Myrix recently made an apt post, the thesis of which was “put the game first, and don’t let the ‘MMO’ get in the way.” He asserts that just making an MMO isn’t special anymore, and he’s right. While the genre has an inherent appeal, in today’s crowded market you need to concentrate on delivering a fun experience over just satisfying the particulars of a formula.

To put it another way: Don’t fall into the trap of designing a game by checklist. That is, you could come up with an entire list of criteria you believe to be required to satisfy your audience (persistence, loot, mounts, quests, combat, instances, etc. etc.) and check off every item, only to be left with a game that isn’t any fun. Players will forgive the absence of specific features; they won’t forgive broken features crammed together to make the back of the box look good if the result is an absence of fun.

It was a startling revelation from a Tabula Rasa developer that the game went into beta with the knowledge that it wasn’t fun yet. A game shouldn’t even go into production unless it’s fun, let alone make it into beta. Production is about having a solid core and being able to replicate it. If that core game isn’t fun, you’re just going to mass produce a bunch of un-fun content. Not a smart move, as history has proven.

The biggest mistake an MMO developer could make in today’s climate is to say “I must duplicate every one of WoW’s features in my game in order to be successful.” Blizzard is too far ahead of you to make that a realistic development goal; you’d inevitably end up cutting corners and falling short of the necessary polish and fun. Instead, decide early on what core elements make your game fun and focus your love and attention on those things. Use your core values as a razor to cut away excess and never lose your focus on the fun.

People occasionally wonder what kind of stuff I’m working on. This about sums it up:

“The aim is to create a cathartic immersive interactive world with a meta, or arch, narrative facilitated through designed dramatic play.”

What the hell does that mean? It comes from an article titled “Dramatic Play” by Stephen Dinehart, in which the author was kind enough to refer to several companies interested in expanding the definition of narrative gameplay, including the studio where I work. While it’s no secret that I’m not a fan of the academic study of game design, I found this a very interesting article. Because at the risk of sounding self-serving, I think the industry is on the brink of finally finding ways for games to truly become a medium for delivering a rich story experience.

Certain entrenched paradigms and assumptions need to be broken or discarded, because early generations of MMOGs proved that they don’t translate well to a fun gaming experience (example: HUGE BLOCKS OF TEXT DON’T WORK). But if we make this leap, games can grow as a legitimate art form and more consistently deliver the same emotional journey as movies, books, or plays–but in their own unique way.

There… I said it. I want to make Art. With a capital A. Yes, I am that pretentious.

However, I will take the quote above and rephrase it a little more plainly:

The goal is to immerse players in a great story which they don’t just read, watch, or see acted out, but that they actually play through and impact in a meaningful way.

That’s really all there is to it.

Turns out she was right!

I was recently interviewed for an article on IP creation by Cody at Ten Ton Hammer. Along with several other developers, I discuss the fun and challenges of building an IP from the ground up as opposed to licensing an existing property.

This was one of the better interviews I’ve done, in part because I could talk freely about this subject without detailing anything about the game I’m working on. Though it’s not as clear when one game is the sole face of an intellectual property, IP development is distinct from game development. The goal is to build something that can live across a number of mediums and feel like it was crafted solely for whatever incarnation you’re experiencing.

When it works, you don’t notice it. When it doesn’t, you’re left with a movie that doesn’t feel like the game, a game that doesn’t feel like the movie, a movie that doesn’t feel like the book, and so on. Examples of the latter are much more common than examples of the former.

Not that the onus for pimping your product ever went away, but it is both terrifying and oddly comforting that the industry is back in “OMG we must suspend actual development to make our bitchin’ E3 demo!” mode.

I can say that now from the safety of Maynard, but the dark shadow over my heart tells me that I am destined to one day be a part of it again.

And then there will be screaming. Lots of screaming.

I recently bought the first season of Star Trek (The Original Series, of course) on Blu-Ray. It’s very cool, because you can switch between watching the episodes with the original special effects or the nicely redone versions they syndicated a couple years back. Unlike most revisions to classic shows, the updated effects took nothing away from the episodes and were handled very tastefully.

I don’t buy a lot of series on DVD, but the original Trek is definitely worth the purchase. This spiffy set makes me wish another of my favorite science fiction shows would receive the same treatment: Babylon 5.

B5 is perhaps the best written show of its kind, groundbreaking in that it was plotted out as a complete story intended to run five seasons. Its themes and characters hold up exceptionally well, but its special effects look horribly dated. If it’s hard for me, a die-hard fan, to stomach the ancient Amiga-era CGI, it would no doubt be tough for a modern audience used to the glorious effects of Battlestar Galactica to get past them.

Releasing a remastered Blu-Ray and DVD of Babylon 5 with new CGI would allow the show to stand the test of time and catch on with a new audience. Is it likely to happen? Who knows. Though the show always struggled in the ratings, it has sold extremely well on DVD and prompted Warner Brothers to fund further TV movies and DVD projects (including a couple attempts at follow-up shows). In fact, Warners keeps flirting with the idea of a theatrical film, though it’s still uncertain as to whether it will happen. If B5 does make it to the big screen, reviving the franchise with a remastered DVD set would be a natural promotion for a movie.

So while I won’t hold my breath for B5 being revamped, I can look forward to seasons 2 and 3 (yes, even 3) of Trek to grace my LCD screen. And that’s not a bad thing at all.

It’s a big day at 38 Studios! This announcement is really cool news, and though I can’t talk about any details just yet, the press release hints at what this means for our IP going forward.

