Helping the player out

Fellow game designer and long time friend David Sirlin wrote an article talking about the difficulty in balancing single player games. I recently re-read it the other day and it got me to thinking about some of the tricks that we as designers do to help make the game more enjoyable. I’m sure that a lot of people don’t even pick up on these subtleties. Not realizing them is usually for the better though as it helps keep the player within the game space.

Wunderkind Nick Inabnit aka “NKI” also posted a translation of a throwing chart for Street Fighter 2 the other day. Not only does it have how much damage each character’s throw inflicts but it also has a great column entitled, ‘Behind’. Which confused me at first because I thought it meant throwing the player from behind as opposed to toward.

However since the first version of Street Fighter 2 (1991) if a player had lost the first round, during the second round they would get a slight damage boost when throwing the opponent. Unfortunately I don’t know if that damage boost gets applied to normal attacks or special moves but it looks like if you lost the first round – time to start throwing the opponent more than usual!

Click here to read the chart and other various tidbits that NKI has translated – it’s all really great stuff.

I find it amazing that even back then designers were thinking about how to help out players – regardless of single player or multiplayer. It got me to thinking about some of the things we have done on God of War to help the player out which I’m sure most people never even realized.

The Low Life Health Orb
Normally when you kill a creature you get a predetermined set of orbs based on how you killed the creature. However when Kratos is low on health when the creature dies, the game will also create a health orb. It’s not a huge chunk of health but it helps the player from dying often.

Health boost on Restart
This was a controversial decision but one that I’m ultimately glad we put in. What would happen is that the player would enter an area and have X amount of health. If that area was a certain challenge such as a hard fight or whatever, the player could potentially have been checkpointed with 5% of health and arguably never complete the challenge. So when the player dies and they restart we bump up the player’s health just a tad bit.

These ‘tricks’ are not unique to God of War as I can think of a ton of other games that do these and more. Some games have the player unable to die at all or give them so many extra lives the player doesn’t feel penalized so bad for dying. The Super Mario Bros series immediately comes to mind when I think of having a ton of extra lives for no real reason. When implemented well, such as the Street Fighter example, I think they help keep the game fun for everyone involved.

Toyota Yaris banner ad minigame

As a fan of videogames as a whole I get excited when I see new areas where games can be found. Last week was the iPod and this week is something new to me at least - Ad Banners.

Even though the Toyota Yaris was involved with the recent success of Evo I somehow completely missed this. They came up with an idea of having a game inside of a normal banner ad that pops up on websites. However the game is multiplayer and it can be played from any website that is displaying the ad banner. So lets say for example this ad was on cnn.com and i clicked on it and someone else saw the ad on yahoo.com and clicked on it - we would play against one another.

Unfortunately I don't find the game super fun as I think it's a little hard to control. But I really like the idea and look forward to what people do next with this sort of technology.

Here is a direct link to the game itself as I'm not sure if the ad is still in circulation:

HERE

Ipod Games

As probably most of you are aware - Apple debuted the very lackluster 'new' ipod (although the new shuffle is damn sexy) this week as well as announcing games. Granted they already had one of the best games ever in my opinion - that music one where it would play 4 songs from your library then asked you to name the song. A really great example of a game taking advantage of the hardware that it was meant for.

However with this new announcement they have a bunch of new casual games for moms to download at $5 a piece. Tetris, Pac-man, Zuma, etc.

I decided to download Pac-Man to see how it controls. The first thing they make you do when you start it up is to input your name. I thought this was a nice touch so that you could get comfortable with the interface. The first game I died very quickly as I was fumbling with the controls. I was hoping that they would make it work by pressing up/down or left or right. However 'up' is Menu and that pauses the game. So you have to actually control with the scroll wheel. That took some time to get used to but I was able to actually play the game within a few minutes.

I'm not sure if I'll ever get around to playing it again - much like I really don't watch movies on my ipod either, I simply listen to music but it's exciting to see that there might be a 'new' platform for casual games.

Anyone working on any of these?

Random Labor Day Update

I usually try my best not to do things like this but in all honesty I have just been super busy the past 2 weeks. The first week was getting ready for a God of War 2 playtest. The 2nd week was my parents being in California for a week. My mom's been here before but it was the first time that both of them came out here to visit me. It went really well and hopefully they will visit more often (since this is the first time in almost 6 years they have been here).

I took the day of the playtest itself off, but I heard it went well. I think Cory posted some stuff about it so head over there and check it out.

I don't know what it is...but I can't stop playing Tekken on the psp. I don't even really like Tekken or the psp but put them together and i'm a fan. Sorta like JayZ and Linkin Park or maybe peanut butter and jelly. Although I gotta admit to liking JayZ more and more as time goes on.

I did an interview with Faith Naked not too long ago. It went live this weekend so make sure to say Hi to her and check it out here.

This week life should return back to normal so I'll try to write something. Hopefully everyone had a good holiday and we can get back to discussing game design.