Getting into Online gaming

So not too long ago, my friend bought me a copy of Left 4 Dead 2 on Steam so that me and the rest of my friends could get together for a games night. And I don’t usually play much online because I either

a) Never took the time to try gaming online what with my slow connection

b) Didn’t find much appeal

c) Didn’t want to meet trolls online

d) Figured the experience would be overall unpleasant especially since I would be less experienced than the gamer whores out there and would be kicked for not being good enough

However, if I’m playing with a group of friends online, it wouldn’t be so bad because we all would know each other and I could talk to them without feeling like every word I said would be judged. I guess the experience overall was well received especially since Left 4 Dead 2 really makes you feel that Co-op play is vital to completing missions. So then from there I figured now would be a good time to really start getting into playing online games with other people to see how it would go. Generally, the gameplay experience was fine until I started getting people who told me how I should play the game. Now, from what I learnt with play testing the video games that I made, one should never tell the player how they’re supposed to play the game or even direct them at all if they want the player to have a valuable aesthetic experience. The problem then with playing online, is that players aren’t game designers and will do anything to please their own aesthetic experience at the cost of others.

For instance, when I was playing a versus match in L4D2, I was on the side of the Infected in one round and I had a lot of fun waiting in ambush as a zombie, hiding in an obscure location before pouncing on any human stragglers. There was a lot of drama in watching the humans walk through an open area whilst all the zombies were surrounding them waiting for the perfect time to strike. However, this time around, when I was trying to wait in ambush, I had one of my team mates suddenly demand that I do something. He probably didn’t realise that my attack was still recharging, but I felt it was relatively still unreasonable to make a statement like that. All the while I was waiting for my recharge to complete, he started arguing that I shouldn’t just sit there. Trying to stay on peoples good side, the moment I finished recharging my attack, I peered out of my spot to attack the human players, only to have my zombie riddled with gunfire before I could even push the attack button. The moment I did this, I was received with “Worst setup ever” and voted to be booted from the session.

Now it comes to situations like these which make me annoyed with online play. No matter how experienced a player, if they don’t play the same way that everybody else does, they’re considered an outcast and immediately blammed for a single mistake. Now I do believe that I’m not the first to have such an experience. Heck people have gotten into fights and even committed suicide over such minor things. So now I’m wondering why people do this? My guess is that people automatically act differently online than in the ‘real’ world face to face, because there’s a sense that they don’t have an identity online and can be as much of an asshole as they would like. If I was sitting in the same room as the guy who voted me off the session, would he have behaved like that? I initially figured that voting someone off the session was a result of trolling, high ping, team killing, swearing or other sorts of stupid things. But what about when you’re voting someone off, simply from not being good at a game? It’s no wonder the gaming world receives so much criticism from ‘non-gamers’ if the gamers themselves are willing to crucify new players or people still trying to learn the game.

I feel from here there’s a problem that cannot be resolved. People will show themselves as they truly are when they don’t have to worry about how people will see them in person. In the gaming world it seems to screw over the new players, especially the ones who want to try online play the first time because they’ll probably never want to try it again, or at least not for a very long time. It’s a very bad game dynamic if people instruct others on how they’re supposed to play, because then the players will always feel that every move they make is under scrutiny, when really they should be learning the game by themselves.

Anyway, that’s all I feel like talking for the moment, see you around in the next post

About exploration in games

Hey all,

Although I’m going to be less university centric, I couldn’t resist to mention the game that was played at last night’s Game Design lecture. Instead of rambling on about how awesome the experience was, I figured I’d say more about how playing the game was an intuitive way to find out how exploration works.

So, instead of coming in to class and starting up the material for the week, the class found our lecturer’s hat and phone lying around on a desk in the room. Although this was strange, my alarm bells only started ringing about 20 minutes in when he still hadn’t showed up, especially since only 5 minutes before the lecture a few of us saw the lecturer walking towards the classroom. A call comes through the phone and when one of the students decided to answer, instead of hearing the whereabouts of our lecturer, we hear a strange Russian accented man tell us our lecturer has been kidnapped and that we basically have to search for him. What better way to teach students how the mechanics of exploration work than getting them prepared for the lecture topic only to suddenly throw them into a treasure hunt where they end up exploring some of the most obscure locations around the university including the underground pipes.

