About Criticism
Read my thoughts on gamers' reactions to games:
http://thedigitalwarrior.blogspot.com/2014/09/about-criticism.html
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About Criticism
Read my thoughts on gamers' reactions to games:
http://thedigitalwarrior.blogspot.com/2014/09/about-criticism.html
"What’s your biggest goal in life?"
"To afford to live."
(Chi Linh, Vietnam)
Check out my thoughts on The Sims 4
http://thedigitalwarrior.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-sims-4-wheres-create-style.html
More information
I realise I my last update was quite brief so will add some more details onto the same update.
The images used for the characters were taken from the internet, for now. The plan for the near future is to have my muse draw the characters herself to add to the element of designing the game especially for her.
An update found in the game from my last post is that I created a new kind of platform for the player to move on to. However, upon touching the platform, it will vanish and thus creating a surprising element where the player has to quickly react and try to position themselves properly to drop onto other platforms below them.
Another update planned for the near future is to have some form of collectibles scattered across the levels, giving the player more reason to explore all the platforms found in each level and more ways to earn more points.
That's the prototype as it is going to be submitted for grading as an assignment, but given more time during the summer holidays, I will work on more updates to this game with some help from my girlfriend on the looks of the game to move towards a more finished product.
An Update
A short update about the development of the Beyonce' Platformer I am creating for my muse, my girlfriend. As I mentioned in my previous blog, we established the idea of having Beyonce' fight against Miley Cyrus and Niki Minaj by throwing copies of her album at them. 'Copies' or 'Clones' of Miley and Niki will be patrolling certain platforms, and Beyonce' has to get through to the end of the level to get together with Jay-Z.
The update is here, five levels have been created; each one with different platforms, and more enemies present with each level the player goes through. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to work more on this game this week.
The planned upgrades for the near future are developing a way to show when Niki Minaj has taken damage, as well as adding some auditory cues to help the player notice that they have dealt some damage. Also, I have an idea to add special platforms that deal damage to the player, to add a little bit of challenge.
More updates to follow this one soon.
The Switch
Once the information was gathered from my muse and a video prototype was designed, it was time to start switching to a digital game prototype. As I am most used to the Unity Game Engine, this is the one I am using to create the game. Firstly, I used a pre-built 'platformer' offered by the Unity staff to start off one's game, and started modifying it to reach my muse's expectations. However, I decided to throw in some of my own ideas to the game. One of these ideas stemmed from an element in the Unity asset itself, where enemies dropped from the sky instead of being placed in specific spots across the levels. However, once I showed this feature to my girlfriend, she did not like the idea. Therefore, back to the drawing board, I will be move back to the idea of having the enemies placed on specific platforms from the start of the game.
Reminder: in this game, the player controls Byeonce'. Two enemy types have been created for this game; the first of which is Miley Cyrus, having 1 health point. The second enemy in this game is Niki Minaj, having two health points but moves slower than Miley.
Another idea I chose to use from the Unity platformer example was to have the player shoot rockets at the enemies instead of jumping on top of them as seen in traditional platformers such as Super Mario. However, in my game, Beyonce' throws CDs at her enemies to make them hear good music instead of their own cheap sounds.
More updates to be seen in this blog soon.
BF4 vs CS:GO - FIGHT!!!!
Battlefield 4 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive… Two brilliant games that fit into the same category, but they can not be any more different from each other.
Before launch, one of the most advertised selling point of BF4 was Levolution, the ability to destroy anything in the game, changing the level map as you wish. This gave way to very interesting ways to play the game; blow up the cover of an abusive sniper, for instance. I even saw a video of a team in an underground car park who destroyed the supporting columns, the roof giving way under the weight of an armoured tank. In the confusion, the players inside the tank did not have enough time to react and avoid the subsequent explosion, which sent them to the seventh heaven. I believe that these kinds of mechanics are what should have made BF4 one of the best games of the year, coupled with some amazing graphics and sound. However; we cannot discuss player experience without mentioning the serious issues that BF4 poses. The first of which I encountered was being killed without any notice and without anyone actually shooting at me and hitting. Due to technical issues at the servers, players are actually dying from one frame to the next, definitely not a situation to be present in a FPS. Secondly, a game such as BF4 should never simply crash to desktop, right? WRONG!! Unfortunately, this happened to me more than once on each occasion that I played the game, frustration levels going up, and I won’t say that I would be interested in another Battlefield title in the near future.
