Game Design Roulette

A gaming blog with a focus on design choices, good and bad, written by a guy with absolutely no credentials whatsoever.

[designroulette]

Diversity in Design: League of Legends and the representation cha-cha

hu·brisˈ(h)yo͞obris/  - noun

excessive pride or self-confidence.

     2. declaring a return to writing, and then not posting a damn thing for two weeks

Part of the reason I haven’t done anything in this space is that I've just finished a week-long binge of League of Legends. I've finally come up for air thanks to a particularly bad streak of losses (thanks but fuck you very much ARAM for making me roll tanks five games in a row). I have spent way too much time thinking about League, and I wanted to touch on a few things about League and Diversity. For today, let’s talk about this guy, Lucian:

League got it’s first Black champion! Or at least, it’s first inarguably Black champion, as opposed to champions like Twisted Fate or Taric, who might be if you squint at their poorly gamma-balanced intro screens for alternate skins. His origins are fairly obvious; he’s explicitly got bits of Grammaton Cleric, Revolver Ocelot, and Edgar Davids (!), as well as a strong link to the Blade and Matrix movies. Visually and thematically, he’s everything I wanted, with inspirations from both Black and non-Black sources.

And he’s pretty great! Due to his being a bit overpowered on release, Lucian was adopted pretty quickly by the player community; he had a high pick rate during the 2014 League Championship Series, and was considered to be "God Tier" early on. As per the trend with new champ releases, Riot Games has had to reign in his power, but he’s even more mobile than at release and is still a high tier pick. He still feel great to play, and he’s a solid addition to the ADC lineup. His design fulfills the intended player experience of "highly mobile gun templar." So all in all, he’s a slam dunk, right? Unfortunately, not 100%.

I’m no lore-nut, but Lucian’s backstory contains, I believe, the only explicit fridging out of 120 champions. For those of you unfamiliar with the term Women in Refrigerators, it’s from a list written by comics reporter and writer Gail Simone about the proliferation of female characters written solely to being injured or killed horribly for the express purpose of motivating or creating angst for a male character. This robs the female character of any agency and relegates her to the role of a mere prop in the story of the male character

It’s lazy writing, and made even more dissonant because the murderer is another Champion, Thresh. Hilariously, Thresh and Lucian have great in-game synergy, and there’s nothing stopping them from being on the same team.

Other champions may have rivalries with other champs, and a few are even explicitly enemies due to differing factions or goals, but Lucian’s entire character is based on burning revenge for the murder of his wife, perpetrated by someone with whom he plays a glorified arena sport. It just makes no damn sense to keep in this hackneyed, regressive, anti-woman story line.

So having taken two step forwards, Riot stumbles one back by relying on a troubling writing trope. Here’s hoping that when they finally proceed with their promised lore update, someone will reexamine this and create something better. Lucian wouldn't be the first champion have his lore redone. Until then, I’ll keep complaining.

Next time: Taric, and why we need someone truly, truly outrageous

[designroulette]

Arise from your grave

Time to blow some dust off this Tumblr and write something.  Somehow, I'm still getting hits off that Sly Cooper thing I wrote ages ago, so maybe it's time I add some new content?

[ultrace]

Warning: Wordy discussion of sprite graphic manipulation ahead.

I’m going to call this post “Scaling - The Silver Rule." I realize that I’m 30 years too late for dozens of games that could have used this lesson, but it’s bugging me that I’m seeing this problem in games as late as 1991 and beyond, so there we are.

The silver rule is this: When you scale graphics, scale down as much as possible, and scale up as little as possible. It sounds simple enough, but an astonishing, distressing number of games take small sprites, detailed as they may be, and expand them using “Nearest Neighbor"-style algorithms to simulate a 3D approach motion. This results in a blocky, heavily pixelated image that detracts from the experience. Starting with a larger image and scaling down if needed will preserve detail and increase immersion.

