From Space

Excited fried egg.

Before I lay me down to sleep, I want to document a dream I had the other night.
I have two recurring dreams. In the first, I am alone and lost in London. In the second, I am standing in my mother's garden, looking out across the field beyond, at the night sky, and a UFO descends. This dream always climaxes in a close encounter of the third kind: an alien (or 'animate being').

This time, I was watching from the centre of the garden, and the UFO was an archetypal, charcoal grey saucer, barely a ghost in the gloom. Often, they glide at high altitudes, lit like fairy carnivals, but not this time. It skimmed silently across the field, little more than ten feet above the crops. I was excited, not fearful.
I hurried into the house through the back door, and into the lounge. The lounge was dark and claustrophobic, flooded with an eerie scarlet light which devoured form, much as a shadow. My brother was sat at one end of the sofa; my mother in an armchair. They watched a dim tv, unmoving. I threw myself onto the sofa and my brother hissed between clenched teeth: Careful! You nearly sat on it!
Nobody moved or breathed. I could feel the warmth of a body beside me upon my bare arm.
Something pushed itself off the sofa and dropped gently to the carpet, its fur brushing my arm, and a shape waddled out of my peripheral vision towards the back door.

Three breasted nun on a pogo stick.

I've been reading a lot about gaps - about space. I love this theory: By leaving spaces for the reader/gamer to occupy, she is encouraged to fill in the gaps with her own personal experiences or imagery, thereby drawing her directly into the narrative.
I love how my dream never depicted the alien and how I have formed my own image of it by filling in the gaps. It was short, with a furry torso. For some reason, I found myself adding a snout to it. I think I was cramming the gaps with an image of ALF.
However, looking at the reviews of thatgamecompany's Journey, it seems that emptiness in a game also creates a high risk of boredom.

Conflict

Eughyeugh! That's the noise one makes when one is pricked by the sensation of jelly skin. I'm making it now. And not just because I've discovered Loscil's Coast/Range/Arc on Spotify!

It's the sensation baked by the simultaneous bombardment of diverse emotions - when one's nerves are teased like oysters.
On the one hand, I'm genuinely sorry to learn that our external producer at BF is moving to pastures new. On the other, I'm tingling with her ultra-generous feedback on the pre-survey build, and with her microscopic list of amendments. So there's sadness, relief and some sort of pride already. Forget-ye-not to stir in the inexorable terror of the looming public Beta.
(All these cooking metaphors! Must be Masterchef final week!)

I've also made a breakthrough in a new style of writing and design.
I was beginning to fear that I was genetically manufactured to favour a languid and child-like form of magic realism. I decided that I wanted to discover how much suspense I could inject into the new project. So I had a chat with Linda Adams.
She listed structure, conflict, and word choice as the primary devices of suspense.
Back to Mimsy I scuttled, this time reading his incomprehensibly brilliant Story with my 'conflict' lenses on. Isn't it curious how we spot entirely different things when we look at something from a different point of view!
Not really, no.

I thunk a bit. I thunk about the concept of questions. Questions aren't enough to generate suspense, even if they're resonant and meaningful. Strip those very questions bare and dress them in the lederhosen of conflict and see what happens.
I thunk about conflict and curled up with Mimsy. He rested his head on my bosom and his breath was warm on my heaving clavicles. There are three types of conflict, he whispered, coiling my chest hairs around his wedding band finger. There's inner conflict (with yourself), and personal conflict (with peoples), and extra-personal conflict (with things). Mimsy licked his lips and continued: Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.
So far so good. Conflict is protag wanting something but being unable to have it.
Protag has two types of desire though solv! Mimsy purred. Protag has conscious desire, which forms the basis for the bulk of the conflict, and protag has an unconscious desire, which is resolved at denouement.
I asked a few professional authors if they consider this when they write. So far, they have ignored me. I bet they don't!
I've temporarily built this into my plot, and it makes for a more informed denouement, but I can't really see it making any difference.
However, by making the decision to design Project X as a (predominantly) linear game, and by upping the pace using only conflict questions, I can honestly see something more compelling than anything else I've written forming in those notebooks. (Um, downside of the linear and pace things is that game duration is greatly shrivelled. Just let me get the quality right first, and then I'll look into the quantity.)
I also considered Mimsy's thoughts on placement of the inciting incident, and chose to place it five mins into the game, after an opening of Mystery.
Reconsidering everything under the strict rule of suspense - or, rather, conflict - has, I sense, made a significant difference to the choices I'm making. They're still, by and large, informed, but informed by a different sentinel.

Remember my loyal, honeyed solv-cake: Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

I See

David Hockney's The Arrival of Spring.

Something's been bothering me for years now. A mystery.
Every now and then, I happen upon another clue, but I've never been able to find any peace of mind. It's one of my many heels that didn't quite make it into the river Styx.

Is it better to withhold information from the reader/viewer and then deliver it as a powerful reveal (provided it has been adequately foreshadowed), or to share the information with the reader/viewer but withhold it from the characters? Are we in a bathtub of apples and pears?

