The Graphics, Part 2: The Purpose

Now, before I start a horrible rant about how I feel graphics are overrated nowadays, there are very very good reasons for having a game with good graphics.

#1: Timmy wants to roll in Style. Timmy wants to feel awesome.

Timmy doesn't play the game because he's killing a bunch of abstract shapes. Timmy plays the game because he wants to be a ninja. You can't properly evoke the feeling of being an awesome ninja without looking like an awesome ninja with all the cool ninja duds. This doesn't mean you go and look up in the history books how ninjas historically looked. This doesn't mean authentic grass hats and patchwork peasant clothing. You want to evoke style, not historical accuracy. This also means that you don't go for photo-realism exactly.

Timmy doesn't want historical realism. Timmy wants to have the ninja experience he's picturing in his mind. Timmy wants to play what he feels is the ninja. It might be a cliche ninja. It might be a realistic ninja. The only qualification in the art is that it must be an awesome ninja. Totally unrealistic black armor, with sword bigger than he is? Who cares?

Awesomeness, the feeling, needs awesome art.

We play games to experience the feeling of being larger than life. Even the Nitty-Gritty war games portray a war, far more intense than the war, with bullets whizzing by and explosions that leave no mark. None of the boredom, none of watching horizons for hours. You can't do this without that feeling of awe that art can do. I mean, which one of us can ride a classic muscle car, or race a Formula One Racer?

None of us. And do we want them to look photo-realistic? Not neccessarily. We want them to look good. We want to feel good about racing these beauties. No faded paint and semi-reflective surfaces here.

#2: Spike needs to understand what is going on.

Art is an incredible communication device. For example, I could have you memorize a list of cards in a some trading card game, let's say.. Magic: The Gathering. For example:

Player A has 6 forests in play, 5 of them which are tapped.

He also has 3 creatures in play, a Shinen's Roar, a Humble Budoka, and a Wispy Moonrider.

His opponent has 5 untapped mountains in play, with 3 plains and a Kami of Fiery Roar, a Kami of life's Web, 2 Kabuto Moths, and a Red Devil.

And by the time you've finished reading this and trying to figure out who is winning... a minute or two would have passed.

...Or quite possibly, you could've looked at the picture and immediately understood the game state from the simple picture before you've even finished reading the first sentence.

Lots of cards on our side, a few cards on their side. A bunch of his cards are sideways, which means he can't use them. ALL of our cards are ready to smash face. All this in a glance. This is the amazing power of effectively formatted art. Colors, frames, icons and graphics all convey more information in a second, in a glance, than we could ever tell from reading lines and lines of text.

This is heavily important for Spikes. Spikes need to understand the game state very quickly. They need to figure out the game state as fast as possible to come up with their next move. No one wants to lose a game because some bit of information was unclear. Art and Graphics are a tremendous vehicle of information for Spikes.

Take it from a different angle...

Think of it this way, this time from a Massive Multi-player Online game perspective. I am level one. I see a huge brutish ogre that has a massive red aura. I probably won't attack him. If I see a bunny on the ground, I would probably think that's weaker than I am. The graphics convey the threat that a monster poses.

If the bunny somehow happens to be the vorpal bunny from Monty Python, and the huge brutish orc is actually some kind of hemophiliac coward, then even the best graphics won't save you from a Spike's wrath.

Graphics determine player expectations and a lot of that is because people treat artwork as a source of information. Notice how I made the bunny much smaller than the Ogre? Even that little resizing gives you the information that the bunny is a smaller, weaker threat compared to the two muscled brutes. If instead, you were treated to lovely O's for Ogres and b's for Bunnies in some sort of text-action game (I'm looking at you Rogue, Nethack.) You would not nearly get the depth of information that artwork would get you.

#3: Graphics allow people to express themselves.

Look at the advent of digital avatars. How many times have you found a ridiculous good hat in a game, put it on, and then promptly burned it because it was ridiculous looking? No? Oh well.

In this age where people are increasingly represented by avatars, having those avatars be customizable allows people to communicate who they are or what they think is cool. Look at Halo 3 customization which customizes individual armor pieces and compare that to what Massively Multiplayer Online games have already been doing with thousands of armor pieces in different colors, shapes and sizes.

Self-expression in games is as important as self-expression in the real world. Graphics help people achieve that goal. People can put more personal investment in a game if their virtual avatar resembles the ideal person that the character is envisioning in their mind.

I, personally, am a fan of any kind of sunglasses in a game. Although... I will occasionally wear a silly hat if the need fits.

The Graphics, Part 1: The History.

Let's talk about art in games.

No, not like, whether games are art. But rather, the graphics of games.

Let's talk about.. whether graphics are good for games.

Hold on, put down the pitchfork. I'm not saying I want the old text adventure days back.

But with the rising costs of today's development, a major blockbuster game takes something like tens of millions of dollars to produce, must sell hundreds of thousands of copies, and a couple of years to produce. With the longer and longer development times, innovation is squelched for favor of stagnant copies...

I mean, it's a little hard to believe all this is worth it for the photo-realistic virtual tennis game I'm seeing. I had about a million times more fun playing Mario Tennis (with loveable, cartoony graphics) or Wii Sports (with.. shall we say.. rudimentary graphics) then I had playing 'Pro Super Awesome Tennis Supreme Champion with realistic commentary, skin tones, and character models.'

There's a cost to the demands of graphics. Let's see how this whole silly affair started...

Back in the day, you had your little raster graphic consoles. We're talking scanlines here. Your Atari-era days. And the era were programmers tried to out-do each other with fancier and fancier techniques for graphics. Back then, when you wanted to draw a line on the screen, it had to be all the same color and you had to plot out the entire horizontal axis. You couldn't draw a line and then go back and 'draw something before it.'

And there wasn't a frame buffer either. *shudder*

But then, programmers started to learn the tricks of the system. Changing color memory on the fly so they had characters with more than one color. More and more complex shapes and designs, as well as speed improvements and controls...

This was the golden-era of arcade gaming, so to speak. The lone developer who made the graphics, code, design and put it all together in a neat package to sell to the world. The first wave of graphic improvement, where programmers struggled to out-do each other in graphics pushing whatever hardware they were on to the fullest. However, this brand of playful competition was quickly squelched when new management came around and realized that this was a new possibility! A new market! A entirely new frontier...

...where you could pass off a tiny pixel as Spiderman and dupe people into buying a few hundred copies.

When you only had to sell a few hundred copies to break even.

Note, I said 'dupe.' Take a look at the ancient games of the 80's. They were all produced by a company. No individual programmer names made it on there. It was in fact, forbidden to put your name anywhere in the game. Initially, the programmers had free reign over what they produced, but as times changed (and profit margins grew...) so did policies. And thus it became that, it was company mandated policy to churn out... well... crap.

People were indeed duped back then to pay for the crummiest of games. When you pay 10 dollars for a Spiderman game, take it home to play, and realize that you're looking at a red dot swinging on some white dots across a square block of dots... You do indeed, feel quite silly at having bought it.

Especially if it played like a cross between washing the dishes.. and say.. slamming yourself in the head with a brick.

Imagine the crisis of faith the consumer population feels when exposed to this. Suddenly, it wasn't enough that you produced a new fancy video game. You had to ensure that it was actually worth buying. And what could the consumer possibly have to gauge the quality of the game from the box?

Screenshots, of course.

(Actually, one of the alternative solutions game companies tried to use was a ridiculous amount of hype. There was an Atari game called.. 'ET' based on.. guess what? ET. Awesome movie, terrible terrible terrible game. This game marked the end of the initial golden age of games, where people finally realized that the game companies at the time were out to simply dupe people into buying crap. The programmers rebelled of course, but the company had its say.

