Recently in Design Category
So a while back I said I wanted to have a discussion of what I thought about the concepts of background, metaplot, and narrative as it pertains to game writing, and why I think that CCP dropped the ball a bit when it comes to establishing those three things, and so here it is. While I realize that this may seem a little pretentious -- let's face it, I am not exactly a "real" game writer (yet) and there's many other people out there far more qualified to articulate this kind of thing -- I'd like to think that I have a pretty good grasp of the concepts and that, at least to me, these aren't just the purview of published authors, but really everyone who's ever run an RPG.
Continue reading Background, Metaplot, and Narrative.
A while back, I was having a conversation with someone about what books I would recommend for someone who was trying to break into game writing but hadn't had much experience with game design, just the writing part (not that I've really been more successful, to be quite fair). Since I've been doing a lot of reading on the topic since I applied for a job at Obsidian Entertainment about 4 years ago. Even though I was rejected (and quite frankly, considering how little I really knew about game design and how amateurish the example material I sent them was, I can't blame them), I got what was perhaps the best rejection letter I've ever seen. Instead of the usual "thank you for your interest, but at this time, blah blah blah" stuff you usually get, I got about a two page letter back giving me a pretty detailed analysis of my application and example work and giving me suggestions for what to do to improve my chances of breaking into the industry, even suggesting a I try for a junior position at a couple other places. That's a class act, and I really wish more places took the time to do that.
Anyway, one of the suggestions they made was to read more about game design and game writing, which is considerably different from writing a novel or short story; in fact, one of the common problems with game writers is "frustrated novelist syndrome." I definitely have become a better writer since I started reading up on this stuff, especially when I think about my writing as it pertains to games, even in pen and paper stuff. I would encourage other people with a similar interest to read up on game writing as well.
So, here's a list of a few books I've read over the last few years:
Anyway, one of the suggestions they made was to read more about game design and game writing, which is considerably different from writing a novel or short story; in fact, one of the common problems with game writers is "frustrated novelist syndrome." I definitely have become a better writer since I started reading up on this stuff, especially when I think about my writing as it pertains to games, even in pen and paper stuff. I would encourage other people with a similar interest to read up on game writing as well.
So, here's a list of a few books I've read over the last few years:
- Creating Emotion in Games, by David Freeman. This book does a good job of describing how to create characters that people will find compelling and really empathize with, and how you can use that to build a strong story around those characters. The book's introduction also has a good breakdown that highlights the unique challenges of game writing (or, as Freeman suggests as a better term, "emotioneering") compared to screenwriting or other more linear narratives. Definitely a good book for beginning writers to pick up, or for people who are trying to transition into game writing from a more traditional writing perspective.
- Game Architecture and Design, by Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris. Especially if you've never worked in the industry, this book is a good primer for how books go from concept stage, through development, and finally to a finished product, with a heavy emphasis how to create compelling, interesting gameplay as well as keep your work manageable. This book is less about writing and more about the overall process of game design, which it is important to understand if you want to do any sort of work in the gaming industry.
- Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design, by Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams. Another book like the previous one, this one focuses on the basic concepts behind game design in practice and theory, as well as an overview of the game design challenges in a variety of genres. If you're looking for a quick primer on how game design works at a higher level than the previous book, this may be the one for you.
- Developing Online Games, by Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Patrovsky. This one is more focused on creating online games, especially MMOs. Though perhaps a bit out of date, since it was published in 2003, it still has important lessons to teach about all sorts of design and management issues for MMOs and other online games. The book discusses everything from the planning and budgeting for an MMO, to the design, to preparing for launch, and finally, to managing the game after it's been released. It also includes a post-mortem of Anarchy Online, which Mulligan worked on, and some additional articles on topics such as player psychology, managing disruptive behavior, increasing player retention, and Dr. Richard Bartle's rather famous "Players Who Suit MUDs" article, which is a must read for anyone developing games with a social component.
Last Thursday saw what appears to be the opening blow of Eve Online's upcoming "factional warfare," the focus of the new Empyrean Age expansion due for release this summer. During a peace conference between the Federation's economics minister and Ishukone CEO Otro Gariushi, Admiral Alexander Noir, a leader of the Gallente delegation who had just recently won the Adonis (Eve's equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize), rammed his Nyx-class supercarrier into the space station, killing hundreds of thousands, including Gariushi and the economics minister.