Anyway, from the moment the game started, there were several things to pick up on. For one, it definitely threw us off, since I for one have never turned up to a lecture only to find that the lecture itself was a massive game. Our expectations were blown away simply by doing something outside of our usual rigid uni environment. And now that I think about it, aren’t all the best games we’ve ever played do something just like this? You don’t have to necessarily have to do something new, but something that will change the way the players think. The most recent example I’m thinking of is say the Nintendo 3DS which really did change expectations. 3D everyone’s heard about and done already, 3D without glasses…getting very skeptical, actually picking up the console and trying it out, my god did it actually impress and get players excited.

So in there I can glean that there is a lot of fun that can be gained from exploring and discovering something different. Playing the game itself is a different story. Once the players actually participated, there were all sorts of experiences that I could observe in the exploration. Firstly, the Russian on the phone sent the students out in groups to look for a seedy Russian somewhere around the block. He would call, hang up, and call a few minutes later to call another group. There was a definite build up of drama as the students waited and listened for the next phone ring. There was also the aesthetic when people would suddenly drop silent and hush each other in between giggles as everyone listened intently at the words of the Russian. And once the players actually got up and went looking for the Russian, there was the fantasy in going with a small band of people on a treasure hunt not much different to things we see in the movies or in games we used to play as kids. People got excited to looking for the Russian and also got exciting from simply being part of the exploration.

Once the group found the seedy Russian, standing around the corner in the rain at night, it started to dawn how well planned the game was and immediately brought up greater expectations with how the game was going to be played out. The Russian man acted similar to a guard who would test the players before they could pass. In this case he gave us a map with directions. So off our band of little happy people went. Despite the miserable weather and the fact that it was getting difficult to see anything, it added a lot to the experience of going out and doing something crazy. The map ended up leading the students to a location they would usually never enter (the music rooms) and they had to look for a specific room number. Eventually, they found it wasn’t a room, but a locker… or rather a door next to the lockers. After knocking 3 times, the door opened and a man inside invited us to follow him one at a time. It turns out that he was actually bringing us into the underground parts of the university. We had to climb down the ladders and ended up in a canal. Again, this is probably where it really hit us with crazy expectations. Who would have thought that this little game would lead us to such a bizarre location? I mean, the underground sewers of the university is somewhere you would generally think is off limits. And how well the experience was received when the students felt rewarded to have found that following the map lead them to an interesting destination, only to throw them into another, even more bizarre place to continue the exploration. I can see there that there is actually an aesthetic in knowing that there is even more to explore. Not just the experience of the exploration, but the time before the exploration, where the players are in eager anticipation to delve into the labrinths of an exotic and new scenary.

From there, we were in a pitch black canal except for a tiny glimpse of light coming from a small door seemingly on the other side of the canal. One thing to note with this canal was how it automatically made for an excellent exploration space. The design of a black room with a small light will generally make the player walk towards the light. The fact that they have no idea where they are, they will generally always go to the point of interest, which in a dark room will always be the light source at the end of the tunnel.

Coming out of the small door, we found ourselves walking into a maze full of corridors and pipes, all underneath the university mind. Along the way we would find hints written on the wall and strange markings to explore. At some points, the path lead two ways and the group would split up. At some places, there would be arrows to tell the players which way to go. There would also be random quotes like go CSE or Mathsewconfused, or the cake is a lie. And with each new thing that the players discovered there was definitely an aesthetic that ran through the students minds. When they saw something written on the wall, they would quickly draw the groups attention and everyone would stop to look and laugh before continuing along the corridors. Essentially they seemed to be small build ups of points to discover which continued all throughout the tunnels. And it wasn’t just a matter of keep following the path and you’ll reach the destination. What with the fake paths, the dead ends, the confusing anagrams and the beware signs. It gave a sense of chasing a goal and catching up to the target. Sometimes groups would pass each other and quickly pass comments or ask what thee other group had found. The fact that the players had been split into small groups meant that there was also a sense of team effort and competition going on behind the scenes.

Eventually there came a point where several groups including my own group got lost and tried to figure out where they’d gone wrong, and sat down to pool the information they’d found. Everyone ended up in one wrong location from misinterpreting clues found along the tunnels. By that time everyone had followed the corridors to a point of exit… which ended up in another part of the university, somewhere other than the music rooms. This itself had some elements of interesting game design since the exploration of the sceneray ended up bring the players to a place that they recognised. It’s like the moment in Planet of the Apes after exploring the planet for a long time trying to find a way off only to find that the planet is actually Earth further into the future. In terms of when the students sat down to actually think, however, there came a sudden delight with when they discovered a single clue which lead to the actual location of our lecturer. It all came through an anagram, which made it all the more sweeter once A the students figured that they needed to unjumble the letters and once B they’d found out that the word directed them to the location of a lecture room. And once the students got to the room, there was still doubt with whether they had actually messed up the clues and got it wrong again, only to granted the moment of relief  (Drama) when they found that they had deduced correctly and the room was the correct one.

