Solv Needs Help Building a Coffee Machine

Not true. It just came up when I clicked in the title bar.
Reckon it's from Zynga's now retired Baking Life, but don't know why it's joining us here on the farm.
However, turning 'coincidence'* into relevance, (another invaluable talent in the writer's talent tree) we should have a quick shuftie at the current gaming headlines.

*My son and I play the 'coincidence' game. You each think of a word, or theme, and sit back and wait. A few weeks ago, we were walking back home with the shopping, discussing the nature of 'coincidence' (and I shall now stop with the apostrophes) and, to demonstrate my point, I chose the word artichoke and my son looked at his watch and chose 1:14.
The word artichoke indeed presented itself on several occasions during the course of the weekend. (As did the time 1:14.) The following week, watching Masterchef, the word artichoke once again did its jaunty jig and there in the background a wall clock duly displayed the time... 12:14! Pretty close. (And, naturally, I mentally adjusted it to the precise hour difference, whereas I suspect it was much closer to 12:12. Two twelves! A coincidence? [Probably should bring the apostrophes back.])



If it wasn't for the assistance of the auto-coffee machine, I would've forged a title from the ideas of money and balance and getting rich quick and so forth.
It's been an eye-opening few weeks (for me, at least), with Spry Fox sticking up for the indies, and Zynga employees, both current and ex, confessing that Zynga pounce upon successful games, attempting to buy out the developer and, if that fails, reskinning that dev's game and bolting on their crew mechanic, and claiming the end result as their own 'original' concept.
There's no way I'm going back to the topic of originality. I'm still with Maltzman. You can find my thoughts easily enough by typing those keywords into the search bar. Suffice to say that neither reskinning nor bolting are required to acknowledge the balance of mechanics within any given game and are, IMO, reprehensible.

And, more recently, we have the revelation that (a staggering amount of) certain devs have been hiring botfarmers for the relatively inexpensive sum of $10-$15k. At the press of a few buttons, the botfarmer unleashes his bots. Over the course of three days, those bots repeatedly download the targetted game, lifting it up through the rankings until it hits the top 25. (Often easy to spot because that game will appear in the top 25 with no reviews, although I've heard of 'automated' reviews in broken Portuguese too!?) Apple are threatening to revoke licenses.

You can do something similar with human peoples. Make $$$s from the comfort of your own home! You just need a computer with internet access, and the most rudimentary understanding of computery stuff.
I've left you a few examples to look at. You don't need to scroll down very far to find comments directing you to services. I've deleted some, but I'm cool with the polite ones. (Just remember kids that I haven't followed any of the links and don't endorse any of the sites!)

My bosses have just returned from the Casual Connect conference in Germany. There, they learned the truth behind the ERS games - and it's hardly a revelation: Hundreds of coders and artists working tirelessly on multiple iHOG projects for minimal salaries.
Just as we've seen in the world of console devs, the drones are disposable: they come and go with the regularity of a ticking pocketwatch; they set up their own rival companies or services; and more drones are plugged into the empty chairs. These services are interesting: For a modest fee, you can outsource your art and code to ex ERS employees. Good pedigree, good price!

(As an aside, my bosses also learned from the horse's mouth that Big Fish went too far with the MCF8 title and received lots and lots of complaints about the game's poor taste. However, Big Fish are in the position where they don't have to worry about these complaints.)

So, quite a whirlwind of activity of late! And it all leaves me with this question:
How can a tiny dev team with typical British salaries make a game of CE standards and turn a healthy profit?
M3 made a similar profit to M2. That's to say that the game pulled in enough extra dosh to cover the combined salaries of the extra five staff members.
Given the revenue ceiling that exists for iHOGs (at least through the BF portal), it's unlikely that M4, however well it is received, is going to make a significant profit.

I had a meeting with my bosses and they presented their ideas for generating more profit. They were:
Cut dev time down to nine months; lower the quality of the artwork; don't invent any new systems - just use more inventory items; make the trial hour great, and pare everything back thereafter.
All understandable and predictable responses*, and all pointless unless you can answer the How? (See my question!) And it's because the How? is so difficult to answer, especially with British salaries what they are, that we hear barely a British whisper in the iHOG charts.
*In their defence, they haven't declared 'Story isn't important!' for several months now, so I think they're making an effort.