In the FPS genre, I grew up playing the Call of Duty games until they became boring, not the subject of this post, and moved on to Battlefield. Although I enjoyed most of these games until I arrived at BF4. I enjoyed the Singleplayer mode but was totally lost in the Multiplayer mode for the reasons I mentioned above. On the other hand, when I was introduced to CS:GO, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the controls felt as solid as I could possibly wish for. Although, the game’s graphical elements are lacking, (graphics being one of things I most value when choosing a new game to play) I was able to play the game and enjoy it far more than a game I had been following and anticipating for over a year.
So what made CS:GO so much better? For starters, you only hit what you aim at, and you’re only hit by whoever is actually aiming at you. But I want to focus on design elements this time round, instead of keep on ranting about technical issues. In BF4, you level up (unless the game crashes on you and lose all the stats. woops, rant…) and eventually unlock new weapons and attachments. A cool feature many people love. I hate it. In CS:GO on the other hand, everyone can use the same weapons in each match. Die, and you lose your weapons. If you’re not doing good, you’ll have to use a pistol, though luck. Or pick up someone else’s gun after killing them with your pistol. Once they die, they’re pretty much on the same level as you are.
A different issue I would like to mention is the learning curve present in each of these games. When I played them with my classmates to prepare ourselves to write this post, some of us had never played FPS games before. It was not surprising at all that they had trouble getting used to the system found in BF4 but internalised CS:GO after just two respawns. Too many actions possible in BF4 make it hard to learn how to play when you have expert players shooting at you from all sides. On the other hand, in CS:GO, these new players could understand how the game works much quicker, thanks to the simpler controls and more stable gameplay.
Requiescat in pace
This past week, I was abroad with my girlfriend; we visited Florence. Obviously, here comes my mandatory Assassin’s Creed post that follows my holiday.
The series is one of my favourites, along with GTA and The Elder Scrolls, however, it is not short of downsides. The first game for instance, felt extremely repetative, having to deal with multiple enemies in cities far apart from each other with no ‘fast travel’ option available in the game. This meant you would have to ride a horse for long distances, probably meating a couple of Crusaders along the way who would kill your horse and after dispatching them, run to the city. Having formatted my hard drive midway through the game due to the operating system going crazy, forgetting to back up my save files, I never re-installed it to go through those journeys again just to play the final part of the game. No, I never finished the first Assassin’s Creed game.
Moving on to Ezio and Firenze (all three of the Ezio titles), first off, Fast Travel. Secondly, I loved the feature of customizing the character’s gear, (a common feature nowadays, being able to customise characters in games such as GTA, where no character creation is available). I should also mention the city upgrades here, purchasing stores and decorative areas in Firenze as the noble families did in those times. These two features helped in making the player, at least in my case, feel like there is more of them in the character and more player impact on the game, visible in the city upgrades.
Skipping on to Black Flag (skipping AC3 for multiple reasons, maybe I’ll talk about that in another blog), Naval battles; ‘nuff said. Personally, I love pirates and naval battles in general, so it was no surprise that I really enjoyed Black Flag. Apart from the quests, which were quite interesting, I burned through countless hours battling the Spanish Armada and the British Navy through stormy nights and beautiful summer mornings alike. Also, ship upgrades, a really good way of replacing the city upgrades found in AC2.
Of Scrolls and Elders
Why did Skyrim break the sales office? Why was the the Imperial Edition of The Elder Scrolls Online sold out almost immediately? Two of my favourite games ever, I’m going to talk a bit about these games, maybe I can get them out of my system for a while and stop badgering the people around me.
What brought me into Tamriel in the first place was the fantasy setting, that’s all. I haven’t played Oblivion, Morrowing or any of the other related titles. What kept me? I think it was the combat system mostly, a hack and slash kind of feeling. It gave me, personally, an elevated sense of control, I decide where I hit, I aim my arrows. This really appealed to me as I was bored with the control system featured in games such as World of Warcraft; tab, 1, 2, tab, 5. You what I’m talking about.