Beyond that, you have all manner of perfect and imperfect information permutations.
I just find it hard to choose - to make an informed decision.
So, taking the advice of a wise lecturer I once studied under, I shall spit this stuff out and see if I can finally find some peace of mind.

Hitchcock's argument is rather persuasive. He said something along the lines of If you're going to plant a bomb under a table, let the audience see it.
Makes good sense. As those characters sit at the table, eating or chatting or drinking or milking reindeer, every moment is imbued with tension.
Consider, too, Dallas, captain of the Nostromo, crawling through the ventilation system in search of the full-grown alien. At first, we don't know where the alien is. We share the characters' knowledge. The sensors pick up a moving entity; again, our knowledge is that of the characters'. If Hitchcock was correct, then would it not have been 'better' if we knew where the alien was, but the characters didn't? Or how about if communications went down, and we and the crew could see the alien closing in on Dallas, whilst he was deaf and blind, alone in the dark?
See my confusion? Where's Mimsy and his hairy shoulders..?

Ten minutes later...

Okay, that's the refresher done. (I find myself requiring refreshers on pretty much everything these days. Some of my spellings have become atrocious! And I keep forgetting basic punctuation stuff - either that, or I've gotten into awful habits. Note to self: Sort it out you lazy ass. Note from self: I am you bossy old penis head. Why d'you think I'm sat here blogging after an exhausting day's work? Note to self: You keep meaning to order Eats, Shoots and Leaves off Amazon. Do it now. Note from self: Done it. And how amusing to see so many reviewers fretting over their every hyphen. Note to self: Sorry for being bossy. Note from self: No worries. Sorry about the penis head remark.)

In MYSTERY the audience knows less than the characters.
In SUSPENSE the audience and characters know the same information.
In DRAMATIC IRONY the audience knows more than the characters.

If we look at the effects of these ways of connecting the audience to the story, and if we understand our audience, we can make informed decisions right?
Paraphrase time.
Mystery is about arousing audience's curiosity - keeping her in the dark, sprinkling hints and red herrings, revealing at climax. Outcome is always certain: detective always catches killer. Ends on up state.
Suspense might end on up or down state: nobody knows how it will turn out. In this relationship, we feel empathy with protag; in Mystery we feel sympathy. Suspense accounts for some ninety percent of movies.
In Dramatic Irony, we feel compassion for someone we see heading for disaster.

Based on these observations, it appears as though Hitchcock was in the minority: looks like Suspense has, for whatever reason, become more popular than Dramatic Irony. I'd suggest that this is, at least in part, because Suspense allows for the greatest degree of bonding between audience and protag and, hence, the greatest scope for deep emotional stimulation.
How does that sound?
Captain Brain... You happy now?

Here's a humbling game.
Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Gray Syndrome.
I really can't think I've seen reviews like this before; pro and user comments alike are overwhelmingly positive.



I've performed a little dissection of the trial hour; in-so-doing, I find myself wondering if I'm looking in the right places and asking the right questions. I can examine and measure the pace - the frequency of developments and the clever employment of loudspeakers through which the antag repeatedly taunts the protag; and I can understand the variety - the movement between strings of inventory item quests to puzzles or narrative developments, and the quantity of back-tracking (and, indeed, the inexorable revisiting of the slow-moving lift does become wearisome). Polish is self-evident. Dialogue is sloppy: there are more than enough flatulent adverbs in there to upset any literary agent; but that could be a translation issue, and hasn't appeared to upset a single player. However, the suspense it generates carries it through. Suspense. I remember with crystal clarity Peter Cox championing suspense - expectation.
There's a line of dialogue right at the end of the trial. It's genius. Brief context: Sam's a journo; he's investigating a narcissistic killer; killer phones Sam asking him to come on over; Sam bikes over there (for a peculiarly long time in the opening cut-scene); Sam discovers that killer has taken his girlfriend Anna hostage; Sam is forced to play through killer's (IMHO laborious) puzzles and deadly traps in order to save girlfriend; along the way, Sam discovers killer's other victims - embalmed and posed as works of art. After solving a major choke puzzle, killer's voice comes over loudspeakers again:

Wonderful! I think you're proud of yourself! Aren't you? I've got many more interesting things waiting for you. Anna is soon going to appear on stage in her first act. No, no, it's not what you're thinking, but it will be very interesting I promise you.

What a great place to suspend the player! All those images and questions requiring resolution.
And, to follow up on my previous post, this game appears to play for some eight or nine hours!
At the time of typing, 115 out of 122 players recommend this game. (That's 94%!) There's clearly lots for me to learn buried away in there.
I just don't get how it only made position four in the charts.

David Hockney was hanging out with Andrew Marr last night. They drove to David's beloved copse 'on the road to nowhere'. They stepped from the Land Rover and David beamed in divine ecstasy. Andrew was puzzled by David's reaction, for he saw only grey clouds and bare trees. David was puzzled by Andrew's reaction: he saw shapes and colours and all manner of things hidden from us mortals.

