Semionaut's Notebook

RPG PCs: Make 'Em Special

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:21:59 -0700

Player characters and their primary antagonists should always be stronger, faster, or smarter than your run-of-the-mill non-player characters. It makes sense that the storyworld would favor these characters and grant them special authority. After all, it wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for their experiences within its borders.

"Books are a machine for producing emotion and the cogs must mesh with what the readers have. You..."

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:23:15 -0700

“Books are a machine for producing emotion and the cogs must mesh with what the readers have. You have to leave room for the reader.”

- M.T. Anderson

One Storytelling Village

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:19:39 -0700

I did not mean to imply that the two camps referenced in the previous post were mutually exclusive. It is merely a description of focus—one outside moving inward and the other inside looking outward. There are studios who seem to have people standing in both camps. Lionhead, as I mentioned, and Team Ico both spring to mind.

Nor did I mean to imply one was more valid than another. Both have their limitations and struggles. Both have their strengths and benefits. I personally feel like exploring the idea that game mechanics convey meaning is too often overlooked and the more we learn about it, the better it will be for the industry at large.

I also did not mean to imply that every single developer falls into one of these two categories. Developers who aren’t remotely interested in storytelling clearly don’t fall into either (although their work can still be examined for its ability to communicate meaning).

Interactive fiction developers quite likely also fall into different camps altogether. As the core mechanic of IF utilizes language, it muddles our attempts to break people out into convenient philosophical camps.

Two Storytelling Camps?

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:14:24 -0700

I think I may have hit upon why I become so frustrated when I read what other developers are saying when they talk about storytelling in video games. I mean, even people that I really like, people who want to tell good stories with video games.

My theory is this—there are two camps of people interested in the storytelling potential of video games.

The first camp believes that Video Games are Platforms for Storytelling. This is the largest camp and the vast majority of AAA titles released today are created within this camp. This camp wants to use the medium of video games to tell stories. It’s an outside-in approach that inherits all the baggage of traditional video game design, along with all the conceits that stories are linear constructs. Despite all their very different outputs—Bethesda, Bioware, Double Fine, and Konami are all in this camp. Looking Glass was in this camp as well, but were really freaking good at making it work. I actually place Tale of Tales in this camp as well and believe they try to resolve the “design baggage” by leaving it at the station when the train pulls out.

The second camp believes that Game Mechanics Communicate Story. This is a rather more niche approach and the best examples of it can be found among indie games. This camp examines how game mechanics themselves convey meaning. It’s an inside-out approach that often breaks the “rules” of game design and runs the risk of alienating traditional gaming audience and being accused of “not being a game.” Daniel Benmergui and Gregory Weir are in this camp. I believe that Peter Molyneux himself is in this camp, even though Lionhead Studios and their output is not. Will Wright is probably in this camp as well.

Clearly, my sympathies and focus lie with the latter camp. I don’t feel the former camp is “wrong,” but I do feel they’re not advancing the art as much as they’re iterating past successes and failures.

My Design Process

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:15:21 -0700

I’ve been asked a few times now to talk about my design process—including to students of game design. So I figure it’s about time I quantified my approach, found personal ways of expressing my goals, create slides, etc. But for now, here’s a rough outline:

Come up with a project idea—genre, theme, mechanic, what-have-you.
Decide on the core user experience I want to provide.
Throw ALL of my related ideas (mechanics, themes, visual desiong, etc) into the design pot.
Organize the ideas into clusters of related concepts, identifying subsets of the overall design.
Prioritize the clusters by their applicability to the core user experience.
Throw away all but the one or two most important clusters.
Prioritize the ideas in the remaing clusters by their applicability to the core user experience.
Throw away all but the two or three most important ideas from each cluster.
Design a game using the two or three ideas from the most important cluster.
Play test.
Redesign based upon how well the testing provided the core user experience.
Play test.
Tweak existing design to better provide the core user experience.
Play test.
If step 14 does not provide the desired core user experience, return to step 11.
If the core user experience can be strengthened by the addition of an additional cluster, repeat the process starting with step 11.

