A save system should allow the player to stop playing at any time, allow the player to pick up where he or she left off with as close to zero replaying as possible, and save as automatically and seamlessly as possible, so the player will not forget to do it.

Saving should be treated as one of the player's natural rights, not an earned privilege or a game mechanic around which to make strategic decisions.

The design space we have to create new games is so unthinkably large that we lose virtually nothing by restricting ourselves to designs with friendly save game systems that don't presume to override the real-life needs of players.

I usually wind up gaming on the fly — a little bit here, a little bit there — and the inability to save 'meaningful' progress quickly is one of those things that irks me. I sometimes resort to leaving my console on, wondering the whole time I'm out of the house if the damn thing is going to overheat and my house, possessions, and dog are going to go up in flames; I don't really need to be punished because I can't schedule my day around gaming. It's an interesting article and rebuttal to some of the 'difficulty discussions' that have been going on lately — Sirlin pretty successfully argues his point that making save systems that don't punish the player for having to put the game down aren't (necessarily) to blame for the lack of difficulty people are grousing about.

Saving the Day: Save Systems in Games [Gamasutra]

JT: I keep thinking about the generation that's getting exposed to all this wonderful, rich opportunity of game-playing as education, and that they expect to be able to manipulate the real world the way they do the game world. How do we bridge that? How do we turn them into socially functioning members of humanity on one planet?

WW: It's funny, because I think they are able, more and more, to manipulate the real world like the game world. If you look at the tools that they have available on their cell phones, Google Maps, and such, the amount of formalized information that we can extract from the world around us is skyrocketing. And it's very much based upon things like game interfaces.

JT: But the fact that they can use that interface and pull up this information hasn't changed one iota of the information content. They're just accessing it.

WW: Oh, they're consumers of it, correct. Although more and more, they do have the ability to produce it ....

Worth watching — or just reading — even if it is a little 'out there.' Then again, what would you expect from Will Wright and an astrobiologist?

Jill Tarter + Will Wright [Seed Magazine]

Our goal when we set out to make BioShock was very clear. We wanted to get to the next level, moving beyond our suite of critically acclaimed games to make a blockbuster. A lot of factors aligned to make this possible: the commercial backing of 2K; the game design knowledge we'd acquired from building System Shock 2; the technological familiarity with our Unreal-based engine that we'd built with previous games. But we still had to figure out how to make it all big-blockbuster big.

A lot of our problems came from underestimating how big the task of making a triple-A product for multiple platforms and multiple regions really is. And other problems came from over-estimating our capacity to solve those problems using our existing procedures and staffing levels.

If there's an over-arching theme of our development, it's that we, like many other developers, believe that ultimate success in this industry comes from iteration. You have to build, evaluate (and have others evaluate) and be prepared to throw things away and rebuild.

It's not terribly long, clocking in at 4 pages, and worth a read — even if you weren't a particular fan of the game.

Postmortem: 2K Boston/2K Australia's BioShock [Gamasutra]

The purpose of this series of articles is to attempt to shed some light on emerging trends likely to influence game design philosophy, and therefore, our industry at large in the next few years.

Rather than an essay in futurology, which is by definition very hypothetical, the trends described in these articles are already in motion — so the question we should ask ourselves is not whether these trends will appear, but rather what their impact will be on video game design.

It's a quick read and worth checking out; I'm curious to see how Luben will tackle the 'megatrends' in his next article, as they don't necessarily have the immediate relevancy of the set in the first article.

The Megatrends of Game Design, Part 1 [Gamasutra]

Awhile back at GDC I attended a panel that discussed taking frustration away from the player. Microsoft evidently has all sorts of metrics that show that players who are able to finish a game are more likely to purchase a sequel or order DLC, so it makes sense to take away the frustration that prohibits a player from finishing the title. These things range from automatically adjusting difficulty, creating more checkpoints, allowing saves anywhere (vs. gating at savepoints), but most importantly, not punishing death. Braid, for instance, is a perfect example of how not to punish death: You simply don’t die. You just rewind to a point previous to dying, and fix your error. There’s no need for multiple lives or continues or checkpoints. You just rewind.

Now, before I continue, I don’t think Braid is what’s wrong with gaming. In many ways, it’s what’s right. But the biggest problem with taking away “Learn by Death” is that in many ways, we’ve removed the challenge. There is little to no tension in GTA IV, because I know that if I get into trouble, I just need to die. Cops chasing you? Don’t get arrested; they’ll take away your guns. Just fight them, die, and wind up at the hospital with all of your guns still on your person. The only penalty is that you might have to replay the mission you were on, and you probably lost the stolen car you were driving at the time. Sure, there are hard parts in GTA IV.

But in the ten hours I played GTA IV I didn’t once have a nail-biter moment (at least I don’t recall many).