Take these two graphic strips, for example. The top selection is from Namco’s Steel Gunner 2, released in 1991. The leftmost image here is the base sprite art for this enemy, taken from the game’s background memory. The game scales this small image upwards as necessary to show the enemy getting closer. The image furthest to the right is how that enemy appears at roughly the maximum scaling in game. Notice how jagged and blocky it appears. If it still doesn’t look too bad, remember that to get a feel for how poor this looks in-game, the image should be increased in size further until it covers a third of your screen.

The bottom selection is a mushroom from Sega’s Space Harrier, released six full years earlier in 1985, on a ROM board that stored one-fifth as much memory as Steel Gunner 2. I couldn’t determine the “base" size of this sprite from memory, but the fourth mushroom from the left is as large as it ever appears in game. I’ve scaled that image further in Photoshop until it matched approximately the size of the largest enemy in the top sequence, Because Sega uses a larger base image to start with, the mushroom is much more smooth and detailed, even at expansion beyond what was used in the game.

Why do I call this the silver rule? Because it’s not golden. There are times when it’s just fine to scale upwards, especially when it’s used in conjunction with other effects. There were some games on the SNES that combined upscaling and warping to make something appear to bounce forward and off the screen in a comical fashion. The bottom line is, if you’re looking to design a game, even if it has a “retro" feel, there’s no evidence to support scaling tiny sprites into big blocky images.

There, that’s off my chest. Now back to game overviews…

[navigatethestream]

if there is one thing radicals/progressives/liberals have failed to get right in the new age

its the notion of boycotts

you wanna know why the bus boycotts of the civil rights movement were so successful?

because an alternative black run transportation system was created for those who couldn’t walk to work or whatever they had to go

they didn’t just tell people “oh the bus enforces racist policies so don’t take it and FUCK if you can’t get to work on time or where you need to be!” 

they said “hey you’re paying to get on the bus and not even being given a seat let alone being ejected if a white passenger needs your seat. here’s a potentially better alternative where you pay to sit down and get to where you need to go” 

all this “boycott Target, Walmart, Monsanto owned companies” comes from a notion of boycott located in the politic of privileged white people

and that’s why they are largely unsuccessful

its why Obama just gave Monsanto the green light to commit even more fuckery to your food

its the reason why cooperation are considered people

its the reason why Walmart is allowed to usurp safety and labor regulations in their factories, and underpay their American workers

because you say “don’t spend your money there” and that’s the end of the story 

you expect people to locate their survival in a politic of “abstaining from unethical choices”

and then from there those unethical choices are somehow supposed to magically disappear. when really only a small percentage of people are able to boycott so many things

there wouldn’t be a movement located around the “99%” if 99% of people could really afford to stop shopping at the unethical places and stop buying the unethical brands

good luck with your hocus pocus activist logic 

[witchymerqueer-blog]

hocus pocus lol. but this shit is hella real.

[bankuei]

It’s the fact that people ignore that the Civil Rights Movement would involve months of planning and prepping before hand - alternate methods to get to work/school, lawyers to press the demands for change of laws, etc.

But all you see is the marches and protests.  The “exciting” part.  Which is why a lot of modern activism suffers from lots of effort for little payoff.  (There’s also a good portion of anti-blackness in the unwillingness to pay attention to the level of intelligence and planning that the CR movement had to do and to talk to people who were involved).

[designroulette]

Roulette of the Week: Ecco the Dolphin

Ok, been stuck under a mountain of stressful stuff for the last two months, but I think things are under control now. Let’s get back into this game design thing.

Information and Cover taken from Mobygames

Ecco the motherfucking Dolphin Published by SEGA Enterprises Ltd. Developed by Novotrade Software Kft. Released 1992 Played on Retrocopy .960 and Picodrive for PSP

This is the other reason I've been stuck for so long. I want to like Ecco the Dolphin, I really do, but honestly it feels like I've reached a point where it’s actively kicking me in the groin. The real tragedy is that if Ecco was just a useless steaming pile of kusoge, I could just shelve it and move on, but that’s not the problem at all.  Ecco gets so many things right: it’s gorgeous, it has an innovative control scheme, and it even sneaks some sci-fi stylings. It certainly doesn't fail due to a lack of ambition.

