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I recently finished Shadowgrounds: Survivor, the follow up to Shadowgrounds (a good $10 game). While I happily recommend Shadowgrounds to people who like shooters, I wasn’t impressed with Survivor. It had a feature set that sounded like it was aimed at me, but none of those features worked out well in practice.

Character development was foremost among the features that just didn’t work. In the original, you have an arsenal of guns and you earn a variety of upgrades throughout the game. They retained that in Shadowgrounds, but they split the weapons between three separate characters. That means the arsenal was cut into small, unsatisfying chunks that forced a specific style of gameplay. The addition of some minor stat improvement for the individual characters didn’t even come close to making up for the loss of guns.

Difficulty is one of the things that really made Shadowgrounds fun. It was challenging and I frequently teetered on the edge of death, but I rarely died. Often, it felt like a scene from Aliens, where I was desperately fighting against an overwhelming and dangerous foe. That’s gone in Survivor. The game was trivially easy, even starting on the highest difficulty. I was never in danger of dying, and it was rare to even take damage.

So, I recommend trying Shadowgrounds but not the sequel. You can find it (or the demo) on Steam or Totalgaming.net, although the demo doesn’t deliver any pitched fights.

This is a subject I’ve seen come up on and off over the years, and it always fills me with a mixture of intrigue and bewilderment. This isn’t in response to any specific event… it’s just my rambling thoughts.

It’s difficult for me to relate to apathetic development in the games industry, and it’s something that really shouldn’t exist. A few things to begin with:

1) There should be no such thing as an apathetic game designer. Simply put, if you are getting into game design for any reason other than because it’s something you love to do, then you’re making a bad decision. It’s like becoming a painter when you don’t like art. The reason to become a painter is because of a love for the craft, not because you need a job. Ten years from now, I expect that I’ll still be making less money as a designer than I did at my last job. And I’ll b e working longer hours. And I won’t get to work from home. And I’ll be spending my weekends researching other games, reading design books and trolling design blogs.

2) If you don’t love the job, then it’s probably going to burn you out.

3) If you don’t care about the projects you’re working on, then your work won’t be as good.

4) Creative work requires inspiration. It’s hard to be inspired if you aren’t emotionally invested in your work.

Apathy in other positions isn’t as big of a leap for me, because most of those positions involve skill sets that can be applied to other fields. A programmer can get a job at any range of companies. Artists are needed at all types of multimedia and advertising companies. Testers are needed in all software development. Management is management. But what about a game system designer? What kind of job do I get with that skill set? In my case, I’d just fall back to architecture.

In some twisted reality, if someone’s lucky enough to get a job as a game designer just because they think it’s a cakewalk and they don’t really care, it shouldn’t take long for them to slam into the brick wall known as reality. Design isn’t an easy job. Chances are, you’ll be overworked (especially if you’re new) , underpaid (especially if you’re new), required to do tons of boring, menial tasks (especially if you’re new) and mistreated (especially if you have forums). It’s a job, and the workload mirrors that fact. The industry’s status quo treatment of new designers also backs up the assertion that the games industry cannibalizes its young (I wish I remembered where that originated). However, we become designers because of the 5-10% of the job that involves doing what we love. That’s the biggest benefit we get. If there’s no passion for that portion of the job, then I don’t understand why anyone would seek to continue this line of work.

Basically, the real benefit of working on games is having a job that you care about. Even the people with skills that translate into other jobs aren’t going to earn as much money working on games as they would elsewhere. The supply of people who want to work on games is greater than the demand, and the new ones are often willing to kill themselves for the opportunity.

Witnessing or hearing about apathetic development confuses me, but then I’ve never worked on a dreary project. Everything I’ve worked on was either of my own choosing or a huge opportunity. I didn’t have to work my way up by designing Barbie games or struggling through other games industry positions in the hopes of getting a spot as a designer.

Has the games industry become big enough that we should expect - or accept - apathetic development? I say no.

This is the third post in my mini-series on controls.

Recently, I started playing an interesting game called Avencast. It’s essentially Diablo’s hack ‘n’ slash gameplay with an extra layer of depth in the controls. Avencast has a steep learning curve because it’s controls are quite unusual for an action RPG. It handles more like a top-down shooter where the keyboard controls your movement, and the mouse controls where you’re looking/shooting. Double tapping a directional key triggers a roll, then you can change the direction of the roll by changing your view with the mouse. You can side-step by hitting space+directional key.

