A casual digression

Gamasutra just published an article about the prevalence (and success) of "cloning" in casual games. (Independent Gaming tipped me off to the article.) Now, I've never been a casual games kind of guy; I have always been more interested in big-budget titles that deliver complex stories and gameplay. Nevertheless, my interest in casual games has grown slowly over the last couple years as the market has grown and as I've come closer to admitting that my best chance of completing a game is to make a "casual" one.

Casual games tend to focus on one central gameplay mechanic, rely on fewer art assets, and have much simpler stories (actually, most have no story at all). The advantages for a small team are obvious. I understand that any hope of creating a complete game that people will play depends on whether I undertake reasonable projects.

So, I have decided to turn my attention for a brief period (a couple of months) toward creating a casual game more modest in scope than my epic RPG. The concept for the game is light-hearted and nonviolent. It will be a target shooting game. I'm not ready yet to reveal the idea, but rest assured that you will all be able to play it.

Those of you who know me will know that this shift is not one I take lightly. I've been working on my RPG for years and, despite excruciatingly slow progress, I am still dedicated to it. But the fact is that it's better to develop a small, complete game than a small fragment of a large one. With a finished product under my belt, I'll be much better equipped to make progress toward the larger goal. A finished game also gives me the opportunity to explore my options for marketing, distributing, and potentially selling a game.

More details about the game will be coming soon. The blog will continue. After all, I'm in this for the journey more than the destination.

Beowulf and video games, part 2

The other day I posted some thoughts inspired by the Beowulf movie's decidedly video game-esque animation and action scenes. Today I turn my attention to Beowulf's story. Now, I know what you're thinking: Beowulf's story is only similar to most video game stories because it sucks. By certain standards, it's definitely not that interesting. Just a few major plot points. Not many twists and turns. Pretty clear roles for the major characters.

A brief interpretation of Beowulf
On the other hand, I think the movie can be "read" not so much as an epic action movie but as an allegory or cautionary tale. I have to credit Roger Ebert at least partially for leading me to this interpretation. His somewhat disjointed review suggests an element of irony and satire in the film. I didn't really find either of those, but he did get me looking for a deeper layer of meaning.

Without giving any big spoilers, I think Beowulf is a story about the price of arrogance, greed, and lust. Ok, this isn't a big stretch -- our hero arrives at Hrothgar's hall boasting of his accomplishments, in search of riches, and not at all hesitant to ogle Hrothgar's wife in that ridiculous way macho protagonists always seem to do (as if to say, "You will be mine, oh yes, you will be mine").

The film's major symbolism, though, can be found in its antagonists. Grendel's mother, in her golden nude-glory, represents the seductive promise of wealth and power. Grendel himself represents the isolation and violent sensitivity born from a society built on greed (he made me think of the Columbine and Virginia Tech shooters). Beowulf's final foe is a physical manifestation of Beowulf's mistakes, a brutal (and large) reminder that leaders' mistakes beget very destructive forces.

Allegory and games
Ok, now the point. For all the discussion about stories in games (particularly the argument about whether they can ever be good), I find myself thinking that allegory could be a particularly rich device to use in game stories (no doubt it has been used before). There are a couple reasons why allegory seems to have a lot of potential for games.

• First, allegory is well suited for the kinds of stories and worlds that are often found in games. Science fiction and fantasy worlds in particular often deal in larger-than-life situations ripe for symbolism.
• Second, and more importantly, allegory can function even in an open-ended narrative situation. Symbolism can be established through visuals (like color or costumes) and sounds (musical themes) without requiring a particular order of events. Additionally, as Beowulf demonstrates, allegorical tales often work best when stories are simple, since there isn't as much plot to distract from the underlying meaning.

Should every video game be an allegory? Of course not. But as the debate over game narrative continues, allegory, as a time-honored form, seems like a good option for developers interested in telling stories of some depth without the pressure of coming up with a brand new narrative mechanic for games.

Is my game going to be an allegory? You'll have to wait and see.

Beowulf and video games, part 1

I saw Beowulf today. Though they took more than a few liberties with the story, it's a pretty good movie (to be fair, the "story" in the original epic poem is quite loose, so it probably needed some tinkering). Being a computer-generated, animated film, there are almost no limits to the scope of the visual effects, and there are certainly no limits to the stunts that the characters can perform.