Naturally, I was ahead of them: I had already taken it upon myself to react to the three months we had lost during the staff drought. I used the M4 CE act to experiment. My internal brief was:
How can I create an hour of gameplay and wonderful experience in under two months with the team we have?
I think I've achieved that. I might be proven wrong, but I'm pretty pleased with myself and the systems I've invented which deal with our own particular obstacles.

In theory - and we can test the theory with minimum risk - I've found a way of making four acts and a CE act of high quality at a shade under two months per act. That comes in at around nine months, and does not allow for sickness or holiday, or for creating guis and menus (although it does accommodate cut-scenes and cinematics). Nor does it allow for the iterative nature of game design, and that alone can constitute a sizeable nugget of time.
But nine months? The whole shebang in nine months?
Where were we? Oh yes:
How can a tiny dev team with typical British salaries make a game of CE standards and turn a healthy profit? In nine months?



To their credit, Big Fish have eased the pressure by introducing a mid-range accolade which they call the Deluxe. It's priced mid-way between CE and SE and eases the financial suffering of those devs that fall a fraction short of the CE score. But it's a cushion, and not something to aim for. (And I can only imagine that it could be achieved by a team attempting to hit the CE score in the first place.)

We're now at that place where things break. If I can't answer this question whilst retaining my integrity, then I have to either shed my integrity, convince my bosses to lower their profit expectations, or walk away with my integrity intact.
It's a place defined by both terrible shadow and challenging sunlight.
And it's a painful truth that (arguably) the #1 requirement for a writer/designer is that she has finely-honed powers of empathy; ergo, the better the writer/designer is at her job, the less likely she is to disrespect her audience.

Speaking of #1s...
Currently occupying the BF #1 spot is Surface: Mystery of Another World. I played the trial. Next morning, I drenched poor Ben with spittle as I related my experience of that trial - and it truly was a trial - to him. Poor Ben. And poor me: two nights with barely a wink of sleep! But mainly poor Ben.
First thing: if forum posts are to be believed, it's evident that S:MOAW spent a considerable time in the hands of the beta testers. Full credit to them for their persistence.
Now, to me it doesn't look great, and the story is ok but delivered without any technical prowess and, hence, gave me no emotive thrill. It lacks originality and sophistication. The live action cut-scenes are well hokey. I can't abide the relentless string of inventory item quests - put x in b and f in y and arse in biscuits and on and on - and the logic is laughable, unless you're able to believe that the only thing that will smash a window is a stone, despite having multiple heavy metal tools at your disposal...

But, studying the trial, I can reasonably confidently describe how it managed to achieve the CE score. Pretty much all you need to know is here in the last five years of blog posts. Forgive my heavy-handed paraphrasing, but it goes a bit like this: Hook, resonance, clear gui, atmosphere, regular developments (good pace+enough variety), strings of inventory item quests punctuated by puzzles/mini-games (which were, on the whole, pretty good), simple map with teleport, abundant hints and quick meter refills, enough fluidity to sustain the immersion cocoon through the bad things. The bad things were those things that are allowed to be bad. If your bad things are those things that have to be good, you get Bedtime Stories: The Lost Dreams (which, sadly, had lots of good things, but those were good things that could've been bad).
Furthermore, I'm well aware that I am not the market. My expectations of art and mood and story are much higher. No use me reading the glowing reviews and shaking my head in disbelief. Neither is there any use in my contemplating how to be more bad or, worse still, forcing Ben and Sally to be more bad. They're far too talented for me to even consider that!

Well what do you know: Providence has indeed presented me with an apt title for this post! Now I need your assistance with a cigarette machine...

***

P.S. Lovely comment on Wild Tangent (re. M3), and one heck of a pat on Ben's back. Let's play the coincidence game! I choose the words 'unique and 'original'!