At it’s core, Ecco is a fine adventure game about exploring the unfamiliar world under the waves. Within the first two levels, the player is taught non-bipedal travel and how to use sonar to navigate their surroundings. It’s a credit to the programmers that moving along both the horizontal and vertical axes is a joy, rather than cumbersome. Some of the best moments come from discovering how to circumvent obstacles like rushing currents and jerkass octopi without the benefit of hands.

Seriously, just look at this guy....Jerk.

Unfortunately, the tweet below from Ecco creator Ed Annunziata sums up why I stopped.

For a game about a *spoilers* time-traveling magic space dolphin, Ecco is very willing to punish the player for even the smallest of mistakes. Air supply and health are balanced in a manner that demands the player make no wrong turns (It isn't helped that for some reason the health and air bars are logarithmic, so as you get more injured, it appears like you lose more bar).

Ultimately, I stopped when it became clear that Ecco had no interest in respecting my time. Screw up, and you’re mostly likely dead and back to the start of the level because of how fragile Ecco is. Ecco has almost no post-hit invincibility to speak of, and running out of air is pretty much lethal if you aren't within spitting distance of an air pocket. I’m reminded of an article from Shamus Young’s blog, “Do it Again, Stupid.”

The OTHER type of game, the kind that has always perplexed me, is something my brother and I refer to as a “Do it again, stupid” game. The game will pose a challenge, and the player is almost certainly doomed to fail on their first attempt. And the second. And maybe a few subsequent attempts as well. Usually we’re talking about a “mission” of some sort. As in, “do something quite difficult before the time runs out”.

It becomes clear when you do this that the designers never intended for you to succeed on the first try. They intend for you to do the mission over and over until you meet some arbitrary goal or time limit. Often the mission with have some sort of surprise “gotcha” moment that foils you. You must then remember this and plan ahead on your next attempt.

Much like my objections to many of its contemporaries, Ecco provides a world for exploration, but the controls and hazards are geared towards breakneck movement. The adventure elements do not mesh with the exacting action elements. As a contrast, games like Dolphin Olympics 2 or Miami Shark do a much better job of designing levels around similar movement controls by focusing only on the action elements.

Ecco the Dolphin makes me sad, because it presents a breathtaking playground and then slaps me for daring to stop to admire the view. With proper balancing, it could have been a real classic.

[caramelzappa-deactivated2018012]

I was super interested because the new NIN video was directed by David Lynch.

But it’s basically just a giant seizure that flashes between like 3 things.

[designroulette]

Here, let me get the bad taste out of your mouth.

Better?

[designroulette]

What are you having trouble with? I could talk about the plot of K7 forever and a day. It’s a bit like a David Lynch film in that there is a specific interpretation that’s favored by the creator, but it has to be painstakingly teased out, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

If you’re looking for a meaty plot analysis, this FAQ is probably the closest I’ve found to a clear explanation of what’s going on. It’s spoilery though, so save it for after your first playthrough.

[discovergames-blog]

I’m going to put most of this under a “read more” to save space, but I just wanted to say what a PERFECT response this is (to my Killer7 post). It is respectful and understanding, not putting down or dismissing my statements. Even though this person clearly researched this and really cares about the topic, there is the understanding that it might not be for everyone. It is informative but spoiler-free, still allowing me to figure things out on my own. Bravo, seriously. Thank you SO much for taking the time. I will give this some thought and definitely check out some of those resources after I finish.

Read More

[designroulette]

I'm glad it was helpful! I totally want to hear your thoughts afterwards, K7 is one of my favorite topics.

[gamedesigntips]

Underwater Levels

Caminc asks: How do you feel about underwater levels? And how should those levels be used effectively?

