Game Developer Uses Sweden's Twitter Account to Confront Sexism and Misogyny in the Game Community
Naseer’s got a point, as stated by DorkmasterFlek in the comments: there is a vocal minority who does terrible, unspeakable things in the name of the gaming community. Everything seems fine in stating that, but inspired by a certain tweet by Neil Tyson, I’ll take a stab at it: it’s not only the fault of the vocal minority, it is also fault of the “non-vocal majority”. Now, not everyone needs to be spearheading a movement against misogyny/racism/whatever. Get too much people trying to lead groups and you’ve got yourself a wholly fragmented movement. Instead, why not just skip that cofee today and chip in some five bucks to Gaymercon? Show up at the event, if you can. Get your friends to stop using offensive slurs (at least when they are around you/playing with you).
Inaction can be extremely harmful too, you know?
Now, don’t get this wrong: while I love “hard”/”challenging” games, this is not a “I’ve beaten all the nintendo-era hard ones and I think all gamers these days are wimpy” hardcore-esque rant. Neither the video is, if you strip all the joking from it. It is about building different gameplay modes for a single game, and while an “Iron Man Mode” ought to please several people, the same can be said for the other extreme, for a “Story Mode”.
That got me thinking about how we never think of the wording we use for these things. Why name it “Easy”, “Normal” and “Hard”? Wouldn’t that affect people’s perception of their own skills? What happens if we change those respectively to “Story Mode”, “Challenge Mode” and “Iron Man Mode”? And not just using those as methafors, but actually implementing those differences. That is, instead of just changing the amount of challenges and the required response time for them, why not go further? Change other things too! Change the availability of saving mechanics, what happens when you are defeated, the way the story flows (but without that “you won’t get the good ending unless you play at normal or higher difficulty” stuff that Touhou does).
I’m actually considering doing these things as an experiment for a future game.
P.S.: This music has such a snazzy beat. Can’t stop listening to it!
Coming soon: Remember Me
Science fiction? Check. Parkour? Check. Espionage? Check. Interesting mechanic that changes the way you perceive the game’s world? Check.
Only thing I couldn’t tell from the trailer was if they’ll address the moral issues regarding the invasion of people’s privacy through messing with their memories. (reading and erasing them)
Piracy is a fact of life, so why not just have fun with it?
Yes I’ll keep pushing this issue until I see it sink in on everyone around me. I’ve spoken about this before, but every time some big news about it comes out, I feel the need to go on about it again.
Happily, it seems the current trend is for a greater acceptance over the fact that piracy isn’t to be fought directly. Instead of spending a lot of time and money making up numbers, focusing on improving your product is being accepted as a viable answer, as well as the (positive) effects of piracy on the widening of audiences are being recognized.
No new arguments from my side this time, yes, but it’s good to look at this stuff again. Also, regarding the article: I am more than ready to take inspiration from these people and oficially make pirated versions of my games available to everyone. (that is, as soon as I have anything I won’t be already giving people for free to copy and play)
Sharing Design : Shoot 'em Up Dream.
Further motivated by Lessie2D’s Recent Post, I have decided to post my first Sharing Design installment. This coincides with my next personal project, Shoot ‘em Up Dream.
Good Bye Bullet-Hell
I have never found the memorization of elaborate curtain fire very fun, therefore I have chosen to…
So I forgot that the ask feature has a character limit so I’m just gonna reblog this and offer my criticism.
So pretty much as I already mentioned the ammo concept might force players into memorizing the stages and make them focus more on trial and error to progress rather than reflex and hand eye coordination. If you’re too generous with the ammo count it will go back to being what you mentioned to where the player could just focus on dodging and not worrying about running out of ammo.
It will be difficult to find a balance, but it could add a compelling element to the gameplay if it’s pulled off properly. You could do what Einhander did and have a super weak fallback weapon. Or you could make it so that once the player runs out of ammo it slowly regenerate. In a doujin shooter called Hellsinker there’s a player ship that had a extremely powerful main weapon, but it had an ammo count that runs out very quickly. Once it ran out it would become super weak until the player stopped firing and allowed the ammo to regenerate.
