Designing Videogames For The Wage Slave 514
Thanks to Ron Gilbert's weblog for pointing out a GameDev.net article discussing the topic of "Designing Games for the Wage Slave" . The author explains: "We balance on the knife's edge between our glorious time-squandered youth, and the commitments of inevitable middle age... If games can adapt to the needs of the working gamer, they can find a lucrative niche." He goes on suggest practical tips for game developers, including 'Don't Waste My Time' ("Make every moment count. I don't play games to punish myself. I play them to be entertained, rewarded, and challenged"), 'Curiosity Killed The Cat...' ("Constant death was a necessity in the days of video arcades... Now, in the comfort of our lounges or offices, what reason is there to keep dumping us out of the game we bought with our hard earned cash?"), and 'I Need Help' ("Make any necessary information available from within the game.")
Maybe I'm Growing Old (Score:5, Interesting)
I find myself, however, gravitating towards Tactical RPGs (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Disgaea, Fire Emblem). I think it's because the rules don't suddenly change in a TRPG (you'll never have to do a move the blocks puzzle like Final Fantasy or as I saw my brother do, in Tales of Symphonia). You don't have to wander around looking for the right villager to talk to or anything - you get right into the action. Instead of trying to figure out some convoluted puzzle, you have one level after the next. They have new challenges and rules, but none of the "fluff" of finding the right item, talking to the right person, etc.
This is kind of the argument for retro gaming too - you can play Mario 1, just pick it up and play for 30 minutes or so. You can't really do that with say, 3D Zelda games or Mario Sunshine.
Why do some games NOT allow in-game saves? (Score:5, Interesting)
THIS GAME DOES NOT ALLOW SAVES!!
So instead you have to spend 20, 30, 40 ... 90 minutes working your way though the game only to have one of your guys take a bullet and make it all one big WASTE OF TIME.
Re:Call me crazy.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I play video games still. I also own a sports-bike, used to own a fancy car, have plenty of things going on that fit the profile for my age but I still like video games.
The ones that really bug me though are the ones where you can only save once every hour or so. Hunting for a save-point when you only have a few minutes to wrap up your gaming bugs the hell out of me. One of the realities of "growing up" is that your time isn't always your own. Often you get interrupted, either by work, kids, partners, or just life in general. If games are going to be pitched at an older audience, they need to take these things into consideration.
Certain things I want in games... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. A proper save game system whenever possible. None
of that "save point" bullshit, which is the main reason I don't play console games, btw. It's insane to have to waste my time playing through the same level again when I just want to carry on with a game after I get home from work.
2. Cut down on aggravating shit. Like, the weapons
wearing out in System Shock 2. I mean, WTF?! They have FTL travel in that game but I can't get a gun that will fire more than 20 rounds without seriously degrading? I mean, shit, even my old hand me down M16 in the army worked mostly fine after pumping out a few dozen rounds in a row at the range.
3. Fuck mazes.
My gamer-friendly idea (Score:5, Interesting)
You could use a sort of time dilation effect - game time starts to slow as the time since last control movement increases.
Maybe not so good for multiplayer, or at least require some tweaking.
Here's another benefit - anyone who's been a kid (or dealt with kids) and trying to distract their attention away from a game, the excuse is always "I can't pause now" or "hang on, just a minute". If you have a game that you can literally drop and walk away from, it changes the way you interact with it.
Jak II (Score:4, Interesting)
Almost as bad as the quadruple fire pillar jump in the first Tomb Raider. A very tricky area- probably hardest in the game. One error, and you got sent back to, like, the previous continent and had to run all the way back, and by the time you got there, you forgot what you needed to do differently. I finally did it after about 30 tries, but it wasn't a sense of accomplishment I felt.
Re:Same game, better graphics? (Score:3, Interesting)
My big lesson in game suck-factor was after getting about 3/4 way through Police Quest (yes, the original) and finding out that because I hadn't collected my wallet from the locker in the first sequence in the game (about 2 weeks playing time ago), I couldn't get any further in the game.
I couldn't just return to the station and collect the wallet, oh no, it was all over, and had been ever since I'd made that first mistake. I don't think I played it again after that.
Re:My gamer-friendly idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, but wasn't really my point. I want a game that is less demanding of my attention - I want to engage with it on my terms.
If I'm playing a game, and someone walks into the room to talk to me, I don't have to scrabble for the pause button, or whatever, I just drop the joystick, release the mouse, hands off the keyboard, whatever, turn and talk to them.
