Gameology

Mathew and Attila discuss the growth of AAA games and how they seek to satisfy a larger audience. Games discussed in this show:

Final Fantasy XIII

Star Fox 64

Deus Ex

Star Wars: TIE Fighter

Mario 64

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Wii Remote

VR: Vive and Oculus

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

As the game industry evolves, AAA games require more and more resources to produce and need to appeal to larger and larger audiences to remain solvent. To reach those larger audiences, developers need to craft multi-platform experiences that work just as well with a controller as they do on mouse/keyboard. This does not necessarily mean creating games that are expected to play identically on both platforms. If implemented poorly, this results in truncated controls and a worse experience on one or both of the platforms. Rather than creating the game based off of one control scheme and then porting it to another, developers need to consider all possible input methods right from the start, designing the control scheme to play off the inherent strengths of each while avoiding their weaknesses.

Sometimes it isn’t possible for a developer to create an experience that maps well from keyboard / mouse to controller, namely Real Time Strategy games. RTS games have long remained an example of irreducible complexity; we may never see an RTS fully realized on a traditional controller interface because it lacks the bulk of inputs offered by a keyboard and the precision selection capabilities of a mouse. If a developer wishes to extend the brand of a Real Time Strategy beyond the realm of its PC origins, they must consider the strengths and weakness of a controller. At best, they might create a game which takes place within the established universe of the franchise and features some Real Time Strategy elements with a different set of core mechanics. Any developer which does seek to create a truly cross-platform RTS experience is fighting an uphill battle, and will likely need to make some sacrifices along the way to make the game playable with a controller. It is these sacrifices which have die-hard PC gamers concerned, claiming that these changes are only for the worse and that it reduces the difficulty of a beloved genre. Of course, these claims are made of all sorts of genres, and “hardcore” gamers will further proclaim their distaste for the lack of difficulty to be found in modern AAA games.

RTS games aside, one must ask how much the complexity of a game’s control scheme plays into its difficulty. In reality, complexity in control is one of the worst ways to make a game difficult. If a game presents an overwhelming number of inputs to the player, that by itself can make it inaccessible to certain players because it’s simply too much to keep track of. This is just as true of a keyboard as it is a game controller with too many functions mapped onto it. Rather, the best way for complexity to arise in a game experience are from the mechanics of the game itself; the results of the player’s inputs and all their possible combinations. By shifting the focus of a game's complexity away from its control scheme, developers have the opportunity to make the game much more approachable without sacrificing the complexity of the play experience. That being said, to make any of this complexity truly approachable, a game needs a good tutorial. If a player is taught enough about a game as to really dive into the depth it has to offer and feel like they understand the interplay of its mechanics, they are far more likely to have an engaging experience. From this sort of complexity, a much more satisfying difficulty can be woven, one which will appeal to far more players, both hardcore and casual alike. This is as true of sprawling RTS games as it is of simple Mobile time-wasters, whatever the scale of the experience, everyone can enjoy approachable depth.

Command and Conquer 4 - Now a MOBA?
Super Paper Mario - No longer an RPG!
Star Wars Battlefront
Final Fantasy
Kirby's Epic Yarn
Mario 2 / Doki Doki Panic 
Mario Kart
NHL Series
Rogue Squadron 3
Star Fox Adventures / Dinosaur Planet
Pokemon Black / White

I'm sure everyone has had the experience where they've been excited to play a new game in a series only to try it out and find its not what you were expecting. There may be lots of ways in which a game can disappoint you, but this is specifically in regards to a game which ends up being almost completely different from the original save for perhaps a familiar looking world or a few characters you recognize. While sometimes a developer is accused of changing too little between entries in a series, in this case it feels like they've changed too much, resulting in an experience that is entirely different from what made you like the game in the first place.

While not always the case, it's possible the developer might have wanted to create a new franchise or spin-off of their original game, but then felt the pressure from the publisher of this new game not selling well because it isn't part of an established brand. As a result, the publisher may consent to funding the project on the condition that the developers brand the game as a new entry in an existing franchise. Of course, even if the developers are able to make a good game it will still result in something vastly different from what people expect out of the franchise, which in turn can lead to damning User Reviews and therefore less sales of the game in the long term. In the absolute worst cases, this can lead to players abandoning the series and the death of the entire franchise (at least temporarily, nostalgia can be a powerful resurrecting force). Given everything publishers stand to lose in the rebranding of a product as a new entry in the franchise, it speaks of incredibly short-sighted planning on the part of certain publishers that they consider this to be the "safe option", that, or it speaks volumes of what the publisher's sales charts must be telling them about consumer purchasing behavior.