[designroulette]

Honestly, more games should have mutton levels

[discovergames-blog]

There are some game stories I don’t understand because they are is no set meaning and they are meant to be interpreted. Some I don’t understand because they are too complex and overwhelming in that typical sci-fi/fantasy way. Some I don’t understand because I’m just not paying attention, because it’s a stupid or throwaway story.

And then there is Killer7.

I am paying attention, reading every word carefully, and I really want to know what’s the hell is happening. Maybe I’m an idiot, but even the most basic plot elements - like who are these people, what are they doing, and what do they want - are eluding me. All of the dialog just seems like gibberish, incomprehensible word salad. 

[designroulette]

What are you having trouble with? I could talk about the plot of K7 forever and a day. It's a bit like a David Lynch film in that there is a specific interpretation that's favored by the creator, but it has to be painstakingly teased out, which isn't everyone's cup of tea.

If you're looking for a meaty plot analysis, this FAQ is probably the closest I've found to a clear explanation of what's going on. It's spoilery though, so save it for after your first playthrough.

Be warned, it gets weird fast, especially at the point where there are three different Harmon's playing different sides. I would say it's worth sticking around until the ending, even if the plot makes no damn sense. There are a few plot points that require a lot of handwaving to get from point A to B, probably because they ran out of time or money to flesh them out.

To me at least, there's a lot of indicators that Killer 7 had a number of development issues that make it even more obtuse than it originally was conceived.  Every episode had the a different animation team working on cut-scenes, which is tonally jarring. The original voice acting was unintelligible; if you listen closely to Iwazaru (the guy in the red gimp suit), you can make out the Engrishy original dialogue with all it's missing prepositions and poor conjugation. I seem to recall reading somewhere that rather than rerecording the dialogue for the NA release, they just put a spooky audio filter on his speech because it was cheaper and atmospheric. 

Without spoiling the story too much, here's the basic idea: there are two factions at war, representing the ideals of the East vs the West. What confuses the issue is that it's not always clear who is fighting for which side, not even Harmon or Kun Lan is necessarily on the obvious side. For your first playthrough, I would NOT pay as much attention to political plot specifics like the Yakumo, the U.N. Party, etc, as they just add complexity without bringing much more to table. Honestly, the best person to pay attention to may be Travis, as he seems to be the only character that doesn't talk in riddles all the time.

In the spirit of David Lynch's ten clues, here's a few thoughts, which may or may not be useful:

1. What is the significance of video cameras?

2. Why is Harmon dressed the way he is?

3. Pay attention to who is white and who is black (in all senses of the words).

4. What exactly is in the safe in the school?

5. Who is Emir?

6. How does each Smith's abilities tie in with the events of the final chapter?

7. Who is making all that racket in Garcian's house?

8. What was Mills trying to tell Garcian before he was interrupted?

9. What's the whole deal with Ulmeyda?

[designroulette]

So, I got this in my email today. On the surface, it reads like one of those sexist ads where "our game is so awesome you're gonna ignore your girlfriend because its better than getting some amiright bros!!@!11!!"

However, curiously, the marketing department at Warner Bros. chose to not only to make the ad gender-  and sexual preference-neutral, but also objectify the Green Lantern and his rockin' abs. And even not 100% necessarily in a "men are unrealistic fantasy objects too" false equivalence sort of way.

Is this progress? I don't even fucking know anymore.

I mean, those are some really nice abs.

[eschergirls]

cannibalistic-superwholockian submitted:

So today was the world premiere of the new cinematic League of Legends trailer ‘A Twist of Fate’ and though I really had a fangasm on this one there was one thing that REALLY bothers me and I just had to share or otherwise I would collapse.

I just really really REALLY hate how Katarina looks in this trailer.

While the dudes are incredibly realistic looking (JUST LOOK AT THIS FREACKIN FACES AND THE TEETH AND THE DAMN HAND; OMG SO LIFELIKE), Kata looks like some teenage girl from a animated pixar movie.