As you can probably tell from that rough description, there’s a lot more dodging and quick movement in Avencast than in the typical Diablo-style action RPG. I’m going to focus on something that’s much more unique - combos. Every spell in the game is mapped to a specific key combo, similar to Street Fighter. Typical combos are three keystrokes: up left, up right, left up and so forth followed by a mouse click. Left click on the mouse triggers a blood (melee) spell, and right click triggers a spirit (range) spell.

This control system has some interesting implications, and there are two that I consider the most important for my experiences in Avencast. By having all the spells mapped to combos that use movement keys + mouse clicks, it means I never have to move my hands from where they belong - resting on the main controls. I don’t have to reach out to try to hit 9, or ALT+9 or whatever other out-of-the-way control I have bound to a specific, rarely used spell. That helps make the gameplay more fluid because I maintain a state of readiness for dodging enemy attacks. The other important element is the sense of empowerment it provides from having all the controls and spells right at my fingertips. It definitely feels like a fighting game, and in those games mastering the range of controls and attacks is part of the experience. Controlling my character this way makes the game feel more involved.

The previous paragraph comes dangerously close to contradicting my earlier post about the impact of difficult controls and how they ruin games. There’s no question that the controls in Avencast will be a huge stumbling block for many players, but they do allow you to setup simple one-click hot keys that are useful for spamming the same spell. We’ve seen better examples of this in games that use unique interfaces, such as Dance Dance Revolution. In DDR, the control system makes the game way harder than it would be otherwise - but that’s also what makes the game fun. It’s a delicate balance between using difficult controls to provide gameplay versus being difficult for no good reason. Avencast treads way too close to this line, but it does an admirable job for first title from a small developer.

All of the moves in Avencast are easily executed, so it doesn’t need the same degree of mastery as a fighting game. However, it still carries some of the same problems. There’s a short ramp-up time whenever I play after several days as I re-familiarize myself with the controls. I experienced the same thing in fighting games, and it usually took about a minute or two to get back up to full speed. Interestingly enough, I find the combos to be most useful for the rarely used spells as opposed to the common ones. This is strange, because it’s harder to remember a combo for something you don’t use as often. It works for me because the rarely used spells really aren’t that rare (every couple minutes), and it makes me feel like I’m doing something major. If I want to quickly spam a spell I can use a regular hotkey.

I’m enjoying Avencast enough that I expect to finish the game, which is something that’s becoming increasingly rare for me lately. Numerous nights of Street Fighter and Soul Calibur made it easy for me to adapt to the new control scheme. Avencast’s controls enable gameplay, while Gothic’s blocked gameplay - that’s the key difference. This first outing is far from perfect though, and there are a number of areas where the controls are clunkier than they should be. For some people, I expect Avencast’s controls will be just like Gothic’s were for me, and that’s a bad thing.

Still, I find the controls in games to be an interesting subject, as you can tell from this rambling stream-of-thought post. Maybe someday I’ll collect my thoughts on the subject in a more coherent and complete manner… but that would require a distinct lack of laziness.

As a designer, I feel like it’s my job to panic. Designers are in a unique position where they possess all the right knowledge about the game to evaluate a problem and how severely it will impact the game. During beta in Pirates, I ran across a handful of issues that were believed to be minor until I laid my eyes on them and my head exploded. Many of the issues MMORPGs face are minor quirks and oddities, but sometimes those open up huge potential holes if you know about the related systems. That’s why I say that it’s part of my job. With that, I present you the Design Panic Meter:

I blatantly stole this idea from a Feature Commitment Index that I see posted around the office. Originally, I started this as a joke but I’ve found that it’s actually quite useful. It’s a clear, concise way to communicate to everyone on the “live issues” team exactly how design regards a specific problem, especially when it comes to exploits. It also saved me from having to say, “This Is Really Bad” whenever something came up and no one knows exactly what I mean.

In no way am I trying to say that people in other positions don’t understand games well enough to judge the severity of a problem… but designers are aptly suited to running around and flailing our arms in panic.

We just presented our first really challenging, non-PvP group content to the public and it was received quite favorably. It’s almost like group problem solving is a fun activity in MMORPGs. Shocking.

