represents a very real connection between you and the world. You physically hold a piece of that world in your hands. The Wii uses this very well. When shooting a gun, flipping a frying pan, or even rolling dice, you have something in your hands at all times. It's very easy to feel connected with link as a marksman, when I have a physical object in my hand that acts as a bow and arrow. Without this device, I don't feel I'd get the same effect. It may not be a gun, or a hookshot, but I have something that acts as a frame of reference. How will I know what I am aiming if I don't have a something to aim? I feel like the full removal of a controller can actually hurt the immersion. I'm forced to rely solely on my sense of sight and sound to match up my movements and body with the environment. Losing the tactile representation could actually further disconnect me from the world. I suppose I could always just grab a shoe and swing it around?

With the new generation of gaming we are rethinking what makes "a game" and really pushing the boundaries of control. The input method of a game is crucial to the type of game your playing, and the experience you are providing. There are many types of experiences that simply will not work without some form of advanced control. No offense to my gamer brethren, but I feel comfortable betting that none of us are able to leap buildings in a single bound, or climb on ceilings effortlessly. These heavily action packed types of games don't translate very well to using full body motion control. As much as I love World of Warcraft, the idea of physically running from Orgrimmar to Silithus doesn't sound like "hours of fun!" to me.

I think the Natal will do very well. I can see it excelling in many areas and types of game play. There are huge numbers of possibilities where it could work wonderfully. I think simply navigating the xbox menu could be really interesting. Or the things I've heard about the netflix integration, or even a Wii fit competitor could all turn out to be amazing products. But when it comes to "Serious gaming" I don't expect it to shatter any molds. I love playing virtual sports games as much as the next guy, but when I'm slaughtering hordes of undead, scaling skyscrapers, or simply trying to enjoy a well told story, I don't want to break a sweat in the process.

Let's hope I'm wrong. :)