So what kept me interested enough for me to pre-order The Elder Scrolls Online and be ready to pay a monthly subscription fee? Well, although I’m bored with the combat style, I still love MMOs and as I already said, I love the Elder Scrolls universe, yes I love the lore. So combine the two and create The Elder Scrolls Online, insta-buy!
One of the selling points of this new MMO is the fact that they kept the same combat system they had in previous titles, you aim your shots yourself, even melee attacks. However, they added MMO elements such as spell casting, parties, dungeons (more similar to the ones of Wow rather than Skyrim). Dodging attacks by rolling out of the way and a very minimalistic UI also help in improving the player experience, at least that’s how I perceive it. Oh, and I almost forgot; the game is entirely voice acted, the ENTIRE game! All quests, all conversations (even those which have no quests associated with them). The characters met in the game also acknowledge your feats; ‘I heard what you did in Vulkhel Guard’ or ‘Did you hear the queen was in danger and was saved by a new comer?’ I don’t have to say how much this makes the player feel good about his achievements.
Shame that the game still has multiple bugs and glitches after launch, but we all know that these will be smoothed out in time. I hope.
Artsy Fartsy
Is a game art? Or is it just a game? One might argue mostly depending on what kind of game is being considered. In this case, I’m going to focus on Electroplankton. Sellers(2006) says “Electroplankton is not a game in any sense of the word. It is art, plain and simple.” I will contradict this in time, but let’s see what Pichlmair has to say.
For the benefit of those who do not know what Electroplankton is, the game is based on planktons (small creatures) which move on screen, produce light and sound. THe player interacts with these creatures to change direction, frequency, speed, etc. Just look up some videos and you’ll quickly understand what kind of game it is.
Pichlmair also states that Electroplankton is art and not necessarily a game, one of the points he mentions is that the game does not have a save feature. Why does a game specifically need a save feature? If I’m playing Pacman or Tetris and I do not have the ability to save mid-game, does that make them non-games? Of course not, and therefore I consider this argument null.
I will look at the game from a gamer’s point of view, instead of that of a critic. Consider the Hanebow game mode, for instance. What are the controls? Change angle of the ‘cannon’ leaf to shoot planktons towards a plant, change the angles of the other leaves so that the planktons bounce off them and onto the others. The leaves change colours when hit, gradually changing into red and cooling down back to green after some time without being hit. Make all leaves turn to red and keep them all red at teh same time, for some time, and you beat the level. For those who say that the game is an Art Game for the sound element, play this game with your speakers turned off, you can still play it without any problem. Also, although the sounds the game creates can make for a lovely melody, when you start filling the plant with red leaves, you just have a massive amount of dings and dongs filling your head and after a while, it gets annoying.
And that is not art. Period.
Wanna go to prison?
I installed Prison Architect this week and guess what, it's bloody brilliant! I personally loved it, AND I showed it to my girlfiend and she ended up installing it on her own pc and played it for about 15 hours already, in less than three days. I guess I should have used this game for the Observation or Think Aloud sessions; shame...
However, this does not mean I did not take some notes. First off, the graphics of the game seem to appeal to her a lot, the cartoon-ish feel to it, confirming what she already said about Super Mario.
Secondly, she really enjoyed the challenge of managing the prison, the building and furnishing, taking care of the staff and keeping the prisoners in line; all at the same time. I don't want to rant on for too long, but yeah, I guess this confirms the kind of graphics that my muse seems to want in her game.
Side note, it was no surprise that she liked this game as its system is quite similar to the one found in The Sims.
Narrative Games?
As one might have noticed, I haven’t posted any blogs in quite a while. No I have not fallen off the face of the earth, I simply have been caught up in my own personal issues and also tried to keep up with the rest of the assignments for the other modules of the course. So without further ado…
There have been debates between Ludologists and Narratologists on whether games are narratives or not, and whether they contain narratives within them. Many authors try to categorise games on either side of the spectrum. Today, I would like to focus on something that interested me in a paper by Espen Aarseth (2012). Although Aarseth still focuses on creating a model that shows on which side of the spectrum particular games sit on, and more specifically, a model that fits any type of game. In the end, what the model mostly does is show that the most important part of a game to convey a story is the characters introduced in the game, making it more important to invest time and money in creating a deeper, rounder character for a more ‘narrative’ experience. Although this interests me and I could go on for ages about the subject, to not make a ‘tl,dr’ post, I will now move on to what interested me the most.