The regenerate feature would probably be a good balance because it keeps the game fair for those who play for survival and still reward them for performing combos. These are just my concerns, you don’t have to give what I said thought and given time you might come up with something better.
In Tyrian, you had a sort of limited ammo, as in firing weapons uses up your ship’s generator. Therefore, if your ship is equipped with weapons stronger than your ship’s generator (which eventually it will), then you will inevitably run “out of ammo”, which not only makes your firing stop, but also prevents your shields from recharging, leaving you unable to kill enemies AND unable to take extra hits until your generator gets enough breathing time. (you can play it on modern machines through the OpenTyrian port. Highly recommended)
Tyrian also features the armor/shield bars instead of a counter for lives, just like you mentioned, and it also has room for different kinds of weaponry (if I’m not mistaken, it has room for a front weapon, a rear weapon and an “option” that either has (actual) expendable ammo or is just another regular weapon that circles your ship). But I really loved your idea of different buttons for different weapons, although I do find that four face buttons are a bit hard to press all at once when trying to go all-out against a boss. Have you considered adding an extra “fire everything” button the player can hold to try to plow against a hard opponent through sheer firepower? (might not be the best strategy, but who doesn’t get excited during “this is it, people, let’s fire everything we have at once” scenes in shows and games? I know I do!)
Another really good idea can be seen on Revolver 360 (Xbox, but according to IndieGames.com a sequel is coming soon to PC), where you can rotate the playing field, which changes your position relative to enemy bullets and effetively adds a real third dimension to the shmup genre. Looks to be loads of fun!
I also get your opinion regarding bullet hell. I always found it extremely fun (just look at me gushing over Touhou over and over again), but it is a genre that is pretty much the least inclusive possible. If you look at Touhou’s fanbase, you’ll find that most probably about half never played any of the games because theyre too hard/not their style, and probably less than 20% (I’d shoot for less than 5% but I’m trying to be optimistic here) kept playing after their initial contact with the game. That’s just not good enough, to publish games that are indeed really good, but that - for mechanic issues - are turned down even by people who liked pretty much everything else about them.
Source: wesleyeldridge
The Hard Work?
Seriously? Is this person even for real? As if “doing the hard work” would be a statement of badassness or even of the value the game holds? Does this person realize that even the most persistent and proud of the programmers does not do the hard work? I, myself, am trying to do the hard work with my game, and a couple of things became apparent to me: first, trying to do everything yourself is (most of the time) stupid and a waste of effort, and second, I am not doing the hard work, OpenGL and the Java standard library are.
These engines, tools, libraries and whatnot are the only and best thing a programmer could do for this industry, which is to allow other people - the people who actually want and know how to make fun games - to do their work, without hassling them with stuff they shouldn’t need to know. “Doing the hard work” is not making a game, but designing the right obstacles for the right moments is.
Please, fellow gamers and developers. Stop trying to judge the value of someone’s art by the effort it took to make, and just enjoy it. Everyone will be happier like that.
For a while, I’ve been trying to find the...
For a while, I’ve been trying to find the words to convey this idea. The idea that narrative and gameplay are not in fact separate things loosely strung together, but that narrative IS gameplay. I still don’t have quite the words to describe it, but this post…
One thing that can be clearly seen is, when the story/narrative of a game does not cover all issues that were raised (that is, there are holes in the story, that can be either intentional or unintentional), players tend to fill in with whatever it is that they have at hand. Agreat example is Yume Nikki (for download of the unnoficial English translated version, the game is a freeware (be warned, the game goes beyond what can be called strange)), where you have a really confusing and curious world (or series or worlds), but no clear explanations to almost everything. Players, knowing better, went on to fill all the gaps with the wildest theories as to why the world and the characters are the way they are.
And honestly, that is fine. That is a game playing with our human nature of wanting to build a backtrack of the events observed, as to build an explanation which in turn would make the unknown into something known and therefore not scary nor menacing. And that is merely one way of many for enabling the gameplay to be its own narrative.