Hm… I should probably make a flowchart of this…

A Simple Roll of the Dice?

Sun, 31 May 2009 08:09:03 -0700

I’m putting this here because it’s a sidebar to the official Rev03 announcements I’m making on Man Bytes Blog at the moment. Not to mention that the notebook could use some more content…

I’m seriously considering using comparative die rolls for every challenged action in Rev03.A challenged action is any action a storyteller wishes to take that another storyteller thinks isn’t within easy range of their skills.

This will enable the storyteller prime (SP? S0? Szero?) to focus on thematic content and story-flow, rather than scrambling to draw up new life wheels when the other storytellers decided to try and approach she hadn’t prepared for.

I’m currently thinking that the SP would declare the storyteller’s challenged action to be of one of the following challenge levels and they would each roll die. If the storyteller’s die roll was higher, it’s a succes. If lower, it’s a failure.

Level 0 - uncontested mundane action - Will cost: 0/1 - d6
Level 1 - contested mundane action - Will cost: 1/3 - d10
Level 2 - extra-normal action - Will cost: 2/5 - d6
Level 3 - contested extra-normal action - Will cost: 3/7 - d10

The storytellers facing the challenge always roll a d10, where 0 is an absolute failure and 9 is an absolute success. If she is performing an uncontested action (i.e. picking a lock, jumping a chasm, fixing an engine), the SP rolls a d6 against the effort. With no 0 or 9 on a d6, there is no chance of automatic success or failure on the part of the world, and the storyteller herself has a higher chance of success, since she’s rollng a d10.

If the storyteller is performing a contested action (i.e. an action against another living being), the SP also rolls a d10.

"When Apollinaire published four of Picasso’s constructions in Les Soirées de Paris in November..."

Wed, 20 May 2009 16:48:10 -0700

“When Apollinaire published four of Picasso’s constructions in Les Soirées de Paris in November 1913, thrity-four of the journal’s forty subscribers registered their outrage by canceling their subscriptions. If this reaction seems surprising given the undoubtedly avant-garde character of the journal’s readership, it provides us with a rare indication of the exceptional difficulty contemporary viewers had in accepting Cubist multimedia works. The absence of an enlightened public beyond the small circle of Picasso’s fellow artists and friends is further confirmed in the fact that Picasso chose to keep many of his important collages and nearly all of his constructions throughout his life.”

- Poggi, Christine. In Defiance of Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

"Absolutely they do, and always have done. Game mechanics are metaphoric representations of basic..."

Sun, 03 May 2009 05:29:00 -0700

“Absolutely they do, and always have done. Game mechanics are metaphoric representations of basic relationships and the thematic context presented by the textual components of the game help the players find meaning within those metaphors.”

- Corvus in response to Brenda Brathwaite.

"I quite literally mean that its mechanics create the meaning in conjunction with the participants."

Sun, 03 May 2009 05:28:00 -0700

“I quite literally mean that its mechanics create the meaning in conjunction with the participants.”

- Brenda Brathwaite

Set My Data Free?

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:44:27 -0700

There’s a conversation that’s been bouncing back and forth among my online circle lately. It involves the use of forums or collaboration sites to further our conversations or increase our visibility. Some feel this is a vital step forward. Others, like myself, either see little value in the idea or actually feel it would be a step backwards.

Yesterday, on Twitter, Michael Abbot suggested to Roger Travis that my Blogs of the Round Table (BoRT) was… well, let’s just quote him:

“@CorvusE BoRT is a model of how to have it both ways. Broad reach; individual voices.”

If you’re not familiar with the BoRT, it’s a monthly blogging event in which people are invited to post on a single topic. They submit the permalink to me and I add it to a MySQL table that updates a centralized list on my blog. However, it is important to me to make the BoRT as decentralized as possible. It is not my event—it is a community event. And although it may serve as a promotional tool for Man Bytes Blog, that’s a side effect. It would be more accurate to say that I’m leveraging hatever caché MBB might have to promote the BoRT contributors.

