Gamer Grow

Designing and tuning game difficulty is trickier than it may seem. I'll try to make this one as concise as possible. For some background material, consider looking into Flow in Games: A Jenova Chen MFA Thesis , and Gamasutra's Game Design Essentials: 20 Difficult Games . Today I going to highlight a few methods of creating game difficulty/challenges. ORGANIC METHODS Optional routes/objectives : Super Mario Brothers Coins . As the player moves through each level, there are coins that are never placed in the player's "laziest" path to the goal. To nab these coins, players must jump for them which often requires the player to deviate from the efficient linear path to the end of the level. Some coins are much harder to obtain than others. Because every coin the player sees can be grabbed in a single pass through a level, the boundaries of the challenge are set. In this way, the coins that are placed in tricky areas over dangerous hazards or endless pits communicate a ...

Another day, another podcast. This time I was compelled to write this article by the conversation on Battle Field Heroes in the 8/27/08 episode of GFW Radio . If you haven't listened to this podcast, you should probably do so now. The conversation on Battle Field Heroes is fairly short but very interesting. In the dialog, the brodeo commented on some balancing issues in the closed beta of Battle Field Heroes. In this game, each player can customize the look of their character as well as their charcters battle attributes. Instead of making a well rounded character, by maxing out a particular attribute the GFW crew was able to push the dynamics and balance of the game into deconstrutive routes. The coterie went on to comment on how MMOs often have similar balancing issues. If you're no stranger to this blog, you know that there are two genres of video games that I frequently put under heavy criticism: FPSs (or shooters of any kind) and RPGs. From a strict game design point of vie...

Listening to episode 47 of the Retronauts podcast I was reminded of common communication crutch that many use when trying to expound extemporaneously or otherwise about video games. "[insert game here] is greater than the sum of its parts." How is it possible for a video game to be greater than the sum of its parts? All video games can be broken down into parts. Basically, a game is made up of various elements (audio, mechanical, visual, level, enemy, player, etc). So, if we start with a whole game, break it down into parts, then put it back together how is it possible to end up with more game than we started with? More often than not, when "greater than the sum of its parts" (GTTSOIP) is used the speaker is unable to explain what the parts are or the composition of this greater "sum." Like reading a tricky poem or watching a convuluted film, the type of person who has yet to understand the work will opt to respond saying something along the lines of ...

If you've read my articles on Drill Dozer ( article 1 , article 2 ) , you should be well aware that the biggest set back for the game is that the primary mechanic DRILL frequently creates static space. Because the DRILL mechanic is designed after a mechanical power drill, using the mechanic is about as engaging as holding down a button and waiting for the object to fall apart. Luigi's Mansion features a similar mechanical primary mechanic: VACUUM. This mechanic includes operating the Poltergeist 3000 forwards and in reverse. Unlike Drill Dozer, Luigi's Mansion successfully designed its mechanical mechanic to be engaging for the player and feature a considerable amount of interplay in the process. Before I can fully explain the superior design of the VACUUM mechanic, I have to first explain the core gameplay design of Luigi's Mansion. If you haven't played/seen the game before, then check out this video. Skip ahead about 4 minutes. The game is set in a series of dar...

As expected, The Force Unleashed demo underwhelmed, fortunately, with great timing for the topics recently discussed on this blog: the flow of combat . Here's a list in somewhat chronological order of my thoughts from my short time with the demo. Whoa! What's with the character movement speed? Touch the left stick and the character jets around the screen at speeds too fast for the... Geeze! The camera can't even keep me on the screen. Why is it pointed at the ground if my enemies are right in front of my character. I'm getting shot from somewhere off screen. Not cool. At least I have a... Umm. Why isn't the lock on holding the camera in place. I'm holding the button and I'm still having a hard time keeping things focused on the screen. Zelda OOT could do it, what's the deal Force Unleashed? Perhaps part of the problem stems from... Yeah. You can lock on to objects and enemies which turns the whole battle arena into a hot bed of lockable things. Now when ...