Quality Quantity

One of the few dilemmas that isn't particularly shared by game design and novel writing! At least, I can't think many people would judge a novel by its length.

It's undeniably one of the gnarliest challenges I face. How do I create four or five hours of great gameplay from a team of three artists?
Length is certainly a consideration for the BF forumites: Invariably, somebody will play through the demo hour and consult the strategy guide to see how far in they are; then they extrapolate the whole duration.

Minimalist Beach with Person by Toni Grote.

I've posted many times about how I've tackled this problem. It was the one major issue that came up in the M3 survey tests. I had held the player in the cottage and immediate grounds for too long, and I had done this predominantly with a succession of dream card games (reusable, scalable assets! My saviours!), interspersed with a small selection of other puzzles and inventory item quests, with the odd cinematic/cut-scene or two thrown in by way of narrative development. Once the problem was identified, it was a dead easy fix, dropping one of the dream cards games and opening up the village a little earlier. (Believe me, identifying problems from hundreds of disparate comments is itself one heck of an acquired skill.)

Players would much rather have a game which develops rapidly and offers relentless variety than play a long and repetitive drawn-out game. (My use of the word 'relentless' isn't entirely accurate because we still need an element of familiarity, which encourages us to repeat carefully selected components.) Ideally, that rapidly developing game will also be lengthy, but that's regarded as a bonus. The current top ten stalwart Witches' Legacy: The Charleston Curse demonstrates this well. It's a short game by any standard, with players completing it in around four hours or less. (I'm using control players: those who would typically take five or six hours to complete an iHOG.) And the CE bonus content came in at under an hour. But significantly few people minded. It was a quality game.

Back-tracking is a strange one. Asking a player if she likes, or minds, back-tracking is kind of like asking her how she takes her coffee.
The amount of locations I can use is determined by how much time Ben has to create them. Furthermore, every scene would then need populating, which means that André and Sally would need to be thrown into the mix. There are scant few exceptions, and none have really succeeded: one particular dev team like to drop a maze into the world. These mazes appear to be semi-modular: a set of scenes which have been created from a selection of trees, grasses, and so forth. It's a way to gain perhaps ten minutes of extra gaming from reusable unpopulated background assets. Whilst the time gain from minimal art origination is evident, the problems here are twofold: the scenes all look too similar such that nothing feels as though it is changing; our players aren't renowned for their love of navigation, especially when this is complicated.

Feel the need to clarify my distinction here. Ideally, you need to constantly develop. Whether you're creating prose, or creating a gaming experience, your audience needs pulling along (forward motion), and regular developments are absolutely, definitively essential. (Apologies for the tautology, but I still regard this as my biggest lesson learned.) However, instead of developing, you can simply change. It's not the Bob McKee-approved technique, but it does do the job of sustaining the forward motion. The difference is that, whilst development is inextricably connected to the narrative and moves the audience closer to the denouement, often in the shape of a reveal or reversal (typically knowledge and/or functionality), change isn't so.
For example: In Surface: MFAW, the designer relies on change to move the chapters along. Examine a puddle and a watery face appears. It's a nothing event - one of several repetitious 'surprise' tactics that reinforces the concept of monsters out there - but an event nonetheless. In M4, the player returns life to a generator and statues rise from the ground. The statues allow the player to activate a power node and wake the guardian Seer. (And the Seer, in turn, develops something else, and so on.)
So, to sustain that all-important forward motion, you can develop or you can change. Of the two, development creates the most meaning; but either will keep your audience engaged.

By constantly developing three scenes, I was able to keep the usability testers engaged for thirty minutes from a paucity of art assets. And by developing through a variety of means, I was able to keep the narrative fresh and also spread the art tasks between the three artists.

In M4, I'm reusing every scene. I hold the player in a selection of scenes, developing through puzzles, mini-games, and cinematics; then I open up a new selection of scenes and do likewise. As the world opens up, I begin redefining existing scenes, sending the player back with my white rabbits, and utilizing the player's new knowledge or abilities to create fresh meaning from those scenes.
If you follow the progress on my map, it looks like a Gordian puff adder.

How does the player return to these scenes?
Provided that they are expectant - anticipating something special - the back-tracking is framed by something valuable. But it's still a danger zone. I'm mindful of g@mrgrl's comment:

Margrave: The Curse of the Severed Heart falls just short of achieving true greatness due to some repetitive puzzles and annoying backtracking, but its ambition and effort to break the glass ceiling between hidden object and traditional adventure games is obvious and well-appreciated.

Without hiring more staff, the obvious (and easy) solution to these issues is to reduce the back-tracking and re-usable puzzles, which would remove a sizeable chunk of gameplay. But there are always less-obvious and more difficult solutions!

