TrickyBuddha Studios

The prior three posts (post one, post two, post three) each made me happy to write. I liked musing on fun ideas. What makes me sad is that game design is an object at rest. For various reasons (ego, money, job security, insane hours, focus groups, risk/reward formulas, constant turn-over, etc.), new ideas are rarely forthcoming; instead, many games are derivative - each one slightly improving upon an established, successful formula.

I read a Spider-Man 2 (dev: Treyarch) post-mortem that discussed their web-slinging mechanic. In the first title, the camera was fixed overhead and the player was in a lot of interior locations. The webs that you swung on didn’t “attach” to anything; you hit a button, Spidey shot a web off-screen, a swing animation played, and you moved. Perfectly fine.

No, not this Spider-Man game...

But someone at the company got the crazy idea of letting the player freely move about the city. And he complemented it with the new-fangled idea of using a physics-based, web-slinging model. You’d fire a web at a wall or light post and - based on speed and angles and other factors - you’d move. It would make movement a lot trickier, he assumed, but it would be more visceral and Spider-Man-like.

It was too late into development for Spidey 1, so they shelved it for a potential sequel. Before Spidey 2, they brought it back to the table. The producer, faced with the possibility of investing limited man-hours into this new, untried feature, said it was too complicated to develop and offered too little - at the cost of making things too difficult for the gamer.

In other words, objects at rest. But a small group formed and, probably in their off-hours, assembled a prototype and showed it to the producer. This time, he could see it. And it was fun. He was sold. And Spidey 2 revamped the movement system to incorporate this feature. And the genre feasted on fresh air.

One of the big differences between games and movies is a thriving-and-mature independent industry (movies have it, games don’t). Jane Doe can write a great-but-controversial story with never-before-seen film techniques, gather some actor friends who are interested in the subject matter, and release it in arthouses across the country and make a few million dollars. Or she can release it on YouTube, for free. Regardless, she can compete. And Hollywood can spot these successes and grow from them. The industry as a whole gets better. The fans are made happier.

In gaming, I can put together a role-playing game that features architecture assembled from placeables as opposed to static level art - so that I can swap pieces to create an illusion of a growing/crumbling town. I can write dialogue for a romance interest and then dynamically drop it on the character that the player happens to choose for a romance. I can create an “Escort Linda” quest and then, when the player ignores Linda and she dies, have other characters talk the next day about the unexpected tragedy - and use that to create a murder mystery or a revenge plot.

ASCII Adventure

It’s hard enough getting people to play big-budget games when they don’t trust or respect reviewers, dislike the other elitist gamers out there, and can’t afford the games themselves - or the three systems they need to buy to run the three games they want to play. (And that’s completely side-stepping the majority of games, all designed for horny, pre-teen boys - and turning off everyone else simultaneously.)

But if it looks like an ASCII adventure, what gamers left are going to play it? If it isn’t pimped by Electronic Arts or hailed by a (non-existent) Roger Ebert-equivalent, what gamers left are going to play it? I’m proud of my ideas, but ideas are a dime a dozen; game development is costly. And complicated. If no one is buying it, or making it, or playing it - then developers aren’t taking notes. The industry isn’t growing. And the fans are left to suffer with the same ol’ stale games.

(I mentioned in this post that it’s fun to think of ways to fill the gaps we spot in entertainment. With that in mind, what follows is one of a three-part series (a TBS first?!) about designing a better RPG - or what I currently think of as better - with each post focusing on one unique or not-seen-often-enough game feature.)

(today’s post: 500 words)

I saved the most difficult for last. And maybe that’s why we haven’t seen it yet (have we?). But I’ve thought on the idea and it can work.

So what’s the idea? For lack of something better, I’ll call it time paths.

Our 2x2 Grid

Here’s my thinking. We have a 2×2 grid. Each square is self-contained. Each square contains a linear story. Time starts at unit “1″ and advances through to unit”10″ when the story ends.

OK?

The top-left square is A1. It’s the story of a town’s foundation (at time 1) through to its eventual role as a key city on the map (at, say, time 7). I think that alone is more than most games attempt to accomplish - since most games feature static areas or, at best, an occasional before/after location (i.e. the village you grow up in is later burnt to the ground).

Just envision coming across a small encampment that later becomes the typically bustling city. You’d realize that this is a a living, breathing world.

But wait, there’s more!