Decay is a natural part of life. All things that live on Earth must also die at some point. And on one's journey through life a person experiences much decay. From one's mental/physical health to the accuracy of one's memories every tangible, quantifiable part of our being decays with time. And it's not just living creatures. Houses even grow old and crumble. The unrelenting wear and tear of nature can weaken and topple buildings never mind the storms that can rock entire cities at a time. Even the very atoms and particles in radioactive materials are known to just up and leave predictably. We're all trapped on this planet in our respective biomes, and so is the decay. Fortunately everything we don't jettison out into space eventually gets recycled back into the realm of the living. Material is consumed, broken down, entered back into the cycle and consumed again. It may sound less than appetizing but this is a reality we've all gotten quite used to by now. ...

Team B.E.S is hitting the road tomorrow. I tried to get a few more posts in before the trip, but it looks like I need the break more than I thought I did. I'll see if I can complete some of the posts from the road (I consider writing a very relaxing activity), but I'm not promising anything. To give you a glimpse at what my brain is filled with, I'm currently sitting on articles like... Decay of Neo*RPG and how decay is a natural conclusion/extension of natural forms. Design/decay of Boktai and taking a gimmick seriously through combined gameplay design (ie. the thing Kojima couldn't do). Sonic 1,2,3, Rush, Rush Adventure review, repair, and re-imagining of Sonic next-gen gameplay . What it means to be a gamer/how games teaches and conditions a gamer's perspective when away from their virtual worlds. Luigi's Mansion - Drill Dozer mechanical match up. Pikmin uncovering the design and depth in Pikmin's origami folded level design. Everyday Shooter repair. DS d...

Just a few points to wrap things up. Simultaneous multiplayer. The core Smash design has the flexibility to support up to four players simultaneously. All of the mechanics, dynamics, and interplay possibilities are increased with each additional player. Some of the possible combinations for matches are team play (2v2), 3 for all (1v1v1), 4 for all (1v1v1v1), and even lopsided combinations like (2v1v1) and (3v1). By turning on team attack (friendly fire) in a 2v2 teams match, teammates must carefully coordinate their attacks as to avoid hitting each other. Because teammates can hit each other, players can also save each other from situations with attacks. If a Jigglypuff teammate is sleeping after using a rest attack, a teammate can step in and wake her with with a light, nonlethal "love tap." The highest levels of team play in Smash are the best the core design has to offer. I had to 2v1 pretty hard at the end. Stock. Another feature that is fairly unique to Smash is stoc...

In any game, it is important that each of the player's mechanics has a specific function that is unique to that mechanic. When mechanics aren't unique, or when they overlap with other mechanics, the core design begins to clutter itself. After all, why design a move that is only slightly different from another move? When answering these questions, of course, the minimum degree of difference is taken into consideration. But pinning down the minimum degree of difference for a fighting game requires an unconventional perspective. Typically, in a fighting game, the only thing that matters is defeating one's opponent. Because the opponent is human (lets ignore computer AI for the purposes of this article) repeating the same move can yield different results because of the opponent's reactions. In other words, overcoming one's opponent mentally or via game rules is the only objective. Beyond this player dependent goal, fighters generally don't challenge the player or fo...

In the struggle to incorporate new, and even next-gen features into a fighter, the developers are at great risk of creating a product that is neither here nor there. In other words, the final product can be something that doesn't work as well as last-gen conventions and falls short of the aims and goals of the next-gen design elements. What's even more dangerous is last-gen design elements often have a caustic, poisoning effect on the next-gen design elements when mixed together in the same game. It is unfortunate that the creator of the Super Smash Brothers series failed to embrace the community of players that gathered around his games. Because Masahiro Sakurai created Super Smash Brothers Brawl completely on his own, often making decision out of negative reactions to the smash community, Brawl greatly suffers from mixed-generational design : when a game contains design elements from at least two different generations of design conventions/approaches that naturally conflict w...

Soul Calibur 4. Street Fighter 4. Virtual Fighter 5. Mortal Kombat 8. GuiltyGearXX Accent Core. All of these games have a few things in common. They're all fighters that have iterated on core gameplay of their series that was established in the last few generations of video gaming. The fighting game genre supports some of the most devoted, skilled, and competitive players around. "Playing to win" is a popular mindset for such players. Unlike traditional single player games where players are given advantages and superior abilities over computer controlled enemies that could never substitute for intelligent opponents, in a fighting game players are pitted against players each I believe this same "do anything to win" attitude has created vocal groups of supporters that have essentially held back many fighting games from truly evolving. I understand where this resistant to change attitude comes from. For most fighters, becoming competent requires digesting an encyc...