Incidentally the same ideas are cropping up in devices that detect when a driver falls asleep. During normal driving, you make many tiny corrections on the wheel every second - someone who drifts off to sleep, or is overly distracted, stops making those movements, and it can be detected.
Of course then the problem is how to do a graceful automated shutdown of a vehicle travelling at 100km/h, but you gotta start somewhere!
Cheats - Playing games when I don't have the time (Score:4, Interesting)
When I do this, I know I don't have time to get good at the game or see everything. So I do the scummy move of using cheats to let me play beyond my skill with the game.
I'd rather my kids not do it, and I'm not proud, but it makes sense. I can see far more of the game and enjoy the art etc better.
I wouldn't use cheats with a multi-player game since it really harms the others.
Except of course if it were playing against my kids and then it would be "play to win"
Levelling characters in RPG's (Score:2, Interesting)
Not entirely true (Score:3, Interesting)
It all sounds great for the casual player, but it all gets extremely boring at the same time. So what if you have some really cool weapons or armor - so does everyone else, no matter how much you play.
The game was a great success when it first hit the shelves, but it has nowhere near the continued subscription rate of Everquest.
The very things that many people dislike about Everquest (hard to get items, slow leveling, very difficult quests, etc) are the very things that actually end up making it successful. No pain no gain?
And comparing a MMORPG with a game like Doom 3 isn't a valid comparison. You can't just give everyone the best stuff in an MMORPG right away, or give them the same level of fighting abilities right away, and expect people to stay interested and paying.
It's a pickle, there's no doubt about that. Finding the right balance between boredom and redundant. Somewhere in there is entertaining and exciting.
I like this guy's style (Score:4, Interesting)
What he didn't hit on, though, is something disturbing I've seen in recent games: games that diss on you when you lose. The one that comes to my mind the most is Civilization 3. For those who haven't played the game, it can take a lot of work to master a difficulty level, and often times the downfall of any civ (a computer controlled one or yours) is when every in the world gangs up on it and crushes it. Okay, bad things happen sometimes. But do I have to see the enemies spew juvenile trash talk at me when I lose? Things like:
Gimme an 'L!' Gimme an 'O!' Whatever... LOSER!
Don't worry "champ," you'll get 'em next time.
Go back to chieftain! (Ed note: Cheiftain is the lowest difficulty level in Civ 3... imagine getting this while trying to learn how to play!)
Aww... was that your last city? Maybe we should give it back...
and so on. Really, if I wanted to listen to stuff like this, I'd go play some random game on a public forum, like Warcraft 3 (the ladder actually isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, though) or an FPS. And I'm pretty sure there's been other games in the recent past like this, either by way of insulting you or over heavily punshing you...
It's funny that this guy picks Grand Theft Auto 3 as an example. I loved its sequel, Vice City, but I hated GTA 3. Why the big difference? Well, let's consider:
And there's more. GTA3 seems to very strongly embody the faults he highlights in his article, so it seemed an unusual choice. I wouldn't be surprised if he only played Vice City, because he makes references to things from that game not in GTA3 (like robbing stores). Or maybe he's just better than I am at GTA3
Still, he makes excellent points all around. Often asked is "What happened to the fun in game designs?" particularly when MMORPGs are concerned.
Re:MMORPG's not a good example (Score:5, Interesting)
This could be adapted to MMORPG by having a casual gamer class of servers that would give you 2-3 hours of playing time per day, perhaps giving you 8 two hour blocks you could withdraw extra for occasional weekend playing.
That way, you wouldn't have to spend 10-14 hours per day to keep up. And, there could be associated chat/spectator service for the people who still wanted to stick around and socialize with gaming buddies after their playing time had been spent.
Just think of all the lives and relationships that could be salvaged by bringing this terrible addiction to a manageable level!
Middle Aged Gamers and the New Generation (Score:5, Interesting)
MMORPGs are designed around time sinks. EVERYTHING in MMORPGs these days revolves squarely around time. The equation is simple, time = power = fun. For this reason many gamers with a job are giving up on such games and going to things like Unreal.
For me personally, I am a great gamer. I pop into a FPS and generally rock the hell out of it after playing it a couple of rounds. This means that when Unreal 2004 came out I could jump in and start having fun right off the bat. The game design was fun and it didn't require anything other then skill to play. I didn't have to sit in a field killing rats before I could play it. The same thing would be true if you dumped me into an MMORPG with a level 50 character. Learning the ins and out is not a problem. It might take some time, but not much in the grand scheme of things. The big problem is that I simply don't have the time to be level 50. If I play an MMORPG I am pretty much relegated to running around in a field by myself killing rats. Oh joy.