I think Braid can be just as punishing as any game that forces you to 'learn by death' — I find few things are worse than figuring out how to solve a puzzle, then be unable to execute it; endless rewinds aren't that far off from dying — but has the challenge really been removed from games at large? Or is it only a particular type of challenge for particular types of players? I log plenty of hours playing games I enjoy (well over the 10 hours the author spent on GTAIV and Halo 3), but I won't put in those kinds of hours if I'm playing games that challenge their players in certain kinds of ways. I hit my frustration threshold and I'm done — usually for a few weeks or a few months, if not forever. I like challenges within reason, and seek out games that hit that sweet spot between 'too much' and 'not enough.' But that sweet spot is never going to be one size fits all.

Challenge vs. Frustration [game-ism.com via GameSetWatch]

The problem is that gamers enjoy pushing limits ....

What's funny is that game designers invite that sort of behavior by implementing responses to it. For instance, how many interactive fiction games implement a witty response to the XYZZY command, even though there is naturally no place or reason for using it? If no game other than Colossal Cave had a response to that command, nobody would be tempted to give it a try. And if there is a response implemented for that command, how many other interesting goodies like that might there be to discover? How many of us who played the original Warcraft sat there clicking repeatedly on their individual units to see how many different annoyed responses it would elicit? It's a form of exploration, I suppose.

Granted, this is a bit different than the topic of role-playing, but I think the same principle applies. Still, in the situation of role-playing, accounting for different types of behavior, even bizarre behavior, can actually work to the game's advantage.

The explicit response mechanic is something that seems relegated to a few types of games; the relation between 'getting into a game' and how a designer designs that game, however, is not. It's an interesting problem to muse on — especially since once a game is released to the public, there's no way to control how players are actually playing it.

Playing the Protagonist Part, Partly [Monk's Brew]

I suppose one question here might be: what would a videogame look like as designed by Vicente Guallart? Would it look like Fracture? If Vicente Guallart and Behrokh Khoshnevis teamed up, would they have created Celestial Impact? But a more interesting, and wide-ranging, question is whether designing videogame environments is not something of a missed opportunity for today's architecture studios.

After all, how might architects relay complex ideas about space, landscape, and the design of new terrains if they were to stop using academic essays and even project renderings and turn instead to videogames?

It seems like you can take your ideas about terrain deformation and instant landscapes and nomadic geology and you can license it to LucasArts, knowing that tens of thousands of people will soon be interacting with your ideas all over the world; or you can just pin some images up on the wall of an architecture class, make no money at all, and be forced to get a job rendering buildings for Frank Gehry.
So would more people understand Rem Koolhaas's thoughts on cities if he stopped writing 1000-page books and started designing videogames – games set in some strange quasi-Asiatic desert world of Koolhaasian urbanism?

He also muses that this is perhaps mistaking 'popularity for engaged comprehension.' Would the pay off be worth having an architect collaborate on level, terrain and building design? There are certainly enough creative landscapes and architectural styles in games to provide interesting fodder for discussion or study — would formally trained architects actually add to that in a meaningful and recognizable manner?

Tactical Landscaping and Terrain Deformation [BLDGBLOG]

[via IndieGames]

I realize that my take on this isn't as statistically significant as whatever market research Playfirst and similar companies may be doing. But I can't help thinking that narrative — real narrative, in which interesting and varied things happen, and the ending isn't just another predictable apotheosis when your character has carried her 20,000th plate — does answer the "why did I do that?" question. It gives the player something of value to take away from the experience, something to remember and think about, which is of far more value than any arbitrary form of status a casual game could confer.

To do that, the solution isn't necessarily to add more modes and structural features to the format. That bloats the system, and I can understand why it might put off new casual players. It's also, fortunately, not required.

She does mention a few games that have employed some sort of narrative to better (and more interesting effect); it's an interesting musing the the problems of 'narrative' design in games, and how designers can increase the narrative potential of casual titles without bloating them with unnecessaries.

'Homer In Silicon': Narrative vs Fiction [GameSetWatch]

In my teaching I have tended to emphasize know thy player more than know thyself, because I feel too many students come to the process with two false preconceptions: First, that game design is a primarily expressive process in which their own desires should dominate; and second, that they are themselves the ideal player for their game.

This is fair enough if they themselves are the only people who will ever play their game, but most designers want other people to play their game as well, and that means thinking about what will entertain them.

Know thy player is doubly important when the game is one that the designer would not choose to play herself — a game for small children, say. When you make games for someone very unlike yourself, you can't rely on your own instincts. You have to study your audience.

Simple and to the point — though, really, many things should be when you get to their core. It's just a matter of paying close attention and recognizing the traps you might fall in before you do.