...and people joke about millions of unsold ET game cartridges ending up in a landfill...

...Snopes confirms it too.)

So the graphic console wars started. Because each game could only run on a very specific console, if you could convince the majority of the public to purchase your console, you would have your market audience for life playing your games. And thus games starting becoming graphical promotions for the consoles themselves. How would I know the Z9000 console would be better than the Atari 2600? How would I know the NES would be better than the Atari 7600? In a world where games were new, often disappointing affairs, people turned to graphics to help guide them. Screenshots of the newest technology. Look at all the pretty colors the Atari 2600 can do! Look at those beautiful lush greens and the man with the hat (Pitfall.)

This trend continued to the present day, where the major consoles are still fighting the graphics war. Each generation of consoles fighting for supremacy of.. who can pull off more sprites, the biggest explosions, the most realistic 3d graphics...

And where screenshots once ruled the day before, we turn to in-game videos or demos to see our beautiful games in action. The first thing we judge a game on is by graphics. Perhaps the only way we can judge a game without actually having played it. It's in our gut to judge a game by it's beautiful beautiful cover.

Where will it all lead to...

MMO Diversity, Part 5: Modern Models

Note: This article is primarily about massively multiplayer online rpg's but can be extended to talking about any rpg with a skill/numbers base.

So, I've spoken a bit about some problems that MMO's have, primarily with how their skill tree is developed. I would like to take a walk through some modern MMO's and analyze how they (attempt to) sidestep these issues.

Recap:

The diversity problem in western MMO's is since the classes are role-based how does one customize one's character because all the roles have the same skills (or need to perform the same functions.)

The diversity problem in eastern MMO's is since there's too much customization of character, and too much focused on the choices you make, you have limited skill sets, you become a narrow focused character, and the classes become somewhat hybridized and hard to tell apart.

City of Heroes, NC Soft

Straight from the outset, you are forced to choose your role: Tanker (Melee Defense), Scrapper (Melee DPS), Blaster (Ranged DPS), Support (Heal / Support), Control (Crowd Control).

But then, how does City of Heroes address the customization problem?

1. Appearance is everything: By giving characters full control over how they appear (and thus doing away with all those silly equipment pieces.) they make a very visual impact on players. Players can choose to be anything from super sailor princess to titanic mecha overlord. Everyone thusly can choose to be somewhat unique, as they definitely stand out from the other 9 players wearing full plate mail.

2. Skill SETS: City of Heroes allows you to choose primary and secondary powers, but the crux of the matter is you are only allowed to choose skill SETS, not individual skills. In these skill sets, you can put the utilitarian skills as a bundle with the awesome skill that the player wishes to acquire. In this way, you do manage to give the player the utility spell he needs to fulfill his role and give him the freedom to choose how he wants to play.

3. Utility Sets: If you could only choose 2 very large power sets, then the game would still be hard to balance. City of Heroes addresses this by giving additional Utility Sets to the player, designed to handle problems such as transportation, gathering, evasion, or anything else lacking to the class. Since these are, again sets, they can be bundled with niche skills. In any event, the player does not have to give anything up to acquire these utility skills.

Silk Road Online, Joymax

Silk Road Online is, without a doubt, the single most grindingly boring game on the face of the earth. To give you an idea of what a Silk Road Quest is like, imagine you have to kill literally 5000 chaos demon flowers to get 5% of a level. Then repeat 50 times over.

That's not to say it doesn't have some good ideas. It has a very very good skill system that encourage skill experimentation and innovation.

1. Exponential Skill Improvement Costs: To get a skill from level 1 to level 10, it requires something to the degree of 100 times the skill points it takes to get a skill from level 0 to level 1. In this manner, one *can* get useful utility spells at low levels because the relative value of the utility spell / skill point ratio is far far greater. Imagine that you had a choice between improving weapon damage by 5% or getting a 3% speed increase in stealth, like in Ragnarok Online. Now imagine if that choice, was, instead, a choice between improving weapon damage by 5% or getting a 3% increase in stealth, speed, attack speed, stealing ability, with the ability to cure poison and cast a weak magic defense buff.

2. Limited Infinite Skill Selection: Silk Road characters can choose from every skill in the game potentially. Potentially. Realistically, it's fairly improbable. What they have done is made it so that one must level up a generic passive ability to unlock later and later skills in the trees. One *must* level up these generic passives in order to improve their skills in the tree. Thus, to have skills whose power nears one level, one must focus on one or two trees.

However, you cannot level a skill tree greater than your current level, so there is no incentive to put all your points into a single tree in the hopes of achieving a higher power level. And given that the trees (Weapon based or Magic based) are very synergetic, the optimal choice is to choose two trees.

What this means is that to realistically gain powerful skills, one must divert the majority of their points to two or more trees. Out of the possibility to choose between infinite skill trees, the optimal choice in their system is to choose two or more trees to focus on. Coupled with their exponential skill point improvement costs, this means it is very easy to tell what few trees characters have chosen to become.

3. Micro-gains in skill improvement unlinked to level gain: During the gaining of one level, a character in silk road will gain many hundreds of skill points. In this manner, they encourage experimentation as the character can simply gain a couple of extra skill points in this level to try out skills. It does not in any way shape or form hamper his advancement of his current level to try out new skills. He does not give up anything by trying out a skill besides a little bit of time. He does not lose anything "in the long run" and mistakes feel very cheap. Because, hey, even if that skill was horrible, I only spent 3 skill points on it, and I could get that back in like, a minute.

World of Warcraft, Blizzard

I don't really think I need to go much further than to say World of Warcraft is currently one of the best models of the western mmorpg. It has clearly defined role-based class systems with a heavy influence from dungeons and dragons and MUDs alike. It solves diversity in an interesting way, directly related to their talent tree.

Let me say this: the talent tree is the most obvious/simplest way to combine the western and eastern systems of skill thought.

First off: Every character in WoW gets their class based skills. All of them. They don't get to skip any. Then every character in WoW gets hit by a fully loaded skill tree that modifies their skills. All of them. And they have to spend points in this tree to unlock bonuses in skills.

Imagine an Eastern MMO where you started off with nine points in every skill and the last bit of adjustments you were to make were to add the last polishing skill points to those you wanted to be just a bit better (or get a few more points in those passive skills.) Wow does have one very good system in place though to increase this diversity even more.

1. "Gold Medal Skills" - These are special (powerful) customized skills designed for players who play a very specific way. How does Blizzard know that these players are playing this way? Because they have placed points in those skill trees in a following manner and thus earn the privilege of being able to use that skill.

It's the best case scenario. Some players have skills that other players don't, but they are the ones who can best use these niche skills in the first place or have the best rationale to have this skill.

It is fairly balanced because there is a significant cost to getting them. It also helps distinguish people from each other as even two of the same class has wildly different 'special' abilities. It's kind of like two people playing street fighter that have their own signature moves. Very 'Ken' and 'Ryu' like, in a way. They're both shotoken characters, but they're tweaked just enough so that they're diverse.. but they can still handle the majority of the same situations decently.

That's my brief discussion on MMO Diversity. Granted it was mainly about skill trees, but since MMO's are so reliant on the skills players have to use, talking about the core skill setup defines 50 to 60% of the core gameplay of any MMO. Thus, by carefully planning the skill setup, one can promote or squelch playing diversity.

Why I play for High Score? The game outside the game.

A lot of games will, as a seeming after-thought, give you a score based on how you performed.

