[Originally posted at http://gambit.mit.edu ]
I have a confession. I never beat The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past without infinite magic. I used infinite lives to finish Hyperzone, Thunder Spirits, or any of the other SNES scrolling shooters that I loved. My first full play-through of Final Fantasy 6 was made a little easier by starting the game with four of the most powerful weapons and accessories. Game Genie made it all possible. Did I miss out on some of the fun by cheating my way through challenges?

“Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough! Please do not use a walkthrough.” That bit of advice is from Jonathan Blow’s official Braid “walkthrough.” He even encourages the player by confirming that “All the puzzles can be solved. Some of them might take an hour or two, but you will get it. If you try. And you will feel cool and smart.” Of course, this is assuming that the cool and smart feeling you get as a reward outweighs the two frustrating hours you spent staring at a single-screen puzzle. For some players I’m sure it is a sufficient reward. I’d compare the feeling to that of players spending hours memorizing enemy patterns in Ikaruga to get a high score or making a record speed run of Super Metroid. This hard fun results in an emotion called fiero.

The key distinction between a high score or speed run and finishing Braid is that mastery is a choice. The player chooses how much time they want to devote to perfecting their play, but will already have experienced all of the game’s content. Braid requires 100% mastery just to progress to the ending. If the player wants to see the mind-blowing twist at the end, they are supposed to just tough it out.

But what if the player isn’t as affected by fiero, if it isn’t their personal “ultimate Game Emotion”? What if their biggest emotional reward is curiosity or relaxation or excitement? That player wonders what happens in Tim’s quest for his princess, wants to see what the next puzzle’s twist on time manipulation is, or finds the art direction fascinating. Wouldn’t their net enjoyment of the game be increased if they used a walkthrough to avoid some of the frustration? Wouldn’t it be nice if they could press a button and have the avatar automatically progress through the next puzzle so the player could still see the solution? That’s what a feature in New Super Mario Bros Wii can do, and it has been faced with very mixed reactions.

A major element of the argument against such an automated walkthrough is that it promotes accessibility over engagement. Leigh Alexander wrote “History has also never disproven… the principle that any medium and any message degrades the wider an audience it must reach. Art was never served by generalization, nor language by addressing all denominators. Entertainment for the masses ultimately becomes empty.” Well now, dissecting that argument can fill a blog post in itself. But in the case of Braid, the casual player won’t be able to experience some of the most artistically challenging content. It’s not that the art is difficult to interpret; the art is in fact hidden behind a barrier. Anyone can look at a painting and see every detail. They can read every word of a novel or watch every second of a movie. Understanding or appreciating the art is a different matter. Imagine if halfway through a novel you had to take an SAT-style verbal skills test to unlock the second half.

What Game Genie allowed me to do was complete the game. I was playing SNES while in elementary school and didn’t have the skills or patience to memorize attack patterns, but I really wanted to see what happened in the next level. In some cases, I was able to play around more freely with the mechanics when aided by cheat codes. For instance in Link to the Past, magic is limited such that some of the more powerful items can only be used sparingly. I remember using infinite magic to turn the Cane of Somaria into my primary weapon since creating a magic block that explodes in four directions was a fun twist on combat.

One of the reasons I feel the quality of my experience playing games with Game Genie was preserved is that the game didn’t do everything for me. In Zelda I still had to solve puzzles (though I did use a strategy guide occasionally). Even in shooters where I had infinite lives, I would try to kill as many enemies as possible and would be disappointed when I died. I determined my own level of challenge by choosing not only what cheat codes to use, but how to approach my play experience. The automated walkthrough still allows a player to be challenged by puzzles; it is a choice whether or not to use the feature. If a player doesn’t want to their experience to be “spoiled,” then they could just not use the walkthrough. Or they should only use the walkthrough on puzzles that have them completely stumped. It’s only different from including an easy mode if you think the challenge of the gameplay trumps the desire of a less skilled (or less patient) player to continue forwards.

[Originally posted at http://gambit.mit.edu ]
Moki and Rooki are back! Moki Combat 2.0 features a brand new design built around a unique physics engine. It’s been a fascinating experience to take the original demo and gradually transform it to the current state. Moki Combat 1.0 was based around arena combat, but as we implemented the new physics we transitioned towards slower almost puzzle-like jousting, switched from arenas to linear levels, and eventually de-emphasized the combat itself. Hopefully I can shed some light on our process and the challenges we encountered along the way.