I managed to blow up the site in the middle of an upgrade tonight. The downtime was pretty short, but I took the opportunity to make a few changes. I changed the permalink structure, which means I may have broken some links in the process. I also tossed in a picture of the Retarded Alien in the header… it’s from a quick flash project I did a couple years ago.

While I was digging through the site, I took a look at some of the visitor metrics and I was rather surprised by the quantity of visitors. I thought Darius and Joe were the only readers! Of course, just because someone found their way here doesn’t mean they actually read anything.

Earlier I mentioned that I’m indebted to Gothic 2. That’s because the newbie experience was so awful that it drove me to Gamefaqs, where I found this Survival Guide by alterEgo. In the guide, the author expressed his distaste for WASD and explained how he used ESDF instead. Reading his explanation made perfect sense, and I felt obtuse for never thinking about it before. Look at the keyboard. Where are your fingers? My left hand rests on A, W/S, E and R/F. There’s a little notch on the F key for identification. Placing my fingers on ESDF requires almost no adjustment whatsoever. Now, if I moved my fingers over to WASD, I’m putting a crink in my wrist. My arm is no longer straight and it’s not as comfortable to hit the keys.

I had wrist pain for years when I played PC games, and I coudn’t play WASD games well because I had to play cautiously. I severely restricted my playtime because I was looking at long-term injuries, and I avoided quite a few games. Then I switched to ESDF and it went away almost immediately. That’s huge, and it’s hard for me to understate my enthusiasm for anything that is not WASD. It makes me wonder how many other people have the same problem, because WASD is unnatural and jams up the wrist. RTS games are still an RSI risk, but that’s generally from requiring constant mouse movement and an absurd number of mouseclicks (even with hotkeys).

I’m still waiting to find a game that offers an ESDF control set, even if it isn’t the default, but I’m not keeping my hopes up. WASD is deeply ingrained in games, and it’ll be hard to get rid of even if it shouldn’t exist. Where else does this happen in our industry? What simple controls adjustments could we make to improve the general ease of gameplay and quality of life?

Ben Zeigler posted some thoughts on a book entitled The Science of Happiness. While there wasn’t anything surprising in his comments, it provided a good overview of how we respond to MMOs. I’m going to pick up a copy.

This is the first in a short series of related posts on the subject of game controls.

Every so often, I encounter a game that’s incredibly difficult for all the wrong reasons. While those reasons vary, controls is the one I’m going to talk about today. Gothic 2 is going to be my punching bag today, because it holds a unique place in this aspect. I’ve earned a reputation for being quite good at games and I like a challenge, but Gothic 2’s newbie experience repeatedly beat me down. My arch nemesis, the Load Game screen, greeted me two out of every three times I ran into a rat, wolf, goblin or bandit, always imploring me to give it another shot. And so I did.

But why did I keep dying? It wasn’t just because the combat was challenging. The learning curve was harsh, but that was something I could overcome. My deaths were often the result of arcane controls that prevented me from performing the desired actions. Movement and attacking was difficult and unresponsive in general. It’s been a long time so it’s hard for me to remember all of the details about combat. Simple functions - like enabling quicksaves and binding a key to “use healing potion” - were features that could only be enabled through INI files. Why are those options locked away in an INI file? Is there a reason that I shouldn’t be saving my game, and therefore it should be inconvenient to do so?

The other elements of Gothic 2 were appealing enough that I kept going at it even as I was frustrated, and it might be the only time I’ve had to cheat to make it through a game. That actually came later, because I eventually got tired of dealing with the controls but I still wanted to finish the game. Now I’m going to go out on a limb and make a controversial declaration: difficulty should come from gameplay, not controls. Despite that, I’m indebted to Gothic 2’s punishing difficulty, and I’m really only using it here to setup the points I really want to discuss. I’ll explain why in the next post.

I’ll bite.

True Neutral Human Wizard/Cleric (2nd/1st Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength- 14
Dexterity- 14
Constitution- 12
Intelligence- 16
Wisdom- 13
Charisma- 12

Alignment:
True Neutral- A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Primary Class:
Wizards- Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard’s strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Secondary Class:
Clerics- Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron’s vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity’s domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric’s Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

True neutral? I remember the only time I got in trouble in school (I had my name written on the board in kindergarten… due to a communication breakdown!), and I spent most of my time on MUDs protecting people who couldn’t PK… and delighting in killing people who thought they could. So, who knows - it is the best alignment, after all.