How to capture and hold an Audience

So I saw Ironman2 tonight. It was gewd. Let me tell you why…

As I was watching the previews before the movie, I started thinking. These trailers look amazing. Why isn’t it that all movies are as good as their trailers?

The reason for this, in my opinion, is their target audience and the given time frame. They only had to amuse the audience for 1 to 2 minutes. That should be enough time to tell any story from beginning to end. Excluding details and filler scenes, almost any story can be told that quickly, and it should be. So it’s not usually the story that people mess up on, it’s the fillers, details, and explanations of how these events played out that people mess up on. It’s not usually that a movie has a bad ending that people think this is so….it’s because they weren’t happy with how it got to that point. An example of a bad ending would be, for me, any Lord of the Rings film. WHY THE HELL IS IT SO LONG. Before the actual “endings” played out, you were already told through some form what was going to happen to them. Leave those to the extended versions of the DVD for nerds…let it end like an epic should: epically. Anywho…

This can be extended to Game Design.

Motivation

The player needs reasons. Reasons to do everything. Whether you use some sort of monetary system to drive the player to do more quests, an honor system to drive the player to do more for his faction, a leveling system to give the player a sense of power, a psychological system to drive the player to do what’s right (or wrong), or story to drive the player to see what’s next, you have to have some sort of reason to give the player so that he will have a reason to play. To keep a game engaging and give it replay value, it’s best to include as many of these systems as possible. Now when I say players need a reason to do everything, I mean everything. For instance, World of Warcraft implemented it’s achievement system, and this helped many players find a reason to do things they never would have done before, however it’s still not complete. They have not used it to give reason for the player to experience all of their content. I.E. the Lore master Achievement. It does reward the player for doing a metric Ass Ton of quests, however who’s to say any of the players that got this achievement actually read the text or paid any attention to anything besides the rewards and requirements? The players need a reason to pay attention to these, and read them. Maybe they could have some quest that requires riddles to be solved that can only be answered with quotes from lore, or through experiences in other quests. I’m not really sure, all I know is that for players to actually go out and experience this massive amount of content that Blizzard has created, they’ve got to give the players more to make them want to spend the time and money to do it.

Constant and Varied Bursts of Entertainment

Now this is primarily aimed at me, but looking at statistics and just random people I know, America is A.D.D. To keep them happy in the entertainment business, you’ve got to have a consistent system of providing them with bursts of entertainment that are varied enough to keep them playing/watching. They say that most people will either stop paying attention after the first half an hour or so of playing your game, and start paying attention again at the end, thus the beginning and ending of your game being the only thing most remembered. However, that’s just because most games are just so repetitive and boring in the middle, that that is just bound to happen. To solve this, think like the consumer for once, or like a 5 year old kid. How do you keep them entertained? This does not mean constant action, just an overwhelming sense of some sort. It could very well be suspenseful, peaceful, intense, gruesome, romantic, emotional, sad, angry….any emotion. Just make everything emotional. Please. Otherwise no one is going to feel anything and therefore they are not going to remember it. This applies to all areas of game design, music environment character story and gameplay all included.

Rhythm

Flow. Your game has to flow, and make sense. If I’m killing zombies, i do not expect to be making out with a unicorn 5 minutes later. As important as variety is to any form of entertainment, theme and flow are just as important. Everything has to connect. It’s all about the details – the action in between the action – the story between the lines. Every story is generic once you take out the details…it’s the details and the journey of the characters from plot spot to plot spot that makes something interesting and amusing. The way I see it is like this…

Picture a field of grass. Look at a pair of grass blades. These blades can be seen as two things..first, media itself. Each blade could be a movie or book or game, they all tend to be pretty generic when seen from afar. It’s not till you take a closer look that you realize not a single one is exactly alike, the details that make up that individual blade are countless. Now look at these blades as an entertainment “burst”. They are both equally amusing, but they are still very different, and they both somehow match. If you look down at the hundreds of blades of grass, it’s as if they all connect to make a solid carpet of green. That’s the consistent theme and flow of your form of entertainment, and you should have as many 30 second intervals of amusement as a field of grass in any form of entertainment you create. At least…that’s how I wish it was.

Day ##, end.

The picture on the left is one I took the other day out of boredom.