More Than Just Ragdoll

The core feature of Moki Combat 2.0 is the physics engine developed by Computer Science graduate student Yeuhi Abe. You may be familiar with “Ragdoll Physics” which is frequently used to simulate falling or unconscious bodies. Instead of being stiffly posed, the limbs of the body move freely. Yeuhi’s engine experiments with active control of the character through physical means. This allows a body to support itself and move naturally when force is applied. In other words, rather than having an animation ready for when Moki gets hit by a spear, Moki will procedurally bend and try to right himself in the saddle.

Though it often results in impressively lifelike motions, this model is challenging for several reasons. First, control over the character has to be seriously rethought. Physically simulated characters are restricted to physically plausible motion. As a result, the character will not always respond immediately to user inputs. It’s not just a matter of triggering the “Swing Spear Animation.” You might notice some of the actions in the game feel a bit sluggish as result. We saw this physical lag as part of the challenge for the player, but some players will likely find it to be frustrating that the character doesn’t respond as they might expect.

In order to implement the new physics engine, the physics from the summer had to be pulled completely. Despite parts of the framework remaining, the programmers chose to scrap everything related to physics and basically start from the ground up. For the first few weeks of work on Moki Combat 2.0, there was little more than boxes and balls bouncing around. Yet the framework that resulted was much better than the original. Not being afraid to start over and develop a stronger foundation brought our more complex goals within reach.

The Design Evolution

It was around this time that I joined the team as a designer to better incorporate the new physics into the gameplay. The early prototypes combined the arena combat of Moki 1.0 with object manipulation puzzles. While play-testers enjoyed the look of the game, the actions were too imprecise for most of the object manipulation puzzles. The most consistently praised element was running through a block wall and watching the cubes fall down on top of Moki, pushing him around. I proposed a new jousting mechanic that would show off the natural movement of characters in the engine while adding more precise interactions.

The zooming, slow-motion joust took many iterations to get right and persisted through all the designs that followed. Yet the challenges surrounding the joust changed a great deal. Given our lack of satisfaction with how the arena combat meshed with the physics, the next idea was to make the game a series of one on one jousting matches. The player would maneuver Moki into position and charge at the enemy. My original designs for the jousting developed into an almost puzzle-like challenge with the player having to observe how the enemy reacted to each blow in order to determine their weak spots. But as we began trying to implement this mechanic, certain challenges arose.

Size Matters Not. Usually.

During the Fall semester, our development team consisted of two programmers (Mark Sullivan III and Igor Kopylov), myself on design, Yeuhi as the product owner, and of course QA testers Jose Soto and Ruben Perez. When implementing new features, we quickly ran into the limitations of having such a small team. In particular, not having an artist meant that we had to make do with existing assets, only tweaking the models’ poses slightly. The puzzle-like jousting idea became an impossibility just given the shape and size of Moki and Chawi (the NPC enemy). As we came up with new ideas, we had to find ways to reuse assets in new ways. To create a circular track, a single hut was placed in the center of the arena level and enlarged to fill most of the space.

We lost a coder after Winter Break, but picked up a level designer and 3D artist in Randy O’Connor. Finally we could add new models and levels! His addition to the team came just in time for another major design overhaul. To better emphasize the excitement of jousting and to keep the player always moving, we decided to trade arena combat for gauntlet runs. Dashing through a narrow mountain pass, trying to hit as many targets as possible was an instantly exciting new mode. As soon as we had a minimal demo of this idea, we had our own tournament to see who could score the most points in 2 minutes. We knew we were on to something.

Yet the limitations of our team size still created a hurdle. Not having the resources to develop our own level editor, Randy and Igor hijacked Maya. Rather than hardcoding all the collision geometry and objects, they created some tools to utilize specially named 3D objects in Maya that would export into the relevant information. A smooth pipeline was created for level design allowing complex levels to become feasible. A difficulty that arose was having to use primitive objects such as cubes, cylinders, and spheres to create free form terrain. Panda3D has limits on stacking material effects so we had to make certain decisions about having shadows, normal maps, or other effects. Despite the limitations, Randy made some great looking levels. A general theme of the development process was finding ways to overcome (or at least work around) our limitations.