I built into the M4 world three secret passages. Once the snaking begins, I immediately open up the first passage and the player can 'teleport' instantly (two clicks: first click on passage entrance in scene, which opens map; second click on desired destination, which opens scene) to the other side of the world.
There are many wonderful articles on navigation in games on the interweb. I should've bookmarked some. I'll see if I can find the one with the argument: Why make your character walk when he can run? Why make him run when he can fly?
Maps have historically served a variety of functions in iHOGs. The Thirteenth Skull map featured little detail: it was more of a pretty appetizer and an overview. The Phantom of the Opera map was a more detailed layout of the world, and was designed with navigation in mind. The Surface map is pared down to pure functionality: a sterile network of circles and lines which allow for teleportation to anywhere at any time.
I designed the M4 map as a pretty appetizer, a reasonably functional navigation system (more of an overview), and a teleporter. I am, however, swaying towards full teleportation for the next project. This functionality could oh so easily defile immersion in favour of functionality, but I have plans for marrying the two with meaning..! (Indeed, the network of secret passages in M4 also serves to explain how Uisdean is travelling around the town! My beloved duality.)



Does beauty sustain back-tracking? If the scenes are stunning on the eye, is the player content revisiting them?
Maybe for a bit; but only for a bit. Certainly nothing to be relied on.
I chanced upon Lisa Evans' blog. She's had a couple of stabs at alchemizing her beautiful artwork into a game. With such lack of development or change, or meaningful interaction, and with such slowly paced navigation, note how quickly the beautiful artwork, and the melancholic soundtrack, lose any mastery over the player's experience. And then extrapolate.
With some form of development required at pretty much every moment of the game, the question How? becomes rather daunting.

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.

Cut

Edwina will even have animated hair this time!

Following on from our previous topic, I noticed today that Melissa from Passionfruit Games posted on the Big Fish forums. Her question sacrificed upon the altar of the vox populi was simply: Do you watch cut scenes?
Naturally, I've emailed her inviting discussion, fantasizing about witty and incisive exchanges of ideas over a flagon of gluhwein and, naturally, I'm expecting no response and a black mark shaped like a Ferengi ear adhered to my name. But hey... he who dares!

I'm uncertain how I feel about devs approaching the public in this fashion. In theory, it seems like it might be a good idea. However, I do think that devs should knuckle down and figure stuff out for themselves; after all, the public have no idea what they want. (The epitome of this is the interchangeable use of the words 'story' and 'plot' to encompass everything and anything.) Moreover, a cursory glance over the responses reveals absolutely nothing that any respectable dev wouldn't already be familiar with.

Our first cut scene (actually I'm going to revert to hyphenating that) - our first cut-scene is going in. Exciting times. Sal has done a smashing job overpainting (and I'm going to make overpainting into a word) the photos we took a month or so back, bar a few expressions that need a tad more definition. Capturing expressions is one of the hardest jobs an artist can tackle. The slightest slip in observation can devastate an expression which, in turn, can subvert the purpose of a cut-scene. (If you have five minutes spare, do go and participate in Professor Ekman's latest smile recognition test. For the curious/competitive among you, I scored fifteen.)

We're devoting a lot more energy to our cut-scenes this time round. The vfx are going to blow you away. Yes they are. And Ben's townscape is a miracle of beauty and convolution. I've been poring over my storyboards endlessly, contemplating the same questions over and over: How can I emotionally engage the player right from the get-go without resorting to melodrama?
And whilst I have absolute confidence, misguided or otherwise, that the denouement is going to shatter even the most obsidian of hearts, I wonder how close we can get to that kind of emotional connection in the intro. Is it possible to conceive of, say, a movie that has the viewer so immediately involved and emotionally attached that she is weeping within the first five minutes?
Well, we're giving it our best shot, using a blend of the story-independent techniques of wonder, peril, and character relationships.

My slightly facetious answer to Melissa's question would be: Are they worth watching?

Which leads us to another question that's congesting my neurons with far too much attention-seeking tomfoolery: Is it worth it?
What's the cost of this kind of endeavour?
I had the unbearably difficult task of letting my good friend 3D Raul go a couple of months back. My response to that arduous day was the blog post Rules.
When everyone ups their game and starts believing that we truly can create something super special, it becomes painfully apparent when someone has no, or little, capacity for improvement, and I was unable to find any way at all to save my friend, and believe me I tried.
As such, we're now over two months behind schedule and I've been using every bit of cunning available to me to massage the schedules into something viable.
Interviews over; on Tuesday we welcome 3D André.
(Interview anecdote: I had another of those 'I'm a writer!' types. He asked if we all write the story together. Despite being afflicted with the urge to reply 'Yes; and my deceased grandmother does all the coding!' I was very humble and polite. You would have been proud of me my dear maggoteers!)
Here's what I want André to know...