Several things struck me about the movie as it relates to video games. The next few posts will explore the relationship between epic stories like Beowulf (and their movies) and video games.

Game action inspiring movies
First, while watching the climactic battle scene, I couldn't help but remember some of the boss encounters in the God of War games. With a physically idealized hero (thankfully wearing clothes for this fight) flinging himself around and methodically chipping away at a much larger foe, I could almost see a big button on the screen telling me to press X as fast as possible. I had the same sense when I watched 300, which clearly had some game-inspired action.



There have been film-inspired games for years, and many of them have endured criticism for seeming shallow and rushed to market. Of course, there have been game-inspired films and TV shows for at least a decade well (anyone remember the Super Mario Bros. TV show?). Momentum has been picking up in the last five years or so, with film adaptations of video games popping up regularly (the Resident Evil series, Doom, Silent Hill, Hitman).

The prevalence of movies based on games isn't at all surprising. What's remarkable is the extent to which a video game sensibility seems to be working its way into Hollywood action movies. Indeed, where else would you find inspiration for visualizing an ancient epic poem than our present-day escapist equivalent?

Maybe what I'm noticing is just an attempt by the movie studios to appeal to a younger audience. Maybe the people making movies now happen to be life-long gamers. Or maybe there's a growing expectation that movies provide the same kind of over-the-top, super-intense action sequences as games, where the player is in control. With no control to offer the viewer, do filmmakers feel pressure to choreograph game-like action sequences to avoid losing their audience?

Of course, it's also possible that the complexity of action sequences in films and games only reflects rapid improvements in computer graphics technology. These could be the images we've always wanted to create, but until now we couldn't realize them so well.

What do you think? Are films beginning to draw on some kind of video game aesthetic, or are games and films both just taking advantage of technological change to deliver more intense sensory experiences?

Screenshots and tryptophan dreams

Don't have much to say today. It seems that my mind has checked out in advance of the Thanksgiving binge.

As a special holiday treat, I thought I would post some screenshots of my progress. You'll see lots of unfinished things in here (like untextured buildings), but I continue to be impressed by how easy it is to create a nice atmosphere using Unity's new terrain tools.

The big city

First of all, I apologize for the brief lapse in new posts. Work was hectic last week and involved a trip to New York. It was my first time in New York, and I wasn't quite prepared for the scale of things or the sense of awe that a city so big commands. Upon leaving, I was struck by the urge to play SimCity, probably because the trip ended with a flight over the city on a clear night.

Where does the urge to build a city come from? Not sure, but I think it has something to do with the way cities seem to behave like organisms -- constant while constantly changing. It's not a new metaphor, but it is a brilliant dynamic to try to capture in a game.

Reflections like this leave me wondering about the relationship between story-based and open-ended games. SimCity doesn't have a pre-ordained story. Indeed, Will Wright (the creator of SimCity) and others would tell you that the narrative value of open-ended games like SimCity is in the communication of events after the fact, rather than in gameplay itself. Even more, he would likely say that the best games are ones that possess the most narrative potential without dealing with a specific narrative (in other words, games that encourage storytelling among players).

The Grand Theft Auto series, though, is a nice example of games that accommodate sandbox play along with a directed (though branching) storyline. Some might call the story optional, but really it's not. The size of your sandbox in GTA depends directly on completing at least some of the story.

Since I'm working on a story-based game, I feel compelled to address somehow the possibility of open-ended play in my game world. How I'll do that remains to be seen. A lot of games resort to side quests, the search for hidden items and hidden bosses, etc. These are good options, but they are once-and-done activities. At a certain point, you can accomplish everything. Maybe that's desirable, though. Stories always have a beginning and an end, so to some extent they can't coexist with purely open-ended gameplay. Maybe the best answer is something like GTA or Will Wright's upcoming game Spore, which I've heard him describe as goal-oriented gameplay designed to prepare you for the ultimate sandbox experience.