She is supposed to be similar age (late 20s to early 30, her in-game voice sounds even older) as Garen (that dude without the hat) but you don’t see a single wrinkle on her face, even her scar looks nothing real (gosh that could have ruined her pretty face?!) so what’s even the point of it. But instead of a adult woman we have CUTENESS. Cuteness and a really unrealistic comic-like body (her ‘assassin-armour’ is a another story).

Dear god, I don’t even now how to describe my disappointment, THAT BUGS ME SO MUCH.

Kata could have looked SO GOOD if they have made her looking like a mature woman in the way they made the other humans.

I understand the fan service in the trailer, but what they did to her just ruined it for me.

Actual trailer

This reminds me of a similar issue I had playing Batman: Arkham City, where the male characters have such wonderfully detailed faces, each looking distinct with lines and wrinkles to add to their expressiveness, while the women all looked like dolls with no wrinkles on their faces, and constantly having this blank kinda expression because of it.  

This child-like doll face on an adult woman’s body thing seems really popular in video games and it’s annoying, not just the idea that women can’t grow old or even look the age their characters are supposed to be, but that it also hurts their character if their facial expressions are limited because they aren’t allowed to have lines on their faces, and it makes all the female characters look the same, which is boring.

Allowing women to have lines, wrinkles, different facial features, and not just all doe-eyed smooth young doll faces, allows the characters to be more distinctive, look varying ages, have more of a range of expression, and ultimately, look more visually interesting.

[designroulette]

Designers, please stop doing this.  Just....knock it off.

[designroulette]

Well holy crap, League of Legends might, might have finally done something about it's imbalanced racial representation problems. Unfortunately, the pic above was quickly taken down, so it's unknown if the champion was scrapped or if they had just not wanted to show their hand before further work was done.

If you read through my archives, you'll note that one of the first Diversity in Design pieces I wrote was on the lack of racial representation in LoL. If this champ is going live, then this is an important step forwards toward fixing that problem. If he's not going live, then what I wrote is more pertinent than ever.

Please take a read through my old article, as it was the impetus for this blog in the first place, and I'm pretty sure that I was getting like a single pageview per week at the time. I apologize for the hideousness of the formatting, as I was still trying to get my head around this crayzeee Tumblr thing that the kids are into. I also ended up splitting it across five posts, which may not have been the wisest choice.

[designroulette]

Diversity in Design: Sly Cooper and Writing Characters with Disabilities

(there are some major spoilers here for the Sly Cooper series, so please be warned. Also, it's been several years since I last played, so I'm taking most of the details from my memory and the Sly wiki)

There’s been a ton of focus on feminist and racial issues in gaming lately, so I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about a less-frequently mentioned group suffers from poor representation. Today, we’re going to be looking people with physical disabilities.

Physical disabilities among video game characters generally run a very narrow range, with the most common either being Genius Cripples (this is TVTropes’ term, not mine), owners of an fantastical Artificial Limb, wearers of an Eyepatch of Power, and Blind Weaponmasters. Typically, the latter two barely even count as disabilities, as characters that have impaired vision are often granted Daredevil-levels of sensory perception, and so are not really disabled at all. Likewise, artificial limbs are often more powerful than meat limbs, and any challenges from having inorganic body parts are rarely examined.

“Differently-abled” has never been more apt.

I’d like to focus on one of the rare times a disability is actually treated as such, with it’s challenges and limitations actually recognized and treated with dignity. To do this, we’re going to need to loosen our definition of “person” to make this work.

Don’t let the coke-bottle glasses fool you, cross him and he will mess you up.

This is Bentley from the Sly Cooper series of games.  While Sly may be the hero on the box, its arguably Bentley’s journey thorugh the series that is actually more dynamic. Also, Bentley is the only example I can think of that gains his disability during the course of the series and yet remains as one of the main characters.