JR: One of the best, most beautiful and most unique hidden object games.

Wild Tangent Games: What did you like most about this HOG?

JR: WildTangent Games The graphics were the best I've seen in HOG's. They were like walking into a Thomas KinKade painting. I loved the tarot card bits, where you had to line them up to produce different shapes. Very original. I also liked playing the sheet music on the piano. Things liike the horse race (blueberry, cotton candy, etc) were fun also. The story line was also sweet. I liked that the first object picked up (the rose) was the last one used. It tied up the storyline nicely.

Wild Tangent Games: Thanks for your awesome feedback Jeffery! Appreciate it :) We'd love to hear more reviews from you about other games!

A Thomas Kinkade painting.

P.P.S. Friend of mine has released his first iOS app! It's called Monkey Pole Climb. I've not played it, but it looks great and, more importantly, the guy poured fluffy ewers of love and care into it! Do go take a look!

Predictable

As I like to affirm to myself as I push another curry into the microwave: Everything we do comes at the expense of everything else.
With that thought, please accept my apologies for neglecting you, my sweet maggoteers, and know that you are never far from my kind thoughts.

Christmas was spent playing Skyrim, playing with my son, and playing Skyrim with my son.
And therein we found the perfect demonstration of the perils inherent in gifting the player with narrative design powers:

So my son hikes up a mountain and chances upon a shack. Inside, he encounters an old man named Froki who is sat at a humble wooden table with his grandson, where they share a meal by candlelight. My son chats to them both. Froki explains how he was a poor father to his children, and since their demises he has found in his grandson the opportunity for redemption. His grandson was equally sanguine, expressing his love for his grandfather. It was a touching moment.
My son then sets about hurling fireballs at the old man, torturing him with magickal infernos. Froki squeals and his grandson leaps up and declares: Cool! You can do magick! I want to be like you!

Yep, it's humour from incongruity, and an unplanned incongruity at that.



I've kinda gotten into The Big Bang Theory. I find myself playing the predict the punchline game, and I seldom score any points, and that's the appeal of the show to me.
In the opening scene from Raj Moves in With Sheldon, Raj sits in his flat, hiding beneath his headphones in an attempt at drowning out the sex noises coming from his bedroom, where his sister and Leonard engage in Star Trek role play. At the cry of Open the landing bay doors; shuttlecraft approaching, Raj hurries from the flat.
At Wolowitz's house, Raj asks if he can sleep over.
Wolowitz duly sets up the punchline and asks what's wrong with Raj's bed.
Come, play guess the punchline with me! I'll add Raj's response at the bottom of this post.

Someone said that the secret to comedy is surprise. They obviously haven't run up to a stranger in the street and kicked him in the testicular zone. Of course, someone else said that the secret to comedy is timing. Doubtless, you won't have to google too hard to find other secrets.
Sorry to say: there's no secret. I know, I know: it's so much more comforting to believe that there are simple paradigms out there waiting to be ingested and metabolized into works of genius. Fact of the matter is, there're no easy answers and no certainties. Five years of blogging, and I'm still as uncertain as ever I was.

And so it is that we approach the gravitational pull of the beta black hole, with its lightless singularity of people and opinions. Deep breath!

Usability was fascinating as ever. I regard the usability test as a beta warm up. Six gamers hop on over to the Big Fish offices where they're ushered into a small room, sat at a monitor, offered beverages, and then filmed playing through thirty minutes of the the new batch of aspiring iHOGS. There then follows an interview, during which the big questions are debated with gut-wrenching honesty: What did you think of that one? Was it fun? Why was it fun? Do you want to play some more? What do you make of the story? Were the puzzles too hard, too easy, or about right? Would you buy it?