  In case you’re wondering, yes, my hair is pulled back into a pony-tail. Pretty bad-a, no? Any who, I’ve decided to make a layout for tools over the weekend. Hopefully I’ll actually carry out this plan. School has been kind of over-bearing and I haven’t had much free time, but thankfully we’ve gotten most of our work done for the week and we’ll most likely get most of tomorrow off, after we’ve finished with asset integration. What I’m planning on doing is just using directX and render to texture, to create pseudo-windows that I can have complete control of, instead of assaulting my mind with the nonsense that is the Windows API. It’ll look much nicer and run faster too…hopefully. I plan on having a ghetto/featureless word processor by the end of the day…but seeing as how I fell asleep earlier to The Last Samurai, this doesn’t sound as possible as it did four hours ago…

Windows Live Writer

Wait…something from Microsoft that’s actually useful?!? If you’re wondering what I’m talking about check the post title again. I may be mistaken, but this is the most useful blogging tool I’ve found. I can set up multiple blogs and post to them from the same app, and it supports plug-ins! Now I can automatically post to my blogs and notify my Facebook and Twitter when I post :O Amazing, eh? And it’s free…something Microsoft does not do very often. If there’s something better out there someone should let me know…Anywho I’m just posting from here to see how if it works ok O.o

Cloud Game Production Service

This is my idea about launching a cloud based game production service, not so different than Valve’s Steam.

While there isn’t much wrong with Steam from a consumer standpoint, from a developer’s standpoint it’s a very different thing. It’s more like a giant bear with a big stick, where you know you have to do what he tells you even though it’s probably going to end up raping you (with the stick) in the end (pun intended.)  Because Valve is a developer as well, they tend to over charge certain developers. More than likely if you’re an independent developer launching your games through Steam, you’ve had this happen to you.

To counter this, I would like to eventually launch my own Cloud Gaming service, with a focus on Indie developers and students – at least initially. Providing them with a quick and cheap licensing service to launch their games through our system as fast and simply as the Android App Market. I say Android instead of Apple for obvious(hopefully) reasons. One of the ways to do this is to have a low or nonexistent charge for publishing the apps, but have a small percentage of revenue to us as publishers only. That way, if the game does not go well they don’t have to pay much. What I’m leaning towards, however, is an integrated advertising service. Along with the low or nonexistent publishing charge, the developer must integrate our ad service in a way that does not break immersion in the game. I.E. they are actual objects in the game world that flow with the game’s theme, and not interrupting videos like on youtube – unless this only involves loading screens or skip-able splash screens. This way, the publisher can get it’s income through advertisement. However, this has to be done right and include a long integration process with the developers.

If anyone is particularly good with networking code, I’d like some input as to how to do this and do it well. Specifically with peer-to-peer running along with direct connections, and still upholding certain security protocols. Let me know if you think developers would be ok with this idea!

sadfase

I have a problem. Our game is not shaping up…well that’s not true. Everything is shaping up except collisions, which is our entire game considering it’s a platformer. Normally this wouldn’t be much of a problem, however, we’ve already been warned that if we don’t get this done we’ll probably get fired as a team. Regardless of the fact that we got complimented on rendering (for the record I did all the rendering and effects systems, and the core application components) but because we can’t have gameplay without collisions we are endangered of failing pretty soon – the same reason we got a failing grade for our Proof of Concept build…

I would be ok with our team getting fired if I could switch teams…the reason being is that I have no money left to continue living in Florida for another five months, and because of that if I failed and had to start over I could not finish school. This leads to another problem…my school loans that exceed $100,000. If I could graduate and get a job, this wouldn’t be much of a problem. I’m pretty confident that I could find a job somewhere with my degree and proficiency in game-specific coding. However, it would be pretty tough to get a job without that degree…at least one that could handle my loans.

Anywho…I’m just a little afraid. Maybe I could find a company somewhere that’s interested in what I already know and how much I would like to learn. I’ve been looking at game development schools since the 7th grade…this is what I want to do! I just wish situations like this didn’t keep popping up. Financial stress, like the fact that I have no money for food for another two weeks, is not really helping the fact that I’m in danger of failing Final Project with something that’s out of my control.

Sorry about “teh emo” just needed to get stuffs out.

Attack and Animation Flow

Going against the whole “feature” organization plan I had come up with…I’m just going to throw out ideas in an explosion of words… So here goes!

Attack and Animation Flow

This topic is mainly here to address the choppy-repetitiveness of most animations in games, specifically animation blending and believable animation loops. For myself, if there is one thing that breaks immersion, it’s the unrealistic and sometimes simply impossible-looking movements of game characters. Like I said before, most – if not all – games share these common problems, but I’ll be using the Action RPG genre to pick out the issues one by one. For example, the “regular” attack. Most of you reading, whether hardcore or casual gamer, know what I’m talking about. It’s that one move you can perform, regardless of character movement speed, orientation, or current situation that has that same exact animation or effect in whatever direction you’re facing. This repetitive consistency is irritating to me to say the least. Although it reminds me of Vince and the slap-chop: “chop – chop – chop – chop…” the pleasantries end there. Sadly the rhythm and satisfying techno beats do not apply here (but very likely could…eventually I’ll rant about potential sound/music integration in games.)

