Hey everyone. So I basically quite Tumblr a while ago, as the people who still follow me for some reason have no doubt noticed. But I did want to pop back in and mention that I have a podcast now, and it’s really good and you should listen to it.
Video Games Cover to Cover is a podcast I’m doing with my longtime friend. We’re going to choose a game and work our way through it and discuss it each week - we’re going to cover the interesting and less interesting bits and make sure that these games get the attention they deserve. We’re covering a few hours each week so that we can cover it all, and you can follow along with us and join the discussion! Think of it like your local book club, but online and for video games.
We just started up this week, and we’re opening up with Final Fantasy X-2, in honor of the HD collection coming out on Switch recently. It’s the unloved child of the FFX family and we’re hoping to discuss why that is and whether it deserves its reputation.
And hey, don’t just take my word for it - so far people seem to be enjoying it!
Currently VGCTC is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher, with more to come as soon as we get approval. We’re adding a new episode every Monday and we’re really excited about this.If you’re into podcasts and this idea sounds interesting, please give us a listen, and subscribe or rate us! These first few weeks are critically important for the success of any podcast and we have a personal goal to make the New and Noteworthy lists on Apple, which we can only manage with your help!
Just use the links below for your podcast app of choice, and thank you for any attention you’re able to give us.
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/video-games-cover-to-cover/id1467320394
its pretty hard to convey how big of a deal this is
he’s selling himself short by just saying he’s the best “dbfz” player. he has a real claim for the title of best overall fighting game player in the world. he just won the biggest game in the world right now, and has been winning tournaments flawlessly for years, and he’s still so young.
he basically just won ten superbowls and cemented his legacy as one of the all time greats, as if it fuckin wasnt cemented enough. in the pantheon of great players, the Mount Rushmore of legendary competitors, he just carved himself out a second head
It is easy to read this as HZD being lazy but the choice (do arrows fire from the bow or the player's view) is a trade off and I think both games made the choice in the way that fits them.
The arrow firing from the bow is more logical and doing so makes the game more immersive by sticking to the logic of the game world. This rarely comes up but it is the details that really sell a game's world and this is a good one. On the other hand it makes hitting targets with arrows harder sometimes. The arrow's actual trajectory is going to be slightly different then the shot the player is actually trying to make but this difference is only really noticeable when you are making close range shots.
Link's primary weapon is a sword, he uses a bow for ranged attacks but most combat is done in melee range with melee weapons. Aloy uses a bow as her primary weapon and you are often asked to make close ranged attacks on small targets (vulnerable pieces of enemy bodies). In the context of a game that expects you to use the bow up close firing from the player's view makes perfect sense; otherwise player's would just kinda miss up close shots sometimes without them realizing why which would be frustrating.
Choices don't exist in a vacuum, whether they work or not depends on the rest of the game.
I want to briefly (joke) talk about the structural incentives of different forms of game monetization. Basically, how does the way a game charges players change what kind of game the developer wants to make?
I will say upfront I'm presenting these as categories with clear boundaries but in practice they aren't so clear. A game will often have to be purchased, and then have a subscription fee, and the game might be selling ad space or have product placement within it. You might buy a subscription which gets you discounts to games that you purchase which have micro-transactions in them. There might be various tiers of subscription, or various tiers of purchase. And so on...
Regardless of how complex it is in practice though simplifying it in order to talk about these things in general is useful as it gives us a tool kit for understanding the more complex real world cases. I will also say that this is not an exhaustive list, this is just a couple common forms of monetization.
With the disclaimers out of the way...
Upfront Purchase
First is purchasing the game. You give them money, they give you a game (could be physical or digital) and that is it. As the price is all upfront the goal of the Devs is to make something that looks exciting. How good the game actually is only matters in so far as being good might get you word of mouth or good reviews which translates into more sales. If it is good it might have franchise potential or just add strength to the company's brand but the important thing here is hype. You want people to want your game, if they actually like playing it is secondary because at that point you already have their money.