To this end, I ask that contributors include a drop down box at the end of their post ( I provide an IFRAME code that calls a script on my server), which automatically updates with new contributions so you can navigate the BoRT without the need to visit a centralized site.

Anyway… I joined in the Twitter conversation with the following:

“I see this as the pull between consolidation of access vs. consolidation of broadcast.”

I thought it would be worth following up and trying to clarify that a bit. When I first started using the internet, it looked a lot like this:

Lots of individual nodes at discreet URIs that I had to visit each node one at a time to see if any content had been added. Often times, as sites weren’t the data driven affairs they are now, the only way to tell if content had been added since your last visit was to click around the site for a while. This obviously wasn’t very efficient and posed a problem for the exceptionally curious. I wasn’t the only one to think so and a lot of people put their minds to finding a solution.

And so the search engine and the portal were born. Portals went and visited sites for you, scraping them for new information and letting you know if they found anything. Concurrently, internet forums became HUGE repositories and social meeting spots for like minded people to share their experiences, links, and ideas.

The problem here is one of homogony. Corporations, not wanting to be liable for presenting innapropriate content to minors, became gatekeepers of the signal—consolidating content into an editorial channel of their own choosing. There was suddenly a hidden message in the data—a message comprised as much of what they chose not to tell you, as what they did.

Community forums were also subject to power struggles over how to control the flow of information, as well as corporitization. The internet experience, while becoming ever more popular, became safer, more predictable, more bland, and less useful.

The answer to this issue lay in the technical solution to a problem portals had—ever increasing server loads. That answer was RSS—really simple syndication.

RSS, along with the rise of blogs, helped transform the face of the internet. Now we could easily return to the distributed broadcast signals of the early days and allow usere to consolidate their own signals. The portal sites haven’t gone away, but with the dramatic increases in internet citizenry, they have become more free to specialize and with our ability to consolidate their data into our feed, we can track more of them in less time than we once could.

This has given rise to the social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Friendfeed. These are nothing more than skeleton structures with APIs to allow customized input and output filters, as well as RSS, SMS, and email outputs—so it’s possible to interact with sites on your own terms, to a large degree. We have become the gatekeepers of our own individual portals. This allows us to connect directly to the content providers we wish and allows them to connect directly to us as well. This is consolidation of access to the data on the web.

You’ll notice what is missing from this final diagram—the community forum. I believe it is possible to decentralize a forum, but I have yet to find a community forum platform that uses RSS well, or allows new models of interacting with the conversation. Google Groups and Yahoo Groups aren’t a terrible platform, but they’re heavily branded and not highly customizable visually. The upcoming IGDA site is attempting to merge the concept of forums and mailing lists, which is an excellent start. But the idea still has some major issues to work out at this stage in its development.

I prefer this decentralization and expect it will continue. Ultimately I’d prefer to have a single application that used plugins to receive output from RSS feeds, email accounts, Twitter timelines, Friendfeed streams, and any other input I wished. And furthermore allowed me to fully interact via inputs of my own choosing—using SMS to comment on a Facebook shared item, emailing a Twitter reply, or leaving a voice mail message in response to a blog post.

I think there’s a place for both consolidated broadcasts and consolidated access. But until I never actually need to visit a web site to successfully interact with it—I’m not sure I’m going to feel the web has reached its true potential.

MicroPlay: Mushroom Hunter

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:02:03 -0700

Mushroom Hunter
Studio: Semionautics, Inc.
Publisher: TBD

At first glance, this hunting sim would seem to be purely comprised of the more… meditative aspects of traditional deer hunting games. The first level presents you with a basket and places you in an environment modeled after an old growth forest in Russia. With no further guidance than suggested by the title, you are left to freely wander the detailed environment.