I can envision adaptive story-based games where the player's decisions truly affect the world and the characters, but they are still some years away (D&D-based games like Knights of the Old Republic don't quite cut it, in my opinion). In the meantime, I'll continue mulling the issue while I build a virtual city to rival Manhattan.

My game design story (so far)

Here's another quality article about game design from Gamasutra (by Gillard Lopes and Rafael Kuhnen). It presents a layered model of game design (starting with concept at the top and gameplay "verbs" at the bottom) and then weighs the pros and cons of bottom-up vs. top-down design. The point, essentially, is that both are required.

Some of you may be recoiling at the thought that I'm gearing up for another overly academic discussion of game structure. Luckily, I'm not that cruel. Instead, I offer something more personal.

My own experience with game design has so far fit quite well into Gillard and Kuhnen's description of a top-down process. I've been mulling the concept of my game for several years (the seeds of it probably sprouted six or seven years ago, but real development started almost five years ago when my brother came up with an idea for a character (yes, development has been, shall we say, sporadic).

With a general context in place for the characters, setting, and story line, we began chipping away at the core questions of gameplay: how would combat work, how would the player interact with NPCs, how would the character leveling process work. The answers to many of these questions have changed several times.

Once the major content-related decisions were made, I started building the mechanics, particularly the battle mechanics. This means, in effect, that I had to figure out how to program all the features we wanted in the game.

The line between design and execution is a blurry one for a small team, but we're now at a point where some minimum amount of playable content is required to test our decisions. If they don't result in a fun experience, we will have iterate at the appropriate design level to improve things. That could mean anything from revamping the battle system to rethinking the entire concept.

So, stay tuned for a chance to provide your feedback. It will be a while yet, but game design for a small fry like me is as much about the journey as the destination.

Game narrative: an overview

A lot of people out there consider Final Fantasy VI (released in the U.S. as Final Fantasy III) to be the best Final Fantasy ever and one of the best console RPGs. While I haven't played the game for at least a decade, I count myself among the adoring masses.

One of the things I enjoyed so much about Final Fantasy VI was the story. There were lots of characters with full story lines (and some without), the story went on forever and had a truly epic scope, which I always love, and it had a villain that everyone loved to hate.

Rather than bore you with a litany of things I like about this game, I will direct you to Blogging Final Fantasy, which is written by worthier nerds than I.

The point, though, is that compelling game narrative is a thing rarely achieved. The reason has been debated for some years now, and there are too many viewpoints to cover in a single post. The crux of the issue lies somewhere around the issue of agency. Agency is the sense of power or control that a player feels within the game world.

Most games attempt to tell stories using cut scenes, which by definition remove agency temporarily to convey some narrative material. This convention leads to the logical idea that gameplay and story are somehow opposed and cannot coexist. A story, after all (according to most definitions), exists in the telling of events, rather than the living of events, which is presumably what agency allows us to do within games--to live a series of events, however mundane. A game without agency is no game at all.

So is game narrative just a film narrative broken up by periods of gameplay? I don't think so. There must be some deeper possibilities, but they may require adjusting our definition of narrative. Take Myst, for example. The "game" consists of puzzles, but these puzzles uncover a narrative, told through the two brothers, Sirrus and Achenar. Still, this narrative is not the story of the player's experience -- the player arrives after most of the brothers' narrative has concluded.

Ah, but there's the thing: in Myst, the player's experience completes the story. The two brothers are locked in limbo until the player arrives to decide their fate (and his/her own). An unbroken sense of agency becomes necessary for the narrative, not opposed to it. What's more, in another brilliant move, the makers of Myst made agency the ultimate goal of the game. The only reward for "correctly" completing the game is the continued ability to explore. An incorrect decision traps the player in a prison book and removes agency--the player can no longer move or interact with the world.

Narrative in games, then, perhaps lies somewhere between traditional storytelling and straight-up, means-ends gameplay. And maybe the quality of game narrative should be measured by how successfully compelling events can unfold without removing the sense of agency.

Defending epic towers

Despite Unity's power as a game engine, not too many finished games have been created with it. Could have something to do with the "you have to have a Mac to develop games in Unity" thing. A new, very casual one was just released on shockwave.com: Epic Tower Defense. (Are we defending epic towers, or using towers to mount an epic defense? Hard to tell.)