So when we now sit down to analyse what was fun, jokes aside from figuring out how there was a cool place to explore in the sewers if we put something similar into games *cough*HL-2*cough* we can see how elements of challenge, drama, fantasy, sensory, subversion and surely several others things I haven’t mentioned already can be encapsulated in the one experience of exploration. There were different types of exploration that fed these different kinds of fun, and they all are relatively simple techniques that we overlook when playing games, but remain extremely useful tools when designing games with a senes of exploration and discovery.

Looking at the Games Industry

Hey all, I haven’t written here in a while.

One of the first pieces of advice I was given now that we’ve come to the end of university, is to stop thinking like a university student. Seriously, it’s a bad mark to simply keep talking about what makes a good game from the perspective of a student. Therefore, you will here less, to answer the question my teacher raised, and more, what I found to be the most interesting dynamic etc.

Hence I will start off by looking at the most logical place to go for Game Designers, to the Games Industry. Looking around me it’s quite clear to me that there’s going to be massive competition to get into any sort of industry. At the moment, it doesn’t really matter to me which one is best to get into. The way I see it, first get experience and then start worrying about the finding the most suitable industry. My only problem is trying to build up the network. Especially in Australia, the games industry isn’t a really big thing, making it harder to find large names close to home. That said, I was at this year’s IE conference and met a few games theorists there.

It will be interesting to see if I can make the first leap and manage to make contact with the hundreds of employers out there looking for decent game designers. Although the first thing I should probably worry about is making solid games for a stable foundation. With that in mind, I’m going off to go back to making more games.

Toodles

Insert something improvised here…

Hoi,

So this is where I reflect a little on improvisational games.

I’ve a few friends who do theatre sports and Thank God You’re Here is one of my favourite shows. What is it about improv games that makes them so fun. Personally I think it’s more than just self expression. There’s the aesthetic that the conversation must seem normal, in character, and witty. The participants are put on the spot in that there is a time limit to answer before the words that come out seem incoherent and break the conversation. I think dynamics like this are what really make the improv games fun. But to answer the question regarding how 3 rules of improv relate to self expression games, here they are:

1. Be fun to play with – Well of course it needs to be fun to play with. Most games, not just games of self expression, will make this a high priority if not the top. (Ignores those who make games for art and for money)

2. Serve the narrative – This relates to part of the illusion of being able to make the conversation seamless. This involves creating something that is true to the fantasy of the game e.g. creating a creature in Spore Creatures rather than a machine etc. However, I feel at times that this rule can be broken. More often than not, people like to go against the grain and come up with something completely unrelated. This can work, but only in small amounts. If there’s too much randomness, then the narrative is lost and it seems there is no longer any sort of skill involved.

3. Make your partner look good – I assume this therefore means that you are working with more than one person. Generally I would find it is hard to make your partner to look bad, mainly because the only way it would make them look bad is A) you outperform them in every way B) You gave them an easy line to continue the conversation which they couldn’t continue. I would initially think you make your partner look bad by giving them a difficult question to respond to, but audiences seem to love it, especially when the partner meets up to the challenge. I can’t think of too many self-expression games that are supposed to make partners look good/bad, but I would generally think that players would want to make their team mates look good generally because it results in a higher success rate than other teams.

Signing off

Insert something that elicits creativity here

Hi all,

This is where I design an art game.

Okay, so the art game I’m thinking of would be an adventure computer game. At the start of the game, you get to create what your character looks like. This part is like and unlike Spore in the creation of an avatar. Instead of placing already existing parts, the player creates their own basic anatomical features to a library e.g. head, arms, legs, nose, eyes, mouth, ears, hands, feet etc. The way it works is that the player has to draw each part and add it to the library. This would make the game compatible with the DS more than likely. The player has a limited amount of ink in which he is allowed to design an anatomical feature such as a mouth and add it to the library of mouthes. At the start of the game, the player gets to put parts from the library together to create a character. At the start of the game, the character is limited to simple abilities such as being able to walk, eat and see. As the game progresses, the player is allowed to use other parts from the various libraries such as arms to climb, grasp attack etc. The game would be like Yoshi’s Story in that there are several levels to undertake, but the story will change depending on the parts the player picks over the course of the game. For instance, the player gets to unlock either wings or gills, one will lead to a sky level whilst the other will lead to a water level. Once the final level is done and the game is over, the entire story of how the avatar evolved will be told as each level has it’s own unique story element.