I guess it's supposed to give you some indication of your performance and how well you've performed. But a lot of these scores are meaningless to the average player. High scores, in a void, mean nothing. A lot of online mini-games will give you scores for your performance, but are those scores meaningful?

It's true that scores don't *need* to be meaningful, simply a measure of the player's arbitrary ability to play. But at the same time, a well designed score system can be very good for the game's meta-game. The meta-game is literally "the game outside the game." The game of competition to see, not who can beat the game, but who can score the highest. Getting to level 25 in Pac-Man is playing the game. Getting to level 25 in Pac-man collecting every single piece of fruit so that one can put your initials on the high scores list is playing the meta-game.

The meta-game can inspire people to do better, think harder, and come up with new and interesting strategies to play the game. The perfect example of this is Tower Defense, where simply beating the game might not be enough for players. One must beat it with the highest score or the best possible strategy. The meta-game thus extends the life-time of the game, by encouraging people to improve their game.

What properties do score tables need to have to ensure this?

1) Scores must be public.

There are far fewer rewards in having a score that no one ever sees. A little private assurance. However, scores are just numbers, and a number without context is essentially meaningless. Having a public high scores table also means there's the possibility that you could be a high-rank in those high score tables. That people will know about your accomplishments.

The desire to beat other people and the desire to achieve a rank on that high score table are very Spike goals. Without this kind of motivation, Spikes have little to gain from a simply score.

2) Scores must be a fairly accurate representation of performance.

This is fairly simple. If I kill 3 guys, and he kills 3 guys, we should have roughly the same score. If I kill 3 guys and he kills 3 guys and we have a wild score discrepency, the score becomes meaningless as it becomes less understandable to the general player.

A high score automatically implies certain things: A mastery of the game, or a long time to achieve the feat, or simply an efficient performance.

If high scores fluctuate wildly, then it becomes meaningless. If I said Player A had 5000 kills, and Player B had 4339 kills, that is a fairly good score representation. If I said Player A had 129387129387123 million points while Player B had 334934 points for the same amount of kills, you would have no idea what those points meant.

This also implies that there shouldn't be a point-farm where the only measure of success if to see how long a player can abuse a specific pattern to acquire a large amount of points with minimal effort to himself. (Like, hanging back and just shooting upward at the spawning enemies... forever.)

3) A high score must be achievable.

There is no point in keeping the top 10 scores of all time, as it only makes players feel that they can never reach that point. Why post the 45 millions and the 67 trillions when most players reach the thousands at most? We can't all play perfect games of Pac-man every single time.

The newest trend that seems to be working quite well, is to post the daily or weekly high scores. This way, you are ensured of competing with people of relevance. (Oh my god, I'm 15th out of all the people playing, right now?)

4) Scoring should not be based on some exponential system, scoring systems should strive to be linear.

If you make it to level 10, you should not get some exponentially bigger score than someone who made it to level 1. The key to this is again, understandability. If the first place has 100 times the score of the other top 10, that's bizarre. If he really 100 times better at the game? Human beings are terrible at understanding what an exponential increase really means. Thus, if at all possible, try to keep scores linear. If he gets to level 10, he should have roughly ten times the score of someone who got to only level 1, not hundreds. That way, you can easily tell from the score what kind of progress that person has made through the game.

Good: Wow! That guy has 10,000 points where I only have 5,000. He must have gone like, twice as far as I have.

Bad: That guy has... 100 times the score I do.... I have no idea what that means.

5) If a public high score isn't achievable, then smaller goals (or ranks) might be sufficient.

There is nothing better than being complimented by the game for doing well. By giving players ranks (like, silver star, gold star, A++.) You provide an additional incentive to do well. I mean, sure some people can be top 100, but if I can get a gold medal on this game, it's good enough for me. This sets the 'good enough' point, where the player might not be the best, but he's hit a goal that he can accomplish with a little effort.

(For example: If you survive 15 seconds longer, you qualify for a gold medal rank!)
(Especially, if said gold medal rank unlocks something)

MMO Diversity, Part 4: Focused Skill Sets

Note: This post is mainly about massively multiplayer online rpgs but is applicable to any role playing game with a skill based system.

Recap: Skill Sets

Western MMO's: Traditionally, Western MMO's have fixed skill sets, where there is little or no variation among character classes as to what skill a class has. If a level 15 rogue has a 'pick lock' skill, then rest assured, some other level 15 rogue you encounter will be almost certain to have the same skill. This assures that classes have the skills to do what the designers intended, however, it means a relative lack of diversity in the character classes.

Eastern MMO's: Traditionally, Eastern MMO's have skill trees. One acquires skills by purchasing them with a skill point acquired by leveling. One can also empower their skills by investing more than a single point in them. In this manner, players can choose what skills they wish to acquire, and generally acquired much more diverse skill selections. However, the problem with this is that with a harsh system of 'no take-backs' and the quick obsoleting of skills that aren't being empowered are generally weaker or even useless. This leads to Focused Skill Sets with a Fear of Experimentation.

Thus, the main problem is how to create an environment where players can have diverse skills without leading to Focused Skill Sets and a Fear of Experimentation. This is a much harder problem than it seems.

Problem 1: There is hidden tension between an Experimental Community and a Diverse Community.

The problem is essentially: If a player can experiment all he wants, then how does he ever stick to a skill set? If all Thieves could magically become Healers without risk, how does one stop the entire community from jumping, en-masse, to the newest and currently best known build?

Real Life Example: Consider a collectible card game. One is free to experiment with his deck build as often as he wants. However, when you get up to a tournament level, the most predominant decks are those that are considered 'the best' in field. The freedom to choose whatever deck they would like often leads to the best players choosing the best decks. It is not unheard to see 50% of a high-level tournament make-up to consist of the same exact deck with minor variants.

Possible Solutions: Some scaled cost to re-experiment, limited experimental phases, a 'one-level' test phase for new skills, quick character re-advancement (The idea that once you've hit level 100 on a character, leveling another character to 100 should take much much less time.), merit-based advancement, Balance in power of the top-tier experimental builds, lots and lots of additional skills added over time (thus changing what is the 'best' build at any given time).

Problem 2: Making lots of skills does not neccessarily make a more diverse environment.

If Warrior One has 'Heavy Strike' and Warrior Two has 'Impact Strike'... how are they any different? We've given them different skills, but since they both need the same types of skills, they end up playing the same. The biggest offender of this is Trickster Online, where each of the 4 character classes essentially start with the same skill. 'Hit things for damage based on your primary statistic.' The game does get better later on, but because each character needed to play similarly early on, there is almost no difference in the skill selection they get early on.

When you have 4 different names for 'Hit something slightly harder' or 'Heal Damage', there's a problem. You might have name diversity, but you've just made the same damn thing.

Just look at all the games where mages will get 'ice bolt', followed by 'slightly stronger bolt.' Truly sigh-worthy. An entire class whose 20 out of 25 skills basically boil down to 'Hit enemy at distance for damage.'

Possible Solutions: Different resource bases for different skills. Basic Skills with alternate effects or additional effects. Diversification of roles. Later skills that have added synergy with basic role skills. The idea of gaining skill sets instead of individual skills. Skills that become more complex as they are improved, rather than simply more powerful (For example, adding a knockback component to a heavy blow skill, or adding a bleed component.) Skill cooldowns such that single overpowered skill is unable to be used repeatedly.

MMO Diversity, Part 3: Hybridization...

Note: This article is mainly about Massively Multiplayer Online RPG's but can be stretched to incorporate any skill-tree based game.

