Humans have an inherent need to justify spending resources on things. People want to know that the time, money, emotion, empathy, or any other personal resource they spent on something is not wasted, even when it is. A good example of this is our time and money investment in leisure activities. There are thousands of comics and baseball cards in circulation, but only a handful of them are worth more than the paper they're printed on. Only a handful of people care who has the world's highest score at pac-man or pinball. Some things can end up being somewhat worthwhile, such as being a professional Magic: The Gathering player, or a professional Starcraft player. These are, of course, few and far between. The ratio of grand master chess players to regular chess player is extremely small, just like not everyone can be Kobe Bryant or Tiger Woods.

What does this have to do with games? Well, in games that save your state, it starts becoming important. The entire genre of MMORPG is all based on ascribing value to something where there really inherently isn't any. I've never seen another specific genre of game take this to such an extreme, and I wanted to spend a bit of time analyzing it.

( Ok, so analyze already )

So very recently, I picked up and started playing Street Fighter 4 like about 2 million others. If you know me, you probably know that I follow the game fairly well. I really like it, because it has a bunch of stuff that I think is really good for games: A great intuitive control scheme, low barrier to entry, and a good way for skillful players to differentiate themselves in ways that aren't (usually) cheating. This got me thinking about games, and when I think about games I tend to come up with something to blog about. This is no different. When last we talked about accesibility, it was mostly about designing content. This time it's a bit different. The discussion is still about things like how much of a game can be played by people, but content isn't quite the right word to describe it. I'll explain after the jump.

( Yes, now you've gotten me all confused. )

One of my friends sent me this video:



After watching it, I thought about it for a time, but I'm not sure I agree with him. I do think that there is some merit to what he says, but most of it isn't quite right.

( Prince of Persia transplanted, not innovated )

So, after glancing through the constraints on a raid encounter (previously posted), you're probably curious as to what it is I thought of. You might be thinking of your own raid encounters. That's cool, but this is my blog so here is my idea for a raid encounter.

( Hail Hydra! )

So once again, I am reading what looks like yet another hardcore/casual player debate and I had an idea for a MMO Project. Specifically, the rollout of content for MMO players. The biggest problem from the beginning of the Burning Crusade was that, despite his name being everywhere, and his voice being everywhere, and his likeness being plastered on every single advertisement for the Burning Crusade, the quintessential Burning Crusade character (Illidan Stormrage, naturally) very rarely actually showed up to deal with the player. You sort of dealt with him through a couple of quests here and there, but he almost never really made his presence known. At the end, he's just a long and involved boss battle in the black temple for 25 hard core raiders. Keep in mind that, according to the current data at wowjutsu, 6.41% of all ranked guilds (EU + North America) have killed Illidan Stormrage. That's an awfully small number of people compared to the total they have playing. They've already stated in interviews that they wish to make the NEXT big lore figure more accessible to the general player.

That got me thinking.... (a dangerous pasttime, I know)

In this case, I will present: Rawrasaur's version of Wrath of the Lich King.

( Get on with it! )

I've been meaning to write something here for a while on this subject, but I've just not gotten around to it. It's pretty simple stuff, but the crux of the matter is this.

Sometimes you've got a decision to make: Should this be "balanced" or should it be "fun"? I tend to err on the side of Fun over Balance.

( But doesn't balance = fun? )

Wow, it's been almost a year since I posted here. That's kind of scary. I do think and write about stuff still, but it has been a while.

So I was kicking this idea around in my head for a while, and I realized, I'm almost to the point where it is going to affect me yet again. It's the First Little Piece scenario.

( The first piece of what? )

So I got into another discussion today, regarding raiding and not raiding, and comparative MMOG progression. It makes seriously me wonder.

I've heard from many players that the leveling up portion of MMORPGs is not the real game. That the end-game stuff you do (typically large raids or pvp) is the "real" game, and that the time spent leveling from 1 to 50, 60, 75, 99 or whatever is maximum is actually not the "real" game. It is only training for the real game.

This brought me to an interesting idea... what if they are correct?