As a demonstration of Yeuhi’s physics engine, and as a quick, fun, lighthearted experience, we feel that Moki Combat 2.0 certainly succeeded. Throughout the last semester we tossed around various ideas for further small games utilizing these physics controls. Some early prototypes are already underway. Don’t expect Moki Combat 2.0 to be the last you’ve seen of this engine.

Enjoy the game!

[Originally posted at http://gambit.mit.edu ]
I like adventure games. I’m referring specifically to the traditional point-and-click graphical adventures. The first one I played was Torin’s Passage way back in elementary school. It was the funniest game I had ever played and had the most sophisticated plot (but keep in mind that the next closest was probably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time). Torin’s Passage was developed by Sierra and written by Al Lowe of Leisure Suit Larry fame. As a simpler and more accessible variant of the typical adventure games, it was perfect for a kid new to adventure games. There were no verbs to select, generally straightforward puzzles, and even an in-game hint system. What really drew me in were the elaborately animated characters, full voice-overs, and hilarious dialogue. The world of Torin’s Passage was a twisted fairy tale that was light-hearted with an underlying dark edge. I fondly remember the mountain-top guru with a yiddish accent, the slapstick shapeshifting of Torin’s pet Boogle, and the emotional revelations during the final encounter. The intriguing characters and plot-twists made me begin to realize that actual stories could be told through games.

But what do I remember of the puzzles and various interactions? There was the hill where I had to hunt way too long for just the right blade of grass to click. There was a frustrating sound puzzle whose solution seemed arbitrary. There was a puzzle where I had to give a bag of rosin to a man with a violin without any prompting, and I didn’t know what rosin was. To remind myself of any other puzzles, I had to look at an online walkthrough. In typical adventure game fashion, most situations boil down to clicking on the right objects and using the right inventory items. And in typical adventure game fashion, the actual playing of the game is a whole lot less memorable then the non-interactive writing and art. I never think “Oh man, it was so cool when I clicked on the shovel and then on the wall and a secret passage opened! I’m so good at this!”

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of memorable in puzzles in other games. The Secret of Monkey Island’s insult battle springs to mind. Then again, that was a break from the standard mechanics. Hearing people talk about the lack of new adventure games, they frequently say they miss the complex stories, the humor, the interesting situations. Who misses the actual interactions? Are the point-and-click mechanics merely the most convenient method to tell the story? I’m sure many readers would take issue with my assumptions (or even better, are yelling indignantly at their monitors), but bear with me: We’re getting to the good stuff.

The MDA framework for analyzing games has been gaining recognition and is featured in the annual GDC Game Design Workshop. MDA gives us a lens to see the relationship between players and game mechanics. Mechanics are rules and low-level processes that govern the game. Dynamics are the behaviors that emerge due to the mechanics. Aesthetics are the emotional responses the player experiences as a result of the dynamics. It’s important to note that “aesthetics” in the context of MDA are solely based on mechanics and interactions, as opposed to art, music, writing, etc. Here we find one of the shortcomings of MDA. It must be understood that MDA only accounts for one facet of “fun.” That being said, the fun that arises from mechanics and dynamics is certainly vital. This interactivity distinguishes games from all other media.

Let us consider how the MDA framework may shed some light on adventure games. Typical point-and-click adventure games have one of two sets of primary mechanics: either the player must select a verb before clicking on an object, or the game assumes a verb depending on context. The challenge is similar in both cases, involving discovering what to click and in what order. The resulting dynamics involve logical reasoning, recalling an earlier clue, or frequently trial and error. Think about the aesthetics that follow. The player is proud of themselves for coming up with the right solution. There is a sense of discovery as they find new objects or learn new information. While we can come up with more types of “fun” for this, notice how the non-mechanical elements of the game still are central to these aesthetics. Discovery is much more exciting when the object is visually interesting or important to the narrative. Puzzles (using the primary point-and-click mechanic) rely on the narrative and context. Abstracting an adventure game by removing art and story could still be an interesting puzzle, but much less appealing. In fact, would you be able to tell the difference between adventure games?

Adventure games seem to have been astonishingly stagnant in terms of mechanics. The interface for selecting verbs has changed, but adventure games released in the last few years function the same as they did 15 years ago. From a purely mechanical standpoint there is more difference between Super Mario Brothers 3 (1988) and Super Mario World (1990), or Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) and Majora’s Mask (2000), than there is between The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) and the Sam & Max Save the World (2006). Adventure games are almost less of a genre than a single game with different stories and puzzles. But it’s the emphasis on story and puzzles that frequently set point-and-click adventures apart.