What if the squares’ linear stories overlapped? What if, for example, the storyline of the top-right box - A2 - was about a clan of trolls who grow larger in numbers until they’re eventually so plentiful that they banded together and conquered the nearby city of A1? So instead of the city of A1 growing to great heights at time 7, they, instead, are destroyed at time 5. Our time-line for A1 is now: 1 foundation; 2-4 growth; 5 war/destruction; 6-10 wastes/overrun by trolls.

But that’s not all! There’s still more!

What if the grids not only overlapped, but you - the player - could affect these time paths?

You arrive at A1 during your adventures at time 3 and find a bustling little village. You perform a few small quests and help them grow - but ignore the rumors of nearby trolls. You leave for a long period of time. You return at time 7 and discover troll settlements amidst human ruins.

You pick the game up at some point in the future and remember how A1 fell to the trolls. You know you can’t change destiny (right?), but you decide to have fun with it. You help A1 flourish - establishing trade routes, building walls, recruiting militia, etc. At time 5, you man the walls when the trolls attack. But - you repel the trolls. The city grows to greater heights. And you discover new characters and adventures that only exist if the city survives.

Now you’re really curious how the game works and you fire it up a third time. Instead of going straight to A1 to build up, you move to the origin of the problem: A2. And that’s when you realize there are more options: attack the trolls and wipe them out; trick them/talk them into leaving the region; convince them to work with the town at A1; etc.

And that’s when you realize this is an RPG like no other. And it’s as “simple” as an array of events/scenarios matched against time/location - and coupled with some writer/designer love.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s epilogue to wrap this all up.

(I mentioned in this post that it’s fun to think of ways to fill the gaps we spot in entertainment. With that in mind, what follows is one of a three-part series (a TBS first?!) about designing a better RPG - or what I currently think of as better - with each post focusing on one unique or not-seen-often-enough game feature.)

(today’s post: 500 words)

Last post, I wished developers would offer gamers a go-for-broke in-game strategy to allow for greater dramatic flair. I talked about the rewards, but what happens when the player lays it all on the line and fails? That leads us to our next entry: the idea of failure as a mechanic to advance the story.

Precious few games have used failure as a forward-moving plot device. I know that the The Witch’s Wake allowed you to die to access an area that you couldn’t otherwise. Similarly, Planescape: Torment. Some games even give you the task of completing 3-of-5 objectives so that if you mess one up you aren’t blocked. There may be a few other instances here and there; if you’ve got some examples, feel free to add them in the comments.

And while these are innovative and commendable, and impactful from the point of view of the story, this isn’t exactly what I’m thinking.

I’m thinking more along the lines of a mission where you’re tasked with safeguarding a caravan that is escorting a holy relic to a nearby sanctuary. In game terms, you must protect the relic for five minutes. Normally, you fight off some would-be robbers, protect the caravan, see the relic safely delivered, and enjoy a moment of happiness-and-unicorns at the end. And if you fail? You re-load and do it again until you figure it out.

Imagine if, instead, you failed. But the game didn’t force you to re-load. Lying on your back, near unconscious (thanks to your actions and not some intruding cinematic), you watch your fellows similarly beaten - some of whom are killed. The rival faction steals the relic you were protecting and leaves. Maybe they take you with them as a hostage - something you don’t find out until the next day when you wake up in chains, on a ship at sea. Not only is there the realization that it was OK to lose the fight because the game is moving forward, but there’s the tension of being side-tracked from delivering the relic and wondering how this new path impacts that old route. What new possibilities are there?

It throws the gamer off-guard, and that’s a good thing.

The funny thing is that the better developers like to be creative and create “replayability”, allowing alternate routes through a story. They’ll provide options where you can charge a gateway, or distract everyone guarding the door and sneak through it, or let you bribe one of the guards into helping you sneak through the lesser-known sewer route. And gamers love discussing the way that they proceeded through the story to contrast it with their friends’ decisions.

My contention is that failure is an alternate route, too. And a potentially exciting/rewarding one. But right now, developers are afraid that gamers will be demoralized from failing. Or that gamers will stop trying because they think they can succeed no matter what. And those fears (or is it something else?) are blocking developers from seeing the available avenues. Like my prior post, I know this is no small undertaking. Games with options are complicated to make - but a) we’re getting better at procedurally-generated content, and b) we need at least a few more 10-hour wide-open games to compete with the bevy of 100-hour linear games.

Feel free to comment! Until then, stay tuned for post #3.