These games are the most likely to be marketed disingenuously because there is little risk and large upsides for doing so. The upside is sales, the risk is consumer blow-back but large scale consumer blow-back is rare. Also, consumers aren't always able to return the game and due to people's natural loss aversion they aren't likely to return something they have bought even if dissatisfied and able to do so.
This doesn't have to be overt lying, it can just be over emphasis of minor elements to different audiences. A game might be sold as horror to one audience, fun adventure to another, and a space romance to yet another. People who think they are buying a space romance yet find that the space romance is, at best, a small part of the game might be disappointed but, as I said, that doesn't really matter after they made the purchase.
Subscription
Second is the subscription model. In this model you make money off of people paying a relatively small amount every month or so. What is important here is that, unlike with purchasing games, there is no benefit in getting people who won't like the game to play the game. Money isn't made by getting someone to play for a month, but rather getting someone to play for years. As such you aren't really interested in marketing the game in a disingenuous way (as you are for a purchased game). You don't just want people who will buy the game but people who will love the game.
Strangely though, you don't want people to play the game for 100 hours a week because if they do they will quickly run out of content and then move on. Your ideal player is someone who plays a couple hours a week, every week, for years. This is a balancing act, you want them to play a bit, stop, and then come back. To accomplish this these games will have daily/weekly goals to get you to play consistently yet won't have so many of them that players will get burned out quickly. The goal is to manage the player's long term relationship with the game and so are much more about community building. Something you play with friends on weekends. Ideally, the game itself the middleman between the player and their friends.
Also important: these games are designed to be endless. Purchased games have finite amount of content as once you buy the game then they are done with you. But subscription games are never done with you. No one finishes WoW, they just eventually get tired of it.
Micro-transactions
Next is micro-transactions. Now micro-transactions come in many shapes and sizes so I'm going to limit what I'm talking about here to basically be "How League of Legends was initially monetized" which was no upfront costs and you could buy cosmetics (but never earn them) and you could both earn and buy more characters to play as. I am, for now, going to dodge the mobile version of micro-transactions where you buy boosts/time-savers and focus on games where you buy discrete digital goods (yes, I know such things are in LoL but as I said upfront there aren't really any "clean" examples).
Unlike subscription games this model does want intense engagement where someone will play 100+ hours a week. Someone who plays a lot is going to want more things to do which is achieved by giving up money. Getting the player into the community part of the game is important as what you are monetizing is often their ability to express themselves (though skins and hats) which matters more if they care about the people looking at their avatar and want to show off for them.
Because there is such a huge need for new content (devs can't make a hundred of hours worth of new raid content every week) these games tend to be competitive games where players create essentially new content for themselves by fighting each other (or potentially making new maps and sellable content for you). As the game wants to cultivate intensity and it is a competitive/cooperative game these communities tend to turn toxic without heavy moderation (which is rarely done).
Loot Boxes
The last one I will talk about is Loot Boxes. Loot boxes are for sale digital goods that contain a random assemblage of goods for the player, this can be gear, new characters to play as, comedic items, and so on. This is different from micro-transactions in a couple of important ways.
First is that unlike the micro-transactions the loot boxes should be earnable though gameplay (this is actually very important), and second is that players don't know what they will get (gambling). Like micro-transactions you care about generating a lot of intensely engaged players who want more more more. But the problem you are naturally going to run into is that if the player can get everything though just playing then there is no "call to action" that gets the player to give you some money because they feel like they can get it eventually. There is desire but no pressure, so you have to add that pressure. How? Timed events.
By making items only available for short periods of time you can create the pressure that gets people to pay for more chances to win the gear or item that they want. Your typical case will be someone who plays obsessively though out the event hoping to get what they want but fears that, as the event draws to a close, they won't be able to earn the item they want and so, fearing losing out, pays money.
There is a greater need to maintain the long term relationship here than with a micro-transaction model but unlike with the subscription model that interest doesn't need to be continuous. The player can stop playing for months at a time and that is fine so long as you get them to come back to the game seasonally for each new event.
The high amounts of engagement that drive loot box sales aren't sustainable for large portions of the player base and so you want to have cooling off periods. The platonic ideal of a player for a game with loot boxes is someone who only really plays when there is an event on, tries hard to earn the things they want, gets some good stuff but not the one things they really wanted, and for fear of that hard work amounting to nothing (investment fallacy) pays money.