In case you haven't been following Eve's ongoing plot (and I suspect that's most of you), CCP has been turning up the tensions between the various in-game nations for a few months, with things reaching a rather frantic pace lately. Factional warfare, which has been promised for at least a year or more now, and the Empyrean Age expansion has been the focus of a multi-layered explosion of content; not only are there going to be some rather radical new game mechanics, but a tie-in novel describing the events of the war beginning is coming out this summer and there's evidence that the plotline will result in some rather sweeping changes to the in-game world as well (such as the replacement of the station model in Malkalen with a badly damaged one following the events of Thursday). Thursday's event coincided with a rather snazzily done trailer in the form of a news report from the scene of the disaster, and from the looks of testing and the latest dev blogs, we're probably seeing factional warfare roll out in the next month or two at most.
The good part about this is that CCP is trying to do something that, as far as I know, has never been done before. No other MMO has done something with as close a tie between in-game content, a metaplot, and out-of-game tie-in materials. CCP is making a bold step and that's to be applauded, and it's probably something that Eve is uniquely capable of doing with a single-shard universe. However, I (and others) have had some concerns with the way it's being rolled out.
My chief quibble, I think, is the fact that things are moving far too fast, and that that problem wasn't taken into account when this was sketched out who-knows-how-long-ago (I've heard the Empyrean Age novel has been in the writing stages for at least a year or two now, and I know the author read part of it at FanFest last year). The latest Caldari plotline started only two weeks ago, and has gone from "sporadic Caldari labor riots" to "corporation upended by hostile takeover" to "nationwide race riots" to "worldshaking cataclysm" in the space of two weeks. If there was that much preplanning put in place for this, you'd think the timing thing might have come up....but evidently not. What this has resulted in is a feeling that things seem too forced and people can barely keep up with the news, let alone really get into discussing it and dealing with it before the next crisis hits.
That's only compounded by the fact that some of the events have strained credulity; Tibus Heth goes from assembly line worker to corporate CEO in two days? Why him? Alexander Noir goes from hardline advocate for peace to ramming a mothership into a Caldari space station? I'm of the opinion that less is more when you're writing plots, especially since I think in game design, a chief concern should be verisimilitude. If a game world is largely supposed to act on the same rules as reality, like Eve (which at least is supposed to be grim and gritty), then over-the-top events seem out of place -- it's like trying to shove Rambo (and not First Blood Rambo) into Platoon. I'm also not very happy that at least at first it seemed very much like there were going to be definite "good guys" and "bad guys" in the war; I'm less worried about that now, but I'm still bothered because it really seems like Tibus Heth is being set up as a Hitleresque cardboard villian. Only time will tell, but race-baiting demagogues are pretty....meh.
If I had been in charge, I would have had the war be a culmination of six months or a year of slowly building tensions, and I would have made the origins of the war be much more nebulous, happening in spite of the best efforts of the national leaders, rather than because of it. I think I would also have tried to involve a bit more internal wrangling; I think we're likely to see some of that with the Caldari and possibly the Minmatar, but it doesn't look like we're seeing much of that with the Gallente or the Amarr (which is surprising, considering the competitive nature of their government institutions). I would try to make the war a tragedy, ambiguous and disturbing to everyone involved with its horror, a World War I-style scenario. CCP could still surprise me with something like that, but I haven't seen that yet, and the description for the novel seems to focus heavily on people with mysterious pasts and other "linchpin" NPCs, something that I think forgets the biggest strength of Eve, its player community. The lead up to factional warfare has, so far, been largely railroaded, and players have had little to no input (made even worse by the rapid pace of events). This is disappointing, when we've seen players do very cool things with CCP events before, like with the Defiants and Brothers of Freedom. If I were working for CCP, I would advise against scripting things so tightly in the future (like they have painted themselves into a corner with by having a novel written and waiting) so that the players feel more empowered and therefore have much more reason to really feel involved with the story.