First off, Aarseth discusses the concept of Kernels and Satellites; Kernels being events that define a particular story and Satellites being those supplementary events that fill out discourse. To be honest, I never thought of defining events in this manner, and quite frankly, I think it’s really interesting. Considering Skyrim, one of my favourite games ever, or any other quest based games, the main quest would be the Kernels while the minor quests would be the Satellites. More specifically, since the game is focused on the story of the Dragonborn, learning shouts and defeating Alduin is the most important event, the Kernel. On the other hand, killing a bear which was attacking a field in the name of the companions is a minor event that would not change anything in the legend of the Dragonborn, another companion would have done the same.
Moving on, the four elements that Aarseth uses for his model are World, Objects, Characters and Events. The World is split into three categories; the Linear Corridor style such as Half Life, the Hub-Shaped Labyrinth such as Far Cry and the Open World as seen in MMOs such as World of Warcraft. Personally I do not favour the Linear Corridor style as this restricts the player way too much. On the other hand, from a designer’s point of view, I understand that the latter two options take more time and money to create.
The second element he mentions is the Objects found in the game, which are split into six categories. Firstly, he splits static objects into two, those which are usable and their opposites. Then, he talks about the destructible kind, mentioning buildings in Real Time Strategy games such as Age of Empires, I would go on to mention even buildings in games such as Battlefield. He also talks about Changeable and Creatable items such as weapons (wielding and crafting). The last type of object he mentions and the Inventable kind, such as objects created in Spore, where the player creates the objects themselves instead of using the ones predefined by the designers.
Moving on to the Characters, Aarseth talks about bots, shallow Characters and Deep ones. Again, using Skyrim as my example, the Deep characters are the ones who give you quests multiple times and have an expansive list of conversations such as Jarl Ulfric or Vex. On the other hand, the citizens of the different cities which can be interacted with, maybe for a single quest or even none, would be the Shallow ones, an example would be Uthgerd the Unbroken and Sabjorn.
Last but not least; Events, split into four. The fully plotted events creating a pure story which are not considered as games by some, games with dynamic satellites which allow for the development of playable stories, games involving dynamic kernels such as quest games and games with no kernels whatsoever - pure games. Again, personally I would prefer those with Dynamic Kernels as they provide a decent amount of narrative element but at the same time gives a high level of agency to the player.
Video Prototype
After re-creating my Video Prototype for the fourth time, I ended up with a much lower quality video to show off in just one day; ah well, the life of a student with a part time job. Anyways, the video is supposed to show off the general idea of how the game will be/look/feel once it is developed.
The idea is to get Beyonce' to reach Jay-Z and have them chill out. But! She has to get through all the rest of the Pop Star Divas in the way and prove that she's the Queen. Jump over Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj and Lady Gaga to get to the end of the level.
Unfortunately, the video also lost the audio; it was supposed to have the Single Ladies track accompanying the images. Also, I did not have enough time to include the power up feature, the idea is to have items related to Beyonce' songs (such as a ring from Single Ladies) which would give her different powers such as High Jumps and Invulnerability.
This is the end of this short rant, enjoy the video.
Now Think Aloud please...
In my last blog post I talked about the results of my experimentation with Cultural Probes to gather information from my muse. This time, I’ll be reporting the results of the Think Aloud sessions I conducted. Since she already told me that her favourite games are platformers; specifically, the Super Mario franchise and also that she would like a new platformer game, I decided to get her to play a Super Mario clone found online (since we both do not have a console to play the original on). First off, the main reason why she really likes platformers such as Super Mario is because the player does not have to think a lot and strategize; instead, one simply relaxes, “run, jump, kill and don’t die”. We split the Think Aloud into two sessions, the first of which being a Retrospective session and the second one being a Concurrent one.