Ooh, I've always wanted to do this...
To preserve their anonymity, I shall assign fake names to our testers. I want to call tester number one Frismagellian - or Friz as I like to refer to her.
Friz is the nightmare - the fly in the ointment - the gamer who doesn't represent the majority, but sits on the fringes hurling stones and leopard faeces.
It started well: Friz had no problems with the interface, and she quickly joined the dots as my white rabbits led her from task to task. Hold up, she's pretty good at this. She twitched and jerked her way through every challenge with the unremitting energies of an autistic code-breaker. She reacted well to the surprise statues, chortling to herself, and also to Miss Thorn's leap from the cliff - indeed, Friz leapt from her chair with a matching violence. Yes, things were going... as I expected... as I hoped... which was... unsettling. Just too quickly. Far too quickly.
She was done in twenty minutes and sat drumming her fingers on the desk waiting for our producer to enter with her clipboard.
It had all gone so effortlessly. Not a hiccup. Not a solitary moment of confusion or panic or aimlessness.
What did you think Friz?
Meh.
Meh?
It's too easy and nothing made me think and the cut-scenes were sooo long and that girl - she keeps talking - and she's British right? Do the British say 'just in time'? Shouldn't it be 'just on time?'



Next up: Colonel Bourbon Hatsplash, a retired gentleman with virgin white hair. (A man!)
It was a contrast of gargantuan magnitude. He ambled and perused and scratched his ear and smelled the graphical coffee beans, and barely made it halfway through the supposed 35 minutes of gameplay I had imagined.
My task was thrown into the kind of stark light that is as terrifying as it is illuminating. How to design a game that appeals to all the Frizs and all the Bourbons of this world, and everyone inbetween? And that's only assuming that Friz and Bourbon do, indeed, constitute the opposing lips of the bell curve.

Things kinda balanced out after that. Korona, a sullen but intelligent lady with a moon face and pagan hair, made the kind of references to her husband's ire at her retreat into virtual worlds that made me very uncomfortable, and made me consider further my function as game designer. Marakesh was a tiny old lady who cackled merrily at everything, which endeared her to me greatly. (Too funny! she would exclaim, leaning back in her seat.) Rubina was the middle-aged, stern-looking lady who most closely played as I had envisaged and, correspondingly, was most lavish in her praises. And Chipotle-Airspangles approached the game with a seriousness and methodicity that let me know she was boss and if I had screwed up, she would seek out and expose my failings.

Upshot? Six for six. Which is like a royal flush in cricket.
All six testers laughed at the same places. All six testers struggled with and delighted in the cunningly concealed HO carrot. All six testers wanted to play further. Five were eager to purchase - only Friz was uncertain, explaining that she might purchase if she found more challenge inside the cyclopean town. (So my assumption of six-for-six, I guess, presupposes that the difficulty level I've prepared inside the town will sate Friz's urges.)
And the most common of the responses to the question: Why was it fun?
It was different; it was unpredictable.

That made me think.
Turn now to the latest ERS release: Maestro: Notes of Life.
ERS do polish like nobody else. Polish is important and good. However, reading through scores of reviews, it's evident beyond all doubt that the formulaic approach is wearing thin.

I'm disappointed that I didn't cajole all six testers into paroxysms of ecstasy; and I might even present the argument that it's disappointment that fuels creativity.
But every special response is enough to keep me focused on the task. Listening to the unedited recordings that the voice-over artists have sent us has further lifted my spirits: it's wonderful to hear the myriad outtakes of Julie-Ann and co cracking up at the dialogue - properly gasping for air. And I love that my team are developing their favourite gaming moments already.

Onwards and upwards.

Raj: Leonard's putting disgusting memories in my memory foam mattress.

Forward Motion and Immersion Cocoons

Ooh, my counter has hit 10,000. I'm not sure what it actually counts... but 10,000!

Girl with a Heart of

This caught my eye - presumably due to its claim to the 'experimental interactive narrative' throne.
Reviews are all acceptably favourable, with the same flaws being flagged across the board.
Intrigued, I followed the pixel trail to the dev's blog.

I have to say, I greatly admire Alexei for what he has achieved and for what he attempted to achieve. And throughout his blog, he references a canoe-ful of the major game design books, so he's clearly studied his craft. Most impressive is the way he's handled the recurring negatives (although you'd have to question his 'I agree' remarks for it's difficult to imagine that the public would give two marsupials whether he agreed with them or not).