(via gamedesignnovice)
How Kickstarter and F2P could kill gaming
So here we are again; the recent kickstarter hype has led to a surprising apogee of crowd-funding. After Tim Schafer’s and Ron Gilbert’s unexpected, innovative and user-financed adventure game last March which achieved its minimal objective in less than eight hours, Kickstarter and comparable sites such as Indiegogo have been receiving an increasing amount of media attention all throughout the blogosphere and subsequently the general internet-community.
Oh man am I tired of reading this sensationalist kneejerk bullshit about how x or y is going to kill an established, working, and loved thing. Saying that Kickstarter and F2P is going to “kill” or “replace” gaming, is like saying the next big Android phone/tablet is going to be an “iOS Killer”
It isn’t.
Just like android, F2P and Kick Starter offer alternatives. We’re going to see some uniquely funded and monotized games from things like Kickstarter and F2P. These platforms are going to grow. We might see a whole new era of crowd funded games that don’t have major publishers.
[…]
Not to mention the big misunderstanding of the OP regarding the use of the “F2P” expression in OUYA’s description. The games aren’t going to be new Farmvilles, but they are required to make some gameplay available for free to be tested by players before being bought, such as a F2P system or a demo.
But what bothers me the most with this kind of “x is killing the industry” attitude is the inability to change that its zealots have. The industry is changing, the public is changing. It won’t get worse, just different. And yet these people go around trying to stop it from evolving, partly because of the already mentioned nostalgia. Well, I’m sorry to say that it is this kind of people that is actually killing the industry, by trying to make it stagnate. “Hardcore” or “core” gamers aren’t the majority, they are the (highly vocal and incredibly ill-mannered, geez) minority, which just doesn’t seem to be able to let go of the “glorious past”.
Moving on to F2P, I find it absurd to say it is a genre that is killing the industry. It is a different means of funding games, while still building something of quality. Sure, there are a lot of bad examples, but it’s not like all games of old are amazingly good. Bad games come in all eras and genres. Bad developers aren’t picky, don’t worry about that. And yet, people don’t seem to be able to do a proper research and find quality F2P games around. Have you tried Combat Arms? I dislike its system of renting weapons, but it works for the game, if you play a couple of hours per week (and don’t suck at it as bad as I do). How about 9Dragons? Best-written MMORPG story I have ever seen, hands down. It’s got a handful of interesting lore, and well-written quests that actually made me interested in reading what the NPCs had to say. Do you know how often that happens in RPGs? It also has fully-animated and (mostly) realistic martial arts moves used by all player characters, and that by itself is worth a lot in my book.
And then we come to the central issue of F2P: the main benefit that came with the genre is the increased accessibily to the gaming community. Before, you had to pay upfront to get a membership card to the “Gamer’s Club” (where all the cool kids hang out), and I know what you’re all thinking about: paying to get in a club sucks, big time. How the hell will you even know if you’re going to enjoy it. Refferals? “Not all my friends have suck refined tastes as myself”. How about reviews? “How will I be sure those people weren’t paid to do good reviews?”. And then we have games that let you play for free. Test it to your heart’s content! Didn’t like it? Just delete your account and off you go! No strings attached! Enjoyed it? How about trying some of our paid stuff? It costs money, but we did put a lot of effort there, and a few people paying it helps us to keep most of our content free for everyone!
You see where I’m getting at, right? Making games more accessible is the democratic way of doing things. Disregard copyright, take control over your own games! More people playing your games (whether they all paid or not) means more people will hear about your game, and thus more people will want to play it (and pay). Don’t be afraid of showing your game (more than just teasers, please) to your fans, they will be delighted to be so close to a game, and thankful for having such good content at a hand’s reach. So thankful, they will want to pay for it, without you needing to force it out of them in the first place. I honestly don’t think anyone has currently achieved a more balanced and democratic way of doing business.
Okay, I am a bit “biased” (not quite the right word), given how I put free access to knowledge and information above the private sector’s profits (as everyone else should). But I honestly think that this mindset is what is right to the industry right now. Trying to get as many people as possible to see that gaming is something positive, and getting everyone engaged in interesting stories and gameplay is a must. Much more important than pleasing a bunch of angry kids who think that the latest AAA (and all of its deeply-rooted prejudices) is the apex of creative development.