Although I already knew that she really likes the look of the Super Mario games, she did not hold back from confirming this more than once during the Think Aloud sessions. She also likes the fact that the design and music of each level reflects what kind of enemies or traps are expected and also a hint at the difficulty level. Also, she commented on the fact that the game has a cartoon-ish look to it; again, for the reason that it’s a relaxing game, no realistic graphics and physics; smiling clouds and stars appear to please her. A satisfying/cute ending such as sliding down the flagpole also seemed like something she would like to see in the game, a ‘Woohoo’ moment to finish off the level. Out of all the powerups found in the game, the Star power up seemed to be her favourite, being invulnerable for a few seconds, however she would prefer having some form of visualisation of the timer assigned to the power ups as she gets really upset when she loses a life because the power up ends just as she is about to hit an enemy. Another aspect she really likes is the fact that you get your lives back once you defeat the boss in the final level.
Switching on to things she doesn’t like in Super Mario that I might be able to tackle will be discussed here. Something that frustrates her in Super Mario is that not all enemies can be dealt with; Bowser, for instance, cannot be killed but the player simply has to get past him, something to keep in mind when I’m designing the enemies in my game. Another thing she continually commented on is the moving platforms found in the Super Mario games, she has a serious issue with these parts of the levels as they are unpredictable, mostly because all platforms have the same design but not the same behaviour. The first part of the levels where little to no challenge is provided seems to be pointless in her opinion, as are sections in the levels where gaps between blocks and pipes have no enemies, are not high and are easily jumped over.
Movin' On
Since I realised that I haven't reported the results of the Interview I conducted with my girlfriend, I will be talking about it in this post. First off, I need to make a couple of points before I start off. I chose my girlfriend as my muse for this game, I know her pretty well, I don't need to go through an awkward interview to learn new stuff. Another point is that she insisted that she reads the questions ahead of time to know what she was going to be talking about, these two points made for quite a short interview unfortunately.
One of the first points I got out of the interview is the fact that she likes drawing and painting, something I used in the Cultural Probe. She also pointed out that her favourite games are really relaxing games that do not require a lot of effort to be played successfully, the example she used most is Super Mario. In fact, after discussing it with her, we decided that the game would be a platformer. Although I did not ask during the Interview, we were talking the other day and she hinted at the idea of the game being a PC game and not an Android game as she prefers playing on a computer with the WASD controls instead of simply tapping on the phone monitor.
Another method I used to gather information about how my muse plays her games is the Observation method. This time round, I decided to let my girlfriend choose the game herself; her choice being League of Legends, a totally different game but a game which can reveal quite a bit about the player. The first to notice is the kind of champion she chooses; Annie being her favourite; a character with high burst damage and quite good crowd control. Maybe this hints at her preference at being able to finish off an enemy quickly and hold them down if they try to escape. After this, the most evident thing to notice about my muse while playing League of Legends is that she is quite an aggressive player, focusing on the enemy champions to send them back behind their turrets rather than clearing the minion waves. She only retreats if she thinks that she might be killed without the chance of landing a kill herself. She also keeps chasing enemy champions even if she might be killed herself.
Another thing I noticed is that, when purchasing items in the ingame store, she favours items that give her more power rather than movement speed. Although during a regular 5v5 match in Summoner’s Rift, she did not attack the jungle monsters for the buffs much (maybe because there was a jungler on her team), she did however give a higher importance to buffs (‘power ups’) in a Dominion match, even completing missions (which do not really effect the game) to get the power ups associated with them. I also noticed that, although my muse isn’t a player who would want full health at all times, she really liked the fact that the healer of the team (Soraka) was doing a good job, pointing out that the team would not have done as well without her. A final thing I noticed is that at times although she could land a couple extra kills, she preferred focusing on the end result of the game, destroying turrets and taking capture points rather than focusing on the enemy champions.
Of Culture and Probing
So, one of the Design Research Methods was introduced to this year is the Cultural Probe. According to Boehner et al. (2007), Cultural Probes ‘are designed objects, physical packets containing open-ended, provocative and oblique tasks to support early participant engagement with the design process’ while Gaver et al. (2004) say that they are ‘collections of materials posing tasks to which people respond over time’. Basically, it’s a way of getting the muse to directly give more to the design process of the game. One of the ideas I liked for probes is giving the muse a list of things they have to take photos of whatever is written in the list.