There's a saying amongst actors, but I've also heard it in other creative disciplines. It goes: Directors don't know what they want; they just know what they don't want.
I guess it's meant to be disparaging(?)
However, if you need to, give it a moment's thought.
I have no idea how this project is going to turn out. How can I? It's like playing a game of Guess the Celebrity by looking at their atoms. It's like dear Margaret Bingley - the author and consultant I visited many years ago - confiding in me that, even after all her successes, she still fears every manuscript she types - fears that it will be a major dud. It's like the cast of Star Wars who, when offered the choice between a percentage of royalties or a flat fee, took the flat fee (if urban legend is to be believed).
And, if you've ever written a full length ms, you'll know perfectly well yourself how organic the process is - how it is far more than the sum of its plot devices and characters. You have to observe - to watch where the project is going - to guide it, but not to stifle it - and to quickly identify those magic moments that fall from the preternatural aether and to nurture them and suckle them and clothe them in bottle green velvet and brass buckles.
(E.M. Forster reckoned that the writer who's fully in control of her characters hasn't even started to do the work.)

I empathise with my team. On Monday I might say one thing, and then change my mind on Tuesday. As the emperor of damage limitation, I try to impress upon my team the importance of testing the waters - of consulting me iteratively and concepting alternatives; and of the importance of research and consideration before that digital pen is even sniffed.
I'm also unapologetic about mind-changing. I've provided every microscopic detail of an invisible five plus hour game and I've made everything as, um, transparent as possible. But all of this cannot be anything more than a first pass: I am nothing more than a lowly human being attempting to pluck three hundred minutes of stuff from a magic land and capturing it and recording it and ordering it and moulding it into hyperreality.
I've learned that the easiest way to spot a professional is by asking them to revise something. The pro's understand; the amateurs are offended. The supreme ease with which Ben and I develop and refine our art is testament to that.

Ben and I performing thorough damage limitation.

And so it is that I face the prospect of derision and vitriol every day.
Today we received the first round of test dialogue from our luscious voice artistes. Some of the characters have been interpreted perfectly! In particular, Julie-Anne's take on Madeleine, the prophetic doll, is genuinely frightening. (Madeleine utters one line in the entire game. I gave J-A no direction other than: as scary as you can.) And Nigel, who may or may not be her hubby, has nailed most of the Seer heads. (Cargan is a scream!)
But Ula and Rudo are way short of what we want, and I have to find a way of attaining my vision without causing offence. Alternatively, I can sacrifice my vision. Which brings us back to my question: Is it worth it?

How many people get hurt along the way?

The answer: If they are all talented and foster a professional attitude and have the gift of ego suppression, none.

Can't recall whether I made Keelin laugh or cry. Perhaps Professor Ekman has a test?

But that's a perfect world. And, just like our Cyclopean town, that world drifts in and out of reality, and when it is with us the rewards far outweigh the hardships.

Forget the Gameplay

It's one of those topics I've been garnering bravado for... so let's jump back in with the controversy du jour...

Does the name Simon Parkin ring any bells?
How about Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception?

Have a look.



Isn't it strange: all these decades in, and we're still arguing about the amount of interactivity that is desirable in a game. Mid-way between the movie and the game is the interactive movie. Games, by all definitions (that I've read, and that's quite a few), must offer the player choices and allow the player to influence the world about him. Movies, conversely, are passive affairs.
With Drake's third outing, it seems as though we've finally reached that point inbetween.

Here's Simon's brilliant review over at Eurogamer.

And then the flamewars began.
As far as I can figure, the furore stems from a misinterpretation (as confirmation bias is wont to cajole) of the review. Some commenters read Simon's review as positive, and then are surprised to find an eight-out-of-ten score; some read the review as negative and are equally perplexed by the score; most are simply surprised that Simon didn't rate the game as highly as the other major reviewers.

Simon concludes his review:
The execution exhibits a kind of workmanship and polish way beyond the ambition of most other developers, let alone their abilities or budgets. As an expression of all that a video game could be, however, Uncharted 3 is narrow, focused and ultimately shallow. It is a majestic tribute to cinema, a movie game in the literal sense, and your enjoyment will be in precise step with your appreciation of that objective - and whether or not you believe it to be Drake's great deception, or Drake's great delight.

So the question facing game designers is: How much interactivity makes for a fulfilling GAMING experience?

I think if Bob McKee were here, he'd say it was a specious argument. And I'd agree. Heck, I'll always agree with my imaginary Bob McKee. I like to call him Mimsy and stroke his hairy shoulders.

Just to backtrack briefly, I'll explain why this has been on my mind for a while now.
Here's a snippet from Jayisgames' review of Margrave 3:

Margrave: The Curse of the Severed Heart is all about the story and setting, and it paints such a wonderful picture with both that the gameplay comes in second. In fact, sometimes the actual "game" parts of Margrave seem like an intrusion...

Consider, too, our producer's remarks that players attempt to complete hidden object scenes as quickly as possible so that they can get on with the game.

Well hold up! What precisely is it that gamers want? Do they actually want to be presented with choices and given the power to influence their artificial world? or will they accept the most modest of interaction - just enough for a game to qualify as a game - provided that their ultimate experience is rewarding?