The Designer's Notebook: The Tao of Game Design [Gamasutra]

A universal game design wouldn’t just stop with action games or titles where you’re directly in control of the protagonist. It could extend out to strategy, space combat, anything really. What else is Starcraft but an action game where you hover high above the battlefield? The concept has been experimented with before in games, but with the kind of refinement we’re talking about it’d be possible to mix completely unrelated players in one game. Take Left 4 Dead. One player controls all of the zombies, the others are all playing characters trapped in the fray. One is engaged in a strategic battle, the other is having a frantic shoot-out. A player who isn’t a huge fan of playing Halo may nevertheless buy a game where they get to control the battlefield while skilled players opt for FPS mode and try to take them out while they control armies overhead. Beyond the always promising broad economic perks of such a game, there’s the co-mingling of different players and preferences in one Universal Design. It’s not a game within the game, it’s a game that has every means of interaction possible in it.

It's an interesting thought, though the old 'jack of all trades, master of none' warning seems like it would come into play pretty easily. Co-mingling, though, is certainly intriguing. It's an interesting piece on choice and game design choices.

Universal Game Design [PopMatters via GameSetWatch]

Consider any game you've played recently. At least some information was conveyed to you in a symbolic manner. What makes this information intuitive? What makes it counterintuitive? Studying these languages, even to a limited degree, made me more conscious of exactly what the difference is.

What is particularly fascinating is the fact that games have already formulated parts of a learned symbolic language for games. Consider the life bar. A life bar is completely alien and counterintuitive, but we'd all recognize and assimilate one instantly. By agreeing on a symbolic notation for health, game developers have acclimated players to it and taught them to recognize it whenever they encounter it. Developers have expanded their toolbox of symbols and added to what can be instantly expressed!

I'm far from arguing that the common video game conceits should be codified into a common symbolic language, but it's interesting to note that, without trying, we've done exactly that to a limited degree.

It's a quick read, but interesting. I can't say I ever pay much attention to in-game languages, other than when I'm more or less forced to, but that's probably one mark of a good one — something that adds color and 'authenticity' without being in your face.

In Tongues: Richard Garriott on In-Game Languages [GameCareerGuide]

... Basically a publisher has about five minutes per game, to explain what the game is about.

So when you're selling a license? It's easy. You say, "Oh, well, we're making this game that's Spider-Man 3, it's going to be blah-blah-blah," they know what Spider-Man is, they know they're going to be signing X quantity of it, mechanically. So that's fine.

You're saying, "Oh, this is a game about little girls, pink ponies, and you know that little girls are going to buy this," it's X number of units are going to go, it's an easy sell. But when you come in with an original game, that they don't have any clear reference to the gameplay of something that has been done recently, that has no license, then it's a very hard sell. And if you have only five minutes? I can't explain Soul Bubbles in five minutes. It's not doable — and I made the game.

Lejade's discussion of the gameplay of Soul Bubbles is particularly interesting, especially since he manages to convey the sense of 'People didn't get what we were trying to do' without sounding like a whiny, pretentious jerk. With the discussion of the casual-hardcore divide that's been going on recently, it's great to hear how people are attempting to bridge that — with some success, but not necessarily from a reviewer's perspective. Interesting interview and well worth a read. In case you're unfamiliar with the game, one of the gameplay videos is appended below.

Mekensleep's Lejade - The Extended Soul Bubbles Interview [GameSetWatch]

But it is possible to shift the paradigm, so why don't older institutions follow suit?

For one thing, they don't consider games "academically respectable," Bartle asserts. For another, computer games staff don't get included in research assessment submissions, because there are no first-class journals specific to the medium — and, of course, major universities just don't see any money in it, he says.

Bartle, who is currently a Principal Fellow and Visiting Professor at the Department of Computing and Electronic Systems at Essex University, explained ruefully: "None of this would matter if it were without consequences. Unfortunately, there are consequences."

Modern universities focus on training in the way that vocational schools do, says Bartle, while older ones have a tradition of education.

My first reaction is 'Well, duh.' Academia is built on tradition and regularity (there is a reason 'disciplines' have that name), so trailblazing a new path is not the easiest of tasks. Even a move to shift perceptions of 'standard' disciplines is likely to be met with suspicion and skepticism. On the other hand, many of those older or less progressive institutions are sloooowly coming around. But the process isn't going to happen overnight, and I wouldn't expect to see 'training in the way that vocational schools do' at an Ivy League institution near you any time soon. I'm also not convinced that's necessarily a bad thing - just as students flock to particular institutions to study under renowned experts in well-established fields, why wouldn't we expect the same out of people wishing to study gaming?