In the first installment of the Sly series, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Bentley is introduced as the stereotypical brains of the gang. He’s the one planning the heists, but he chooses to stay out of the action and comes off as a bit of a panicky, uptight nerd. He’s definitely the thinker of the group, but he doesn’t do more than present the plans and hints for Sly.

Bentley starts to come out of his shell (ba-dump-bump) more in Sly 2, as he transitions into a playable character.  He’s still not the most nimble or strong of characters, but he’s shown to be capable in the field. He still heads up planning, but he also serves as their hacking and demolitions expert. Bentley is just beginning to become confident in his abilities, when disaster strikes late in the game.  Bentley devises a plan to eliminate the final boss of the game, but the explosive aftermath of his plan crushes his legs, permanently crippling him. Here is why I love the series. Rather than waving a magic wand and having Bentley get better off-camera between Sly 2 and 3, Bentley’s injury actually provides the catalyst for the first part of Sly 3. Murray leaves the team due to his guilt in Bentley’s injury, and Bentley himself has to deal with a brief bout of self-doubt. However, instead of giving up, he builds himself an entire arsenal of gadgets and a techno wheelchair to help bring Murray back to the team. Bentley has at this point effectively become Oracle to Sly’s Batman.

"Seriously, New 52 can go eat a bag of..."

Rather than stepping into the sidelines, Bentley becomes even more active, even taking on bosses and finding himself a love interest.

Bentley: I wish I could walk on tightropes and land on flagpoles, but I can't.

Penelope: You can do other stuff. Sly can't rewire a satellite or write ASCII code.

Bentley: Sly can't even spell ASCII.

While I was Googling for the least offensive term for “disabled person,” I found (maybe for the first time ever) something useful on Yahoo Answers:

Use "people first" language - and this is NOT about PC. It is about using language to empower and dignify a human being.

- use "a person with a disability" or "people with disabilities"

person who uses a wheelchair (who is in a wheelchair) and NOT a "wheelchair person"

I think this applies to why Bentley is a great character, because he’s defined by his personality and growth, not his disability. The loss of his legs is acknowledged as a challenge, but he’s forced to identify what he truly excels at and become more of a badass because of it. He's a person that uses a wheelchair, not a wheelchair person.

As Sly 3 closes, Sly passes on the Cooper legacy on to Bentley, implying that Bentley’s grown to be as great a thief as Sly and his family line. Bentley, who has relied on, and occasionally felt overshadowed, by Sly since game one, has become his own man....err, turtle. Like Oracle, he’s no longer defined by the guy on the cover.

Some further thoughts:

In some ways I wish that we could see more of Bentley convincing himself he can still run with Sly’s gang, and how he invents the gizmos that we see in Sly 3. How can we make a game about coping with a new disability interesting?

Bentley is the obvious narrative choice for injury, but what if Murray or Sly, who depend on their muscles and dexterity respectively were injured instead?

[littleduckorganics-blog]

{Rad Dad Alert}

Mike Mika, a game designer, hacked Donkey Kong so his daughter could play as the princess and rescue Mario. Awesome.  (Source here.)

[designroulette]

Yay equality!

[designroulette]

Roulette of the Week: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Setting and Mood

Last time, I talked about how Stalker’s setting is its most salient feature. It’s interesting to note that Stalker is not a post-apocalyptic setting in the traditional "world-changing armageddon" sense, but for all intents the Zone might as well be.

From an realism standpoint, the art direction in Stalker is fantastic, with plenty of decaying buildings, abandoned vehicles, and other reminders that the Zone was once thriving with human activity.

There is no better example of this than when you need to wander through the empty streets of Pripyat. GSC did their homework, and abandoned Brutalist architecture is everywhere.

They even replicated the Pripyat Ferris wheel!

However, what’s most important about Stalker’s setting is how it contributes to the mood of the game as a whole. I unintentionally left it out of my one sentence description, but Stalker is also member of the survival horror genre of games. Much like other SH games like Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark, the primary mood that Stalker tries to convey is one of helplessness in the face of danger.