Lastly, I will say that loot boxes are, by any reasonable definition, gambling. That isn't to say I think it should be banned, I personally don't have a problem with (adults) gambling, but I feel that it is important to be honest about what lies at the heart of this form of monetization.
Wrapping up
There are far more kinds of monetization that I didn't talk about here, this isn't an exhaustive list but a broad discussion of a couple different forms of monetization. The ones I talked about I did so because I felt that they were either the common or interesting.
At the risk of spouting the boring centrist line of "nobody is perfect" I will say that all forms of monetization have flaws. Just as there is no ethical consumption under capitalism there isn't really an ethical way to monetize you audience under capitalism either. Purchased games want rubes who will believe anything they are told, subscription games want to make you low key dependant on them, micro-transaction games want you high key addicted to them, and loot box games want hopeless gamblers who know they are "due" some luck.
Though I will say that, of the models I talked about, loot box games have the greatest capacity for taking advantage of people. Even if most people never buy a loot box, the monetization of the loot box game is to take severe advantage of those who do fall prey to its manipulations. While I do love games like Overwatch I would never recommend such a game to someone who I knew had problems with gambling and I am loathe to recommend it to someone without knowing how susceptible they are to such manipulations. Some kinds of micro-transaction games come close but even with those the cost and rewards are clear and upfront, players can make at least semi-rational choices. Loot boxes games though have a clear incentive and ability to take advantage of people in the way other monetization methods don't. So while it is true all forms of monetization are flawed they are not equally flawed.
A Game Dev might not want to admit the power that these incentives have on the game they are making, even to themselves, but they of all people should be aware of the invisible and overwhelming power of incentives as understanding that is core to game design.
Pyre was probably the most stressful game I played this year. That isn't to say that it was the hardest or most intense, but that I was more afraid of losing in that game then any other game I've played. This seems strange given that the stakes for the game are much lower than most other games. There is a revolution, but it is a distant thing for a place that you --the player-- have never seen. Rather, the stakes for each match are much more personal. To try and settle a grudge, to win a bet, or to show a bully you won't be pushed around. Maybe it is because the stakes feel more relatable or maybe it is because the stakes are so small the game can actually let you lose.
This dog has a mustache and if you say it looks dumb he will shave it but why would you it is great. The things you do and say in this game MATTER!
In a game like Destiny 2 where the stakes are the end of the world I'm not really afraid of dying. It would be an inconvenience, I would have to redo some stuff, but I know that the world isn't actually going to end. The threat is grand and operatic, but also totally without teeth. It doesn't matter how many times I die, the sun isn't actually going to explode. But in Pyre, I can let my friends down. I can screw up and put them more in debt, be unable to help them stand up for themselves, or help them get the forgiveness and absolution they deserve. All those things can happen because of your failure and the game doesn't stop and ask you to try again, you just have to live with it.
Your soldiers can die in XCOM, will die in XCOM. On one hand this made me fear for their lives but it also made me emotionally distant from them. I might spend some time customizing them or giving them nicknames, but I'm always ready to let them die if need be. But in Pyre your failures don't just disappear, they stick around and tell you not to worry, its okay. They’ll figure something out. Really, they are okay. Its okay, it wasn’t like they cared. It is fine, they are fine.
Honestly, its fine. Fine. I’m fine...
This hurts more. It wasn't a noble sacrifice that gets a plaque on a wall of heroes, it was just you fucking up and letting down someone who counted on you.
I don't particularly care when a game tells me that all time will be destroyed if I fuck this up. In part because I know I can fuck it up and I'll get another chance, and in part because I have no conception of what everything being destroyed would look or feel like. If, on the other hand, a game tells me that if I screw this up I'll be late to pick someone up from the airport... well now I can't bear to lose.
