Game Designer's TAX

As a videogame designer there are certain games that you just have to play. They are the tax that you have to pay for having such a cool job. You are forced to play every new zelda game for a little bit at least to see what new things have been done. You are forced to play half-life 2 to see what everyone is talking about in regards to their cut scenes and what cool puzzles they did with their physics engine.

Recently I have been playing a lot of games just to see what everyone is talking about - such as Black and Full Auto. I don't really play FPS's for the most part so when playing Black I'm having a really hard time figuring out what is 'cool' about it. It looks great but after playing Call of Duty 2 on the 360 I am having a hard time going back and appreciating a FPS on the ps2. Full Auto on the other hand I have enjoyed way more than I thought I would with all the bad reviews/hype going on. It's not the greatest game and arguably burnout looks better but I am still having fun playing it.

On the flip side of Game Designer's tax - you are also forced to play really bad games which is where you can learn a lot. Hopefully you can figure out why the game is bad and maybe even take notice of some of the good things and use them in your own game. Some games are just bad no matter what, but I find there is often more to gain from playing a bad game than a good game.

Before going to bed the past few days I've been playing Rub Rabbits, the sequel to what I felt to be the strongest DS launch title - Feel The Magic. Both names are just downright awful and I have a feeling they changed the name from Feel The Magic to somehow get people to see that Rub Rabbits is a way more appealing name - thus buying 3 copies at once. I had to go to around 3 or 4 different stores to even find a copy. Most of the time it was me walking into the store and mumbling, 'do you have rub rabbits?' and the clerk not having a clue as to what game I was asking for - probably thinking it was code word for me trying to buy animal porn.

Which is a shame because I think this game definitely falls into Game Designer's tax - but on the good side. There are a lot of cool elements that they do - including gimmicky things requiring the playing to turn the DS 90 degrees or even 180 for some of the mini-games. Beyond that though there is actual good game design - when bad characters come on screen they make a noise and when the good characters come on screen (the ones you aren't supposed to kill) they make a different sound helping you as the player react besides with just visual cues. I could go on forever about the nuances of this game but I hope everyone out there reading this may go a little out of their way to find a game that it seems like Sega doesn't want anyone to know about and or buy.

New Ocean?!?

I don't know about everyone on here but I had NO idea there was a new ocean, the Southern Ocean. I asked a few people I work with and no one heard about this either, somehow 6 years ago someone snuck in a new ocean and none of us realized it. Amazing.

I started re-reaidng, 'The Design of Everyday Things' by Donald Norman this week. A wonderful book about industrial design and how things in general are designed poorly and how they could be improved upon. He has this whole chapter where he is talking about phone systems and how confusing they are and there is a wonderful paragraph that I thought I would share with everyone:

"It is interesting that things like the "R" button are largely determined through examples. Somebody asks, 'What is the "R" button used for?' and the answer is to give an example: 'You can push "R" to access loudspeaker paging.' If nobody can think of an example, the feature is dropped. Designers are pretty bright people, however. They can come up with a plausible-sounding example for almost anything. Hence, you get features, many many features, and these features hang on for a long time. The end result is complex interfaces for essentially simple things."

I couldn't stop laughing and was just thinking about this is completely the case with videogames - especially sequels. Things keep getting more and more complicated and the developers don't even bother to notice/care. The returning users usually don't care but the new users are completely blown away with the complexity - look at any new version of DDR or any fighting game released this year for that matter.

As a quick addendum to my previous post about why some games have communities and some don't - me and Omar, a designer from Gun, had a long discussion about this before I posted and one of the conclusions that we came to were: games need something interesting to talk about. Take that for whats its worth.

Videogame Communities

Me and a friend of mine the other day were discussing this - why do some games have a community and other don't? By community I mean people gathering to either play the game or gathering online to discuss the game. Some games sell amazing numbers (Virtua Fighter for instance) yet virtuafighter.com has only 8053 registered users - compared to the almost million sales that VF4/Evo have sold in america alone.

So why do some games have huge communities and some don't? Anyone have some ideas? BTW - this is not relegated to only fighting games, I would love to hear why one FPS does versus another or MMORPG's.

Why the DS is good for the industry aka why the PS2 controller is scary

Note: I wrote this a while ago and never had any place to put it. This was written before the Revolution controller was shown to the public.

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"Dengeki reported that Nintendo has successfully acquired the female and adult market for Nintendo DS in Japan…”

What is it about the DS that appeals to women and adults? Why are they gravitating towards a machine that most of us mock?

My girlfriend is a programmer for a videogame company and needless to say she understands technology and is not afraid of it. And yet even she – a woman who makes videogames – does not play them. Why? “There are too many buttons” she tells me. We have evolved into an era of videogames where not only are they too complicated to understand, but even controlling them is frightening.

I remember the first videogame I played; it was Pac-Man at the local convenient store in 1980. It had one button to push, “Start Game.” This button needed to be only pressed once to start the game and after that it never entered gameplay again.

The first videogame console I ever played was the Atari 2600 in the early 80’s and the controller consisted of one joystick and one button. In 1985, the second console I owned was the Nintendo Entertainment System and the controller had a d-pad and two buttons (4 if you count select and start). The first console I actually purchased myself, was the Super Nintendo in 1991 and the controller came with an amazing 6 buttons; 4 face buttons and 2 buttons placed on the edge of the controller that came be known as “shoulder” buttons. Those shoulder buttons sure felt funny to press in the very beginning, especially the left one.