If there's one thing I've learned during my time as a game designer - and there probably isn't one thing I've learned - but if there is, it's that there's not a single design question that can't be answered by the statement:
It's all a question of balance!

I was, I think, amused when I played Deus Ex the other day. After some twenty minutes of 'on rails' gaming, about eighteen minutes of which was dialogue (exposition), I finally reached the opening credits and began the game. At that point I was given three choices of play. The recommended/default choice was something like:
Full story mode: This is how the game is meant to be played.

Which is why I think it's a specious argument. The old school HOGgers didn't much care for M3 because it had a good dollop of story. They wanted uninterrupted interactivity. The nu wave HOGgers - those whose EXPECTATIONS of the iHOG genre are different (as in contemporary) - did enjoy it; for them, the ultimate experience justified the anchoring of meaning through conventional narrative design.
How to appease both camps?
1) Give everyone the option to skip cut-scenes.*
2) Be sure to inject as much meaningful choice into any existing interactive elements as possible.
* N.B. Players judge on default. If you default to 'cut-scenes on', they'll moan if they don't like cut-scenes, even if you give them the option to switch them off. Weird, but true.

Here's another snippet from our Jayisgames review: (This was pretty consistent feedback.)

Another high point in the Margrave experience is the Dream Card mini-game... it's steeped in tarot artwork and mythology, so naturally you'll feel a bit like a psychic yourself each time you name a spirit.

I'll leave you, my dear maggoteers, with these questions:

Would Simon have scored Uncharted 3 higher if it had claimed to be an interactive movie rather than a game?
What does that say about the effect of expectations upon a game? And how do we deal with such expectations?
Would you be content to sit back and watch ninety minutes of this..?

Rules

Muskateer with Pipe and Flowers. (Pablo Picasso, 1968.)

My son starts his new school today!
(Um, meant to post this a couple of weeks back. Sorry.)

Even as I type, I can imagine him in his stiff and heavy uniform, chatting with other frightened kids in a dinner hall heavy with the sounds of clashing cutlery and chair legs scuffing varnished floorboards and a thousand boys discussing their summer hols, and with the smells of whatever has replaced the boiled cabbage and suet puddings of yesteryear.

He read through his rule book last night and had some questions for me.
Most of the rules are obvious, he said: Don't smoke and don't drink alcohol and don't gamble at school or on the way to or from school. We discussed briefly whether Top Trumps qualified as gambling.
Several rules concerned him however. It says we're not allowed into the school buildings during lunch break. So how am I going to get my lunch? And am I going to have to sit outside to eat it? And what if I need the toilet. (Yes, toileting is surely one of the top concerns for schoolkids. If it was a Top Trumps card, it would have an Anxiety score of ten.)
I allayed his fears by explaining that it was the same at my school, and the rules simply prohibit students from hanging around the classrooms and the like during breaks. Dining halls and toilets are fair game.
He also has games today and hasn't moulded his gum shield and wasn't sure which of his shin guards he needed. Multiple shin guards! I jest not!

Coincidentally, I'm reading Stephen Fry's (if I was gay, I certainly would! Heck, give me a couple of glasses of wine and I'd give it serious consideration) Moab is my Washpot, the first installment of his autobiography. Like my son, he's just started big school, and is surveying this foreign landscape. Looking back, Stephen bears no ill-will towards the masters who caned him; rather, he recalls the injustices, especially those acted upon him by other schoolkids.
Certainly something I've noticed in my son over the years, as he grapples with the concept of the fallibility of adults and the often uninformed judgements of teachers.

Lord help us all if we dare to breach the topic of rules whilst in creative company. Whenever someone would mention the word over on the writers' forums, I would pull a lemon-sucking face and recoil from my monitor. We prefer the concept of guidelines, or techniques, or methods, or tools, or anything that doesn't stand over you with a birch.

Thing is, 'creative rules' are nothing more than starting points. A writer who has mastered POV and plotting and all those dry techniques still has a very long way to go before she can craft an unforgettable tale. Or, to put it another way, if you bought me a tool set for Christmas, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to knock up a uniquely handsome, weatherproof gazebo. Oh no.
Creativity is about understanding how stuff works, and then setting sail on a long and lonely journey, where you make a million informed decisions, ruthlessly, um, paddling out brilliant mixed metaphors and splicing mainbraces with toasted emotions.
If a dead rat measured the creative process, and you started at the tip of its tail, you wouldn't even touch its arse with your tools.

When you get how stuff works and what it is doing, well that's when you can reinvent.
The learner artisan doesn't get this. I've known writers who will witness a professional author breaking POV and then exclaiming But you told me not to break POV! And amateur artists producing bland and hackneyed abstracts, confidently referring the viewer to Picasso's success. Just as the barber I visited as an art student was unable to distinguish between his infant daughter's painting of flowers and Van Gogh's Sunflowers.
Picasso didn't jump straight into cubism. Aged thirteen, he was admitted to the Barcelona School of Fine Arts. And he did this.
And, aged about seventeen, he did this.