There has been plenty of evolution in adventure game mechanics, it just has occurred in other genres. Survival horror games frequently have puzzles requiring item acquisition and usage, but that mechanic is usually paired with real-time combat. Action-adventure games like the Zelda series have adapted similar elements. Role-playing games feature fully animated sequences with spoken dialogue. Each of these genres use elements of adventure games in conjunction with other sets of mechanics that form the primary interactions. I’m currently playing through The Longest Journey, and while I’m very invested in the story and am amazed by the visuals, the game mechanics just feel old. Point-and-click adventure games haven’t faded away by accident, though the proud few continue to be some of the most humorous games available. They still have a place in the game industry, but it’s like listening to vinyl records. Records have their own charm and many people would argue that their sound has more personality than CDs. Once in awhile I get a kick out of listening to my parents’ old Beatles album, but I have 6500 songs on my computer that I can play instantaneously. There is still a market for albums to be released on vinyl, but it is a niche market that shows little signs of changing.

[Originally posted at http://gambit.mit.edu ]
The Game Design Workshop at GDC 2009 began with a series of lists. During the opening presentation, the 100+ workshop participants received a crash course in the MDA Framework, eight kinds of “fun,” four possible aesthetic goals, and various dynamic models. As a professor here likes to write all over our papers: “Jargon!” Personally, I enjoyed the presentation. Marc LeBlanc et al laid out a solid foundation for the formal approach to game design that would shape the next two days. After reading Rules of Play, a 20 minute lecture was hardly daunting. But not every designer has the same theoretical background. There were plenty of programmers, artists, and others who were just interested in the design exercises and getting their feet wet in another discipline. More than a few participants found the presentation to be too technical and uninteresting. How does this all jargon fit into the actual process of design? Hopefully some of the participants skeptical of the theory discovered the applications along the way.

We spent most of the first day creating variations on Sissyfight. Originally designed by Eric Zimmerman and released on the web (as Sissyfight 2000), a simplified card-based version has become a mainstay of game design exercises. Six players are each assigned distinct colors and have a deck containing a card for every action and a card for every color. Once all the players have placed their selected action and target cards face-down, the cards are flipped and the actions resolved. In the simplified version, the commands are a basic attack (deal 1 point of damage), a team attack (deal 2 damage per team attacker, but fails if there’s only one), and defend (receive half damage, rounded down). The game continues until there two players are left with health tokens.

With our 6-person teams, we discussed and analyzed the game before creating our own variation. One of Sissyfight’s strong points is how its simple mechanics work to convey the theme of schoolyard girls taunting each other. Without the name, it’s still an engaging game, but keeping the theme in mind lends the game a lighter humorous quality. The question we faced was how could we change the mechanics to communicate a different aesthetic. With 20 ideas, from monster trucks to debating, we gradually narrowed down our options. The idea we settled on was a combination of tribal and spiritual warfare. Two distinct conceptions of the theme were playtested. First we split the players into two tribes to make the game 3 vs 3. When that turned out to be too unbalanced without extensive complications, we returned to an earlier idea of converting followers. The result was a pool that all damage went into, which could then be claimed by a player if they were the only one to take that action in a turn. But as we iterated, we focused more on making the new mechanic interesting and balanced than matching the theme.

In contrast, another team did a game about bacteria where every card had a post-it note renaming the actions to things like infect and mutate. Each of their changes also were more geared towards following the theme, though it seemed to have some fairly arbitrary limitations. What was really interesting was how they saw the player interactions during the game. My team generally avoided ganging up on any one person and kept the scheming to a minimum. The other team played with constant discussion of alliances against other players and actually incorporated this as a phase in their game progression. With the same set of rules, the two groups had completely different social dynamics. Maybe this was reflected in our design process too. We tended to listen and discuss every person’s ideas and tried to incorporate all input. But as a result, our prototyping process slowed. The other group seems to have made firmer decisions and then had time to incorporate the theme more fully. On the flipside, our team really polished the changed mechanic. The difference here actually brings to light one of my problems with the MDA framework. The A in MDA refers to aesthetics that result from the mechanics and dynamics, separate from any visual or narrative aesthetics. I don’t disagree, but I worry that MDA overemphasizes the mechanics influence on aesthetics. Simply renaming the cards and describing the gameplay from within the theme added a lot to the bacteria team. Would Braid have been nearly as effective without its elaborate artwork and music? But thats an issue for a different, and much longer, post.