Anyhoo, do go and take a looksee.

Sooo... two days from usability submission and I got to play the opening act today. Yep, two days to go and we start the playthrough. Sigh.
We're looking at major pacing issues, placeholder ui components, a HO scene with no HO, yet-to-be-implemented music, sound fx and vo, cursor inconsistencies, obscure leading and no exit button. It's a terrifying shambles.
But the wind effects are smashing.
As I maundered my way through the act compiling pages of notes, poor sweet coder Lucy turned rather pale. I do hope she's hardy enough to weather the approaching storm...

What the playthrough highlighted - or highlit - for me was the importance of immersion, and the influence that controlled forward motion wields over immersion. Every time a placeholder graphic sicked upon the screen, or a series of interactions invoked no aural response, or a line of dialogue came and went before I could register the meaning of its arcane shapes or even when a line of dialogue duelled for attention with the pretty coloured forms of a new zoom window, I was jolted further from the world. I can see the world there, interred in the earthy inadequacies and inconsistencies, and I even get to caress its bosom during those stolen moments of uninterrupted flow, but then she is dragged deeper beneath the soil, rent from my lips by the Valkyries of brokentude.

Silky forward motion is the womb of immersion, and credibility of meaning the, um, urethra. That would likely make sensory stuff the fallopian tubes.
Or, to put it another way, for the player to respond to any of the stimulae laced throughout the game like bear traps, the real world has to be kept apart from her conscious mind at all times. Hiccups within her artificial reality will fracture the cocoon which she willingly builds from the materials we provide for her. If the player isn't immersed, she won't care. It's one thing for me to state mid-blog post that Miss Thorn steps off a cliff, and quite another to immerse you into a vivid and interactive world of ethereal sights and sounds and lead you delicately to that one moment in time.
And that cocoon can be so very easily fractured at every single step.

Pregnant automata give birth to exploding babies.

MCF8: Escape from Ravenhearst came out. As predicted, the public reaction to this strange shaped wheel was mixed.
The two principal bones of contention were the morphing object scenes and the abstention from hints, followed closely by the text-less and user-unfriendly strategy guide, the invisible integration of CE material, the discriminatory minimum specs, and the question of taste, chased up by the omission of puzzles or mini-games.

There are two mechanical differences between a HO scene and a MO scene.
In a HO scene, the player is essentially given the instruction: Find several items in this scene.
In a MO scene, the instruction is: Find several items in this scene... oh, but they're only going to appear every five seconds or so.
You could also read the instructions this way:
HO scene: Find several items. Here's a list of those items.
MO scene: Find several items.
The results were:
* The momentum stalled as the player was required to wait for objects to reveal themselves. (The favoured simile was '...like watching paint dry'.)
* In order to identify items from subtle changes on the screen, players developed headaches or migraines.

I personally didn't mind the MO scenes (although they did appear with a dogmatic frequency).
It's certainly no surprise seeing Big Fish attempting to breathe new life into a tired formula.
It was a marginally risky decision. The bad decision, though, was to penalize the player for misclicking. Select a non-morphing object and a previously discovered morphing object is returned to the scene.
Attempting to find items in a HO scene causes a lull in the forward motion (due to the repetition and isolation), but does not interrupt it for the items are findable at all times.
Waiting for items to appear in a MO scene stalls the game.
Returning items to the scene reverses the flow of the game - just as the author who attempts flashbacks runs the risk of facing backwards.
Yep, we're back to the importance of forward motion - of continuously developing towards, and promising, a satisfying denouement.

Another way to stall is to remove hints. Player noodles, player reaches impasse, player thinks for a bit, player presses hint button and is back on track.
Take the end off that sentence and you leave the player in limbo without sign of resolution.

Curiously, the stalling and the reversing were sustained for longer than expected due to the life-giving nutrients provided by a cocoon wrought of detail and atmosphere - of rain splashing on leaves and lightning burnished upon the Irish Sea. This immersion cocoon was barely even grazed by the bottle opener which was used to move a boulder.