Encumbrence further weakens the player by putting a strict cap on how prepared a player can be. Unlike a standard shooter of the time, the player must make tough choices about what type of weapons to carry, how many first aid items and ammo to stock, and how much food and anti-radiation medication they think will be necessary for the journey. Additionally, all items are either consumed on use, and weapons and armor eventually degrade into uselessness.

Decisions, decisions...

The rules of the universe are also deliberately obscured from the player. While the PDA’s looted from corpses will sometimes provide information or background, it’s not uncommon to discover a new type of anomaly or monster by blundering into them. One of the scariest moments happens late in the Agroprom Underground, after clearing out the area of enemy soldiers. After fighting humans with conventional weaponry during the entire length, the game pulls a bait and switch, by dropping a controller in behind you. Visually unassuming, the controller will still melt a careless Stalker's brain from a distance.

"I'd prefer if you don't mention my skin condition"

So does Stalker succeed at creating a mood of fear and helplessness? If I were to stop writing here, you might think the answer is yes, but unfortunately, there’s a fair number of caveats here.

As I mentioned before, Stalker has a metric butt-ton of bugs. Nothing breaks tension and immersion like a soldier with his voiceloop stuck on “get out of here, STALKER!” Still, this is less of a design issue and more of a cautionary warning against biting off more than you can chew on your debut game.

A more serious problem is the enemy respawn rate. Everytime you leave an area, you reset all the baddies. Unfortunately, this kills a lot of the scarcity issues later on, as you can easily loot ammo, food, and bandages from almost every person you kill.  It also removes some of the mystique and danger when every area is crawling with bandits and soldiers.

Here's my end of game stats. I've killed an absurd number of bandits.

It’s a bit counter-intuitive, but the more human enemies around, the safer I felt. My reasoning was, the more humans roaming around, the less likely I would encounter any mutant horrors or anomalies in the area,

Once you reach Rostok, which is roughly halfway through, another related problem arises. Once you have a lategame gun and armor, there is almost nothing short of taking an anti-tank missle to the face that can stop you. I feel that the designers made an error in making the toughest enemies heavily armed soldiers, rather than more horrific mutants. Given that you can loot guns off the soldiers, there’s a hard limit to how strong they are compared to you, whereas an otherworldly monster might have helped maintain the horror mood for longer.

"I'm not sure I have enough pockets for all these bullets..."

Unfortunately, the endgame transitions from Resident Evil One horror to Resident Evil Five action, to its detriment. The novel horror atmosphere that I lauded earlier is all but replaced by a fairly standard military shooter, to the game's detriment.

It’s hard to be scared when I’m the deadliest animal in the area.

When designing your game, ask yourself:

What mood are we trying to achieve with the setting?

How do the setting and mechanics work to achieve this mood?

Do we want maintain that mood throughout the entire game, and how can we achieve that?

[designroulette]

Roulette of the Week: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Intro

Information and Cover taken from Mobygames

Published by THQ Inc. Developed by GSC Game World Released Mar 20, 2007Platform played on: Windows 7 PC Version 1.0006 with Stalker Mod Compilation 1.3 Also, I really wish I had found this link before I started playing

I’ve been struggling for the last ten minutes trying to figure out how to categorize S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl (which I’ll just refer to as Stalker from here on out, because FUCK PERIODS). It's a modern day, alternate history, open world, sci-fi survival shooter...thingy. Based loosely on the Russian sci-fi classic Roadside Picnic and it’s later reworked into the movie Stalker, Stalker:SoC borrows the same setting while jettisoning the plots of both sources.

Stalker is relatively skimpy on plot and characterization. There’s a whole “missing past” arc that should be familiar to anyone that’s played KoTOR or Bioshock, but it’s largely window dressing. Your motivations for everything you do are flimsy at best, and while the various factions feel differentiated, individual character traits are nonexistent.