MUD Co-Creator Bartle Criticizes Gaming And Academia Divide [GameSetWatch]

... We are reminded of sports or puzzle games with unnecessary story elements tacked on as evidence of the misguided nature of narrative games. Or we explore the limits of games like GTA4 and Bioshock and bemoan the promises broken when it comes to fully identifying with Niko or making truly meaningful ethical choices in Rapture. These "failures" are seen as defining the limits of narrative gaming - reminders that games just aren't quite up to the challenge of telling good stories.

Really?

I'm the first to admit this narrative medium is still emerging from its infancy...but what a handsome baby it has been! It requires no strain on my part to recall a fairly large collection of games that have provided narrative experiences I've found compelling and meaningful. System Shock, Deus Ex, The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker, Planescape: Torment, Bioshock, Planetfall - these are only a handful of the many I could name. Are any of these perfect? No. Could they be improved in all sorts of ways? Certainly.

Amidst the teeth gnashing and wailing that frequently accompanies these discussions of narrative, a little injection of positivity is a welcome thing every now and again. Also worth keeping an eye on — and a bit of a tie in to this article — is a developing 'conversation about Braid' and interactive story telling.

Beware the straw man [The Brainy Gamer]

Not playing Civ taught me some important lessons about the audience for games. Yes, I may want to screw around with history and make bizarre alternate timelines but most players want to be authentic to their perception of history, not to their boundless imaginations, at least in the context of nation-building games. I may feel constrained by a tech tree which encodes certain preconceptions about history, but most players of Civ find in the technology tree a vibrant advancement mechanic that they enjoy exploring and min-maxing to their benefit.

Not playing Civ taught me that I am not the audience for games, even though I have spent my life playing them. And that, I suppose, helped push me into further exploring just who the audience for games really were…

The whole Round Table set is worth a read, as always. There are twelve entries thus far, which is more than enough to while away an hour or two with.

What I Learned From Not Playing Civ [Only a Game]

Everything. Much of the GUI is not as complete or polished as planned in designs. Room creation/publishing/decorating could be a lot easier than it is now - we're working on that. Social functionality needs to be built out further - finding friends and inviting friends should be easier and more productive. There are some aspects of the client that limit how flexible it is as an element of web design - we would like to have it be more malleable in the hands of web designers.

There is a big demand for the ability to create content. We have a tool that our artists and partners use to publish content after its been exported from off-the-shelf DCC tools like Max, Maya and SketchUp. The publishing tool needs a redesign and documentation before its ready for public consumption. However, UI design and development for that is a simpler task than ironing out the policies for user-generated content.

Ruberg's initial complaints centered around Lively's lack of support for cybersex, but she coyly notes that "Earlier conversations with Young may or may not have involved interface design changes specific to cybersex, but since Google has no official statement on sex in its virtual world, those comments will have to be left to your imaginations ...."

Q&A with Google Lively's User Experience Designer [Terra Nova]

Can you make an AI-free, randomness-free, physical-challenge-free, single-player game with gameplay depth akin to that of Go?

Is there any hope for the single player art game that seeks to provide that kind of depth at the gameplay level?

I now firmly believe that the answer is "no." The proof comes from considering how one might go about winning, or doing well at, such a game. If there is a single, optimal path to victory, then systematically finding that path is the main task in the game. Once the path has been discovered and documented for future use, the game's depth is exhausted. If there are multiple possible paths to victory, finding the rest after you've found one is an optional act of completionism, an exploration of mechanical depth.

He provides the fruits of his exploratory labors in the form of a board game-type game called i45hg. It's an interesting piece to digest even if you don't bother with the game — as Rohrer points out, a lot of things that failed as single player experiments would've 'sprung to life' with two or more players.

Game Design Sketchbook: Testing the Limits of Single-Player [The Escapist]

There's not much yet, but if Ryan can stick to the book-a-week premise, I think there will be a nice and very accessible collection of reviews and thoughts on a wide variety of books. It's one of those things I've added to my feeds and just hope it doesn't peter out.

The Secret Books of Game Design [Words on Play via Grand Text Auto]

Video games can be gateways to higher learning. Is it idealistic? Sure. But the base repudiation of idealism is so often used as a shield against saying anything interesting. Anti-idealism is what keeps triple-A games generic, and the reversal of that trend should already be a good enough target.

Compare the social value of these games to that of Halo or Oblivion. They're just as entertaining, but they are not relevant to any humanitarian or political discussion, and are certainly not literary. The Wire and The West Wing will not reform government but they will challenge and galvanize their viewers.

I'd be curious to know how many people actually went out and tackled Ayn Rand after playing BioShock; I'm also a little skittish about the idea of heavy handed philosophy and the like making a strong appearance (one Xenosaga series was enough, thank you). Fyfe's opinions aren't new by any means, and can be found in just about any essay talking about more 'grown up' themes in games. Interesting essay and worth a look.