From a general standpoint, there is only one way to counter this, and anyone that knows anything about game design should see this one coming: give the player choices. I hate to conform, because every book/article I’ve read on the subject brings this up, but its relevancy, even today, is sort of remarkable. As the famous Sid Meier once said, “…a game [in its simplest form] is a series of interesting choices.” To provide these choices to the player, while minimizing the amount of limits, the designer has two choices: button/input combos, and context-sensitive actions.

Now with the Wii’s recently released motion-plus, and the upcoming Natal and motion control attachments for the 360 and PS3, the first option could very well be more viable: where the movements and actions of the player could be mapped directly to the movements of the player…potentially…but we’re not here to get into that. The issue with popular game controllers (I.E. Gamepads, Mouse and Keyboard) is that there is no way to comfortably map potentially thousands of movements. Even if there was, who would want to sit down, “relax”, and play a game like that? If you would, you just received a virtual high-five from me, but chances are most of you didn’t.

The more feasible option would be contextual controls. Depending on where you are, what you’re doing, and the environment and what inhabits it around you, you will have a different “attack” and animation: mapped to a single button press. This is very possible with todays level of technology in procedural animation and collision/physics systems. Although it wouldn’t be the most time or wallet friendly option, it would have the highest quality – if done right.

The reason I brought up these issues is to talk about something that I think could take advantage of contextual abilities, and could help counter the evilness of repetitive animations/attacks and still give the player to customize their attack sequence. By minimizing the amount of button presses and combinations required to pull of a higher variety of abilities, this allows you to combine the ridiculous amount of strategy and variety of skills such as those in World of Warcraft, with the hands-on controls and simplicity of an Action RPG such as Fable or Mass Effect (2).

The “Solution” I’ve come up with is something I like to call Streams. To give a gameplay example…the player will have a Pool of abilities to choose from, stemming from several different Styles with their own trees of skills. These abilities/skills can be pulled into a Stream. To allow the player advancement and something to look forward to, this Stream starts with a small amount of slots, and can increase in size and amount – I.E. the player will eventually have several different Streams with several different sizes to choose from during combat. While not in combat, the player can take his time in deciding rotations he would like to follow, setting up combos that can be pulled off by activating one skill at a time in the Stream(circular queue). To make this work, each skill will have a potential beginning and end point, however, some could be placed in between any other abilities – and some will be contextual and do the best skill for the player in the given situation.

The goal of this system is to give the player a system to combat to allow the player to flow from attack to attack. As you can see with the naming convention, the goal when having a character use this system is to make them seem as smooth and consistent as flowing water.

That is a basic explanation, so if you’d like to know more please ask.

What do you think of this idea…would you think it would work in the current state of the MMORPG/action RPG market? Did I explain it simply enough…?

Potential Jobs

Alongside of Final Project, Game Development students at Full Sail have to take a class called Interpersonal Communications. Personally, I’m not entirely sure of the exact purpose of this class, but at the moment one of our assignments was to do research on a company we’d like to work for. Being the nerd that I am, I’ve already done this during my free time, and I think this would be a valid thing to blog about as well.

There are two major companies I would like to work for, and for certain reasons I’m not going to say which I favor more, however I will give reasons as to why I would like to work for these companies.

The first of the two I’d like to mention is 38studios. This is a baby company (as in newborn), and therefore does not currently have any published titles aside from small iPhone apps. The company was started when the Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling retired from sports. Having played Everquest and World of Warcraft throughout his entire career in between baseball games, it did not take him long to decide what to do with his now open schedule and heavy purse. He then proceeded to partner with the world renown authors and comic book artist R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane. The company continued to grow as Curt saved Big Huge Games from bankruptcy, and added these talented and experienced players to his roster, as well as heavy-hitter Ken Rolston, the lead designer from the massive Elder Scrolls epics.

If that small story doesn’t motivate you on its own, then maybe this short and blunt explanation will: that’s an all-star design team starting brand new intellectual properties with plenty of job openings in an amazing game-dev hotspot(Boston). This is a company I’ve been watching for a good bit now, even before their name changed from Green Monster Games.

The second I’d like to mention is pretty obvious to people I know, and that’s Blizzard. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but the reason I am so intrigued with this company is not only because of their high level of polish in their games, but their sense of humor as a whole. If you have ever played a Blizzard game, you probably have seen at least one of their countless hidden – and sometimes not so hidden – inside jokes. I won’t go into details here, but lets just say that Blizzard knows when they’re being ridiculous and knows how to make fun of themselves, as well as current-events and cultures without offending (too many) people. And with that, I probably don’t need to mention the ridiculous amount of benefits and level of job security that comes with a job in this company.