This isn't me saying we should stop making games where someone threatens to blow up the world. What I'm saying is that when games engage in this Armageddon arms race where each game struggles to come up with a bigger and badder way to end the world, solar system, universe, EXISTANCE, they miss what makes a game's stakes emotionally compelling. Pyre doesn't threaten to undo existence, it doesn't even threaten to kill any of your friends, yet I've never been so afraid of letting down a virtual character before.
Different Kinds of Difficulty: Continuous and Aspirational
With Cuphead reigniting discussions about difficult games it is worth spending some time examining all the ways in which a game can be difficult. Cuphead is difficult and Chess is difficult but they are difficult in such radically different ways that it seems odd to just apply the same “difficult” label to both. But instead of talking about how different games are difficult, I want to talk about the different ways the same game can be difficult. I want to talk about the difference between continuous and aspirational difficulty.
This is an image of Cuphead and not Chess because only one of them is bringing in that sweet sweet SEO right now.
Different Kinds of Difficulty: Continuous and Aspirational
With Cuphead reigniting discussions about difficult games it is worth spending some time examining all the ways in which a game can be difficult. Cuphead is difficult and Chess is difficult but they are difficult in such radically different ways that it seems odd to just apply the same "difficult" label to both. But instead of talking about how different games are difficult, I want to talk about the different ways the same game can be difficult. I want to talk about the difference between continuous and aspirational difficulty.
This is an image of Cuphead and not Chess because only one of them is bringing in that sweet sweet SEO right now.
Defining our Terms
Broadly, aspirational difficulty is how well you have to be able to play to win, and continuous difficulty is how well you have to play to not lose. These are similar to the concepts of skill ceiling and skill floor but are different in some important ways.
Skill ceiling is the cap on how good at a game you can be. For example, Tic Tac Toe is a game with a low skill ceiling as it is very easy to be as good at that game as it is possible to be. Aspirational difficulty isn't how good at a game you can be but rather how good at a game you have to be, even if only for a moment, to be able to win or accomplish a goal in the game.
I've never been good at darts but sometimes I'll try throw darts at the bullseye to see if I can hit it. There are no points, I'm not playing against anyone, and there isn't a limit on how many tries I get (outside of my own patience). I just throw dart after dart at the board and try to hit the bullseye. If this counts as a game is another discussion entirely but it is a good example of a pure kind of aspirational difficulty. I'm just trying to do something that is hard to do and I win when I've done that hard thing. It doesn't matter how bad at it I am the first 99 tries if I hit it on the 100th.
Compare that form of difficulty to getting the infamous "Art" ending to the Stanley Parable. To get this ending you have to spend 2 hours pushing a button and then spend another 2 hours going back and forth to press 2 different buttons. Pushing the buttons is easy, even when there are 2 of them and you have to go back and forth to press the buttons. This is, on a mechanical level, very very easy to do.
Save the virtual cardboard baby from the fire!
But despite how easy this is very few people are willing to put in the work to get this ending because you have to spend 4 hours pushing buttons and if you screw it up you have to start all over again. At no single point is this difficult, but doing it continuously for 4 straight hours is unbearably hard to do. This is continuous difficulty. It doesn't ask you to do anything amazing in the way aspirational difficulty does, rather it sets a limit on how bad you are allowed to be. Skill floor is about your mechanical ability to press the button, the continuous difficulty is that you have to press that button every few seconds for hours on end.
Both at once
Very few games only use one or the other, I had to pull some strange examples to show relatively pure forms of each. While games use both it is worth understanding them apart from each other so we can better talk about how they work together.
For example: in Cuphead there is a lot of continuous difficulty that comes from having to avoid enemy attacks. Being good at dodging attacks will never win you the fight, but you have to be at least okay at dodging attacks to give yourself enough time to damage the enemy. It is also worth nothing that the aspirational difficulty in this game isn't much higher then the lower bar set by the continuous difficulty. Enemies tend to be very large and easy to hit with your ranged attacks. That said there is a great deal of aspirational difficulty in using your parry to get additional super meter and this mechanic makes each fight a great deal more interesting as each parryable object is a chance for you to try and do some amazing stunts.
Players tend to experience continuous difficulty as stress as it is a constant unrelenting pressure. Stress has negative connotations but it isn't necessarily a bad thing in this context. A game that provides no or insufficient stressors sounds relaxing but it can just as easily be unbearably boring especially when that lower bar is the only form of difficulty the game provides.