And with that, he climbed into his boat, waved goodbye to his friends and his family, and set sail for terra nova.

High on a Hill

Crikey, standards are really going up. The new Enigmatis looks pretty darned polished.
But let me ask you this: Does it have a goat chocolatier? Eh?

You know how the saying goes: If you can't beat 'em, you're not very good at beating.

The Insecurity of Reinvention

Been a taxing week - one of those weeks where you question your work a tad too deeply. (We're in the land between paradox and non sequitur people!)

I'm currently assembling the hints system and it's about as mind-spangling as things get. It's nice to take a break for a couple of days to tidy my thoughts.

I've briefly allowed myself a tour of the recent reviews of M3 - just enough to perk me up a little, and not so much as to perpetuate a dependency on public adoration. :o)
And boy, I'm blown away. The scores keep going up and up, all across the board, raised on the shoulders of so many kind and encouraging comments.
As that comforting glow soaks into my soul, a panic eel spasms in my gut. All those high expectations! Can I really lead my team to an even greater victory? I've changed my approach to design and game narrative so much, and everything is once more uncertain. I mean, this game is, thus far, an unfiltered nozzle into my head, and that's a scary premise.

What do the greats do?
On the one hand, you have the MCF team who reinvent with breathtaking courage from game to game; on the other, you have the unfalteringly successful ERS team(s) who pump out 'cookie cutter' games with unnerving regularity.
The upshot is pretty straightforward: each new MCF game garners a host of negative reviews from those who dislike the new systems, techniques, and mechanics. The ERS games seem only to receive negative reviews concerning the lack of originality. ('More of the same' is a recurring review.)
And, in both cases, these games hurtle to the top of the charts and make heaps of money.
I'm quite sure my bosses would prefer that I adopted the ERS approach. But I simply can't do that. To deny myself the opportunities to improve and experiment and to push boundaries is to deny myself of everything that is necessary for my creative survival.

My new hints system is, to the best of my knowledge, radically different to all others in the iHOG genre.
I've replaced the insipid omniscient hints (Collect the bacon slicer from the mortuary) with a character.
So now the hints are imbued with personality, and we move a little closer to turning a 'penalty' into a 'reward'. Furthermore, we increase immersion every time we shun omniscience in favour of important, narrative-driven characters.
I've also broken the hints into smaller increments. When coupled with the interactive in-game map, this method overcomes all the issues we experienced with the previous system.

One unforeseen by-product of all this is that the hints have rather ballooned.
Now that the hint can 'see' where the player is, 'he' needs to respond appropriately in order to sustain believability:

PLAYER has not visited mortuary. PLAYER is not in town.
HINT PERSON: Let's head into town and have a look around.

PLAYER has not visited mortuary. PLAYER is not standing outside mortuary.
HINT PERSON: There's a mortuary on Gallows Corner. Let's have a looksee.

PLAYER has not visited mortuary. PLAYER is outside mortuary.
HINT PERSON: I don't like the look of this place at all. Let's go in!

PLAYER does not have bacon slicer. PLAYER is not in mortuary.
HINT PERSON: Hey Edwina! I'm sure I saw a bacon slicer in the mortuary.

PLAYER does not have bacon slicer. PLAYER is in mortuary.
HINT PERSON: Ooh look! A bacon slicer! We can use that to create an origami pig!

(N.B. The hints are organised into linear bundles of loops. At the final 'idiot' stage of a loop, I've chosen to lead the player not just to the current choke, but also to the next.)
It's a teeny bit painful to compose a full ms of hints, knowing that any one player might only require a small clawful of lines from that almighty document.

The other problem - and this was not unexpected - is wrestling parallel game-play into a linear hint system. I faced this in M3, but in M4 the player might have three or four tasks open at once, and our intelligent, self-aware hint must intuitively assuage the player's current concern, whilst shepherding her to the next point in a linear system.

And I think these are possibly the moments when we most question our judgement - those moments when we are entrenched in something that is difficult and untested.
In my head, it's a brilliant system and everyone loves it!
But we're fast approaching the time when nigh on a year's worth of ideas and decisions will crawl from my head and into the outside world with all its glorious reality.
Man, if it stayed in my head it would be the best game of all time - the best, very lonely game of all time.

Should end on a high. Let's pick a review...

Absolutely beautiful game. The story was so touching, and the music was gorgeous. I even loved the side story that opens up once you finish the main game. It takes a lot to impress me, or keep me wanting to play, and this one definitely grabbed me completely.
[Jamie Machia of New York.]

And finish up with an actroid. Utopia or dystopia? (Ah, let's face it: they're all gonna end up as sex toys.)

Make Over

Tattoo fail.

So, if you're up for playing our little game of 'find the essence', I'd advise you to scroll down to the previous post first, ensuring that you pay no heed to the illustration in this post. Then meet back here when you've had a thought or two.

