Negative feedback

From now on, I'll also start using this blog to write short entries that will serve as reminder / brainstorm of areas to explore in Dungeon of Greed.

Negative feedback is bad. But what about anti-negative feedback (not sure this is what we call positive feedback, so I'll use another term)? What if, the more you lost, the stronger you became (instead of the opposite, that leads you to a perpetual death)?

This has the obvious benefit of making sure you will never get stuck anywhere - you could theoretically lose as many times as necessary to be sure you got past the blocking point.

The downside to this is that it can be gamed in an un-fun way: just die repeatedly until you're strong enough to breathe through the game.

A possibility could be to cap the increase of power, or to limit it in time. In Dungeon of Greed, I am considering having the player enter a berserk mode upon death. Alternatives could be to have materias that make you stronger the closer you are to death.
As long as it's something that can be used by the player to construct specific builds, and not gamed or exploited (especially if such an exploit is un-fun), I think that should be fine.

A theme and a name

The world was doomed, onslaught by demons coming from the deepest levels of Hell. The Heavens fell, and all seemed lost. But heroes, renegades and wanderers came out of their recluse, and finally restored peace on the world.
However, this was not the end. Lured by greed, and the promise of ever stronger powers, some of them continued to roam the world, slowly turning their glorious quest into a scavenger hunt, falling into madness.
All things come to an end. The most valiant join the Heavens, while the vile go to Hell. But for the Fallen, who succumbed to their greed, a last chance is offered. Will they be able to vanquish their thirst of power, or will they fall even more?

One of the things that contributed to The Five Orbs' failure was the lack of a theme. The game was purely a mechanic, and while interesting, it lacked background to guide the characters' appearance, their skills, or even the justification of why they wanted to fight at all.
I am very much on the mechanics side. I'm deeply convinced that this is what ultimately makes a good game. But while I don't think it is mandatory for a good game to have a strong theme, it clearly helps federate the design decisions. Apart from purely abstract games, all successful titles have a recognizable theme. Angry Birds would be different if it weren't about birds wanted to get revenge on green pigs.

So I went to look for a theme that would fit my hack'n'slash.

Something that always nagged me in games like Diablo was how long you spent simply farming for stuff. Doing the same routes (sometime even the same enemy - I'm looking at you, Diablo 2's Mephisto) again and again in the hope to find a better piece of equipment, that will in turn makes your farming easier. It's an endless cycle, just for the sake of getting the better gear.

At some point, there is a distinction between what you want to do, and what you like to do. This has been exacerbated in Zynga's games, which forced you to come every so often check on your account, lest you lost your crops or your small fish. In hack'n'slash, the push is slightly different (there are no mechanics integrated specifically to make you need to come back regularly), but the drive for having a better gear is sometimes enough to spend hundreds of hours seemingly doing nothing.

And here I had my theme. Dead heroes from the Diablo series that have been overcome by greed are given a chance to repent. Will you stop the game once you cleared the story ("saving" the soul of your character), or will you fall back into this pursuit for equipment?

This "Dungeon of Greed" is a test - will you pass?

Of course, this has to translate into some meaningful mechanics to be relevant. I used happiness points as an example in an earlier article. They could be used to describe how "addicted" your character is. The more you play to find loot, the less happy your character. And of course, some items and skills will be reserved for "happy" warriors.
But if you play less, you don't grow as powerful (both in terms of gold and loot), which is why many players will probably choose to forsake the redemption of their soul to go item hunting;

I am still at the beginning of the design, and trying to put together a very basic version of the game to iterate on. All these things related to the "greed" will come into play into quite some time, and will probably still evolve a lot.

Until then, I'll keep you posted!

Achievements in Ruzzle

Ruzzle is a mobile game that has had a ridiculous success since the beginning of the year. If you haven't played it, give it a try, it's really fun.

Alongside the "core" of the game (finding as many words as possible in two minutes, using the special letters to score more points), there is an Achievements system that grants you badges for performing various "feats".