P.S.: Sorry for clipping your response, but this post was growing alarmingly large already, and that could make reading it harder. I think.
P.P.S.: I didn’t mention the Kickstarter issue because udknovice pretty much got it covered.
(via gamedesignnovice)
Source: k2ccube
Third Person Perspective in Games Ruins Immersion
Atleast, in most games.
The best way I can put it…
There’s an enormous difference between watching a character on-screen stand next to a corner and seeing what’s waiting for you on the other side…
And poking your head out into the unknown, never knowing what might take a swing/shot at it.
In…
I’ve got to disagree. Take Starcraft for example. It is an RTS, and yet there are some Terran missions where you have no builders/gatherers, instead are presented with an already trained squad of marines (and possibly firebats, maybe even a hero, like James Raynor).
Obviously, you only have a third person view, and yet, those are arguably the scariest missions on the whole game, simply because you are out of the safety of your own territory. You don’t even have a territory, all you have is a bunch of armed dudes in a dark place filled with Zerg. No prospect of building extra units, no resources to gather, no tech to research. Only a limited number of units and your own micromanagement skills. This is called sense of danger, and if you’ve got enough of that in your game, it doesn’t matter if it is third person or not, your players will still feel scared.
Something else that came into play is Starcraft’s amazing use of its (land) units’ field of vision (FoV) regarding high ground (link for Starcraft 2, mechanic applies to Starcraft also) and obstacles, which obstruct the usual circular Fov of land units, preventing them (and thus the player, unless that same area is lit by another unit’s FoV) from seeing what lies behind. That created the already mentioned uncertainty as to what would be behind a corner, present in first person games.
That all added up to make a brilliantly immersive situation, in a game genre that is, oddly, considered to be poorly immersive due to its third person camera. You see, it is not the camera that builds immersion, but everything else, like visibility, sounds, hints of danger, tension, keeping a prize visible (survival) but not trivially reachable, sense of loneliness or abandonment, etc.
The case for movie-length, narrative video games
This article talks about the need for more short format games, and how they fill a void that big budget 10-100 hour games never could.
I like this article a lot because it echos how I feel about a lot of games. I’m never going to buy Skyrim or Fez, not necessarily because I don’t see value in their gameplay, but because I simply don’t have hundreds of hours to pour into them just to complete them. I absolutely adore games like Mirrors Edge, Portal, and other games that can be completed in one sitting. I’ve always preferred quality of quantity, and I get a lot more out of a short game with strong narrative than I do from a giant game with endless mediocre content. Even in games that I love to the core, like Uncharted 2, I get fatigued near the end of the 12-15 hour experience. It feels like I should have reached the finale but I’m still chugging along. I think a lot of the gaming market sacrifices pacing and coherence for “more” content, and I’m getting rather tired of it.
The article itself is a lot less personal than my ramblings, and it focuses on a lot of different aspects of this idea. Definitely worth a read.
Great article. I’ve got to admit that, while I always whine about not having the time to play any long game - especially RPGs (Final Fantasy anyone?) - I always end up spending a lot of time replaying shorter games. Usually I replay stuff like Portal, Shank, and other single-player games, not to mention the hundreds of hours spend on online games such as Left 4 Dead. But to me, there has always been a special place in my heart for Touhou, a series of games that can each be finished in less than 40 minutes each (single player, deep stories told through quick dialogues before and after battles), supposed one is skilled enough to actually make it to the end of any of the games.
I know it sounds really obvious, but what I see out there is that the more “content” the player is forced to go through, the smaller is the replay value of the game. Of course, several other things factor in, but I think that this proportion is something really important to note.
But the most important thing I got from the article definitely was that all game developers must dare to experiment. The industry is young, and rapidly growing, but we cannot afford to stick to what is already established. That would basically invalidade completely the trump card that is to have a lot of different and fresh developers with their own opinion on the industry. Let’s keep pressing forward people, there’s still much to do and much more to learn!
Can fold a crane with only one hand.