Video Games Are The Silver Bullet [GameSetWatch]

Perhaps "manifesto" is too strong a word for what I'm describing, but at the moment I can't think of a better one. Most dictionaries define the term as a public declaration of intentions, motives or views. Beyond that simple definition, however, manifestos are intrinsically anti-status-quo. Regardless of its framework - politics, ideology or art - a manifesto is a defiant call for change and an implied "Who's with me?" All of the people I'm about to describe are plugging into something that sounds very much like a collective manifesto to me.

Many people currently writing about narrative and game design do share a lot of commonalities in thinking, so some sort of 'collective manifesto' (even just informally speaking) does make sense. Anyways, Abbott's roundup isn't particularly long, but worth a read; he's done the work for you when it comes to pulling out some particularly salient bits of the essays.

Narrative manifesto [Brainy Gamer]

Braid had already appeared at two GDCs before I ever got involved. Jonathan Blow, its creator, showed Braid's time manipulation puzzle-platformer gameplay at a couple Experimental Gameplay Workshops, and an Independent Games Festival, where it won an award for game design. Minus some polish, it was nearly a finished game: playable, coherent and individualistic.

Visually, though, it was primitive. Its blocks, spikes and ladders were utilitarian, communicating merely the elements of platformer-ness. It could have remained a visually simple game, but it already contained hints that it wanted to be more, to express itself across the full multi-media palette available to video games.

... Hired as visual artist in the summer of 2006, my challenge was not only to clearly present Braid's mechanics and behaviors, but to help tell a story that was anything but literal: part anecdote, part artifice, part philosophy.

It's an interesting article even if you're not terribly interested in Braid, as it goes through the art creation step by step with lots of screens. It's an edifying little essay.

The Art Of Braid: Creating A Visual Identity For An Unusual Game [Gamasutra]

... I also find The Count of Monte Cristo frustrating because the mechanic is such a bad form of interaction for the storytelling that is supposedly going on in the game. I would be a little more patient (I think) if the object searches were a little more relevant to the game's supposed narrative, but in the case of the Cristo game, we get to search for absurd things in various settings around Marseille.

(To give credit where due, the settings themselves are designed to be period French rooms — but that doesn't quite excuse the fact that apparently one of the damning bits of evidence against the villain is, in fact, a pine cone.)

She breaks down more successful marriages of literature and game, which mostly center on gameplay that actually seems to relate to the narrative. Personally, I find a lot of hidden object games to be the worst offenders in 'crappy casual games' — sure, there are some that are nicely put together, but many are eye-sores of poorly put together photographs that just look ... cheap — so I guess I fall into the same category as Short. And people are supposed to want to shell out money for these things? In any case, I'm always interested in Short's opinions on narrative design and applications to here-and-now games, and this article is worth a read. It's not enough to drape a mantle of 'classic literature' around a game — it's nothing but nice window dressing unless it's supported by gameplay (I would still love to see the FPS version of Wuthering Heights, however).

Playing the Reader [GameSetWatch]

Despite my fondness for the adventure games of yore, it appears the days of puzzles in narrative games have come and gone. Puzzles - especially the serial unlocking variety found in the old LucasArts games - seem to have become a relic of a bygone era. Where they once provided a necessary ludic element to a clever and often complex narrative - designed to add challenge and force the player to earn his progress through the story - few modern players have the patience for such challenges anymore ....

Combat has replaced puzzles as the progress-impeding mechanic du jour for modern gamers, and fast-paced action, quick reflexes, and gamepad dexterity are the premium skills. To be sure, games like SOCOM and Call of Duty also require strategic thinking, and online multiplayer often requires fine tactical thinking and cooperation. But puzzles - the kind you study for awhile, scratch your head about, and maybe even mull over in your sleep - have largely disappeared from narrative games.

Is there a place for puzzles of the old school stripe in current games? Abbott suggests considering the purpose of such puzzles in narrative-driven games while re-thinking their implementation; it's a difficult puzzle, to be sure, but one whose dividends could pay off in future gameplay.

Puzzles are for geezers [Brainy Gamer]

When we acknowledge videogames as a medium, the notion of a monolithic games industry, which creates a few kinds of games for a few kinds of players, stops making any sense. As does the idea of a demographic category called “gamers” who are the ones who play these games.

The point is not whether games qualify as art or not. Nor whether games are useful tools or not. Rather, the point is that there are lots of other things people can and do accomplish with videogames. Some are well-established, like entertainment, and some are emerging, like meditation. No matter, all of those uses taken together make the medium stronger and give it greater longevity.

