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.