With all my complaints though, I have to give credit where credit is due. After things began happening on Thursday, the traffic on the Intergalactic Summit message board and in the Malkalen system in the game shot up, and even players who have scoffed at roleplaying events in the past took notice. That's a pretty big step, and it is exactly what CCP intended when they started this whole process, I'm sure. While maybe everything is not to my taste (and I admit I have much higher standards than most), it's hard to argue with success, and I have to admit flying to Malkalen and swinging by the ruined station is a pretty powerful image. I know a lot of people have given CCP's staff a bit of stick on this (me among them), but in this case I think aiming for the fence and maybe falling short worked out better than bunting and trying to leg out a single. I do hope, however, that they will take some of the comments they've had during this process and apply it to the next big event they want to set up, because if they make the same mistakes (well, I think they are mistakes anyway) again, I will be pretty disappointed.
In case you haven't been following Eve's ongoing plot (and I suspect that's most of you), CCP has been turning up the tensions between the various in-game nations for a few months, with things reaching a rather frantic pace lately. Factional warfare, which has been promised for at least a year or more now, and the Empyrean Age expansion has been the focus of a multi-layered explosion of content; not only are there going to be some rather radical new game mechanics, but a tie-in novel describing the events of the war beginning is coming out this summer and there's evidence that the plotline will result in some rather sweeping changes to the in-game world as well (such as the replacement of the station model in Malkalen with a badly damaged one following the events of Thursday). Thursday's event coincided with a rather snazzily done trailer in the form of a news report from the scene of the disaster, and from the looks of testing and the latest dev blogs, we're probably seeing factional warfare roll out in the next month or two at most.
The good part about this is that CCP is trying to do something that, as far as I know, has never been done before. No other MMO has done something with as close a tie between in-game content, a metaplot, and out-of-game tie-in materials. CCP is making a bold step and that's to be applauded, and it's probably something that Eve is uniquely capable of doing with a single-shard universe. However, I (and others) have had some concerns with the way it's being rolled out.
My chief quibble, I think, is the fact that things are moving far too fast, and that that problem wasn't taken into account when this was sketched out who-knows-how-long-ago (I've heard the Empyrean Age novel has been in the writing stages for at least a year or two now, and I know the author read part of it at FanFest last year). The latest Caldari plotline started only two weeks ago, and has gone from "sporadic Caldari labor riots" to "corporation upended by hostile takeover" to "nationwide race riots" to "worldshaking cataclysm" in the space of two weeks. If there was that much preplanning put in place for this, you'd think the timing thing might have come up....but evidently not. What this has resulted in is a feeling that things seem too forced and people can barely keep up with the news, let alone really get into discussing it and dealing with it before the next crisis hits.
That's only compounded by the fact that some of the events have strained credulity; Tibus Heth goes from assembly line worker to corporate CEO in two days? Why him? Alexander Noir goes from hardline advocate for peace to ramming a mothership into a Caldari space station? I'm of the opinion that less is more when you're writing plots, especially since I think in game design, a chief concern should be verisimilitude. If a game world is largely supposed to act on the same rules as reality, like Eve (which at least is supposed to be grim and gritty), then over-the-top events seem out of place -- it's like trying to shove Rambo (and not First Blood Rambo) into Platoon. I'm also not very happy that at least at first it seemed very much like there were going to be definite "good guys" and "bad guys" in the war; I'm less worried about that now, but I'm still bothered because it really seems like Tibus Heth is being set up as a Hitleresque cardboard villian. Only time will tell, but race-baiting demagogues are pretty....meh.
If I had been in charge, I would have had the war be a culmination of six months or a year of slowly building tensions, and I would have made the origins of the war be much more nebulous, happening in spite of the best efforts of the national leaders, rather than because of it. I think I would also have tried to involve a bit more internal wrangling; I think we're likely to see some of that with the Caldari and possibly the Minmatar, but it doesn't look like we're seeing much of that with the Gallente or the Amarr (which is surprising, considering the competitive nature of their government institutions). I would try to make the war a tragedy, ambiguous and disturbing to everyone involved with its horror, a World War I-style scenario. CCP could still surprise me with something like that, but I haven't seen that yet, and the description for the novel seems to focus heavily on people with mysterious pasts and other "linchpin" NPCs, something that I think forgets the biggest strength of Eve, its player community. The lead up to factional warfare has, so far, been largely railroaded, and players have had little to no input (made even worse by the rapid pace of events). This is disappointing, when we've seen players do very cool things with CCP events before, like with the Defiants and Brothers of Freedom. If I were working for CCP, I would advise against scripting things so tightly in the future (like they have painted themselves into a corner with by having a novel written and waiting) so that the players feel more empowered and therefore have much more reason to really feel involved with the story.