There are plenty of other companies I would love to work for, all with their own individual reasons, but I’ll save that for later perhaps…

Stress

So I had a hard time yesterday. Not only did I get to go on a modeling runway for the first time ever, I also had to go through our first really stressful turn-in. While we haven’t gotten feedback yet, I’m pretty confident our Proof of Concept build is going to get shit on pretty hard. Can’t wait. The reason it was so stressful to me is that I know it’s COMPLETELY my team’s fault, and I know it is ABSOLUTELY not my fault, considering the only thing that breaks is collisions, something have yet to touch. The error we’re getting is that collisions don’t work until about 5 minutes after you start playing, and only in release build outside of Visual Studio. Inside of Visual Studio, release works fine.

Anywho, that was probably the most stressful day in years for me. First 16 hours of driving, stress about wtf I was going to do on this runway thing, getting owned by my partner because she didn’t follow the routine we went over at all, and then coming back to orlando to sit in a classroom for three more hours to make a broken build and prepare to get owned the next day(today) by our External Producer. Wooo!

Social Networking in Games

Everyone knows that online social networking is a huge thing. If you haven’t heard of Twitter or Facebook, someone is bound to tell you to “get a life”…although sometimes this is the other way around, and I find that kind of ironic. Anywho, something that hasn’t really been taken advantage of is Gaming and social networking. Although Microsoft’s Live does take advantage of Facebook and IMs – and possibly Twitter although I’m not sure – there is no real reward for players who actively participate in social gaming.

For example: World of Warcraft. This game has a ridiculous amount of social happenings going on, and a massive database recording all that goes on. Something they could do here is use there Achievement system and reward players for actively participating in guild, party, and whisper chats. Like say, a “BFF” achievement for always talking to a particular person and grouping/questing with that player. Or maybe, an “First Mate/Head of State” or some lame achievement like that for constantly helping out with the guild as an officer and actually responding to requests. These achievements could offer rewards such as mounts/tabards/titles/and even more interesting I think – party buffs.

Another thing is Twitter. The achievement system that most games implement could be an interesting thing to link up to Twitter/Facebook updates, and encourage players to strive for these titles/points. Another thing that a highly successful company like Blizzard could take advantage of is the linking of Armory and Facebook, letting players have some sort of app that displays their character(s) and has a direct link to their site, where they could potentially make money.

Videos are also another thing barely recognized at all with Gaming and Social Networking. Say someone made an awesome replay or some hilarious video in Halo. They could upload it straight to a YouTube account linked with their Live account, and check comments and ratings through their 360. This could also provide a huge amount of replayability and a much more vast sense of community, where you are linking up with the rest of the world on the internet, and not just the players in the game you’re playing.

While some of these things have been done, I still feel that there is a vast potential for more, although this can be said about pretty much anything in Gaming and the entertainment industry in general.

What are some other ideas you might have with social networking and gaming? I want to know!

Blawg Inspiration

I get blogging inspiration from odd places. This one might not be so odd, but it might be asking for a bit of trolling, so bear with me.

It starts with the World of Warcraft. One of the many reasons this game is so successful, is because if its consistent updates. I see the gameplay of WoW kind of like the TV series Lost. If you miss a few episodes, or sometimes even one, it is a completely different show. In the case of WoW, if you miss a single major patch or expansion, you will probably be lost to the point where you have to relearn the game. Some seasoned players find this irritating, some to the point where they will quit because of it. However, as a seasoned player myself, I find it a fresh change; like I’ve just come back from the store with a new game.

Blizzard has recently announced their newest expansion, Cataclysm. What’s interesting about this expansion is that it is changing the game more than all other previous patches and expansions combined, at least in my opinion. They’ve decided to take out certain stats and attributes, redesign how healing and tanking work, and adding a crap-ton of new spells.

At the IGDA meeting a few days ago, Brian Robbins spoke about his experience as a contract developer in the iPhone/iPad department. He mentioned how usually starting new projects is more profitable than updating an old one. While this is obviously an invalid argument when subscriptions are concerned, he still has a point. I, personally, am tired of WoW. I’ve been playing it since release, and a little in the first beta. However, no other MMORPG(mem-or-pig-er) has ever reached the amount of polish or content that Blizzard has managed to cram into their most epic game to date. Also, they manage to put enough content/change in their expansions/patches to entice even a seasoned player like myself to come back. I’m not sure how they do it. If I had my way, I would create a virtual world like that of WoW, with my own lore and game-play that I’ve been cooking up since, maybe, the 7th grade, and not stop updating it until I decided to “retire”. If only there was a way for me to do this…