skipgamer

I was reading through the UDK forums today and stumbled upon yet another post of “Its too hard, I give up.” So I wrote this reply. It pretty much sums up my opinion on people wanting to jump straight into the games industry with no idea what they are getting into.

It really surprises me the sorts of individuals the game industry attracts. Let’s be honest here, just because you really like playing games, and have a few ideas for your own games, doesn’t mean you should be a game developer.

On the other hand if you have some spare time, and an interest in 3d modelling, programming/scripting and a genuine interest in designing interesting gameplay mechanics… Then the path down the long and rocky road can begin.

In saying that I’m not saying you have to master modeling, animation, texturing, map design, lighting and programming… That would be impossible, but almost every modeler, animator, programmer etc has a basic understanding of all game development principles… At least in any triple A studio that develops their own IP, and most especially in successful indie studios.

Now, if you find yourself struggling with this, perhaps you have a strong interest but aren’t good at self-teaching, or maybe you like to be taught at first by a person and then go off on your own and experiment. Perhaps you cant read big chunks of text at a time and have trouble following tutorials… Then I highly recommend doing a formal degree at an institution, you can’t expect to just learn Everything you need to know just with a bit of elbow grease. Sure it can be done, but chances are the people that do are naturally smarter than you.

Design / Programming / Art Courses and Degrees focused on the games industry are a dime a dozen these days. And while it almost certainly wont land you a job in the games industry straight away, it will definitely help you on your path if you plan to take up indie development.

Something interesting happened in the World of Warcraft this week. Arthas, the Lich King encounter was released for all the hardcore raiders who have the ability to get to him. Ensidia, one such hard core guild killed him one day after his release. However where the drama comes in is after they killed him they recieved a temporary ban, and had their achievement and loot from killing him removed from their characters due to an abuse of game mechanics.

Specifically what they did was use an item that they apparently always use in their boss fights which caused the encounter to bug and made the encounter less difficult.

Now whether they were in the right or wrong doesn’t concern me, but it does raise some interesting questions about game mechanics and where the line between use and abuse is drawn.

Using game mechanics to their fullest, or in some cases abusing them depending on your point of view has been a staple of gaming since pretty much the beginning. In Super Mario Bros. for the NES/SNES people use all sorts of bugs to obtain speed run world records. One could easily consider this an abuse of game mechanics. In Leisure Suit Larry people could skip certain parts of the story by talking to people in an order which one would assume was expected nor intended by the developers. In the Quake series of games, using (or again, abusing) the physics engine to increase the speed of the character by “bunny hopping” became common place, which was obviously not originally intended.

So the precedent for using / abusing game mechanics has been in place long before World of Warcraft or even MMO’s in general. There has been an untold agreement between gamer and developer where if you can do something in the game, its fair game, and if the developer doesn’t like the way the game is being played they can patch it, or fix it in their next version.

However now things are different. Games are no longer just played for fun (sadly,) in the World of Warcraft high-end players race for first kills on new bosses, so much so that these groups have often recieved sponsorship for associating brands with their group. They have even toured and showcased their playing ability at numerous conventions.

This has obviously raised an eye at Blizzard, it feels like (to me personally) that they are no longer just “making games” they are providing a virtual arena for these battles between groups of elite players. And this makes me wonder, are they doing the right thing by preventing players from “abusing game mechanics” isn’t it just something that gamers have done for generations. One could even say that the best players of any games are those which can abuse game mechanics the quickest and most efficiently.

It’s one thing to say you can’t abuse game mechanics, its another thing entirely to prevent people from playing your game (even if just for a limited time) for doing so, in an environment which promotes finding the quickest way to get through a game.

In my honest opinion Blizzard should re-think their development philosophy and figure out who exactly the game is for. Is it meant to be a portal for e-sports, where killing bosses the fastest is the main goal? Or is it meant for casual players who can only play a limited amount of time per day? Or is it meant to be a deep, involving fantasy RPG? It feels to me like it is trying to be too many things at once, and failing at all of them. Which leads to situations like this.

If Blizzard intends for World of Warcraft to be the former, then they seriously need to reconsider their testing and quality assurance practices, because its just a matter of time before a game comes out with that specific goal and takes that entire market away from them.

Source / Links:

http://www.ensidia.com/article/269/ensidia-suspended-for-72-hours

I recently obtained a copy of Virtua Tennis 2009 for the PC.

Disappointing.