Following an earlier post on the topic, and my more recent gripes with the system, I wanted to have a look at what these achievements actually accomplish in the game.

I like to classify them into categories:
- The ones that improve the game
- The ones that harm the game
- The ones that you will fatally stumble upon
- The fun ones

Improving the game

That's what I would actually expect from achievements. Open new horizons, new ways to play the game, hints at how you could play to get better, etc.

However, there is only one achievement in the whole list that fits into this category: the Globetrotter.
To get this achievement, you need to win a game in three different languages. It pushes you to play the game in a way you wouldn't have thought of (a language you may not be comfortable in) AND which opens a whole new horizon: getting more fluent in other languages, change your reflexes, and simply discover a new language.

Harming the game

These are for me objectives that should not be present in the game. You won't accomplish these objectives by playing the game in a normal way, and trying to accomplish them would at least annoy you, or ruin the experience of a match.

These are:

- The Fantastic Four, which rewards you for using only four-letter words in a game. While the concept could be fun, it actually forces you to play with a handicap, that is in no way beneficial to the global game experience. An alternative would have been to offer a variant to the game, where both players can only validate four-letter words.

- The Noob, which rewards you for seeing the tutorial a second time. Seriously, who actually wants to do this?

- On Fire, which you can get by winning 25 consecutive times. This is for me the worst of all, since it incites you play against weaker opponents until you have your winning streak. Fun is derived from challenge, so purposefully playing to win against weaker opponents actually makes the game less fun than it would otherwise be.

The obvious

These are the achievements you are bound to get if you play the game long enough, or if you're skilled enough, and are mostly without interest (except giving you something for continuing to play the game, which is not a good thing because it lowers intrinsic motivation). They are:

- Ultimate move (find the best word in the grid, which is, well, one of the goals of the game)
- Speedster (find words quickly)
- Da bomb (score a lot of points)
- Bookworm (find long words)

- Sky's the limit (find many words)

- Top notch (find a word that is worth a lot)

- Juggernaut (harass a weaker opponent, or simply keep playing with friends of your level - you'll beat one of them enough times at some point)

- Hooked (play many games)

- Checkmate (win many games)

- The Dictionary (find many different words)

- Sweet sixteen (use all tiles of the grid)

- The challenge and Friendly (challenge your friends)

Some of them are a bit more tricky, because they seem fun in a way, but takes something you should be proud of, or amazed at doing, and turns it into an achievement, which, again, is bad.

- Tie. When playing around an evenly-matched player, there is around one chance in 1000 or 2000 to get a tie. So when it's happens, it's actually amazing! But getting an achievement for this simply turns something exceptional into yet another checkbox to tick.

- Close call is awarded when you win by a short margin, turning the "pheew, that was close" into an "achievement unlocked" thing.

- The Underdog, which rewards you for losing the first two rounds, and then winning the whole match, which is very similar to the Close call.

The fun ones

And finally, some are simply fun. They make you smile, or show little hidden things you had not noticed in the game. I like these ones a lot :)

- Going the distance. It turns a "play a lot" achievement into "I swiped words for 5 kilometers already"! How amazing is this?

- Lemon. When I received this achievement, I realized some avatars (the default ones) where not actual faces, but lemons. This made me smile.

- Not now. How pissed are you when someone calls you during one of your best games? This achievements actually turns a frustrating thing into a reward. Nice!

So, if you ever design achievements into your game, please concentrate on the fun ones, and the ones that broaden the horizons of your players.

The Grind (2)

Let's refocus a bit. When people talk about grind, it's actually a shortcut for referring to the constant leveling loop, present in most MMO or Japanese RPGs, in action RPGs, in virtually anything where your progress is measured by numbers that increase little by little. You do repetitive actions to improve your character stats. To get better.