I'd quibble with some of his assertions on books (We don't distinguish between 'serious' and 'entertaining' books? C'mon Ian, you can't possibly believe that — and if you do, I've got a couple of bookshelves I'd like you to see), but it's an interesting essay on the wide and varied uses of games — and what that may mean for the industry.

The End of Gamers [Edge Online via Water Cooler Games]

Look at the big picture. Think 10 or 20 years down the road.

In that kind of time frame, do you think your games might have lots of different types of AI-controlled characters with different shapes, sizes, and movement capabilities?

Will players have AI henchmen that they expect to be just as intelligent as themselves?

Will your game worlds be significantly larger, more complex, and more dynamic than they are today?

Will you have huge crowds of AI characters — so many that just using simple steering and obstacle avoidance are no longer adequate to make them coordinate with each other effectively?

Will your games have realistic physics and huge amounts of physically-simulated objects, and will players be able to use the physics to mess with the AI characters in every way imaginable?

Will players be able to change the game world until it's virtually unrecognizable?

Will there be AIs in multiplayer that are expected to pass for human players?

If you're interested in nitty-gritty game design elements and AI in games, the article is definitely worth a read through. Even if you're not terribly tech savvy, it's an interesting piece to spend some time with.

Fixing Pathfinding Once and For All [Game/AI]

To build a meaningful game, a narrative designer joins together and balances these disciplines in game development so that the story can shine in a game. When done successfully, the game expresses themes that connect to audiences. It becomes more than simply a game, but a meaningful experience ....

By espousing this multidisciplinary approach to narrative design, developers can elevate the art of game development as well as increase the bottom line. Meaningful games require advance planning, but players benefit much from the integration of story, art, gameplay, sound, and music. Using themes, narrative designers ensure that each play experience is not only immersive, but also a meaningful one.

Clearly this is geared towards games that have a real narrative to weave the other elements around, but not shirking any of these smaller parts in creating a grander whole would add to any game. It's a shortish essay that's worth a quick read — Chen's piece is nowhere near as pedantic as some of these 'narrative design' essays can be.

Towards More Meaningful Games: A Multidisciplinary Approach [Gamasutra]

Danc at Lost Garden has another take on the utility (or lack thereof) of game reviews in today's gaming landscape, this one looking at the 'expertise bias.' He points out the disparity between reviewers and players when it comes to looking at new games — especially ones that have a gentle difficulty curve. His basic operating premise is that because game reviewers have plowed through so many titles and mechanics, they're looking at 'difficulty' in an entirely different light than vast portions of the audience. What will the future look like? He posits observation of other players is going to become increasingly important to developers, and if reviews can't keep up with that, they will really fall by the wayside:

If you are serious about providing objective insight into a game, either a title you are building or one your are reviewing, your expertise is not enough. In fact, your vast mastery of game related skills is mostly likely causing a giant bias in your judgments. You need to fight this bias by observing other players over and over again. They will do things with the game that are a source of wondrous insight. Your expertise becomes a tool for making great changes based off these insights, not one for predicting a priori exactly how all users will react to the game.

As for the current review industry, it is built on the unstable foundation of expert opinion in the absence of actual player observation. As games evolve and become ever more about first time learning experiences, the traditional game review will become increasingly irrelevant. It is arguable that they've already stopped informing most buying decisions and now serve as little more than entertainment for the hardcore niche. As the value proposition of reviews falter, the vast, churning, capitalist forces of creative destruction will replace them with a much richer set of game criticism that offers real value to its readers.

We've heard a lot about why the reviewing structure is broken, but this is an especially thoughtful take on the problem. I'm not sure it's one that can really be gotten around (critics — of the game, film, food, or book variety — tend to get those positions by being 'experts'), but it makes for interesting reading to be sure.

Soul Bubbles: A classic game ill treated by expert reviewers [Lost Garden]

You should check out Dogniaux's site for a loads more, as the French naming is half the charm.

Wii recherche [design matin, via 4CR]

I wanted to make a game about how regret feels, but not necessarily about how to overcome regret. We both agreed that we should avoid the Deepak Chopra self-help angle.

My initial design ideas used 2-D platform mechanics as a foundation. Imagine making a mistake like missing a jump, but not dying from that mistake. Instead, imagine that mistake coming back to haunt you, forcing you to replay that jump again in the future. Imagine a level that becomes longer and longer as the regrettable past portions of the level are injected ahead of you - a future populated by past mistakes that you must replay.

Using familiar mechanics as a foundation can work, but I'm more interested in devising new mechanics that are the best possible fit for the topic at hand. I cast the net a bit wider and came up with the design that involves feeding animals. Oh, and killing them, too.

Worth a look this weekend if you've got the time — I didn't have much time to play around with it, maybe after I'm safely ensconced in LA for our E3 get together. Here's hoping traffic doesn't suck.