MMORPGs need to take a clue from FPS and RTS games. Make the game based upon player skill, not time. This does not wreck the fundamental formula of an RPG. It just changes the nature of the game. Imagine for a moment SWG done in this style. If you wanted to smuggle, you would play the game like it was a space simulator and occasionally perhaps play the game like it was Thief. If you wanted to go explore you would jump on your land vehicle of choice, ride around, jump off, and the game would play like Jedi Knight or Dark Forces. If you wanted to be a Jedi the game would be more of a social game with elements from a Tail in the Desert combined with combat elements from Jedi Knight.
The real important thing to do is to be sure that any reward that increases someone's power is balanced. A n00b with skill should be able to kill the most jacked out person in the game. So perhaps it takes a little work to be a Jedi Knight, a total newbie with a blaster should still be able to cap you in the back of the head or stab you in the back killing you.
MMORPGs are obsessed with steep power curves, and nothing - absolutely nothing, is going to drive away a gamer with limited time more then that. Nothing pisses me off more then logging into an MMORPG and knowing that there will always be people I can never, under any circumstance kill, not because they are so skilled, but simply because I can't spend the 10 hours a day to actually gain the power to inflict any harm. In most MMORPGs a newbie could attack someone who is high leveled and AFK and still not be able to kill them. This is wrong.
Re:Not entirely true (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem that resulted was that because their testing was so woefully inadequate players were able to very quickly "cap out" their characters in unanticipated ways. Their testing hadn't included bounds checking so when good resources showed up on the servers armor, weapons and medicine were suddenly far, *far* beyond what their testing environment had been set up to handle.
Now the powergamers had uber-weapons, armor, buffs and abilities and were burning through the existing content much too fast. What had been intended to keep the players busy for at least a year had been played out inside of 3-6 months. Then the Holocrons and the Jedi were introduced to maintain powergamer interest while the casual gamers were still trying to maintain a roleplay friendly and social environment.
The casual gamers began to catch up to the powergamers and gave in to the lure of the Holocrons and Jedi-dom and abandoned their roleplay and social play which had previously "kept them busy", enough so that they didn't notice how little content was in the game. Now that most of the players had adopted a power gaming attitude there simply wasn't enough content in the game. The fixes necessary to make a sustainable game took a back seat to the content needed to keep an entire community of powergamers busy.
Now they even had a hand in the acceleration of the community turning into powergamers who tore through content and they had to make the game more difficult somehow. They turned to rebalancing combat, which was necessary in its own right, but about that time management said "We need at least half of your manpower to be diverted into the Space Expansion".
Now there's an unfinished Combat Rebalance already partially implemented, broken professions, broken content and hundreds and thousands of disappointed players who have now done all of the available content, done all the professions they care to do and see nothing worthwhile being patched out until at least 4 months from now. The social play has been decimated by the Hologrind which turned everyone into an AFK zombie or a powergamer who consumed all the available content in far less time than the team anticipated.
New content to keep the powergamers busy? That's a neverending treadmill.
New content to keep the social gamers busy? That's a development nightmare. Social gamers are finicky and given the right environment tend to make their own content, given the wrong environment they blow you off altogether.
Stop the hologrind and unleash the AFK hordes upon a galaxy already short of spawns and content? That's a revenue bomb.
Re:MMORPG's not a good example (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though this is actually happening. I've played MMORPG's since Ultima Online Phase 1 beta, and the only other game I've spent significant time in is Everquest. I've tried almost all of them. Even the new WoW beta (I somehow got selected for this) isn't very interesting. The new games seem to tailor to the casual player and forget the active player. Quests are generic and randomly generated for each player upon request. This is, in my opinion, a huge mistake.
I'm sure someone will nail perfect mix of gameplay, challange, reward, and replayability eventually. We'll have to wait and see!
Re:Thoughts from a "wage slave" (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh yes. That irritates on so many levels. It's also worse when combined with two of the major uses of Plot in RPGs.
Not that I don't like plot. I love it. But still...
Exposition followed by no Save Option:
You go into a new level, boss fight, or whatever. There then follows a segment of plot. The first time you go through it it's fine, but you often have no chance to save before going into the action. So if you die (and with Boss-fights it can take a few goes to get right...) you've got to sit through the exposition again. It's not as bad when you can skip these segments, but in some games you can't.