The game doesn't really show off Unity's graphical chops, but it does have some nice user interface elements and a variety of different game modes. I found it while looking for something to write about and promptly spent half an hour playing. I think I might have blinked once or twice. Sometimes I wonder if I should shelve my epic story-based game and just create a casual one with "epic" in the title.

Anyway, aside from the easy bake oven ad that I had to watch before playing, it was pretty fun. Seriously, how many 8-year-old girls are going to play a game that involves zapping armies of orcs with lightning bolts?

Glorious free textures

The bulk of my time this week has been spent texturing one of my models. It's not a very complex model (in fact, it's just a bunch of cylinders and cubes), but I'm trying to get everything perfect. The process has left me a bit numb in the brain. Nevertheless, I keep reminding myself that I am relatively new to the texturing process, and this is pretty much what I expected.

The tedium of this particular texture (which is clawing its way from the pits of mediocrity) compels me to comment on the special place in my heart that is now reserved for anyone who posts a library of free textures to the internet. I stumbled on Mayang's Free Textures today, which has quite a variety of images, though there is a 20-per-day limit on downloads (if that's the only restriction, I'll take it). I expect to be downloading several in the coming days as I start creating new textures for the ground in my forest. It doesn't seem quite right that the floor of a dense pine forest would be covered in lush, green grass.

So, today I would like to harness the power of the internet and suggest that both my readers write a letter to someone (doesn't matter who) requesting that Mayang be immortalized with knighthood, sainthood, statues, songs, honorary degrees and other suitable accolades for contributing his photographs to the greater good. Thank you.

Game grammar and the structure of creativity

After a short delay since my last post, I thought I would launch into something super heavy: the structure of creativity. Now, before you flick your cursor toward the back button, let me give a little context.

The context
A couple attempts have emerged recently to define a grammar for games, a structured way of describing or diagramming game design that can help us understand what makes successful games work and (we hope) improve the overall quality of our gaming experiences.

• One is from Daniel Cook, who wrote an article in July on the Chemistry of Game Design. Cook's system focuses on "skill chains" as a way to understand the structure and distinct elements of a game.
• The second grammar model is from Raph Koster, who is helming the Metaplace project. Koster's version of game grammar, touched on in roundabout fashion in this Gamasutra interview, attempts to be more detailed than Cook's as a way to describe the elements of gameplay. I'm guessing Koster's game grammar ideas are a huge part of his design for easy-to-create games in Metaplace.
  

Yeah, games have structure. So what?
These two articles point toward an idea I've been noodling for a while: maybe grammar should be considered in a broader way.

Game design is, to me, a unique art form. (To be safe, let's go with a little "a" in "art" for the moment, as in anything artificial or man-made.) Its uniqueness doesn't come from any single trait; rather, games represent the combination of more creative enterprises than any other form of entertainment. Drawing, painting, animation, music, writing, story telling, interaction design, even programming, all converge in modern games.

Each element of game design, and game design itself, has its own structure. Text is divided into paragraphs and sentences. Music contains movements, verses, chord progressions, and phrases. Visual art deals with texture, colors and composition.

So, regardless of the output, all creative processes will have certain things in common:

• A set of tools for creative expression (paint brushes, instruments, paper, software)
• An appeal to the senses (any art form is ultimately about stimulating some combination of the human senses)
  
• A top-down hierarchy of meaningful units (for a novel it might go like this: book > chapter > paragraph > sentence > word > syllable)
• A bottom-up set of rules for combining smaller units into larger ones
  

Obviously each one of these elements could be explored in great detail, but together they form a sort of grammatical structure for creativity (a superstructure even?) that could be applied to any number of disciplines. For any "multi-disciplinary" creative endeavor, success depends on reconciling the grammars of multiple art forms into one coherent whole.

Grammar, creativity, and games
Is all this blathering too general to be useful? Possibly. Big-budget games and movies are usually created by decentralized teams of hyper-specialized artisans. But Art with a capital "A" these days rarely comes from the corporate machine. For games to grow as Fine Art, small groups of people speaking dramatically different creative languages will have to focus their attention on creating a product that embraces this broad structure of creativity to deliver something meaningful.