Game Design Sketchbook: Regret [The Escapist]

“I am shocked and overjoyed to be the first G.I.R.L. Scholarship recipient,” said Brasil. “I’m really looking forward to my internship with SOE, and getting some hands-on experience at such a well-known company. It’s such a great opportunity.”

Shocked, Julia? You need to believe in yourself. Dreams really do come true; you're living proof.

SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT AWARDS $10,000 SCHOLARSHIP FOR WINNER OF FIRST-EVER G.I.R.L. GAME DESIGN COMPETITION
G.I.R.L. Scholarship Program Helps Boost Female Educational Opportunity
SAN DIEGO, Calif. - July 8, 2008 – Sony Online Entertainment LLC today announced that Julia Brasil of San Francisco has won the 2008 G.I.R.L. Game Design Competition. The competition was the first of its kind and was promoted in conjunction with The Art Institutes system of schools, to encourage students toward career paths in the creative and applied arts, ultimately resulting in the development of games that are more interesting for women to play.

Brasil, a student in the Game Art & Design program, was awarded a $10,000 tuition scholarship toward her education at The Art Institute of California – San Francisco and a paid internship of up to 10 weeks at the Sony Online Entertainment studios of her choice in Austin, Denver, San Diego or Seattle.

“I am shocked and overjoyed to be the first G.I.R.L. Scholarship recipient,” said Brasil. “I’m really looking forward to my internship with SOE, and getting some hands-on experience at such a well-known company. It’s such a great opportunity.”

Brasil was one of nearly 100 applicants vying for the winning title of the 2008 SOE G.I.R.L. Game Design Competition. In order to become the winner, Brasil had to submit an in-game design, original concept art and two essays.

“We believe our groundbreaking G.I.R.L. scholarship can give Julia the foundation she needs to pursue a successful career in the video games business. SOE is thrilled to jumpstart the first step in pursuing her goals,” said Torrie Dorrell, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing, Sony Online Entertainment. “We anticipate G.I.R.L. continuing to evolve and snowball, creating even more opportunities for women to get behind these games.”

Due to the popularity of the initiative, SOE will make official G.I.R.L — Gamers In Real Life — T-shirts available for purchase sometime this summer. For more information about G.I.R.L., go to girl.soe.com.

Dreaming of Dashboard 2.0 [Platform Nation]

Lest you blanch at the notion of Solid Snake lumped in with Days of Our Lives or Waiting to Exhale, I would suggest to fans of Braveheart, Lost, CSI, and virtually every sports movie ever made that you are also fans of melodrama. The Call of Duty series, the Final Fantasy series, Bioshock - even significant portions of GTA IV - all rely on melodrama to deliver their experiences.

And at the center of these tales is the classic Melodrama Hero - a man (sometimes, but rarely a woman) of strength and courage who must do great deeds in an environment of heightened emotional intensity; a hero who operates within a clearly defined world of good and evil, charged with restoring order and stability from chaos. Solid Snake and Dudley Do-Right are cut from the same cloth. One may be a conflicted hero with lots more backstory (and, okay, Dudley is a cartoon caricature), but dramaturgically they function in remarkably similar ways.

I have to say I would think most people would blanch at the idea of Solid Snake lumped in with soap operas ... but he's got a point. Melodrama is a hugely effective narrative style — and the reasonably clear dichotomies we see in many narrative-driven games is one critical part in labeling them as 'melodramas,' or at least as media possessing melodramatic elements. However, I don't think the world is quite ready for the Days of Our Lives RPG. At least, I certainly hope not.

We do melodrama [The Brainy Gamer]

Video games often face a challenge: what does playing a game do to people in the world? In the case of entertainment games, such a question asks about the effects of violence on players, or about how players find and evaluate meaning in games.

In training, advertising, and learning games, the question asks how players take knowledge they learned in a game and apply it in their daily lives. The motivational (and compulsive) aspects of games suggest other ways gameplay can influence behavior. But such matters cover only part of the intersection between our game lives and our ordinary lives ....

Performativity in discourse produces action. Performativity in video games couple gameplay to real-world action. Performative gameplay describes mechanics that change the state of the world through play actions themselves, rather than by inspiring possible future actions through coersion or reflection.

The performative aspects of games go far beyond 'serious' games, and Bogost has a number of interesting examples — good reading for a lazy weekend.

Persuasive Games: Performative Play [Gamasutra]

I believe the videogames industry has an ongoing problem, in that a large proportion of the people who influence the game design process prefer Strategic play to other kinds of play. But as the audience for games has exploded into the mass market, strategy games (and other forms of Strategic play, such as adventure games) have become niche titles, with even the most popular titles selling no more than a few million units at most, while games with a wider appeal can rack up more than ten million units (as Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, GTA: San Andreas, Guitar Hero and The Sims all demonstrate in wildly different ways).