Recap:

Western MMO's suffer from a lack of choices. You can't decide on what skills you want to be better than others. You can't really decide how your class will evolve. A warrior is a warrior is a warrior.

Eastern MMO's suffer from too many potential possibilities. Too many classes waters down the pool of classes. With so many possibilites, one is unsure whether his class can fulfill a specific role, or what his class is even meant to be doing in the first place.

How Modern MMO's can address these current problems...
...with examples of some that already have.

Hybridization: Giving each character class a clear goal and keeping in mind that no matter what the player does, there are clear roles he can fulfill is the main fix to the problem of too much Hybridization:

1) Have a clear set of roles that each character class can play and how effective he is at those. Have less roles that a character can fulfill but make him more effective in those roles.

2) If one character class can fulfill multiple roles then we make sure that he can fulfill those multiple roles without interfering with himself. Address potential problems with those multiple roles and how one can alleviate it.

3) If the character is too much of a hybrid, make his customization choices something that would naturally make sense as a combined whole.

Bad Example:

Assassin, Ragnarok Online

Roles: Primary Damage Dealer, Secondary Physical Defense Character, Secondary "Money" Character, Secondary Stealth Character, Poisons Enemies.

Do these roles interfere with each other?

Somewhat. His main powerful ability (Sonic Blow) requires a lot of magical energy to accomplish. However, it cannot be used in stealth. If he, instead, wishes to steal items from a monster, that takes up the energy he could have used to sonic blow to kill the monster. If the Assassin stealths, then he no longer fulfills his potential to be the party member who can dodge 95% of enemy attacks. Additionally, many of his powerful damage abilities cannot be used in stealth mode...

Except for the fact that many of his damage abilities can only be used in stealth mode. His only Area of Effect attack can only be used in stealth, and takes up a lot of magical energy, so he can't both handle Area of Effects and play defense (Which would be an ideal role, a defensive character who could also damage everyone that's attacking him.) The Assassin can play many roles, however, they are at cross-purposes with each other.

Do the roles make sense when taken together?

Partly. If you choose to whittle away the Assassin's, steal, stealth, envenom, area of effect abilities, then what is left with is a very strong defensive character that deals a high amount of damage. However, add any of the Assassin's other skills to the mix and you water that down to something that never utilizes the Assassin's full abilities and somewhat unclear about what the assassin's true role is.

Which is a shame, because if those abilities were not at cross-purposes with each other, they would make rather good combinations. Stealth and Massive Damage would lead to a very powerful 'Alpha Strike', except for the fact that the Assassin cannot attack in stealth except with a weak area of effect.

He cannot use his area of effect while he is playing the role of defense, because he needs to be stealthed to use his area of effect skill. This would make a great deal of sense if possible as a warrior who could keep the focus of multiple enemies at once.

He cannot both stealth and steal from monsters, which would create a very interesting money character that focuses on bypassing monsters entirely. Poisoning a monster is much less effective than simply doing his most powerful attack move. Furthermore, the Assassin's most powerful Poison Bomb skill is on a timer and has the condition that the enemy not be killed while the poison is in effective to deal the most damage... which totally defeats the purpose of the Assassin being a damage dealer. (In order to poison most effectively, the assassin must not attack the thing he poisoned.)

Good Examples:

Paladin, World of Warcraft
Clear Roles: Defensive Warrior, Secondary Healer, Tertiary Party Enhancer

Do the two roles interfere with each other?
If he is healing, is that hindered by the fact that he is a defensive warrior? Possibly, if his healing is interrupted because he is in the front line getting hit by stuff. Therefore, we give the paladin the option to have faster heal times, ignore spell casting interruption.

If he is playing defense, does that hinder his healing ability? Possibly, if his defense abilities take up all the magical energy he needs to heal other people. Therefore, we can make his defensive abilities relatively light on magical energy or give him the ability to recover magical energy while he is being hurt or doing damage (As a defensive warrior.)

When his abilities are put together, do they make sense as a combined whole?

A defensive warrior and a backup healer. Clearly the Paladin's role is to make it hard for his party to die. He both absorbs damage from rampaging monsters and heals the party in case some of that damage passes by. Additionally, he might have some powerful resurrection abilities or group buffs that make it even harder for the group to perish.

Pure Wizard, Dungeons and Dragons Online
Clear Roles: Massive Area of Effect Damage Dealer, Powerful Crowd Control, Secondary Group Enhancer, Places Enemies under Negative Enchantments.

Do the roles interfere with each other?

Yes, the roles do interfere with each other. Using magical energy on both Crowd Control and Area of Effect Damage Dealing are redundant tasks. If on the other hand, he is around to provide useful enchantments for the party his role as Damage Dealer and Crowd Control will be hampered by the need to constantly maintain and use up his magical energies on keeping the group buffed.

We can address this issue by giving the wizard only a few spell slots to choose from. His highest level spells will be limited in number to one or two that he can swap out at specifically designated rest points. This way, the wizards most powerful spell will only be from one or two of these categories and the player's focus will be on only one of these roles and not all three of them at once.

We can also prevent the wizard character from fulfilling all of these roles by giving him a very limited energy point to work from, thus ensuring that he will be called to fulfill only a few roles at a time before he is exhausted. To balance this, we can make him very powerful while his magical energies are well supplied.

Do the roles make sense when taken together as a whole?

Yes. These roles, when combined together, make the wizard a universal problem solver or a "panic button". No matter what the situation at hand, whether it be overwhelmed by enemies, having to have a powerful enchantment or simply destroying something very quickly, the wizard can be called to get rid of a problem. Balanced with a low energy pool, the well prepared wizard becomes a valuable role as he can be called on to unleash his full power at those critical moments.

MMO Diversity, Part 2: The Choices You Make...

Note: This article is mainly about Massively Multi-player Online Games, with a slight bleed into skill-based RPG's.

A quick recap of terms I've discussed and that I will continue to use:

Western MMO:
An MMO where characters choose clearly defined roles at the outset, characterized by little or no character branching and definite skill sets rather than point based skill tree systems.

Examples: Everquest, Dungeons and Dragons Online.

Eastern MMO:
An MMO where characters start off with initially unclear roles, and determine them by strict character branching with further branch-offs from point-based skill tree systems.

Examples: Ragnarok Online, Trickster Online, Maple Story

In the Western MMO, it's very hard to talk about my character. After all, what makes me different from anyone else? There's very few classes, and in those classes are very similar skills. How do I express myself if all I can say is 'I'm a level 30 warrior.' 'Oh.' Where is the choice or the diversity there? How am I any different from the faceless masses?

Considering the problems of Western MMO's, the Eastern MMO System seems like a comparative upgrade to the old Western MMO system. Why would one want static roles and a complete lack of choice in skill sets? Why shouldn't I have the freedom to decide whether my character has heal or not? Why shouldn't I look forward to when my Thief becomes an Assassin?

Problem 1: Hybridization

Throughout time immemorial, there have been 4 main party roles:
Thief (Single Target DPS).
Cleric (Heal Bi.. err. Healer.).
Mage (Crowd Control).
Warrior (Tank.)

When you have 32 classes divided up into these 4 roles, and possible combinations of those roles.. you have no idea what those classes end up as. Please, tell me, at first glance, what you think the difference between a Crusader and a Knight is? Crusader, Knight, Swordsman, Assassin, Rogue, Battle Smith, Monk? What do you think their roles are? Tanks? Damage/Tanks? Damage/Tank/Cleric? What makes these characters special besides the unique way they take/deal damage? How do you compare the relative benefits between a Crusader and a Knight? An Assassin and a Monk? When the classes come too close to one another, the difference between the two might be in Name (And looks) only.