Wait. Performing repetitive actions to get better? That sounds an awful lot like training. I can spend hours hitting a ball against a wall by myself to improve my squash skills. Pianists perform endless boring exercises to strengthen their fingers or polish their technique. Speakers perform exercises in front of the mirror. Starcraft players have even created training maps just to work on the precision and dexterity required by the game.
However, none of this is ever referred to as grinding.

Why is that so? What is the difference between training and grinding?

When you grind, you don't learn anything. Your character improves, but you, as a person, do not evolve. The moment you're finally able to perform a music piece that seemed out of reach a year before is exhilarating. Nothing beats the feeling of improving, and seeing the results of your training.

However, both are a manifestation of the same thing: dedication. The will to get better, and the ability to pour efforts into that.
Casual sportsmen / musicians / <insert your passion> don't do this kind of boring exercises. They just want to enjoy their hobby. In the exact same way that someone who is not invested in the game will not enjoy the grinding time. For people who do undertake the grind, it becomes a measure of their progress, and each additional level or piece of item becomes a badge of honor (which is also why the "pay-to-win" games are shunned by those very hardcore players, since the grind can be eased with money).

And it teaches something valuable: patience, and dedication. In real life, not all tasks will be interesting, or as fulfilling as beating the final boss of your favorite game. People who have embraced the grind... Is it just me, or is this starting to sound like some kind of religion? Anyway... People who have embraced the grind instinctively try to optimize all the repetitive tasks they have at hand, or find a way to remove them entirely. When I have some boring stuff to do that I can't automate, I have got into the habit of decomposing it into smaller tasks, doing them in the proper order, and measuring my progress against those. I don't think about it anymore, and it helps keep the boredom out of it, thus finishing earlier.

I don't think that grinding should be part of every game. But players have "endured" it for a long time in many of the most popular games ever for a reason. It gives them the opportunity to be among the best, without being limited by their reflexes or real-world abilities. With enough dedication, they can climb to the top.

But maybe it does not need to be as "boring" as it is today. Maybe we can work to make it appear as a reward rather than an imposed step before the interesting part. It won't be easy, but at least it's worth a try :)

The Grind

According to Wikipedia, grinding is "the process of engaging in repetitive tasks during video games". It is often seen as being tedious, uninteresting, or boring, something you have to do to get access to the next piece of interesting content. 

The thing is, some people actually like the grinding part. I don't mind spending hours leveling up my Diablo 3 wizard while watching series; it actually helps me relax, and lets my mind wander (which results in crazy projects like building a hack'n'slash game for smartphones). I enjoyed the Civilization endgames, which are arguably nothing more than rolling over all your opponents without much thinking. And I found myself powerful when I repeated my perfect sequence of attacks during 20 minutes when destroying Final Fantasy VII's powerful Emerald Weapon.

To me, all of the above are grinding activities. They are repetitive and they don't involve much thought or skill to execute, and can be boring (what's the point in continuing a game you're sure to win?). But there is a clear difference of perception between the "level grinding" of Diablo or <insert your favorite MMORPG> and the other two. Why is this?

 

  First, the reason of why you grind, and what you expect to achieve by this, are completely different.
In Diablo or World of Warcraft, you grind to get to the last stage of the game, to access what is usually called the end-game content. Grinding is thus seen as a mandatory gate before being able to enjoy the real game.
In Civ or FFVII, the grind is the culmination of all your past efforts. It's the reward. You planned and executed and beautiful strategy which left you with half of the map under your control. Enjoy the moment while you grind your final opponents to dust! Or you found a clever combination of materias, or poured efforts into grinding your party to the maximum level, which made the execution of one of the toughest bosses in the game a breeze. 

But in the latter case, the grind is seen as a reward for the efforts you poured into the game. If you were cruising through the game from the very beginning, the endgame would not feel special at all, and would actually be boring. The grind needs to feel like it's something you earned, rather than something you have to go through. 


And this difference is all the more accentuated by the duration of the grind. Leveling in Diablo can take several hundreds of hours. A Civ endgame is a couple of hours at most. Past a certain point, it goes from reward to burden, especially if you need to go through it to unlock additional content. 