Post-battle Story Mode: After several hours of attempts, a long battle, and a good helping of pure luck you finally win a Boss Battle. Geek-instincts scream "Save now, before you do anything else." Instead you're treated to a 5-minute unskippable section of Story Mode. (The Final Fantasy games are notorious for this)
Usually this would have the bad timing to occur when I'm already running late for something. Meaning I either had to be more late, or just power-off and hope I could still win the next time. (I was reluctant to leave the console running when I went out after an incident with a SNES, a loose power-connection, and a kick-on-return induced reset)
I just wish that after major battles the first thing you were treated to was a save-point and not a plot segment.
I have to say that I like the feature in recent Square-Enix games where you can save-quit during a battle, and re-enter it later. (Albeit you can only load it once) It means that at least you don't have to lose progress in an important battle if you have to leave.
Re:Middle Aged Gamers and the New Generation (Score:3, Interesting)
What about people that have no skill? If they played an FPS or RTS they would lose continually and repeatedly. Obviously there is a market for this type of game (MMORPG). As much as you or I may dislike it, perhaps there are people that enjoy playing a game that does not require skill. Popping bubble wrap can be fun - and that doesn't require much skill.
This is wrong.
Who's to say what's right and wrong? If people enjoy it enough to pay money for it, then the developers must be doing something right.
MMORPG is a bad example anyway. If you don't have much time to play games and you choose to play an MMORPG, then it is your own choice. It's like not being able to eat spicy food, but going into a restaurant and ordering the spiciest thing on the menu.
Re:Middle Aged Gamers and the New Generation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Maybe I'm Growing Old (Score:3, Interesting)
Disgaea is a great game for me because I can play it for 20 minutes while my girlfriend is in the bath, because you can save after almost every level in the main game (and they are short levels). Or I can sit down for four hours and play through the item world.
I used to love Final Fantasy but I never knew whether I would have to keep playing for 10 minutes or for 10 hours.
I want to be able to have short blasts on a game whilst still feeling I'm getting somewhere. I don't want to waste my time playing a random map on an FPS or a few fights in a beat em up. I still want to building a character or advancing a plot, just in short bursts.
This is why I'm hoping someone will have the good sense to add a suspend to memory feature to one of the next gen of consoles. Let me stop playing whenever I want!
Re:MMORPG's not a good example (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who like to devote there time to other things (including free software) I was looking forward to having some levelling field against college kids who are busy wasting tax payers money on pointless degrees (as is the case here in the UK where 'fees' are virtually nill and education is state funded, and as someone who pays 40% tax I'm pissed it's my money they are wasting).
I hope there is still enough content and fun to be had without playing 35 hours a week just to keep up and be involved with all the cool things and to go to all the interesting places.
I think powerlevellers are pandered to too often and that they have a negative impact on games (because in practice its hard - but I belive by no means impossible - to design a game that suits both them and 'normal' players). I notice they rarely care about gameplay, nor do they understand what makes good gameplay.
I'd add it's also worth noting they typically arn't the ones with the most money either (being young, and often not in full time employment) so it puzzles me further that they are catered for so much (e.g. in SWG, which is EQ in space, and EQ is bascially exlusively about levelling).
I'd happily drop 50 USD a month per MMOG game JUST to avoid having to deal with kids and teenagers (and forum trolls). Hopefully, when the MMOG market establishes itself a bit we might see companies who will feel confident enough to change more and cater for a different sort of market segment (those of us who are sick of crappy forum and in game atmospheres, leet speak, and people sending
Personally if I ever have kids (unlikely) and I caught them using 1337 speak or using the 'n' word to describe anyone I'd stop their allowance for a month and have them out washing the car and mowing the lawn the whole summer. Or worse, I'd make them grind out a Jedi in SWG. On a 486.
Re:Not entirely true (Score:5, Interesting)
> New content to keep the social gamers busy? That's a development nightmare. Social gamers are finicky and given the right environment tend to make their own content, given the wrong environment they blow you off altogether.
> Stop the hologrind and unleash the AFK hordes upon a galaxy already short of spawns and content? That's a revenue bomb.
The key is that given the right environment, social gamers can create their own content. SWG with user-supplied story arcs (a'la NWN) subject to balance constraints might have been fun, as social gamers can usually spell "you" and "your", by using "y" and "o". (And I could have simply chosen not to do player quests that start out with "ur quest is 2 whak u self 10 foozlz of d00m" :)
But SWG didn't offer any ability to create content. Putting that ability in would have been a tough call to keep player-generated quests from turning into XP and loot farms. So they can't be faulted for that.