It's also buggier than a VW Beetle even with fan patches.

At its heart, Stalker's strongest feature is its setting.  Using the tragic events of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown as its basis, Stalker reimagines the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (referred to as “the Zone” in-game) as a place fraught with danger but containing otherworldly rewards.  In the Zone, it’s quite possible you’ll be killed by mutant animals, radiation, soldiers, deranged cultists, or opportunistic bandits. Even the elements themselves conspire to murder you in creative ways, as the Zone has patches of instability called “anomalies,” where an unwary explorer could find themselves set on fire or flung hundreds of feet in the air.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at where Stalker achieves and fails the goal of creating a sense of place.

[designroulette]

Diversity in Design: POX and designing for promoting dialogues

Ok, so I stopped writing due to some real life stuff, but also because I was stuck trying to wrap things up with this week’s Roulette.

So let’s not waste time, let’s get right into it.  

Yesterday, my wife and I attended the keynote for the Different Games Conference, which was all about building games for diversity.  The keynote speaker was Mary Flanagan of Tiltfactor.

Mary is super adorable.

Truth be told, I found her talk a bit scattered, but there were quite a few things to take away from it.  Today, I want to focus specifically on her experiences with designing and testing POX, a iPad/board game about fighting a highly infectious disease. If I recall correctly, the idea came to her after she asked a friend in the medical sector what the biggest problem is in America today, to which they surprisingly replied, “vaccination.” POX was designed to raise awareness about the value of vaccination, especially given the recent anti-science, anti-vaccination attitudes that have cropped up recently in first-world nations.

  It's like Pandemic, except it doesn't feel like work.

Mechanically, POX most resembles Go, and if you have a firm background in Go, you’ll probably find that similar containment strategies apply. However you are hampered by the people that are unable to (or refuse to) be vaccinated, and if they contract the disease they will immediately die. You will learn to hate these people.

Seriously, Jenna, please just take your pseudoscience protest and go away.

Tiltfactor did actual scientific testing of players to see if the underlying “message” sank in. I think the most surprising lesson that they found was that the more the design distances and abstracts itself from “message,” the more effective it is.

POX comes in three flavors, regular board game, iPad app, ZombiePOX. Perhaps not shockingly, players actually internalized the ideas behind the game most strongly when playing the zombie flavor. I wish Mary had spent more time dwelling on this, but she presented two theories as to why this is.

One, being too explicit with the message doesn't inspire critical thought. How many of us have played “educational” games that were ridiculously on-message like Captain Novolin?

It’s the videogame equivalent of a very special episode about drug abuse. Tiltfactor’s games, to their credit,  mask their message in gameplay instead of wearing it on their sleeves.

For example, Buffalo is another game by Tiltfactor, where players draw two cards and are challenged to name a famous person matching the combination, like “optimistic soldier” or “glasses-wearing heartthrob.” The beauty of Buffalo is that it’s a stealth drone targeting the public’s general lack of knowledge about certain populations. By sheer chance, eventually you’ll come up with combinations like “female scientist” or “asian-american sports star.” If we can only name one, or even worse no celebrities at all, what does that say about us? Would Buffalo be as thought-provoking if players were told up front that they were playing a game about bias and stereotyping?  Probably not.

Two, adding flavor elements for the sake of engagement helps players think critically about the message,  even if they have nothing to do with the message.  Mary recounted working on another public health game, and deciding, “this game’s setting is just not very fun.” After prototyping a number of alternate designs, they found that a variant set in the 16th century involving buckets of leeches and plague masks was much better received.

How could this not make a game more awesome?

Unfortunately, they had difficulty convincing their sponsor that this was a valid design choice, and the sponsors actually refused to continue supporting the game development unless they continued with the sterile, boring, “on-message” design.  In the end Tiltfactor decided to continue developing without sponsorship because their experience showed that they were making the right decision. You can download POX for free for the iPad