This article is actually starting to get much longer than I expected, so I'll stop there for the time being. Stay tuned for the second part!

Making failure fun

There are countless posts about making failure fun, and why it is important. Failure is part of the challenge - if you never fail, there is no challenge, and excitement comes with overcoming challenges.

But the main issue with failing is when you feel like you're not progressing. Failing is part of learning. I died more than 200 times to get the last star in Mario Galaxy 2, but that was ok. I felt like I was getting better, I could clear some passages without thinking after a while. And when I finally got it, I felt like I was a champion.
In other styles of games, your character progression is the main indicator of how strong you are. In modern RPGs, being beaten by an enemy doesn't necessarily mean you lose all the experience you have earned until then, or the items you have looted. When you die in Diablo 3, you lose time (and a bit of gold). You have no experience or item penalty.
However, it isn't exactly fun to fail in all these cases. What's fun is the feeling of progress, not the failure itself. The usual reaction in these cases is frustration at having to start yet another time. Easier said than done however.

What I'm considering doing randomly triggering a kind of "berserker mode" upon death. Instead of immediately dying, the player has a chance to become invulnerable, with increased powers, for a short period of time, before ultimately dying. It could then even become a kind of skill to be improved - it needs to be carefully balanced though, because strategies that revolve around dying could not only be counter to the general playing goals (defeating monsters without being defeated), but also frustrating for the player; even if it's fun, no one prefers dying repeatedly over simply bashing the monsters away.
The "random" aspect is important too. It gives the berserker mode a special feel to it. Or maybe it could be triggered every time, and randomly have special powers. It is still all only ideas, upon which I will iterate.

What do you think? Are you aware of other games that made failure fun? How do they do it?

Starting a new game!

The Five Orbs is finally out, and even though it has not found its player base, I am quite satisfied with what the game has become.
There are still lots of things I could add to the game (mainly multiplayer matches and guilds), but I don't really feel like putting more effort on a game without players. So on with something new!

The main issue I had with The Five Orbs was the playtesting part. It is a multiplayer-only game, and as such very difficult to test on my own. This also was an issue for the first players. They log in, and find no one to play with - and so they can't enjoy the game.
So my next game will be a single player experience (possibly - and probably - adding multiplayer afterwards).

So, where do I start.
The main thing I want to do is to allow players to have a "different" game from each other. Today, the game I have, and the experience I can get, is the same than what I would have if I played with my friend's game. Of course, the experience itself varies a lot depending on how you decide to play the game or your personal sensitivities, but it all really depends on internal factors.
Some games use procedurally generated content to make the experience new every time you play. This is great, and allows for a lot of replayability. However, we are still in the same case - everyone has the same game, and even though the experience changes with each game, there is no common ground specific to the player.

What I would like to do is to use procedural generation, biased with some criteria specific to each player. The first thing that came to me was to use environment variables, like the player's location (am I near the sea? Then generate more water enemies!), the current weather (a sunny day could mean I get extra happiness points on all the actions I do), and possibly even some very specific conditions (if I am moving at high speed when starting the game). I could also even ask the player for some of their personal preferences when they create their character, and the generated game world would reflect this.

Now, what kind of game to make? The Five Orbs was something totally new, which posed some issues in trying to convey what kind of game this was. So this time, I'll start with something more standard.
Moreover, I want to develop something to play on phones and tablets, both because it is something I have never done, and because it lends itself well to the "use environment data" thing.
And finally, I'm in the middle of my Diablo III playing phase (I love hack'n'slash and RPGs); there is basically nothing coming close to a Diablo experience on phones; the gameplay is standard and easy to grasp, with a lot of room for innovation; and it is a perfect occasion for me to try and incorporate FFVII's Materia system, which I simply find awesome :)

So this is it. I have started prototyping something with Unity3D (a tool I have just discovered and that I find totally fantastic), and have quite a few ideas to add some distinctive features to a well-established genre. So I'll probably post something here soon again.