Still, with a little effort, you could do it... I mean, what do I care if my Assassin and my Monk do similar things. Isn't it awesome that I have an Assassin? And a Kung-Fu Monk? Or better yet.. ASSASSIN MONK?

Problem 2: Focused Skill Sets

If you have one point in a skill, common knowledge says that it should be worse than a skill in which you have 9 points in.

Fair enough, that makes total sense. A skill in which you've invested in should be better than a skill in which you haven't. And it also makes total sense you should be able to 'pass up' bad abilities to further your good abilities. Who hasn't groaned when their thief in some game got the skill 'kick a little bit of sand in someone's eye' and wish that they could just possibly gouge that eye out?

However, this leads to dangerous scenarios where core abilities and utility spells are ignored in favor of the best abilities. It'd be slightly odd if the following scenario happened...

'Okay, Thief, sneak around that corner and kill the guard.'
'I err.. don't have points in sneak.'
'Okay, then steal the key off him.'
'I err.. don't have points in steal... but I can err.. stab him twice, really quickly.'
'...'

This frankly, wreaks havoc on the whole class-role system. You can't count on a person in that role to have to skill you need in a party system. Imagine a Healer who couldn't heal effectively, because he spent all his points on his 'holy attack' skill.

Furthermore, this problem kills game-play diversity. In our focus to make our good spells ... well... really good, we kill off any opportunity for our other spells. Any player who has spent the last 10 levels saving skill points to dump it all into 'Double Attack' of any type will know the feeling. Days and weeks are used leveling the same three skills over and over to their maximum power. Other skills are discarded into the dust. It is *so* important that we level our main skills that we do not deign even to "waste" a point in other spells.

Our game-play will be reduced to three-skills. And the system encourages it, otherwise, we're just being silly and weak, wanting 'too much.'

Problem 3: Fear of Experimentation + 'Cookie Cutter' builds.

The major problem with the skill point based system is that usually, each and every decision made with our skill points is final. We can't try out a skill before we sink a point into it. It's FINAL. Nothing is worse than the excitement of putting a skill point into our recently acquired skill of fiery explosion mark 3 and learning that.. well.. it sucks.

Which leads to a major fear of experimentation. Who has the time to level another character up to 60? 100? 200? How will I reconcile my desire to have a good play experience as well as the desire to have a character that remains useful? I limit myself. I limit my skills. I do research online to find the 'best' skills.

Which leads to the plethora of 'Cookie Cutter' builds. The established common builds that are supposedly better than any other build (Whether or not that's true or not, is up to the player.) Millions of people requesting help on how to build their characters. Millions of skills lying unused in the mud.

Problem 4: Obsoleting Skills feels like a punch to the gut

So, I have my shiny level 10 double attack skill. It rocks. Wait.. what's that? What do you mean in 10 levels, I get a triple attack skill? What? That totally sucks. I just got a new skill. I should be HAPPY. Instead, I feel like the game creators have just pulled a fast one on me and are now pointing and laughing.

Some skills are better than others. This is true.

Having skills that are simply better than others and obsoleting old skills that people have spent dozens of points on, while ignoring other ones, is like someone slapped you across the face.

Now, you could make level 10 double attack a pre-requisite for this awesome triple attack skill.. but then that pretty much means you've set the course for the player for the previous 10 levels. 'Hey! You better get level 10 double attack, or else.. You're going to suck!'

Compare this to the Western MMO, where if you get a triple attack skill, all players will scream 'Awesome', replace their double attack skill with the triple attack, and walk off feeling like they've been rewarded for invested their time into this so far.

Proble...

Well, actually, I've said enough about the skill tree system. The fact is, the sheer amount of customization you give to the players might be a terrible idea if the system also punishes them for customizing their characters in the wrong way. That, combined with the fact that more and more character classes generally leads to more confusing and less diverse gameplay tends to be more of a net negative in the end.

Join me for the next part, when we look at Modern MMOs and how they've addressed the issue of customization and avoiding these problems.

MMO Diversity, Part 1: The East and the West

Note: This article is mostly about Massively Multi-player Online Games (MMO's)

There have been a glut of MMO's from the East (Korea, China, etc.) and the West (US, Europe). Both have somewhat different roots and they lead to very different game-play models. This is my theory on the history of the evolution of these various styles of MMO's. Under no circumstance should you take any of this as well-researched facts. That said...

How did western MMO's evolve? The earliest model would probably be the Pen and Paper games popularized in the west. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons being the most ubiquitous example. In these games, the classes were not so different from one another. Take one mage and compare him to another mage and the only difference would probably be the equipment and the player playing the mage. Both of them could learn everything the other mage could and more. Every warrior was at least proficient in their weapon of choice.

The next stage in this evolution was the gradual adaption of the pen and paper model onto an online model: The MUD, or Multi-User Dungeon. Modern muds have a terrific variety of game-play and settings but the very first few muds have, for the most part, a firm grounding in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules. If you were a level 25 warrior, you were going to have kick. No question about it. There wasn't a choice. When you leveled up, you got a skill. Barring very rare exceptions such as weapon choice, all level 50 warriors had the same skill set.

One of the first incarnations of what could be called a Massive Multiplayer Online Game was Everquest. In this, all classes followed the same general model. You hit level X, you get skill Y. All Bards that were level 30 had Spirit of the Wolf. All Monks that were level 30 had meditate and kick. They all had the same meditate and kick skill. You weren't going to suddenly find a level 30 Monk who somehow didn't have meditate, but had some god-like triple kick skill.

From Everquest onwards, companies have tried to emulate the massive success that Everquest has had. Most of these typically have the same class-based play as before. Warrior, Thief, Cleric, Mage. From this model, the western MMO's were born. You picked your class, and you stuck with it, and you flamed on the message boards when your class was depowered by those evil Game Masters.

Western MMO's are very role-based. At the outset, you choose a role. A warrior, a mage, a priest, a thief, etc. This stems from its Dungeons and Dragon roots where players would choose what type of role to fulfill in a party. These games give you tools (in the form of skills) to help you fulfill that role. Thus, it is vitally important that each role or class have the same set of tools to work from or they might be woefully under-equipped to handle it.

From my experience, Western MMO's typically ask you this question:
'How do I use the skills that I have effectively?'

What about the history of Eastern MMO's?

To tell the truth, there isn't much of one. Nexus: Kingdom of the Winds was one of the first MMO's out of Korea and it followed a straight-forward path akin to the Western Muds. It, however, introduced the idea of character-branching, that one base character could become aligned and subtly different. (Lineage is one of the direct descendants of Nexus, branching off from one of the Nexus sub-servers several years after it was released.)

To tell you the truth, there was a precedent for character-branching before. It was a Japanese game of all things that brought this to us. The game? Final Fantasy 5 J. (FF5J was never released for the U.S. Market.) You can see the class-change system in Final Fantasy XI has had its roots in one of the earliest incarnation of the game.

And then shortly thereafter, Korea spawned one of the most pervasive and well known game of the Eastern MMO's: Ragnarok Online. RO marks, what I believe to be, one of the earliest examples of the Eastern MMO marked by one thing: Skill-tree based character development as well as character class changes. While the game was officially released in 2002, the earliest alpha/beta of the games were many years before that date.

Shortly thereafter, the Eastern MMO market quickly branched off into derivative works such as Maple Story, Silk Road and other "free-to-play" MMO's which made money by selling in game upgrades. Individually these MMO's have small quiet markets but when taken together as a whole these small free MMOs have user bases that can compare with the large stable western MMO populations.

