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?
Monday, November 16, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
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?
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?
Monday, November 2, 2009
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."
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."
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