A good strategy game may well be a series of interesting decisions – but a good game is something that meets the play needs of its audience. If you want to make games for the new videogames market, you’d better start striving to understand just what those diverse play needs might involve.

Certainly, plenty of games are a series of interesting decisions, but as Bateman points out, it doesn't mean all games are, and many super-successful games don't fit the paradigm.

A Game Isn't a Series of Interesting Decisions [Only a Game]

But did you know that it's been featured in at least 48 video games? From Ant City to Timesplitters 2, Mr. Juandrful at Kezins has gleaned the full list. It's longer than Wikipedia's list of games using the scream, and includes titles not yet released (where the scream is used in a trailer), so he seems to have done his homework. We had a little something on this back in 2006, but not a full list of games. So check it out. And booby prize goes to whomever comes up with the best onomatopoeic spelling of the scream, in the comments.

We've All Heard it: The Wilhelm Scream [kezins.com]

I do love Lost Garden's prototyping challenge, though I will never in my life prototype any game, even simple and super cute ones. However, I always love seeing what other people come up with — it's an interesting exercise in observing the design process with playable prototypes. The latest is a cute idea that takes advantage of 3D engines and real-time shade. The basic idea is that you play a farmer who has to save his haul from the scorching sun:

You play the part of a rugged mushroom rancher who must collect adorable sentient mushrooms living in the shade. All you need to do is run up to a planted mushroom and touch it. It will pop out of the ground and start following you around. Lead it back to the start location and you'll be awarded multiple point based off its size.

Unfortunately, it is a scorchingly hot day. You can meander about the landscape of giant grassy blocks with impunity due to your meglo-awesome wide brimmed hat, but the mushrooms wilt quickly in sunlight. To lead them back successfully, you'll need to keep to the shadows and plot the optimal path home.

There's a lot more in terms of what the game needs to include, and unlike a lot of previous prototyping challenges, Danc is not providing art assets, though he does make some suggestions on what sorts of options people could employ. So, if you're sitting around this month and are itching for a challenge, wander over and check it out.

Shade: A game prototyping challenge [Lost Garden]

Anders Tychsen has some interesting ideas on how to leverage elements of tabletop RPGs in order to make their digital cousins more compelling (and thus keeping players enthralled for longer). Tychsen points to issues of integration — something many tabletop games are quite strong on, but an area that has seen less work in creating console or PC RPGs — as an area that could use some work, and create more positive gaming experiences:

Tabletop RPGs have for the past 30 years created personalized story-based gaming experiences for players worldwide. Given their likeness with digital RPGs, it would seem there are some opportunities for leveraging these experiences.

Character generation systems can provide sets of cues for the game engine to react to and direct content after, provides a reasonably simple method for integrating soft personality components in a programming environment, is theoretically simple to design and integrate, and can be scaled to accommodate different levels of intricacy and integration.

A personality system such as that observed in many tabletop RPGs has the further advantage that it is modular, it can be designed to change appearance and stats of characters or it can be strictly parametric.

It's an interesting take on what could be done to current games (without too much work) to make them more interesting (and personal) experiences.

Innovations In Character: Personalizing RPGs, Retaining Players [Gamasutra]

Portable XBox 360/Zune Phone Fantasy is Exactly What Microsoft Should Make [Gizmodo]

While some people argue that what games need is more monotony, at least in terms of black and white games, plenty of people are dissatisfied with the current trend of drabness in developers' color palettes. Of course, there are plenty of brightly colored games that are and will continue to be released, but plenty of people miss color. Bright color. I myself am rather fond of candy-colored palettes, preferring them to drab medieval "realism." One blogger thinks he has the answer to who stole the color from games:

... I think that publishers have convinced developers that the game buying public is composed almost entirely of teenage boys.

If the binder doodles, film and music consuption habits of my friends in junior high is any indication, adolescence is as much about proving that you’re not into “kids stuff” anymore, as it is about anything else. Remember when Nintendo made Wind Waker more cartoony? Remember how sales spiked when Prince of Persia went from this to this? Remember what the monsters of Doom 3 look like?

This is the legacy of teenage boys that continues to shape our industry. We sell to our audience, our audience thinks that they want “mature” titles and someone told them that mature meant dark, dank and bloody. Dystopian novels English curriculum, I am looking in your direction.

I can appreciate muted palettes as much as anyone, but it's nice to step into games that are so far removed from reality that the grass is always emerald and the sky is always some slightly unnatural color of blue. Are teenage boys to blame? I don't know about that, but there's nothing wrong with prettily painted games. And you can be muted without being drab.

Who Stole All the Colours? [Quiet Babylon via GameSetWatch]