That leaves the "new content to keep the powergamers busy" option. Which is a treadmill, but it's a cheap treadmill!
Grok: with 100,000 subscribers (and probably more like 200,000), SOE was pulling in $1.5M-3M a month in revenue. Let's call it $20M/year revenue.
Are you seriously telling me that with 20,000,000 per year in revenues, profit margins on running a MMORPG are so slim that they couldn't have hired ONE GUY at $100,000 a year ($50K salary, $50K benefits/bonus/cubiclespace/overhead) to write quests?
I'm not talking about an art team to develop custom assets for every quest (though maybe he gets an allocation of 10 artist hours per month). (SWG started with a "monthly" story arc that degenerated into a "quarterly" story arc. Each segment had custom art that cost a small fortune to develop. Compounding the problem, they *removed* the early arc segments from the game, so that new players couldn't even play through prior parts of the story. Who the fuck thought that up? Gee, let's spend a fortune to make custom assets for two hours of content every three months, and blow away the old stuff while we're at it, so that there's never more than two hours of content in the game! :)
I'm talking about a guy who can place a building, an NPC, and when you find the building and do what the NPC asks you to do, you get a shiny and a text message. And you use the text message and the shiny to play a little game-on-rails for a month.
Look at KOTOR: Go to 4 planets. Solve 4 puzzles. Find 4 shinies. What made it work was that as you progressed through the storyline, you unlocked progressively more information about your fellow (NPC) characters and the history of the world around you. In the space of 10-20 hours, you went from "WTF am I doing on this starship?" to a pretty good basic understanding of the Jedi/Sith ideologies and the ancient pre-history of Star Wars early universe.
You can't code KOTOR in a month, but MMORPGs are just graphical wrappers around text-based MUDs. You could code (the text and triggering events, and don't creat any new art) a similar set of quests into SWG in a month. With $20,000,000 a year of cash coming in, could SOE not have hired one goddamn Star Wars Geek to write quests that actually taught the players about the universe in which they lived?
As a simple example, consider the trivia 'bot in the SWG Theed Palace -- if you don't know the answer, you just click at random until you get it right. (So you don't even need to shell out to Google the answer!) Why not have the answers to the 'bot's questions be discoverable by the players in the game through in-game actions? Solve the walkthrough/cheatsheet problem by having the game not ask a question until it knows that the player's avatar has discovered the answer.
Look at Morrowind - possibly t
Admittedly, I dislike Boss characters too ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm like a lot of people in this thread, I want to be able to turn on the game to squeeze in a half hour or so of play time.
Nothing frustrates me more than running into some insane boss-level that takes 25 minutes to play and I can never get right anyway.
After the 10th time of dying in the exact same spot in the exact same way, I get fed up, turn off the console, and leave the damned game alone for weeks.
The next time I try it, I'm stuck at the same boss character and I give up after three deaths and turn off the game. Then I never finish the game and never buy anything else in the frandchise if there are sequels 'cause I know I'm just going to get stuck at that *one* point and give up.
Sure, my nephews who have grown up with gaming consoles and have evolved the invisible 3rd and 4th thumbs to operate the controllers can usually solve it in about 5 minutes and move on.
I, on the other hand, remember when the single joystick and two buttons was all you needed to control a game and play it for hours. Some of the controls on newer games completely baffle me.
I'd absolutely love to seem games that account for the fact that I'm not prepared to spend my entire life playing and that I may not be able to control that many buttons.
[ yes, I know, a game that would allow for that would bore the heck out of the people who need the challenge of operating 10 buttons and 2^10 chords of buttons. Me, I want nice approachable game play that I can have my friends who are even older than me play without spending an hour explaining the controls. ]
Re:Call me crazy.. (Score:2, Interesting)
None of the "adult" activities mentioned strike me as particularly interesting. And I have no kids, with no near-term plans of having any.
Personally I spent ten hours a day at work then go home and after dinner go in front of my computer, usually to play games. On weekends, it's not uncommon for me to game from 10am to 10pm.
There is an unsubtle qualitative difference between staring at a screen for work (usually reading and writing text) and playing games.
Some days I blow off the gaming and watch anime (AKA cartoons, another "childish thing") or read a book. (If you think anime are not cartoons, please look up the word "cartoon" in a good dictionary before protesting.)
In some ways this makes me the antithesis of the wage slave in the article - but on weekdays evening play times tend to be short. One hour between save points when I have an hour and a half to play means I either have to cut play short or stay up an extra half hour.