One advantage I have over my art team is that I get the instant hit. Sal will call me over and I'll wheel across to her desk, my heart fluttering with anticipation, and I'll arrive at her side as a player: I get an instant response, and that response is paramount in making decisions. Similarly, I wheeled over to Ben recently and my immediate response was something like 'Wow: that's a powerful scene. I'm getting the storm clouds preparing for battle behind a mighty stone cathedral and a derelict bridge languishing in the shade of blossoming trees; I'm getting the river and the graveyard of steam boats. I get the sense of destruction and unholy power - and the sense of change, as the beauty and tranquility of the town is falling away to reveal something much more sinister.'
Nice.
However, I also found two elements which didn't work so well: the first distracted, the second was weak. Ben's composition was so overwhelming that he had created a regular vertical two-thirds of the way across the painting, and as a part of my instant hit, I found the sense that the piece was a kind of cut-and-shut of two distinct paintings. To remedy this, I recommended that Ben bled some of the golds across to the river and into the steam boats.
Secondly, his lamps were not achieving their potential. We had created an opportunity for orange street lamps (of a Victorian gas lamp style) set against the impending storm, and Ben had not quite made the most of the bright oranges - rather, he had stifled the glow beneath his adored repoussé metalwork. Two simple fixes upon a magnificent hit.

We all face this problem - the problem of become involved in the work and losing the perspective of a fresh-faced outsider. My solution is to take regular breaks, or to leave a work for a short time, and then to return with a slightly fresher perspective. But there's no substitute for having trusted eyes on your side.

So to Sal.
Which sounds like a great name for a character! So-to Sal. So Tosal. So To-Sal. Sot Osal. Soto Sal. Hmm. I like.
The narrative elements bombarded my bones like emotive X-rays, and lit up a panoply of responses...

I didn't really get enough of the sense of the Puritans' evil. Also, I wanted to feel more that Brites had been overpowered - that many burly men had swarmed about her and had actually relished the idea of harming her. To this end, we had already suggested this prepared intent by introducing the dual-functioning step ladder: on the one hand, it served as a functional means of crucifying her (and we acted this out to experience the problems of crucifixion); on the other hand, it demonstrated that the Puritans had come prepared, which is to say that this was part of a plan that had been brewing for a while.
As you'll know, I'm extremely fond of using devices that serve more than one function! Maximum impact from minimum work!
I knew we needed at least one more Puritan in there. I also wanted to up the evil ante. Imagine there's a crucifixion going on. You'd be horrified right? You'd probably be glued to the execution - at least momentarily.
I wanted this extra Puritan to have his back turned on the execution. Consider the effects of this. Perhaps this is his seventh crucifixion of the day and he's now bored of them. Pehaps he cares so little for the woman that he bears no interest. (Also, in body language terms, the act of turning one's back on another is the ultimate rejection and a powerful narrative tool!)
I then faced a new problem: What if the player invents an alternative, inappropriate reason for this action? Perhaps she will read the disinterest as revulsion? Perhaps she will invent a narrative (and this happens constantly and unfalteringly and we have to retain control throughout) whereby this extra character is so upset that he has turned away to vomit?
I read through the text again, looking for something with which I could regain control of the narrative, looking for some means of demonstrating evil.
We talked recently about motives and about humiliation. I found Brites' flowers and saw an opportunity to create an unnecessary action in this foreground Puritan: he tips her flowers from her basket. Also, by bringing him into the foreground, we were able to get something more from his expression, knocking a few of his teeth out and going for something of a leer.
To close the scene off a little more - to hone the sense of claustrophobia - I asked Sal to paint in some foliage across the top. We also looked at Brites' clothing and decided on a more authentic peasant dress with longer skirt and bodice; and then - and here's more duality - to return her bare legs to the scene, which were necessary for the crucifixion pose, we tore away a section of dress, which creates all manner of wonderful additional connotations. And lastly, I had Sal add a scabbard and sword to the torch bearer.
And all of these reactions, considerations, and resolutions occurred within me in under two minutes. And that's something that never ceases to amaze me about the writer's wily brain!

Sal is still learning about clarity - about simplicity and cleanliness. Consider all of my requests, and then decide how clearly these narrative features percolate from the illustration. (In particular, I had Sal use almost iconic flowers to keep the player from reading those small gangs of pixels as teeth or buns or anything other than flowers.) Do you get the torn skirt? Do you get the gappy grin and malevolence in the foreground Puritan? Is the sense of claustrophobia pervasive enough?

There we have another skill required by the art director: When do I let stuff through? How much of my bosses' real, actual money do I allocate to, say, a clearer flower? Or even a stronger narrative? Should I have let the previous illustration through? Or, for the sake of fifteen minutes work, are the effects worth the cost?

As a rule of thumb, anything within the first hour of gameplay needs to be as near perfect as we can achieve, as this constitutes the trial period, and is where the player decides whether to purchase the full game or not.
Also, anything that functions to drive forward the story and, hence, anticipation, context, and a powerful climax, needs to be as clear as an invisible crystal.
However, provided that the milestones are met, we face the miasmic question:
When is a heap not a heap?