At first, I thought that having only a single forest to explore would feel limiting, but the forest is truly immense and after playing for nearly ten hours, I had yet to explore it all. This is not a game that allows you to hurry through it. The woods of Mushroom Hunter are more like a classic painting than an actual forest landscape. The art direction is incredible and seems specifically geared to relax and engage the player, without ever being over-stimulating. Small flowers peek out from the forest underbrush, a fox watches you cautiously from a distant spot of sunlight before dashing into a pool of shadow. Even the soundscapes are meticulously lush—full of insect hums and the muted warning cries of startled birds.

There is no overt scoring system at work during the gameplay either. But once you’ve collected mushrooms to fill your basket, you are presented with a village-themed menu screen where you’re paid for the mushrooms you’ve collected. You can then spend this money on helpful items from the village store. Larger baskets, broad brimmed hats, and walking sticks are among the items available early on. I bought a walking stick, which allowed me to overturn larger rocks and push aside underbrush more effectively as I searched for rarer fungi.

From the menu you can also access a field guide, which is nicely hand-illustrated with each type of mushroom you’ve found in the game, and includes quite a bit of interesting information about them, including recipes.

All in all, Mushroom Hunter is a very enjoyable game. There is no pressure to play better, work harder, or even to complete it. I understand the Semionautics, Inc. is working on an expansion set in Italy that will include coop play and a pig-training module for truffle hunting.

Ubisoft's (Ab)Use of Gender?

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:31:01 -0700

A larger version of the previous photo can be found on Picasa. To all appearances, it would seem that all of the female members of this purportedly 240 person team have been put in the front third of this photo. Of course it’s difficult to make out individual faces in the very back, but all the visible female faces are assembled in a group closest to the camera.

So what’s Ubisoft’s point here? Are they setting a good example by promoting the fact that there teams aren’t 100% male? Or are they trying to make it look like their team is more diverse than it really is?

Or are they trying, once again, to (ab)use the women on their team in an effort to promote the game?

What are your thoughts and reactions to the photo?

Hey guys, it worked so well to promote Jade Raymond instead of...

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:22:30 -0700

Hey guys, it worked so well to promote Jade Raymond instead of the game last time, why don’t you put all of your female team members right up front in the promotional photo!

Two Men Enter...

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:56:00 -0700

The news is full of reports about a certain gaming luminary leaving his mega-corp publisher after a seven year relationship that was initiated by a takeover of his studio. This luminary just spent a lot of years and a lot of money to make a game that didn’t exactly dominate the charts, as everyone was anticipating. The mega-corp publisher is not known for taking risks and really only like to spend that kind of money on games that rocket to the top of the charts and stay there.

The fact that this gamble didn’t exactly pay off surely didn’t sit well with the accountants who run the mega-corp publisher. But on the other hand, this luminary has one of those really bankable names. Not to mention that his ideas are good, even if his development process got a bit out of control on that last project.

Now you can’t afford to get rid of him and you can’t justify to the major shareholders that you should continue paying him to actually develop games anymore. So what do you do?

You go half in on a new venture with him that has a specific goal of creating IP that you have exclusive rights to for all video game development. Then you take those ideas and give them to development teams you can more easily control and start cranking out a bunch of slapped together titles with the luminary’s name on them.

Voila. Cheaply developed games with a large return and by the name the luminary’s name isn’t worth a thin red dime anymore because of over-exposure and dissapointing games, well it won’t matter because you’ve made your money back.

And, to minimize your manipulation and involvement in this process, you title your press release, “Gaming Luminary Leaves The Evil Aempire.” Because… yeah. That’ll fool anyone who’s been paying attention to your business practices for the last 20 years.

*DEEP BREATH*

The news is also full of reports about a talented writer, director, and producer who has made cult hit show after cult hit show for his network continuing to get the short end of the stick when it comes to making sure his work gets proper release.

Why does he continue to work for this studio, when he’s been involved in a break-away hit online show that never even aired on television and likely made him a decent amount of money through DVD sales alone.