With all my complaints though, I have to give credit where credit is due. After things began happening on Thursday, the traffic on the Intergalactic Summit message board and in the Malkalen system in the game shot up, and even players who have scoffed at roleplaying events in the past took notice. That's a pretty big step, and it is exactly what CCP intended when they started this whole process, I'm sure. While maybe everything is not to my taste (and I admit I have much higher standards than most), it's hard to argue with success, and I have to admit flying to Malkalen and swinging by the ruined station is a pretty powerful image. I know a lot of people have given CCP's staff a bit of stick on this (me among them), but in this case I think aiming for the fence and maybe falling short worked out better than bunting and trying to leg out a single. I do hope, however, that they will take some of the comments they've had during this process and apply it to the next big event they want to set up, because if they make the same mistakes (well, I think they are mistakes anyway) again, I will be pretty disappointed.
It's been twenty years since Infocom ruled the gaming industry and what's now become known as interactive fiction was the pinnacle of the computer gaming field. I have many fond memories of playing Zork and the other Infocom titles, as well as the MUDs that were their multiplayer offspring. My first step onto the internet as a whole was actually when I dialed in to the university's modem pool (back when they were wide open and everyone trusted everyone else) and played the old IlliniMUD at speedy.cs. That, of course, led to MUDding for me as a more general hobby; I was an Armageddon and Harshlands junkie in college, among others. Some of my fondest roleplaying experiences (and most embarrassing ones too, in retrospect) were on those MUDs.
Now, it's been years since I've played a MUD really, and I admit most of my games that I buy and play now have flashy graphics, and I look down my nose at games with poor ones. Part of me though, still misses the simplicity of those text based games, and it's mostly due to the way a text interface combines the best of simplicity and depth. As a writer (at least an amateur one), a text interface gave me so much more power to create a vivid description than I can with any sort of graphical interface, and with unbelievable speed and flexibility. What brought this to my mind tonight is that I'm trying out Second Life after being prodded by benoc for a few weeks now, and it is far more complicated to create an avatar that matches what I see in my mind's eye than it would be for me to write a description of what I want her to look like.
Now I'm still learning the interface, the terminology (is a skin just the textures on the model, or does it include the body shape?), and how to get around and what's there, but I have a hard time believe that even a talented artist can whip out a good avatar in the same time it would take me to write a good, detailed description of what I want. Now add on top the difficulty with actions....
Just for example, imagine you wanted to translate the following exchange from a MUD like Armageddon to the same thing happening in something like Second Life or Neverwinter Nights:
For that reason, as much as I'd really like to, I don't think it's going to be possible to translate the tabletop gaming experience (or even the MUDding experience) to the computer anytime soon. It's also my big frustration with Second Life at the moment (all three hours of it I've messed with). When text was king, I felt pretty happy with the way I presented myself and it was infinitely customizable. When graphics are king, I'm just another peasant thanks to my complete lack of artistic ability.
Now, it's been years since I've played a MUD really, and I admit most of my games that I buy and play now have flashy graphics, and I look down my nose at games with poor ones. Part of me though, still misses the simplicity of those text based games, and it's mostly due to the way a text interface combines the best of simplicity and depth. As a writer (at least an amateur one), a text interface gave me so much more power to create a vivid description than I can with any sort of graphical interface, and with unbelievable speed and flexibility. What brought this to my mind tonight is that I'm trying out Second Life after being prodded by benoc for a few weeks now, and it is far more complicated to create an avatar that matches what I see in my mind's eye than it would be for me to write a description of what I want her to look like.
Now I'm still learning the interface, the terminology (is a skin just the textures on the model, or does it include the body shape?), and how to get around and what's there, but I have a hard time believe that even a talented artist can whip out a good avatar in the same time it would take me to write a good, detailed description of what I want. Now add on top the difficulty with actions....