It's a viscous cycle which needs to be broken to benefit developers, publishers, and players alike. Unfortunately, there's almost nothing the developers themselves can do to break the cycle since these decisions are tied up in the finances that fuel the creation of the games in the first place. Developers are at the mercy of whoever holds the purse strings, and Publishers likely won't change their ways unless the sales charts dictate that change. That means it's up to us as Players (and consumers) to vote with our wallets, aim to make informed purchases, and assist others we know in making informed purchases (assist grand-parents in picking out better games as gifts). There's a big rush to be the first to experience something, and it's incredibly tempting to get a new game in a franchise you love, but you've got to ask if the potential disappointment isn't worth waiting a few days to see the reviews. If we can pull this off, it will mean that developers everywhere will get their original ideas off the ground and inspire us with new worlds and the stories within them.

Following last week's mention of Procedural Generation at the tail end of the podcast, I thought I was worth discussing in-depth.

Mathew and Attila discuss games that build themselves! The pros and cons of procedural generation. Games discussed in the show:

Rouge's ASCII World

Shadowrun's Infinite Quests

Speedrun - Free Arcade game

Mario Maker

Hotline Miami

Metal Gear Solid 5

Borderlands Guns

Galak-Z - Finding loot

Sudoku - Solve them with Algorithms!

Rubik's Cube - Can you solve more than one face?

Having discussed Environmental reuse last week, I wanted to touch upon another game design tool; procedural generation. Advances in both hardware and software have improved the nature and quality of experiences generated by procedural generation. As the prospect of using procedural generation becomes more accessible, it is important to consider its use cases.

When talking about procedural generation it will be useful to break it up into two distinct categories; procedurally generated experiences and procedurally generated environments. A procedurally generated experience is one that takes place within a fixed environment (an "endless" mode in a game where enemies keep spawning according to a set of rules) while a procedurally generated environment is the physical space that an experience takes place in (a randomly generated dungeon). A procedurally generated experience can take place in either a hand-crafted environment or one that was created with procedural generation, whereas a procedurally generated environment can only play host to a procedurally generated experience as the level will never be seen by a designer.

Procedural generation may seem like a great tool for small teams to quickly build out the physical terrain of large game worlds, but there is a significant time cost associated with creating that system in the first place. To break down this time cost, lets go over the basics of how a procedural generation system is built.

At its heart, a procedural generation system is a constrained means of creating random outputs. Those outputs can be (but aren't necessarily limited to) the experiences or environments you are seeking to create. The constraints are made up of the very same rules you would use as a designer when creating your game (certain enemies must be placed on the ground, power ups should not be placed on spots players cannot reach). Certain "rules" will no-doubt be easier to recreate in code than others. The more elements there are in your game, the more the constraints grow exponentially as all possible inter-relations of those elements must be taken into account. Consider this example from a platforming game like Super Mario World; while it might be easy to create a system that does a position check to ensure that Goombas are always placed on the ground, it might be more difficult to ensure that those Goombas are not placed in such a space in which it will make it impossible for Mario to jump up through a one-way floor. Of course, you could create a simplified set of rules for such a game by only generating terrain which can be traversed through a series of easy-to-perform jumps; making "safe-guesses" as this will guarantee that you'll end up with something playable. Of course, "playable" can be a long way from "fun". Ultimately, you need to decide if the scope of the project you are working on merits the time investment necessary to create a procedural generation system, or if that time would be better spent hand-crafting your levels.

Whether or not you ultimately use procedural generation to create your game environments, it can be an excellent tool for decorating them. For instance, if you are creating a large open-world where the emphasis is on filling a large area with decoration, you can use procedural generation to fill a space with a set of randomized elements. For example, in creating a city, it would be incredibly tedious to decorate all the roads with lane markings, cracks in the pavement, weather damage, etc. but you could easily feed these details into a procedural generation system and have it do a large amount of the work for you, so long as you take the time to look over what the computer came up with and verify that it didn't make something outlandish.

On the experiential side of things, procedural generation is excellent at creating certain types of puzzles, specifically ones with simple rule sets like that of a Rubix cube. The possible movements the cube can make can be encoded and then applied as a shuffling algorithm to scramble the puzzle.

The same sort of logic can be applied to creating a Sudoku. A completed board can be generated which adheres to the rules of a Sudoku, then numbers can be deleted from the board at random to create the puzzle itself. That being said, any puzzle which is created by an algorithm can be solved by an algorithm. Relying too heavily on procedurally generated puzzles can get boring or frustrating because the computer can actually spit out puzzles faster than it takes a player to solve them. At that point, the challenge being presented is as arbitrary as playing 52 pick-up. That being said, lots of people still enjoy Sudoku puzzles and solving scrambled Rubix cubes, I don't mean this as a slight against that sort of entertainment, but with the power and flexibility afforded by modern game devices I personally believe we can create puzzles that are more varied and satisfying to solve. 