Compare this to a game like Super Mario Odyssey which has a low amount of continuous difficulty. It is much less demanding and screw ups aren't a big deal. That said, you can pull of some amazing platforming if you push yourself to find creative solutions to the game’s various problems. The game not only allows you to pull of some amazing tricks but recognizes and rewards you for doing so by hiding caches of coins in places that you "shouldn't" be able to reach. I would describe Super Mario Odyssey as a game with low continuous difficulty but high aspirational difficulty if you really want to 100% it.
How are you making a game harder/easier
Now that we have a basic understanding of the difference between continuous and aspirational difficulty, and how most games comprise a mix of both, lets talk about difficulty levels. If we wanted to make an easier version of a game do we want to lower both continuous and aspirational difficulty or perhaps only one of them?
In a FPS game like Doom (2016) lower continuous difficulty might mean giving the player more health, making enemies less aggressive or giving them fewer attack patterns. Lowering aspirational difficulty might mean being more helpful with the auto-aim, enlarging hit-boxes (especially for head shots), or making enemies move slower/less-erratically.
In many games continuous difficulty maps to defense (how many times you can get hit, how hard it is to avoid getting hit...) and aspirational difficulty maps to offense (how hard it is to hit enemies). This isn't always true, and many individual acts for both attack and defense contain combinations of both continuous and aspirational difficulty, but I felt this was worth noting.
Let’s examine the classic example of how to make a game harder: making enemies bullet sponges (giving enemies tons of health). In making enemies bullet sponges you aren't making them any harder to hit, you are simply making it so you have to hit them more. This is an increase in the continuous difficulty but not in the aspirational difficulty. You don't have to get better at shooting enemies to win here, you just have to do it for a longer period of time. If made without other shifts in aspirational difficulty this will change the feel of the game by putting a greater focus on doing the same things over and over again. A different solution here might be giving the enemy some kind of armor that the player has to aim around in order to deal damage. This would make it harder to kill enemies while preventing fights from becoming long slogs, though it would require additional art assets and visual/sound cues to convey to the player when they aren’t dealing damage which is a large trade off.
When changing a game’s difficulty level you generally want to preserve how the game feels which would mean lowering/raising both continuous and aspirational difficulty in roughly equal measures. Doing this well means that to a player that is generally less skilled the game will get the same feeling out of the game as a better player would get out of a harder version of the game.
So?
There are many more kinds of difficulty. A game can challenge your reflexes, memory, perception, or any number of other things. The goal here isn't to say that there are only 2 kinds of difficulty, rather to try and understand two broad classifications of difficulty and how they interact.
We often just say a game is difficult (or like Dark Souls) but difficultly has too many complexities for it to be comfortably put under a single label. Understanding the different ways in which a game can be difficult, and that different forms of difficulty effect players in different ways, allows us to better understand how to create the specific kind of tension we want in players of all skill levels.
I'm sorry said you don't bring in the SEO chess, please give me your SEO.
Most of tumblr activity is on mobile and this feature is hurting many small creators like myself. Our activity is dropping rapidly as our content is being buried under more “popular” content creators that automatically get put on the top of your dash.
Support ALL content creators and turn this off, please. It sucks having our work be pushed to the bottom never to be seen.
How gambling principles and seductive animation compel players to drop cash on card packs and weapon crates.
Loot boxes’ ubiquity might be fairly new, but they’ve been around rather longer than you might think. Economic sociologist Vili Lehdonvirta has suggested that they appeared in their modern form first in the Chinese free-to-play MMO ZT Online in around 2006 or 2007. A Chinese newspaper described how for a yuan you would buy a key: “When the key is applied to the chest, the screen will display a glittering chest opening. All kinds of materials and equipment spin inside the chest like the drums on a slot machine as the wheel of light spins.” Yep, sounds like a loot box.
But they’ve also been around far longer in the form of baseball cards and Magic: The Gathering packs, and, if you think about it, even in identifying magic items in D&D.
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