Just for example, imagine you wanted to translate the following exchange from a MUD like Armageddon to the same thing happening in something like Second Life or Neverwinter Nights:
The dusky, grey-eyed man brushes cobwebs away from the doorway, peering inside with his torch.Now, that's not exactly the world's most complicated interaction ever, and none of those emotes required a particularly huge amount of effort on my part to write. But in order to do something like that in Second Life, aside from the effort involved in creating the avatars and the environments, you'd have to custom scripts for the brushing the cobwebs out of the way or peering inside with his torch, and a custom animation for the other man to walk "confidently" (not exactly an objective description that's easy to translate either), and a custom script for the woman to rub her locket. I'm pretty sure all that would take longer than the 5 minutes it took me to come up with that scene and write it out. I'm not even sure you could do something like that with an even less flexible environment like Neverwinter Nights. Furthermore, when you make those custom scripts, you can't be sure how someone is going to take it, whereas when another person reads that description instead, their mind shows them exactly what you want to convey.
The dusky, grey-eyed man says:
"It doesn't look like anyone's been here in years."
The alabaster-skinned, auburn-haired woman frowns slightly, nervously rubbing the gold locket around her neck with one hand.
The athletic, raven-haired man says:
"Then our prize may still be here. Come!"
The athletic, raven-haired man pushes his way past the dusky, grey-eyed man and strides confidently through the doorway, his torch held out in front of him.
For that reason, as much as I'd really like to, I don't think it's going to be possible to translate the tabletop gaming experience (or even the MUDding experience) to the computer anytime soon. It's also my big frustration with Second Life at the moment (all three hours of it I've messed with). When text was king, I felt pretty happy with the way I presented myself and it was infinitely customizable. When graphics are king, I'm just another peasant thanks to my complete lack of artistic ability.
So today was the first day of work for my former coworker benoc at Linden Labs, the makers of the complete waste of time known as Second Life, and he mentioned that of the many perks he gets there is some sort of crazy god mode powers on the production servers. This highlighted a concern I've had since the t20 incident in Eve last year. Why is it that game developers, sysadmins, database admins, etc. seem to have "superuser" privileges on MMO production servers? Shouldn't these sorts of things be compartmentalized?
At work, we have a security policy that basically dictates that people need to have as restricted of privileges as possible. We don't put development tools on production machines, we separate the duties of service developer and service manager, and we don't let developers have access to production boxes, among other things. While this is unfortunately not as common in the IT industry as maybe it should be, I think it is generally accepted that this is the best practice. And yet it seems like incidents like the t20 affair could have been avoided if similar measures had been implemented and safeguards acted upon.
Second Life and Eve are two very different games (if Second Life can even be called a game), and I don't think a developer giving a certain item in Second Life would do as much to tilt things in someone's favor as t20's misconduct in Eve did. On the other hand, the linden-to-dollar direct conversion makes the stakes for some sort of misconduct quite a bit higher as well. Now, I'm sure Linden Labs has an extensive system of auditing (and unlike Eve, it sounds like they have outside auditors keeping an eye on things), but an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure.
Surprisingly, in all the game development books I've read, even those focusing on MMO development, security and transparency doesn't really seem to have a central focus in the development process. While security in IT has become more and more of a concern since the late 1980s, it seems like MMO development hasn't adopted many of the basic concepts. Some of this, I think, is because the MMO industry is still somewhat immature and the mentality among some development houses is still that of MUD implementors years ago, when games were run for free on a college server on the QT. Everyone does everything and friends get privileges they don't really need just because they are friends.
But compartmentalization is only part of the solution -- companies need to treat tampering with the game seriously and make it clear to their customer base (or at the very least, their investors) that they do so. The big problem with the t20 affair and the other issues that have come up with Eve is that to many people, it seems like the only response from CCP has been a slap on the wrist -- and the revelation that the company knew of the issue months before it became public and apparently did nothing only compounded the problem. The "scandal" that came up earlier this year with regard to alleged intervention against GoonSwarm and ISD misconduct after the t20 affair became public actually turned out to largely be less of an issue than many people were claiming. However, the perceptions that the t20 affair was horribly mishandled eroded the trust of many players for CCP, and allowed others (most notably GoonSwarm) to make more of it than it actually was, because now people were all too willing to believe that cheating had been institutionalized within the halls of CCP.