This is the only thing that comes to mind now after playing it for around 10 hours. The premise of the game is that you are a rookie tennis star, rising through the ranks to become a professional star. Sounds good, in theory. Where it immediately takes a turn south is when you realise there are 200 ranks through which you need to rise to get to the top, and you can only do so by gaining one or two ranks if your lucky for each tournament you play through.

A typical match at the rookie level lasts 2 minutes, the opponents are far from challenging. While this is welcoming for the first few tournaments it quickly gets tiresome, yielding very little challenge.

There are few things you can do to break up the monotonous gameplay of playing tournament after tournament after tournament (even saying it is tiresome.) You can “level up” your character by taking part in various challenges which present themselves in the form of minigames, or you can go to tennis school where you are “coached” by Tim Henman. The “coaching” is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to add more content to the game. You are not taught anything about the game of tennis, rather you are presented with various challenges, such as winning 3 points from the baseline, or playing a 6-shot rally against your coach. There is no help with how to pass these challenges apart from one line tips on the loading screen, which means you can easily be banging your head against the wall if you don’t know what a drop shot is.

Apart from this there is a shop, where you can purchase items which are unlocked by playing through tournaments, and which must be purchased with money from said tournaments. You can also customize your “playstyle” which has very little effect on the actual gameplay. It is very hard to notice the difference between having a “strong forehand” or an “attacking volley” which cheapens the whole system, and leaves you with very little reason to bother leveling up your character.

All this aside the gameplay is almost perfect when actually in a tennis match. Apart from lacking the ability to skip sometimes tortuously long replays, there is very little to complain about when actually in the middle of a game. I had to play arcade mode on Very Hard to have sufficiently challenging opponents, and in those cases it is very gripping and fun, albeit simple.

One can’t help but think of the possibilities this game has if it was designed properly. If linesmen actually called “out” when a ball goes out for example, or players had the ability to challenge referees calls as is seen in modern day tournaments, or if the ball boys actually moved across the court to pick up balls, or if there was commentary, the game would instantly be more immersive, dynamic, interesting and ultimately fun. Even some more advanced AI wouldn’t go astray. When players constantly have the ability to hit perfect serves, and the position in which you hit the ball has no effect on consequent plays, and there is no effect of fatigue as time goes on, and the only increase in difficulty is how hard and fast your opponents hit the ball, your left with a very shallow, albeit as I mentioned before, fun experience.

So all in all I can imagine Virtua Tennis being a game I pick up every now and then when I’m in the mood to play a quick game in arcade mode, other than that there is no reason to play it at all really.

This is an incredibly broad topic for a first blog post, but I might as well start big, at least then you and I will have some basis on which to view the rest of the posts. I understand that this topic is incredibly subjective, everybody has their own likes and dislikes, what may be perfect to one, can be less than stellar to another. After all, while Sims 3 was the most sold game in 2009, most people who call themselves “gamers” probably haven’t touched it.

That being said though, while the opinion between great and average games may vary, there is a very distinct difference between a good and a bad game which most people can agree on. I’m just going to be giving my opinion on what makes these games good, I’m not a market analyst, nor have I done countless research on the subject. So without further ado heres the list, in a nice and easy to consume bullet point form.

• A solid design

A good game needs to know what it wants to be, as the line between genre’s blur, more and more games have “features” which are not meant for that type of game. While First Person shooters with RPG mechanics can be great when they are designed as one, when they aren’t things get overcomplicated and uninteresting fast.

• Replay-ability/Longevity

Every good game has the ability to be played for a long period of time, or be so memorable that the longevity of the game lives long past the gameplay time. If a game can be completed in a matter of hours, and doesn’t incite any emotion or feeling then the player will be left with a dirty taste in their mouth, and the game will quickly be relegated to drink-coaster duty.

• Fun mechanics

This might seem obvious, but it surprises me how often this is forgotten. The #1 indicator of a bad game, is that when you play it you arent smiling, you dont laugh, you wonder “why am I playing this” and often you stop. Games need to be fun. Its not a simple process to make a game fun, but it is necessary.

• Bug Free

So many good games have been passed over because they are bug-ridden, whether its a dodgy camera system, or items not having their intended stats. I often think of bugs as unintended visual artifacts on traditional art. Some people might be able to see past them and view the piece as it was intended, the majority will just say “wtf is this” and move on.

So they are my main criteria when deciding if I like a game or not. Considering commercial development studios have an incredible amount of money to spend on design, development and testing, it surprises me how many bad games there really are.