That’s all. It would be nice to think that such a game exists…

signing off

Insert something a little distracting here

This is where a little bit about interactive fiction games such as Galatea and Aisle.

Do They Work?

To be honest the work to a certain extent. It is enjoyable to explore different possibilities to see if there is a possible outcome since it is easily understood that the game is basically a large storage device that provides different responses with different commands. Therefore, players try to experiment as many things they can think of that would incite a response. For, me, this died out quickly because I’m the type who likes to know all the answers. When I’m given so many possibilities, it seems tiresome to try and experiment. Furthermore, after typing in various commands, a pattern emerges which seems to constrict what players say e.g. ‘ask about…’ ‘think about…’ ‘look at…’ etc. On the other hand, the results are quick and rewarding. It is fun to see what type of results players can receive, even if there is no right or wrong outcome. It becomes a matter of balancing the rewards with the exploration. Generally all this means is that there need to be more input commands. The more to experiment with, the more fun. The best outcome would be when anything the player types in generates a different outcome, and I mean anything.

Are they enjoyable to play more than once?

I think the answer to that is quite obvious. If the games weren’t enjoyable to play more than once then the game must have been really poor at grasping your attention when you played it the first time. Especially with the Aisle since the game finishes after the player inputs a command only once. A game like the Aisle is fun in a Groundhog Day kind of fashion, where the player replays the day over and over with new information each time. So generally the answer is yes, the games are enjoyable to play more than once. I think a better question would be, at which point does replaying the game become superfluous.

Signing off

Insert something… wait maybe don’t insert something

Here I come up with game that reinterprets and retells the fairytale of the Journey to the West.

Journey to the West is one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature. It involves a romanced version of Xuanzang’s pilgrimage to India to obtain Buddhist religious texts.

The player would take the role of Sun Wukong, one of the three protectors of Xuanzang, better known as Monkey King. However, to reinterpret the story, I would change the beginning of the game so that the player as Sun Wukong seeks power. His first steps involve trials where he learns to use each of the five elements Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal. Using only his resizable staff as his main weapon, the player has to go through 5 different levels each containing one of these elements. This would be very much like Zelda where the levels are filled with fantasy creatures trying to stop the protagonist. In this case, on top of creatures, I would add celestial guards and dieties who want to stop Sun Wukong from becoming too powerful. Two of the boss characters that Sun Wukong would face include Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing, the two protectors of Xuanzang. After Sun Wukong collects all five elements, he is confronted by Xuangzang who holds secrets to immortality. The player cannot defeat Xuanzang and ends up in prison. Xuanzang meets Sun Wukong in his cell and makes a proposition. It turns out that Xuangzang is immortal from eating peaches from a heavenly tree. However, it turns out that the peaches have only a temporary effect. Xuanzang plans to go to the West in order to find ingredients for a recipe which mixed with the peaches causes everlasting immortality. Only Xuanzang knows the recipe and needs to get to the West. However, there are many monsters along the way that want to eat Xuanzang’s peaches and attempt to kidnap Xuanzang. Without the peaches, Xuanzang is incredibly weak and plans to use Sun Wukong as a bodyguard along with Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing. In return, Sun Wukong is to be released from prison and will be given some of the final elixer for immortality.

The player has to traverse the Silk Road along with Xuanzang, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing to find the recipes for the elixer. Along the way, The player fights countless enemies and saves the three companions from several traps e.g. Xuanzang is very trusting and naive being influenced by monsters pretending to seek help or Zhu Bajie is strong but interested in women, falling for creatures that disguise themselves as women. The player’s main aim is to ensure the safety of his companions until they reach India and cook the elixer. The player is given resources such as peaches which allow for temporary immortality and magic spheres which allow him to perform magic that surrounds the five elements. The player loses when all four characters are put out of action (they can revive each other with another resource such as life peaches).