Frankly, I'm a huge fan of Eve and I think the game is overall a well-designed product with some very standout differences from the normal MMO crowd, and I hate to see the game suffer because the company doesn't want to treat the game like a business and a product whose integrity must be preserved. Unfortunately, I suspect CCP's problems are hardly unique, but I wonder how much misconduct is either caught and quietly dealt with by other companies before it can become public, swept under the rug and ignored as acceptable, or simply not caught. As the industry matures, and more and more real monetary value is traded in these game economies (a trend I don't really endorse, as I don't like the idea of RMT, but a reality that will always exist I'm afraid), MMO companies are going to have to start taking more and more measures to secure their economies against tampering. When I briefly dated a law professor last year, one of the things we talked about was how this is a rapidly emerging field of law -- if real value is being created, and can be destroyed (or severely disrupted) almost at a whim, the number of lawsuits that could be filed if one of these companies goes under or sufffers some sort of unrecoverable data loss could be staggering, regardless of what safeguards they try to put in their EULAs.
At work, we have a security policy that basically dictates that people need to have as restricted of privileges as possible. We don't put development tools on production machines, we separate the duties of service developer and service manager, and we don't let developers have access to production boxes, among other things. While this is unfortunately not as common in the IT industry as maybe it should be, I think it is generally accepted that this is the best practice. And yet it seems like incidents like the t20 affair could have been avoided if similar measures had been implemented and safeguards acted upon.
Second Life and Eve are two very different games (if Second Life can even be called a game), and I don't think a developer giving a certain item in Second Life would do as much to tilt things in someone's favor as t20's misconduct in Eve did. On the other hand, the linden-to-dollar direct conversion makes the stakes for some sort of misconduct quite a bit higher as well. Now, I'm sure Linden Labs has an extensive system of auditing (and unlike Eve, it sounds like they have outside auditors keeping an eye on things), but an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure.
Surprisingly, in all the game development books I've read, even those focusing on MMO development, security and transparency doesn't really seem to have a central focus in the development process. While security in IT has become more and more of a concern since the late 1980s, it seems like MMO development hasn't adopted many of the basic concepts. Some of this, I think, is because the MMO industry is still somewhat immature and the mentality among some development houses is still that of MUD implementors years ago, when games were run for free on a college server on the QT. Everyone does everything and friends get privileges they don't really need just because they are friends.
But compartmentalization is only part of the solution -- companies need to treat tampering with the game seriously and make it clear to their customer base (or at the very least, their investors) that they do so. The big problem with the t20 affair and the other issues that have come up with Eve is that to many people, it seems like the only response from CCP has been a slap on the wrist -- and the revelation that the company knew of the issue months before it became public and apparently did nothing only compounded the problem. The "scandal" that came up earlier this year with regard to alleged intervention against GoonSwarm and ISD misconduct after the t20 affair became public actually turned out to largely be less of an issue than many people were claiming. However, the perceptions that the t20 affair was horribly mishandled eroded the trust of many players for CCP, and allowed others (most notably GoonSwarm) to make more of it than it actually was, because now people were all too willing to believe that cheating had been institutionalized within the halls of CCP.
Frankly, I'm a huge fan of Eve and I think the game is overall a well-designed product with some very standout differences from the normal MMO crowd, and I hate to see the game suffer because the company doesn't want to treat the game like a business and a product whose integrity must be preserved. Unfortunately, I suspect CCP's problems are hardly unique, but I wonder how much misconduct is either caught and quietly dealt with by other companies before it can become public, swept under the rug and ignored as acceptable, or simply not caught. As the industry matures, and more and more real monetary value is traded in these game economies (a trend I don't really endorse, as I don't like the idea of RMT, but a reality that will always exist I'm afraid), MMO companies are going to have to start taking more and more measures to secure their economies against tampering. When I briefly dated a law professor last year, one of the things we talked about was how this is a rapidly emerging field of law -- if real value is being created, and can be destroyed (or severely disrupted) almost at a whim, the number of lawsuits that could be filed if one of these companies goes under or sufffers some sort of unrecoverable data loss could be staggering, regardless of what safeguards they try to put in their EULAs.