While I’m spamming company news anyway, note that we’re currently hiring a number of positions.

Some guy named Salvatore did an interview with Ten Ton Hammer, and he even mentions me by name! Therefore I had no choice but to link it here.

Seriously, working with Bob is one of the best things about being at 38 Studios. Someone with his career could have come in and said “You schmucks will do it my way.” Instead, he’s been collaborative from day one, just as eager to hear what we have to say as we are to listen to him. And I think when people see our unique take on storytelling, they’ll understand why we had a heavy-hitter like Bob on board.

But that’s a tale for another time.

I get emotional over Star Trek.

When I was a kid, our fuzzy old TV could catch about six stations: the three networks, PBS, a local independent, and maybe a UHF channel or two. Although the local station ran blocks of monster/horror movies on the weekends, there wasn’t much else on the airwaves for a skinny nerd to call his own.

The glorious exception was reruns of Trek–The Original Series, which at the time was The Only Series. I devoured those episodes, watching them again and again. I cried every time Captain Kirk had to let Edith die in order to save the timeline, and cheered every time he beat the Gorn. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and all the rest were a lifeline to me. No other fictional world before or since has had such a profound impact on my life, shaping my imagination and giving me an ideal to strive for.

When I was older I embraced the movies, TNG, DS9, and to a lesser extent the other shows. Though there was plenty of mediocre moments in those hundreds of hours of Trek, there were also some profoundly moving experiences. No matter how many times I’ve seen The Wrath of Khan, those scenes between Kirk and Spock leave me a blubbering mess. Shatner’s acting takes plenty of well-deserved knocks, but when he chokes on his words as he eulogizes Spock, I think it’s one of the most touching moments on film.

So when I heard plans to relaunch the franchise with a new cast taking on the classic roles of the original Trek, I was more than skeptical.

Happily, my fears were put to rest in the first five minutes of the film. It’s wonderful; go see it. It’s not just a great Trek film (possibly… possibly… the best of them all), it’s a great movie. I loved it.

If you need to hear more, there are some minor spoilers after the break. Continue Reading »

Cuppy raises what she assumes will be controversial questions about game design bloggers: Do they know what they’re talking about? Are they even good designers?

Where’s the controversy? The answer to both questions is “Play it safe and assume not.”

Which makes you wonder whether I know what I’m talking about or if I’m a good designer. And the answer to this question is that you have no way of knowing. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

To Cuppy’s first point, I think the proof that game designer blogs lack relevance is that 100% of them could vanish from the Internet today and the actual practice of game design would not change one bit. Not one iota!

In case you don’t believe me and would rather hear from someone more famous who makes games and blogs, Raph responded with the following observations:

1. There didn’t use to be so many professional designers blogging. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon.
2. Even today, most designers DON’T think in terms of design theory, psychology, emotions, etc. It’s even more recent than blogging.
3. There are a lot of designers who make good games of a given sort, but can’t make great ones.
4. There are a lot of designers who make good games of a given sort, but it’s the only sort they can make.
5. There are a lot of designers who can talk about theory but can’t develop new theory.
6. There are a lot of designers who talk about theory but can’t apply it.
7. There are a lot of great designers who don’t know how to express what they do.
8. There are a lot of good academics and yes, other designers, who can express what great designers do in language that others can understand.
9. There are a lot of really terrible game design blogs. But there are also lots of really good ones. A lot of the good ones are not by “professional game designers.”
10. Often, because of points 3-8, it can be very hard to tell a good game design blog from a bad one.
11. Experience is often worth listening to, even when it’s wrong.

By the way, I can’t think of very many truly “famous” game designers in game design circles who DO blog.

All of those points have truth to them, but that last line is perhaps the most telling. There is something to be said for the old chestnut that if you are good at what you do, you don’t need to tell people that you’re good at what you do. That is to say, good designers just shut up and let their work do the talking.

So let’s get back to Cuppy’s second question and my response to it. For the most part, you have no way of judging whether or not I know what the hell I’m talking about for a couple reasons. One is that talking about theory is one thing, but implementation is quite another. That’s why incredibly smart and articulate people can fail at actually having to make games, and why some people are more famous for what they say than for actually producing quality work. It’s also a reason why many players can write blogs that are every bit as thoughtful and compelling as people in the industry–because blogging doesn’t have the accountability of meeting deadlines and budgets.

Another reason is that, despite the many articles I’ve written and all the interviews I’ve given, you probably don’t actually know what I do for a living. Nor are you likely to know what specific content or systems any game designer who blogs has actually created. You know what projects we have been attached to and can read the credits to see what titles we were given, but those things tell you almost nothing about what we actually did and whether or not it sucked.

This doesn’t just make it hard to know which blogs to trust, but also to tell whether someone’s resume is worth the paper it’s printed on. There are an awful lot of terrible designers out there with game credits on their resumes who hurt the projects they worked on far more than they helped them. And these kinds of folks are sometimes willing to take credit for good work that they didn’t even do in order to land a job.

So unless you can point to exactly which zones a designer mapped, which quests he implemented, which dungeon he populated, which dialogue he wrote, which raid he itemized, or other specific details, you’re pretty much guessing if he’s just a good salesman or if he actually knows what he’s doing.

Despite all this, I do believe there is value (even sheer entertainment) in reading blogs of people making games. Just don’t take their theories for granted–pay attention to what happens when they actually have to deliver the goods.

Except for this blog, of course, which you can trust implicitly. But you knew that already!