Although, apparently, most times Cultural Probes are physical objects given to the muse, I decided to take a more digital route. So what I did was instructing my girlfriend, my muse for the game, to find GIF images, animations, of certain moods so that I can get an idea of what kind of animations I could try to create for the player character in the game; I asked her to think of the moods she is in first thing in the morning, at about noon, lunch time and in the evening. Having a software development background, I created a small application for her where she simply copies image URLs and pasting them inside the app, which would show the animations and save them. This process was done for six days, giving her the Sunday off.
Some of the resultant images of this experiment are shown below. The most common elements found in these images are Exaggerated Expressions and images of animals performing human actions. Also, I noticed that the amount of motivation to work she has was frequently displayed in the images chosen.
The second part of the Cultural Probe was in fact of a more physical form. Since my girlfriend enjoys drawing, I also asked her to draw Beyonce’ (being the subject of the game and the character the player would control) in different moods/positions; Power, Success, Failure, Happiness, Anger/Frustration, Idle/Bored. These images will be used as a base for the character and animations designs to be used in the game. So to end this blog post, here are the pictures she drew for the Cultural Probe.
Falling behind (?)
Yes, I feel like we're slightly falling behind with development of this game. Me and my muse have been ultra-busy lately and have not put in as much work as we would have liked to this week. However, I did manage to squeeze in some time to play some Participatory Design games. First of which was the one me and my team created in a previous workshop during one of the lectures. Basically, each player gets a coloured paper and writes three words that come to mind in relation to the particular colour presented. Upon doing so, the player folds the paper in order to hide what they wrote and then pass the paper to the next player; so each player has one paper at a time. Eventually, each paper would have a list of words that are used to build a game concept upon, only using one word from each line.
So let me show you what my girlfriend came up with from Blue, Yellow and Pink.
Blue: Blue Ivy [Beyonce's baby daughter] falls from the sky into the Caribbean Sea. She then has to collect crystals to swim to Greece to find a blue eyed nanny.
Yellow: Asians getting energy from the sun have to collect as much gold as possible to kill a blonde pope who drinks too much wine.
Pink: Umbridge [a professor in the Harry Potter stories who strictly wears pink clothes and decorates her office entirely in pink] was having fun torturing students when the fashion police came over and fell in love with her panties but when they took them off her, they realised they were not Chanel so she has to find the magic ribbon to make new panties and romantically seduce them again.
What I noticed in these games, apart from the fact that I'm not the only one who would like to play weird games, is that all thee ideas push towards the idea of collecting items along the way to find the ultimate goal. This is exactly what players generally do in platformer games, the type of game that she has been hinting at since the start of this journey. Collect coins in Super Mario or apples (or whatever they are...) in Crash Bandicoot. So, the thing I'm taking out of this experiment mostly is that she would like to have some stuff to pick up along the way that would constitute much of the game's score, and that could effect whether she is successful in winning or not.
Next, we tried a different game developed by another team in my class. Basically, it's pictionary with a twist. The players trying to guess the picture write down any words that come to mind instead of shouting them out. I played this game with my brothers and my girlfriend (my muse) to get some ideas out of her.
Thriller: For the first round, I simply told my brother to draw 'Thriller'; this is what she created out of it. "God is in a movie trying to read Voldemort's mind who wants to kill Slenderman because he is a zombie muggle. The world belongs to Micheal Jackson who lives in a rocket and transmits the Thriller video every hour which gives bonus points."
Smurf riding a unicorn that farts rainbows: Yeah I wanted to get a bit more creative. This is the result: "A Rasta Penguin got high from smoking from a hat, and became a muppet in the shape of a puppy, and rode with a dolphin pirate riding a unicorn farting rainbows to fight a dinosaur penguin."
Suicide bomber is in a car, he blows up inside the car but the car doesn't: Yep, even more detail, let's go! "Marshmallow guy dials a cab from his phone. A terrorist driver comes with a school bus and drives him under a tree to protect him from a nuclear explosion"
Honestly, what have I gotten myself into? Hehe, jokes apart, let's deconstruct these concepts. The bonus points idea in the Thriller round is very interesting in my opinion. Maybe combining this with whatever the player would be picking up throughout the levels can give the player some sort of bonus, such as speed, jump or whatever. The dinosaur penguin point in the smurf round is also intriguing as it hints at the idea of end level bosses. In the last round, I honestly don't know what to make of it, but I might use the nuclear explosion somewhere in there, what do you think?