As a general rule, these games are all about defining your character through the choices you make while leveling. You choose what skills to get. You choose what skills to upgrade. You gain levels and sometimes you even choose what character class you will become. Not only that, sometimes you even choose what the next advancement of that character class you will become. It gives the player an amazing freedom of choice. The decision to make their character how they want it. The ability to branch out into multiple paths.

From my experience, Eastern MMO's typically ask you this question:
"How do I build my character up so that he has the best skill-set for me?"

...In the next part, we'll see how this affects the actual game-play of these various MMO's...

The Conflict of Timmy and Spike: The "Cheap" and the "Scrub"

Note: This article refers mainly to 2 player fighting games (Ex: Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, etc.)

Cheap: A move or tactic that is felt to be unfair. Someone who is abusing the system to earn wins.
Example: Throwing 20 times in a row is too damn cheap.

Scrub: A (possibly) derogatory term for a novice player mainly used by highly competitive players. Mostly used for players who refuse to adapt to powerful tactics.
Example: Look at that Scrub complaining that I just threw him 20 times in a row.

There is quite possibly an eternal conflict between which group of players is justified. Are Spike's just really cheap? Or are those whiners just Scrubs who refuse to adapt?

The Casual Viewpoint: A group of friends are sitting around playing one of the many fighting games of the ages: Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, Marvel vs. Capcom. Much blood has been split. Much accusations of cheapness have been declared. Every player has their own signature tactic that, when used, elicits many groans from everyone else. Everything from the classic 'Fireball Spammer!' to 'Corner Turtle!'... from 'Button Masher' to 'You keep doing that same damn move over and over again.'

Timmy's Complaint: Spamming fireballs all day or hiding in a corner all day is not fun. You might win, but all you're doing is really just annoying people to death with your cheap tactics that are simply designed to win without any sort of excitement. Jump. Fireball. Block. Fireball. Etc. What we're doing is trying to have fun. We get that winning is fun but not if winning turns out to be looking at the same predictable pattern over and over again.

Spike's Response: I am spamming the same move over and over again. If it is so impossible to counter this one move, wouldn't I be foolish for not using it? Furthermore, what would be the limit to using this move if it is so impossible to counter? Even a single use of this move could be called 'cheap.' You know exactly what I am going to do, can't you just play around it? Is there no desire for self-improvement here? It can't be possible that I've found *the* impossible to defeat strategy while we're just spamming random moves here.

The Hardcore Viewpoint: A group of players are around their local arcade stand playing competitively. A newcomer comes to the playing field and plays around. After he is trounced by the elite players, he sighs to himself and complains about how they kept abusing the most well known absurd combos. And then comes the inevitable. He'll leave, and the elites will shake their head and decry him as a "Scrub."

Spike's Complaint: Complaining about tactics that win you the game are a moot point. If what you really want to do is *win*, then you will learn to adapt to increasingly new tactics. If you're getting bombed by planes, you can't complain that planes are "cheap" and that they are fighting "unfairly." If you want to win, you learn and adapt, not redesign the game so that is "fair" for you. Complaining about cheapness is really a sign of not wanting to improve your own playing skill and instead wanting to play a game which requires a lesser skill component to win.

Timmy's Response: If your only motivation to play is to win, then you prevent yourself from truly having fun with the game. In any fighting game, there are top-tier, middle-tier and bottom-tier characters. If your only desire is to win in high-level competitive play, that limits your play experience to simply top-tier characters. What an incredibly boring way to play, limiting yourself to 2 or 3 characters. Furthermore, our objective is not to win. It is simply to have a good time among friends or have a good time at the arcade. Your goal of "self-improvement" is ruining our play experience.

Loss of Diversity: Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has a character roster of some 50 plus characters. If the players involved aren't very skilled, they will choose a team that consists of 3 members out of these 50 plus characters. However, the actual 'playable' character roster that tournament players choose from consists only of a mere 12 to 16 characters. Of those playable characters, not all the 'special moves' of those characters can be used, as some just are straight out terrible. (Example: Strider Hiryu has some 15 special moves. Of these, only 4 are ever used and that's stretching it.) The pure Spike mindset seriously limits the gaming experience.

If you'd like to take this to the extremely, look at Guilty Gear. 15 out of the top 16 tournament players all used the same character: Sol Badguy. The 16th player played a different character, Baiken, and predictably died very very early on.

Both sides have extremely valid points. One group is trying to have fun with the game experience. The other group is all about self-improvement. It would be hard to find a group of friends playing a fighting game who didn't want to get better and the fighting game *and* have fun.

Here's the thing though, for both groups: Decrying someone as cheap or decrying someone as a scrub doesn't actually help either of you achieve your goal.

Timmy: Suppose that one predictable move is too 'cheap' for you to handle. If your only way to beat this move is the other person not doing it, perhaps a fair degree of practice is in order? Going deeper into and getting better at the game can be more rewarding. If I had to pick between a Street Fighter with 'cheap' fireballs and a Street Fighter with no fireballs.. or a Street Fighter with 'cheap' throws versus a Street Fighter in which you couldn't throw... I'd rather have the fireballs and the throwing. It's more diverse. It's more gameplay. And once you learn how to handle it well, it's more fun.

Besides, nothing's better than showing that Spike just how vulnerable he really is. :D

Spike: If your ultimate goal is to find the dominant tactic of play, consider two things:

1. Playing to win all the time will quickly drive off all the casual players. If all you play with is with casual gamers then you will quickly leave yourself with no avenue of improvement.

2. Playing to win all the time will ensure that you *not* find the dominant tactic of play. It might ensure that you perfect your *current* dominant tactic, but that does not ensure that your tactic is the best.

Street Fighter example: Suppose you've learned to play Ryu *really* *really* well. All the casual players call your fireball / dragon punch traps cheap and you win the majority of the time. Newsflash: Ryu might not be the best character. Unless you vary your gameplay experience and try supposedly bad moves, you might never make the discovery that some other character might be the best character for you. The best character for you might be a really really weak character at first glance but if you keep doing your old fireball / dragon punch traps, then you'll never find out.


So relax. Go deeper into the game and learn to adapt. Or stop using that dominant tactic for a while. Who knows what you'll discover?

Basic Math and Games

Note: This article is mostly about action-rpg that have game mechanics rooted in heavy numbers.

Well, I believe it's time to take a little tangent here to talk about a thing that has plagued me for years: Mathematics.

It comes from the fact that I love action games with rpg elements or rpg games with heavy action elements and such. (Examples: Castlevania: SoTN, Secret of Mana, Diablo.. Etc.) They are typically rich games with a good mix of customization from the RPG side and fast-paced gaming from the action side.

...And then math rears it's ugly head. Suppose that you have a game where Damage is Calculated by (Attack - Defense) = Damage. Simple. Perfect. Understandable. Of course, simple is better, right?

Slime hits you for 3 damage!
You hit Slime for 7 damage!
Slime hits you for 3 damage!
You hit Slime for 7 damage!
You have defeated Slime!

What's wrong with this picture? For starters, it's utterly boring. You know exactly what will happen next time you face the dreaded slime. You'll take 6 damage. If you don't have 6 hp, well, then you'll die.

What happens if you get +3 defense? Well, then.. even if you face a million slimes, you won't have to fear a thing as they all bounce uselessly off your armor. What if you had 3 less defense? Then you'd take twice as much damage from all slimes. In this 6 point margin, you can go from 'Slime is a terrifying force' to 'Slimes are trivial.'

In 6 points. That's a thin margin.