As with all tools available to a game designer, if you decide to use procedural generation in the creation of your game, or as part of the game experience, you must consider all the implications of the randomly generated experiences that the system can produce. Investing a lot of time into a well built procedural generation system can create a near-limitless number of possible experiences, but volume does not substitute for the quality of an experience. It is highly important to start with a fundamentally strong game-play experience, only then should you consider which elements of the experience can be handed over to a procedural generation system.

Games and other things we mentioned in order of appearance.

Robo's World: The Zarnok Fortress, available on Steam

Metroid

Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear Solid 5

Twilight Princess

Ocarina of Time

Wind Waker's Triforce Quest

Quality of time over length of experience

Super Mario 64

Super Mario Sunshine

The Last of Us

Minecraft

No Man's Sky

For a number of reasons, be it conscious decision or a simple lack of budget, you'll see environments reused in games quite often, much to a gamer's dismay. I feel that the reason we dislike retreading ground in games stems from our experience retreading ground in our day to day lives. I think most people have some sort of routine where they take a familiar path to and from work every day, and when we play games we want a contrast from this monotony. We want an endlessly new and interesting world, and it's all too easy to call the developers lazy for not creating new environments for each new experience.

Instead, our focus should be on unique play experiences. If a game is making you retread the same ground and perform the exact same task while nothing about that experience has changed, then yes, you have a right to call the devs on it.

But let's look at the example of playing as the wolf in the Twilight sections of the game. Your control scheme is familiar, but your means of traversal are different. You have a different objective then simply "get from point A to point B" as you do when you are a human. You are tasked with hunting down a number of insects which which hold the key to forward progress in the form of Tears of Light. True back-tracking (turning around and going back the way you came) is possible to allow for players to fully explore an area if they fear they've missed a Tear, but isn't mandatory. Upon finding the last one, you are granted instant passage back to the point where the Tears are redeemed. I think this is great design choice because even if the designers had taken care to make the return path an interesting one, it's so psychologically draining to have to "go all the way back". I think devs might be tempted to make the player leg it back to the start out of some distorted sense that this will help inflate play time and make people think they are getting more value out of the game.This is not at all the case. First of all, it's painfully obvious when a game is forcing you to back-track and everyone feels that immediately. Secondly, going backwards isn't really adding any value to the game. If it was well designed, back tracking should always be possible in the emergency sense discussed earlier, and therefore shouldn't be held up as something exceptional. It's aimless traversal at best, and a nightmarish grind at worst, like swimming up stream against a level which was designed to be played optimally in a single direction.

In the case of Twilight Princess, there are clearly some parts of the game that are "world" and some that are "level" and this is an important distinction. "Levels" are dungeons, temples, or any other part of the game you can expect to go through in a linear fashion. Re-treading these "levels" is the least fun because it can be difficult to create a vastly different experience within a space that was so tightly designed. On the other hand, the "world" includes locations like Hyrule Field and the Towns in the game; locals which are not hives of combat or puzzle solving, but open space that knit the levels together. Free-roaming is the name of the game in places such as these.

Until the day when we can spawn complete experiences from our brains, environments will be re-used in games. Twilight Princess handles environmental re-use very elegantly because it always seeks to provide the player with a new experience within familiar environments.

With Twilight Princess being a great example of "environment reuse" done right, I wanted to turn a critical eye to PM:TTYD. I'll just quickly preface that this is one of my absolute favorite games of all time, and I've played through it about 6 times, on an average of 22 hours per file. If anyone has played the game anywhere as much as I have, there will be a few segments that probably stick out in your mind for having an inordinate amount of back-tracking.

That being said, Paper Mario has a nearly flawless difficulty curve. When you enter a new area, you're always just around the right level to fight the enemies in that area. Cutting out all the back-tracking and subsequent enemies that you fight while back-tracking would mean you no longer have the experience necessary to be at the correct level. It'd be like playing Pokemon and dodging all the encounters with random trainers. Sure it feels like it's saving you time, but in the end you need that experience and it's only worth fighting those trainers when you first see them, otherwise you're too over-leveled.

So clearly Paper Mario is constructed around the back-tracking, but these are still parts of the game which I would gladly skip if given the choice because they aren't adding to the experience. There's nothing new or exciting about running back and forth four times between Twilight Town and the Ghostly Manor. In fact, in this part of the game there's a pretty strong implication that you should be fleeing every battle, but this feels awful as a player, and you can loose a lot of saved up coins.

On a back-of-the-envelope calculation, I estimated that you could crop out about 7 hours worth of back-tracking out of the game, and that would have left it a much tighter experience. Make sure you don't cave into people clamoring for "dollar per hour" game experiences. It's far better to keep your eye on your "awesome per second" ratio.