I’ve been playing videogames for the past 25+ years of my life and I’ve experienced the slow progression of going from no buttons required to being comfortable to using 14 buttons (L3, R3, and even the 4 directional buttons on the Dual-Shock controller have become buttons in games) on the PS2 pad. When I watch my girlfriend who is new to videogames hold the controller, it looks she is choking a poor dog to death that won’t stop barking.

It is no longer a secret that women actually do like videogames. Some not only like watching videogames being played but some also like playing games themselves. Not all games mind you (I don’t even play all games) but without sounding too stereotypical in my experience women tend do enjoy playing puzzle games, The Sims, MMOs, etc. I firmly believe that if The Sims had been released simultaneously on PC and console the PC version would still be the best selling version.

People who do not play games, for the most part, do use a PC on a regular basis. They have become common not only at work but in the home as well. People are comfortable with using a keyboard and a mouse, which is why casual gamers will gravitate towards what they already feel comfortable with. Another reason is the cost issue. I’ve been buying consoles my whole life and I’ve yet to buy one solely for a single game, which given the sparse pickings for women on today’s consoles, could be a real proposition. People are much more compelled to spend $40 on a PC game because if the interface is familiar and if the game doesn’t work out, they have only lost $40 in comparison to $200+ it would take to buy a different console and a game.

Recently, Katamari Damacy that quickly grabbed the attention of not only game designers everywhere but also women due to how simple it is to play. Granted they have to actually hold the PS2 controller, which is daunting, but once they realize no buttons are required to play they are instantly hooked. Unfortunately, even with a game as simple as this is to play, it still has yet to sell well. My personal theory is that even if women find it accessible, it is the only game on the PS2 that they are attracted to and why bother buying a whole console just for one game? I wouldn’t either.

Look at the success of racing games, particularly Gran Turismo. Gran Turismo basically said, ‘screw the PS2 controller!’ altogether and threw it out of the equation. Many people play the game with the steering wheel controller, which is instantly comfortable due to its familiar replication of driving an actual car.

The Gameboy has been dominating the market for the past 16 years and never even had a close competitor until the recent PSP. Many technically ‘better’ handheld consoles have been released, featuring color screens, fancier graphics, etc., and yet the Gameboy still stands as #1. The killer app for the Gameboy, Tetris, only required one button. Not only that but the Gameboy dominated the market for 12 years with only 2 buttons. Coincidence?

This brings us to why I think the DS is good for the industry. While there are more buttons on the DS in comparison to the Gameboy, the main form of input is the stylus. The stylus is immediately comfortable as it feels like a real world device, the pen. There are already many games which require you to draw really fast on the screen, much like coloring, which is not only fun to do but very intuitive. What the DS is bringing to the table isn’t revolutionary gameplay or even for the most part nothing we haven’t seen before – what it is doing is packaging it in a way that is more appealing to women. The DS will be the gateway drug; getting women hooked on DS games mean that they will be more willing to try out other games.

Now that E3 2005 has passed, we have seen the controllers for the PS3 and the Xbox 360. One interesting thing to note is that there are no new buttons on either controller. Sony and Microsoft both feel that this number (note that they both have the exact same number of buttons) is the magical number that will attract new gamers and sustain long-term gamers. Since this is an industry first, where we go from one generation to the next without an addition of buttons I am curious as to if this interface is still too complicated to attract new players.

Fighting games to become obsolete?

So I'm trying my best to keep updating this blog so that you people will keep returning for the crumbs of entertainment/knowledge i'm leaving. Either that or so you can watch me implode one post at a time.

I was talking to another videogame designer the other day on a internet message board about DOA4 and how hard the AI is and how that is a dis-service to the average player. Fighting games are already a niche market. Making the few that do come out even more un-inviting is not helping matters at all, regardless of how many fanboy panty shots there are. His point was that fighting games are so niche that all it will take is something like GTA to have good combat and pow, there will no longer be a need for fighting games. Players will get their 'fill' from playing GTA.

At first I agreed with him but the more I thought about it, if GTA had a basketball as good as (insert some really good basketball game I have never played) I think people would still buy said basketball game. Fighting games are dying (are dead?) and there is no denying that. There are still a few franchises that knock homeruns as far as sales are concerned every time they step up to bat - Mortal Kombat, Dragonball Z, etc.

So i ask you readers if GTA had a combat system as good as Tekken would there still be a need for the next incarnation of Tekken?

About Derek Daniels

Somehow in the chaos that is the internet you find your way to my little corner of it, probably because I sent you this link and you felt obliged. Either that or someone else conned you into coming here ^_^

Recently I worked on God of War as one of the two combat designers. Eric Williams was the other and the main driving force that kept us through the late nights, correcting the mistakes before you got to play them and polishing an already well polished main character. Me and him have worked on numerous games before and hopefully will continue to do so.

Besides making games I also enjoy playing them, specifically fighting games. I help run shoryuken.com as well as the biggest fighting game tournament in North America - evolution. I have been to Japan to participate in their largest tournament - Super Battle Opera. As well as visiting Korea, Europe and Australia to play some of their top fighting game players.

This blog will probably turn into a discussion of both topics - me making games and me babbling about the more competitive side of them specifically from the fighting game community. Hopefully it will be interesting to more than just me and you will continue to visit. See you next time.