Now, think about what happens to the next mob? Say, the Blue Slime. If he hits for 3 more attack than a Green slime and you take 0 damage from Green Slimes, then the Blue Slime will be as hard as a Green Slime before. The monster isn't getting harder. It's running hard to stay in place. However, if you didn't have you armor... then the Blue Slime would be more than 50% harder than the Green Slime. Such a jump in difficulty would be hard for most slow paced rpg's to stomach.

The problem with using straight attack - defense = damage formulas is the thin margin of balance you have.

For example:

If my attack is less than the monster's defense, I essentially do nothing to the monster and it is impossible.

Alternatively, if my defense is less than the monster's attack, the monster is challenging for a while, until he decimates me by having just a few extra points of attack. (The difference between doing 5 and say.. doing 9.)

If my defense is greater than the monster's attack, then the monster is essentially irrelevant. It does nothing to me.

And the difference between impossible and ridiculously easy is only a few points. A few pieces of equipment for defense. A level or 2. Fall a little behind, everything is impossible and you're forced to stay behind to catch up. Fall a little ahead, everything is ridiculously easy.

This problem becomes compounded if you want to have a character that does repeated small strikes. Suppose we have a 'Thief' type character who hits twice.

Thief hits for 0 damage. (Attack less than their defense.)
Thief hits for 2 damage. (Attack one more than their defense.)
Thief hits for 4 damage. (Attack two more than their defense.)

This character will do very little or start doing twice as much as his compatriots. How are you going to balance this when it all comes down to a razor thin margin of points? If you give a character 50 attack but 2 attacks and a character with 100 attack, these characters are essentially ALWAYS unbalanced no matter what the defense of the monster is. The thief character will always be affected twice by the monster's defense and the 100 attack character will always out-damage the thief. But it seems balanced, at first glance, and that is the difficulty.

Typically, games that use this formula follow a distinct pattern: "This game is too hard." "Wait, now it's too easy." "Wait, now it's too hard again, did I miss something?" "Wait, got that piece of armor. This game is too easy." "Aagh. Can't afford that next armor. This game is too hard."

What was missing? "This game is just right." or.. "Hm. Well, I don't need that armor, I could just play a little better."

But you might say.. "Well, I can perfectly pace my game such that it curves out perfectly. At level 1, they'll fight green slimes and at level 2, they'll fight blue slimes with such and such bonuses and they'll have such and such equipment..."

Which is all fine and good, until you realize that you are not flawless, that players will either miss the equipment/skill/level or player's will innovate and achieve far greater equipment/skill/level and make all your careful balancing irrelevant. Putting the entire difficulty of the game on a razor thin edge by using simple math? A game that's too hard is no fun. A game that's too easy is no fun.

In a large complex game featuring complex interplay between monsters and players... Having the entire difficulty of monsters come down to whether or not people have the stats to EXACTLY put them on this razor thin edge of 'just right' is insane. If the players have control over their stats (Attack/Defense) then it's essentially hopeless. There is no margin of error if you use this kind of simple math.

And if you screw up.. well..

Slime attacks you! It does 0 damage!
Slime attacks you! It does 0 damage!
Slime attacks you! It does 0 damage!
You attack Slime! You do 7 damage!

*Yawn*

Big Slime attacks you! It does 13 damage!
You die...

*Sigh*

Ninja Gaiden and God of War: Spike and Timmy.

Ninja Gaiden is not a game for the faint of heart. Ninja Gaiden will kill you three times over before you've landed on your back. Ninja Gaiden deaths typically involve making a single mistake that is punished for 3/4th your hp. Beating Ninja Gaiden on Hard requires a play performance that could be accurately described as 'Flawless.'

It is a game that Timmy might enjoy, but can't. It's just too damn hard.

If only he could. A popular misconception is that Timmy is an inexperienced player. That is not true. Timmy could be a very professional gamer. He could be quite impressive when he wants to be. But that is not Timmy's goal in the game. He wants to experience a great game. Being a Ninja and wreaking havoc on your foes is definitely a great experience to have. And it's not like Ninja Gaiden was a poorly done game that had the difficulty all of whack. So what happened?

The design of Ninja Gaiden is clean. It is well-thought out. The enemies are hard, but not impossible for a determined gamer. The game is fair. The game punishes repeated spamming of the same move. The game carefully adapts to your strategies. The game ensures that you do have the tools you need to survive and attempts at various stages to gently teach you what to learn to make it to the next level.

An example: On Level 2 of Ninja Gaiden, you face mostly samurai. They are fairly tough enemies when they get a hit across on you, but after that, they don't really have much in the way of attacks. It is true that they hit very hard, and they are fairly fast (for most games.) But all one requires is that one blocks when they are aggressive (read: all the time) and you can counterattack them easily.

...On level 3, however, the stealth commando enemies both fire bullets at you (You do remember how to block, right? If not, people shooting you is a clear-wake up call that if you got through level 2 without learning to block, you're definitely going to learn to do it now.) However, the enemies have now learned how to throw (a move that typically only lands when you are still and unmoving.. like say.. when you are blocking.) So now one has to learn when to block and when to strike.

So why can't so many people enjoy this game? It's all due to the same reason. It's too hard. They are unable to experience the game because to play the game requires such an intense focus on skill level that it frequently borders on impossible for most people. Would normal people really learn an entire new skill set in one level and master it in one sitting such to advance to the next level?

This is a game for Spike. More challenging? Awesome. Skill-intensive yet fair? Doubly awesome. World Renown for being difficult? Check. Bring it on. Beating the game is considered a badge of honor for hardcore gamers into the action adventure archetype. To say 'I beat Ninja Gaiden in a week' is a fairly impressive task that definitely sets one apart from the mainstream crowd.


God of War on the other hand, is a much more pleasant experience. Sure, that baddie looks impressive. It probably towers over you. Yet God of War wants to deliver the experience to you. It is very toned down and requires very little skill.

And yet it still delivers magnificently. Look at that. I'm wielding two swords that are ON FIRE against a freaking Giant. That is the experience that Timmy craves. How cool is that? And this is one of the tamer moments... For example...

On level 1 in God of War 2, you destroy an enormous cyclops, break both his arms in a windmill, and finally kill him with an epic sword that Zeus imbues with the fiery destruction that is your power of a God. LEVEL ONE. Can we talk about a bigger experience here?

And yet, God of War has been loudly decried as 'Button-mashing' for some critics and the Cinematic events that you have to press pre-set timed buttons have gotten a fair amount of negative criticism. Yet, if you were to ask the grand majority of people which game they would prefer to sit down and play through, I'm sure the grand majority would say that God of War is a cleaner, far better game experience.

Why exactly? Ninja Gaiden has a lot going for it. Ninja Gaiden is well designed. Ninja Gaiden is well balanced. Ninja Gaiden has you playing a freaking Ninja! Ninja Gaiden has once been described as 'Playing the most balanced fighting game against the most ridiculously hard computer in the world.'

Why would more people enjoy God of War to Ninja Gaiden?

1. Not all Spikes strive for self-improvement: Spikes want to win or accomplish it all but not all of them have the time to work that hard at it. Catching all the pokemon is a badge of honor and probably less frustrating than killing Atma in Ninja Gaiden. Ninja Gaiden requires a player to say to themselves 'No, I'm not good enough to beat this game right now' and still believe that 'Yes, I will be good enough to beat this game if I can afford to put more time in it.'

2. Timmy really wants to enjoy Ninja Gaiden, but he cannot because he just cannot beat the game. Thousands of people have cried out for an easier mode to Ninja Gaiden. This isn't because they don't feel like practicing for the content. It's because it never was their intention in the first place to become a Ninja Master. They wanted to play the game and experience the game. They wanted to have fun just experiencing the game.