Signing off

Insert something delinquent here

Hi all,

Here is where I talk a little about the game Mafia

The live action party game Mafia works on levels of fellowship, drama, fantasy, discovery, self expression and challenge. There is fellowship in that players get to kill (not literally) other people, drama in the tension of finding the Mafia or being caught as the Mafia, fantasy in the role play element of civilians vs Mafia, Discovery in finding out who the Mafia members are, Self expression in the choices made about who should be killed, and Challenge in the goal of surviving to the end of the game. The main reason it works so well as a party game is that it is social and lets people debate towards a common goal for the civilians whilst it works well for the Mafia in the drama of staying within the game.

Strategy works well mainly for the informed party. Sometimes the game is played with a policeman, sometimes it is played with a vigilante. This blog focuses mainly civilians vs Mafia where the informed party is the Mafia. Mafia formulate strategies by trying to sway the uninformed party as to who the mafia people might be. I can think of a strategy where Mafia members go against their own Mafia members to gain the trust of civilians, meaning the voice of certain Mafia members becomes more credible and less suspicious.

Does the game work online? I think it can, but for the most part, it won’t work. Why: The game itself generally loses many of its dynamics since there is a different medium. People can’t look at each other online like the would in live action. There have been suggestions about using a webcam to fix this problem, but I think that is less likely to happen since many issues arise when a group of people can all see each other, mainly privacy. However, I think it would be a good experiment to turn Mafia into a text based game. Many of the same mechanics apply such as the informed minority and the uninformed majority. There would be a small group of mafia members with a large group of civilians of roughly 30 people. Within the group would be a spy who is given the name of a single Mafia personnel. The players would participate in an online room and can talk freely during the day. Instead of providing players with facial expressions, the players instead write a small section about their job description. The players can come up with any occupation of their choice and players initially use that to try and estimate the credibility of each player. The Mafia and the spy will give a false description of their occupation since the Mafia don’t want to be caught by the civilians whilst the spy doesn’t want to be caught by the Mafia. The players talk online and discuss who they think is the Mafia during the day and vote to kill someone at the end. During the night, mafia can select a civilian to kill without any other players knowing who. The spy tries to formulate a strategy to help the civilians through moving the discussion against a Mafia member, but does so without being caught by the Mafia who try to kill the spy. Once the name of the Mafia member given to the spy is killed, the spy is given another Mafia member. The Mafia are allowed to participate during day discussions to try shift the blame onto other civilians.

Insert something socially defaming here

Hi, I’m going to talk about a social game that would use the facebook network system.

Okay, I’m not really sure how to go about discussing a game-theoretic game, but it could be like a cross between The Sims and Little Big Planet, neither of which I have played before. From what I know about the sims, you can interact with a world very much like Earth and you can perform actions with avatars that simulate similar scenarios in the ‘real life’. Facebook could use this same kind of idea (interact with other avatars), but the other avatars are your friends on facebook. For instance, making a relationship happen in the Sims is automatic when two avatars interact with each other often. However, a facebook version allows for personal identity, meaning other players can reject each other in such a situation. This could cause some dilemmas where it seems very real, however, when interacting with a virtual environment, the relationships also become unreal and allow flexibility in the actions players perform with each other. Furthermore, allowing for customisation like in Little Big Planet would allow for creation of new environments. However, that part doesn’t really feed into the social aspect so I won’t talk much further on it. BUT THINK ABOUT IT. It would so work.

Insert something strangely invigorating here

Hey all,

this is where I come up with a game that is hardware driven (sensor gloves)

I think there have been many games that have been thought of when it comes to the hypothetical sensor gloves as controllers. I’m going to do a bit of cheating and provide a game idea that one of my teachers came up with. My Wing Chun master thought it would be really good to make a game that teaches people how to learn Wing Chun using a pair of wrist bands as controllers. I think that with the sensor gloves that such a thing could actually be programmed. Of course not to the highest degree since learning Wing Chun involves a lot more than hand movements, but the conept is itself very innovative.

The game wouldn’t be much different to say Wii Fit in that there are a ton of exercises to practice and as you get better, more exercises are given out. All you have to do to turn it into a game rather than a training program is to simply add a boss that you have to defeat by using some learned skills. Add a boss every now and then and you’ve got a pretty good game. To make people want to comeback, there’s always the exercises and for some extra social aspects, it could be good to compete against your friends through using the power gloves. Or even better, the video game spawns a live action game which means that the skills you learn from the video game transfer into the actual Wing Chun martial arts which allows you then to free spar with real Wing Chun practitioners.

Signing off