So there you have it folks. Two men entered… and one man pretended to leave.

Meaning and Games

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:56:52 -0700

Forget narratology. Forget ludology. If you must, you can even forget anthropology, history, religion, and media studies. But if the preceding two quotes don’t proove to you that game mechanics themselves communicate meaning and are therefore the raw stuff of stories… then there’s simply no convincing you.

"Yeah yo, but chess is a better game yo. Naw, hold up hold up. Ya’ll don’t know how to..."

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:32:00 -0700

“

Yeah yo, but chess is a better game yo. Naw, hold up hold up. Ya’ll don’t know how to play chess do you? I’ll teach ya’ll if ya’ll wanna learn. Ya’ll can’t be playing no checkers on a chess board, yo. Now look—it’s simple, it’s simple. You see this? This [kisses king] this is the king pin. All right? He the man. You get the other dude’s king, you got the game. An’ he trying to get your king too. So you gotta protect it. Now the king, he move one space any direction he damn choose, ‘case he’s the king. But he ain’t got no hustle. But the rest of these mother fuckers on the team—they got his back and they run so deep he ain’t really gotta do shit.

—Like your uncle.

Yeah, like my uncle. Now you see this? This the queen. She smart, she fierce. She move any way she want, as far as she want. And she is the go get shit done piece.

—Reminds me of Stringer.

And this over here is the castle. It’s like the stash. He move like this, and like this.

—Dog, stash don’t move man.

C’mon yo, think. How many times we move the stash house this week? Right? And every time we move the stash, we got to move a little muscle with it right? To protect it.

—True, true. He right. All right, what about the little bald headed bitches right there?

These right here? These are the pawns. They like the soldiers. They move like this—one space forward only. Except when they fight, and it’s like this. And they like the front lines, they be out in the field.

—So how do you get to be the king?

It ain’t like that. See the king—stay the king, all right? Everything stay who he is. Except for the pawns. Now if a pawn made it all the way down to the other dude’s side, he get to be queen. And like I said, the queen ain’t no bitch. She got all the moves.

—All right. So if I make it to the other end, I win.

If you catch the other dude’s king and trap it, then you win.

—But if I make it to the end, I’m top dog.

Naw yo, it ain’t like that. Look. The pawns, man, in the game? They get capped quick. They be out the game early.

—Unless they some smart ass pawns.

”

- D’Angelo, Bodie & Wallace in The Wire Season 1 Episode 3 “The Buys” by David Simon

"This here game’s over, man. Well you got to move your boss or Rocky’s going to lay a..."

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:21:14 -0700

“This here game’s over, man. Well you got to move your boss or Rocky’s going to lay a supoena on him. And his torpedo is going to smoke your old lady and all your heavies will be doing time. Except for maybe your mouthpiece and Rocky’s sheriff got him put in the corner. You’ve got nothing left but punks and junkies. You’re through Jimmy. You are.”

- Evelyn “Angle” Martin in Rockford File Season 2 Episode 9 “Chicken Little is a Little Chicken” by Stephen J. Cannell

Hip Hop Culture

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:59:28 -0700

Often people complain about rap music when they’re actual contention is with the mass media notion of “hip hop culture,” which is something of a myth. Of course, I don’t use myth to mean lie exactly, but to mean that hip hop culture has been idealized to a point where it more informs our reality than is informed by it.

It’s an awkward cycle created by the immediacy of media.

Post-GDC Podcast

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:53:19 -0700

Post-GDC Podcast:

You may have noticed that there was no March BoRT’cast. I think we’re just going to have to live with that for now. To make it up to you, I’ve got an award winning designer/developer lined up to…

Round Table: Cycle of Abuse

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:53:19 -0700

Round Table: Cycle of Abuse:

Please be aware that although the content of this post is not graphic, I’ve opted to rate it M (Mature) for suggestive themes of sexual violence.

Taking Games Seriously, Making Game…