3. God of War succeeds at pleasing it's core audience. If people want a 40 hour adventure with flare and excitement and really ridiculously damn cool fight scenes, God of War delivers just that. It is a commendable achievement. Anyone picking up God of War looking for a fun intense experience will get just that. It succeeds. Ninja Gaiden's finely tuned mechanics and intense challenge are aimed at a group of people that... well.. probably just don't have the time any more to commit to Ninja Gaiden.

Ninja Gaiden's appeal is severely hampered because it's a Spike game that not all Spikes can enjoy and the basic premise of it appeals to Timmy, but Timmy can't be bothered to achieve the inner perfection just to enjoy the experience of being a Ninja.

As a general rule, Timmies far outnumber Spikes in any given time. (Timmies are more casual gamers. Spikes are generally hardcore.)

Note that this trend has been going on for some time. Devil May Cry? Ridiculously hard. Lots of people want to enjoy it and get turned off by the uber difficulty. Prince of Persia? Life fountains everywhere... not to mention the literal ability to reverse time and mistakes. Guess which one is a Game of the Year title?

Make no mistake, I think both games are extremely well refined and polished. Personally, I think I could replay Ninja Gaiden over and over and over perfecting myself and how I play. Certainly the Hurricane Packs and Ninja Gaiden: Black packages are reinforcing this point (It's the same levels. With harder enemies. And new moves. ) whereas God of War would be played once and set down. But if I were to recommend a game to someone? Definitely God of War. They would definitely have more of a blast playing it through the first time...

... That said, if only there was an easy mode in Ninja Gaiden that wasn't as ridiculously humiliating as the current one (Ninja-Dog mode, an apparent unwillingness of the creator to let humble Timmies experience the glory of being a perfect Ninja.)

So what about Johnny?

So, I hope I've left you with a basic understanding of Timmy and Spike from the previous article. Just a quick re-cap though in Mark Rosewater's own words:

Timmy wants to experience something.
Spike wants to prove something.

But what about the third type? Johnny?

Johnny wants to express himself.

In Magic: The Gathering this is the type of player who loves the fact that he can build millions of decks from thousands of cards. He looks for interactions between cards or the coolest theme deck he can imagine. He is about discovery, he is about finding new ways to use familiar tools. He is the person who makes you go 'I didn't even know you could do that.' Magic is a creative outlet for him. This is by far the hardest player type to generalize into normal games. The main difficulty is...

How does Johnny express himself in the context of a static game?

1. Discovering something new -- This is the hallmark of creativity. How does one express oneself? By saying something no one else has ever said before. By doing something no one else has ever done before. Massively Multi-player Online RPG's have this in short bursts where, in isolated communities, many simultaneous discoveries are made.

2. Embracing the ignored -- This is a mark of a stubborn Johnny. He WANTS to be the fire mage, even in a world where fire is ridiculously horrible. That is his thing. And you know what? This is the type of player who frequently discovers how to play the fire mage correctly that everyone else ignored. You thought fire was bad?

3. Embracing a Style -- Sure. He *could* bump you off with a red shell right now. But it's so much cooler when it knocks you out of a sharp turn into the ice water so you have to wait for the little cloud guy to pick you back onto the race track. It's about doing it right. If that means he fails 9 times out of 10, so be it. But that 1 out of 10 he nails you with the red shell on a really bad ice corner that he's been waiting ALL DAY to... he will have triumphed.

Johnny loves potential. The potential to express himself. The potential for the existence of tricks and fun stuff. A game that allows him to play his way. It isn't that Johnny doesn't play for fun, or that Johnny doesn't like winning, but the important thing is how he plays. He will play to express himself. He will play for that creative edge. He will play because the game is something that he can build into.

That's not to say there aren't cross-breeds. Everyone has a mix of Johnny, Spike and Timmy in them. I, myself, tend to think of myself as a Johnny-Spike. I want to win, but I want to win my way. I want to win in a way no one's ever thought of. I want to show that terrible strategies can be salvaged. Creativity and Innovation lead to perfect victory.

So, what do you think you are?

Johnny.. Spike.. What?

For those of you not familiar with Magic: The Gathering, the terms 'Johnny', 'Spike' and 'Timmy' sound a little weird, if not down-right insulting. However, these are terms coined by Mark Rosewater of Magic Design to describe how various players demographics enjoy playing Magic: The Gathering.

Timmy wants to experience something great.
Johnny wants to express himself.
Spike wants to prove himself.

Note that these definitions are broad enough to cover a vast number of gamers. Spikes tend to fall into more hardcore type gamers while Timmies tend to be more casual players.

What is interesting is that both Spike and Timmy tend to like the same type of game, but they like very different aspects of the game. How a Johnny likes a game tends to depend on the game itself, from my experience. In this entry though, I will focus on Spike and Timmy as they are far easier to grasp.

Compare the following descriptions of Mario...

There are millions of people who have played Mario. Mario is fun. It is an experience. It is running around in countless different worlds, saving princesses or most likely, finding out she is in another castle. Mario 64 brought this to a fore-front with countless worlds and new vistas to explore. Secrets and Shines and Coins lie everywhere to hunt and to find. You can beat Mario, see the ending and feel accomplished. It is a haven to casual gamers.

Or...

There are millions of people who have played Mario. Mario is a deep rewarding and above all, challenging game. There are ridiculous amounts of secrets in Mario for the player who must find it all. There are 120 Shines in Super Mario Sunshine. Even the original Mario games have secrets for the experienced player. Mario 3 games can even be beaten in as little as 12 minutes. Mario 1 speed-runs have gone under 7 minutes. There are even secret, super-hard worlds to play in. Plus, everyone's heard of Mario so it's not like getting an unknown accomplishment in some tiny niche game.

The first one was written in a Timmy perspective. The second one was written in a Spike perspective. A Timmy player sees the game as an experience for him. It's fun to play Mario to experience all that Mario has to offer. A Spike player sees the game as a challenge for him. It's fun to play Mario because there is a real accomplishment in beating Mario.

...I want to get across that it's not that the Spike player doesn't enjoy Mario because Mario is fun. Of course he plays Mario because Mario is fun. But Spike derives as much or more pleasure in Mario because completing Mario is a real accomplishment. Timmy might never complete Mario and still have a blast. Spikes will complete speed runs of Mario in under 20 minutes or beat entire worlds without dying. Timmy might never collect 120 Shines. Spike will definitely have close to them all.

Since the purpose of this article is simply to introduce the two terms, I won't go much more in depth than now. But think about this... Remember those Giant Huge Ridiculous Koopa in the Giant World in Mario? If you gaped and said 'Awesome!' because Giant Ridiculous Koopa are awesome, that's a very Timmy feeling. If you gaped and said 'Awesome!' because Giant Ridiculous Koopa are much more of a challenge to beat, that's a very Spike feeling.

If you gaped and said 'Awesome!' because you were wondering how awesome it would be if you could use those Giant Ridiculous Koopa SHELLS to wreak havoc, you might be a Johnny... (to be continued.)

An Introduction...

Welcome, to my... tentatively titled... wasted effort.

The purpose of this blog is to keep a track of my various thoughts and views on game design without actually having to ramble on *at* someone and possibly bore them to death. I warn thee, gentle reader, in advance, that a lot of these thoughts should not be taken at face value. Indeed, most of these probably contain as much fallacious reasoning as any other. I speak only from my experience, not from anyone else's. That said I hope you find this stuff interesting or that it resonates with you.