And if they are... what kind of game would that be like? One game immediately springs to mind. Guild Wars has that option... completely skip the leveling up and go straight into PvP. But what about the other side? A game entirely based on PvE raids. Large groups of players and large monstrous encounters. You'd need to assemble a large force to take on the monsters, and it would require intricate timing and knowledge of your characters' abilities to win.

Would this be financially feasible? I'd say that it may not be... mostly for a single reason. One of the deep-seated desires of hard core players in any game (though MMOGs in particular) is recognition. The desire for players to show that they are superior to other players in some way. They need their badges that they can show off to others. They want to feel like whatever it is they did actually meant something, be it grind for thousands of hours or spend weeks upon weeks throwing themselves at content until it is defeated.

So I'd throw a PvP arena in there for them to assert their dominance. Periodically infuse new content into the game, and see how it goes.

I wonder if it would work?

--Rawr

What does it mean if something is accessible?

Dictionary.com lists it as:

ac·ces·si·ble Audio pronunciation of "accessible" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (k-ss-bl)
adj.

1. Easily approached or entered.
2. Easily obtained: accessible money.
3. Easy to talk to or get along with: an accessible manager.
4. Easily swayed or influenced: accessible to flattery.

The big question that many game developers must pose to themselves is one of how accessible the game content is. Let's take the example of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

( Yes, let's. )

Greetings, folks.

This is my little neck of the LJ community. Guess I'll give a little bit of info here on myself, and the (future) posts I'll be making. I'm a game dev. I make games for a living. I'm relatively new to the industry, got myself one of the coveted 'entry-level' type positions. For many, this is a dream. For me, it's both my goal, my fun and what puts food on my table. I wouldn't have it any other way.

So I guess my first post I'll give a little bit of info on some stuff folks may wish to see, so they get a feeling for what it is we devs do. A lot of different kinds of games get made, and it's really a lot of work to get even a single game finished, polished and on the shelf. In subsequent posts, I'll try to talk about what other roles are, or specific game genres that I may or may not know about.

Surprisingly enough, a lot of folks hear I am a dev and say 'Oh, so you play games all day?'. Heh, don't I wish. I *do* play a lot of games, but I approach them somewhat differently than most other folks. Specifically, I am a scripter, meaning I am the person who makes sure that the bad guys you fight in the games you play don't act like morons. In other words, I do a lot with behavioral AI.

It can be as simple as something how the ghosts in pac-man behave... try to take the shortest path to pac-man they can, then when he eats the bigass pill, turn around and run like hell.

Sure, early games start with simple AI. But what happens if you increase the complexity?

Look at a recent game, like God of War. This game is a lot of fun, but if you consider, each of those bad guys you fight has to have some sort of specific AI. The cyclops, the minotaur, etc. etc... and each one gets 'scaled' depending on which texture/model version of it you fight. This means that certain behaviors, such as a hammer slam into moving shockwave will be used by later minotaurs, but not early ones.

Then what about things like group tactics? Obviously, the player has to feel somewhat challenged by the bad guys, but at the same time, as a good designer you can't make the bad guys TOO hard. So how do you coordinate the groups of bad guys? You don't want them all attacking at once, all the time. That makes it too easy to interrupt the player's attacks. It leads to frustration. But you don't want them to only attack one at a time, then it defeats the purpose of having a big group, as well as making the player wonder 'what the heck are the other bad guys doing?'. So you have to have that happy medium, of bad guys attacking enough to keep the player interested, but not too much to frustrate. It's a rough balance, and will have to factor in stuff like game difficulty (which is *usually* a cop-out... just adjusts a damage multiplier. Easier = more damage dealt, less received), player skill, and stuff like common sense.

When you have formations of bad guys, they have to take things like environment (what, you mean I *CAN'T* step off the cliff?), position relative to other bad guys (Out of my way!) and distance from the player. Then add in stuff like what attacks to use, whether there are attack sequences, and even whether bad guys should take stuff into account, like breakable objects. Sometimes AI actually tries to maneuver the bad guys in front of breakable objects, so that the player can smash the bad guys into them, just for added effect.

These are all things that someone who messes with AI has to deal with on a daily basis, to provide YOU, the adoring public, with games to play. Go figure.

--Rawr