You know that 'instant rejection' faux pas? - that phrase in the covering letter that instantaneously raises a literary agent's blood pressure and hackles..?

Please find attached chapters five and seventeen. I know you requested the opening two chapters, but chapters five and seventeen are much better.

Yes, it's blinkin' difficult taking a sack of nothing and turning it immediately into something riveting and meaningful. But that's one of the skills a decent writer needs. I had the privilege of reading the MCF8 journal a few weeks ago. It was compelling stuff. (The last page was missing and I found myself cursing!)
So why oh why did Big Fish choose to open so coquettishly?
And do you know what they posted in the MCF8 forums?
This game has many chapters with several twists and turns, so you may want to play through more than just the demo before leaving feedback.

Really? You keep all that juicy stuff out of the demo and expect people to assume that the game is going to improve and that they should take your word for it and buy the full game?

Righty, that's an evening of Skyrimming that I've sacrificed for you my lovely maggoteers (or, more likely, for the opportunity to alchemize formless thoughts into barely decipherable sentences to see if I have anything to be concerned about). Are we doomed, or simply at a necessary and inevitable point in the development cycle? In the spirit of forward motion: let's go find out. (Insert ellipsis here.)

Christmas's Children

Continuing a thread from my last post: here's the John Lewis Christmas advert that's reducing everyone to tears. It's one minute and thirty seconds long.



My thoughts on the employment of children as emotional pawns in fiction have changed several times over the last five years or so. They're such easy triggers. I have to confess that I wasn't expecting the young Edwina scene in M3 to move people to tears - rather, I was expecting goosebumps as a prelude to the denouement. I felt terribly amateurish when I learned that I hadn't controlled my players.
I guess children are the embodiment of all that is good, pure and innocent in the world, which gives us a pretty darned powerful default to begin with.

Here's Hemingway's six word flash:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Here are the Man Booker winners.
I'm not counting, but I can see at a glance that a healthy dollop of them, and possibly the majority, adopt the pov of a child, either in first-person or in third limited, either in flashback (recollection) or in present tense (or even both). Certainly I can recount a good deal of short-listed child povs too. (M. J. Hyland's Carry me Down is still a personal fave.) Moreover, it was Anne Enright's The Gathering that made me begin to question my treatment of fictional children (and last year's short-listed Room [Emma Donoghue] was a wholly predictable confirmation). I'd done my share of child cruelty, riding on the wave of child abuse books that were en vogue at the time, but I knew I would always, always make amends before the closing line, and I would avoid anything relentless. Anne's relentless tone disturbed me* - which is as valid an emotional hit as any other - and I vowed there and then (-ish) to find my own ethical and emotional stance. And we mustn't forget the trauma of Torey Hayden's unresolved Ghost Girl.
As such, I refused to allow young Edwina to watch as her father burned to death AND I would only allow such a flashback to occur once I had clearly imparted the knowledge that adult Edwina was just fine.

I'm genuinely haunted by The Darling Buds of May. I simply can't get my head around it. See how I was mentally subverting the plots not so long ago, warping them into drama. That's to say that it really doesn't qualify as drama, does it? (Or am I mistakenly assuming that drama is comprised of the dramatic?) I adore that show, and countless other people adore that show, but my head cannot imagine how I could make such a tepid (I use that word without any derogatory connotations) topography work for today's audiences, let alone for your average gamer. I guess Ico comes as close to the Darling Buds topography as any other game (and hopefully The Last Guardian: see video on right), with its gorgeous environments, bloodless skirmishes, and ethereal soundtrack and ceaseless winds.
That's where I've pitched Margrave 4, and I'm comfortable with that decision...
Could it be, however, that the big money is buried in horror..? Here's the trailer for the forthcoming MCF release: Escape from Ravenhearst. (Those teeth are far too clean!)



*On second thoughts, I think I found The Gathering depressing more so than disturbing. Anne's world seemed bleak and grey to me, in stark contrast to the previous winner, in which Sai inhabited a world of exciting and vivid colours and smells and tastes.