Following our second coffee break of the day (there was no shortage of caffeine during the conference) we began Elective A. We had a choice of three activities and I participated in Robin Hunicke’s Facebook game session. Each team had to come up with an idea for a social Facebook-based game and then present their proposal to a team of producers who assign a sponsorship to the game. The next iteration would then have to somehow incorporate the sponsor. One of my favorite proposals was a collaborative art game where the best results would be printed on Threadless tees. But for such an interesting activity, I left pretty disappointed as did the rest of my team. See, the youngest person at each table was placed onto the producer team. I can see that Robin was trying to give us a special role, but in the end we had very little to do aside from listening to pitches, picking a sponsor, and giving a few suggestions. On top of that, Robin was obviously very excited about the activity and ended up doing a fair amount of the talking for us. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a blast to work with, her enthusiasm was infectious, and she gave great input. Just next time: Can we play too?

For the second elective that spanned the last hour of Monday and all of Tuesday morning, I chose “The Three Musketeers.” Similar to the Sissyfight activity, we were given a simple game that we would make changes to. Three Musketeers is a simple two-player asymmetric board game. Rather than make a thematic change like with Sissyfight, we were asked to preserve the theme while adding a third player (and a fourth if possible). So if you have The Three Musketeers against Cardinal Richelieu’s men, who is the third player? Some teams added d’Artagnan or another third distinct side, though most ended up splitting either the Musketeers or the Cardinal into two. With the asymmetric sides, it was particularly difficult to add a player while maintaining a balance. My team, again using an iterative process (moral of Game Design Workshop: iteration is good), where we had two pairs of Musketeers working independently. But the Cardinal’s win condition was to have any three Musketeers in a line. This meant that the two Musketeer players had to strike a balance with each other. By the way, is there really no flash implementation of Three Musketeers? Someone fix this!

Next up was a short activity where each team chose an existing video game and create a paper version that conveyed the aesthetics (using the MDA definition) rather than the mechanics. Now this is a fascinating thought experiment. My team chose Street Fighter and we quickly developed a rock-paper-scissors style play. The designers on the team revealed very different conceptions of how the game would actually play. One designer was convinced that the game needed to be frantic and fast-paced, with players throwing dice or placing cards as fast as possible. This proved to be impractical, but revealed how players see Street Fighter in different ways. It’s the difference between button-mashing and strategic choice of moves. A less experienced player would throw out whatever moves they could while an expert player would be planning moves in advance. Our version kept a similar distinction by implementing a time limit. Players place three actions (high, medium, low attacks, and directional movement) face-down on the table. Once one player has placed all three cards they count down from three. If the other player hasn’t placed all their cards, they have a missed move. The result is that if the player doesn’t plan ahead and constantly reorganize their cards, they could fall behind. The actions we specified definitely could use some adjustment (jump and crouch gave no advantage, only added a disadvantage), but the idea was so successful that I hope to make a fuller implementation at some point. After we presented our game, a man came up to me and explained that he made the Street Fighter card game, and it was very similar to what we had done. I guess we were on the right track.

And finally, to close out the workshop, I signed up for Iron Game Designer. Each team was given an identical bag of objects to make a game with. Rather than giving us typical game-related objects, we had rubber pencil toppers, elbow braces, plastic two-pronged forks, floss picks, a comb, and a plastic bag. One group made a board game using the objects to replace traditional pieces, but the others mostly grew out of throwing things. It was certainly fun, and a relaxing end to the workshop, but using a floss pick and the forks as bow and arrows isn’t exactly a useful design exercise.

Still, the workshop as a whole was a resounding success, giving us a chance to come up with unique ideas and make some rapid prototypes. I’m not sure how much I learned that could be articulated, but the activities provided plenty of food for thought. Would I recommend the Game Design Workshop for next year’s attendees? Absolutely. Will I attend again? Doubt it. There are other summits those two days that I’d like to attend. As far as the Game Design Workshop, I’d be more interested in a workshop held locally every other month or so; essentially a game jam of exclusively non-digital games where go through a variety of small projects.