Keep it Boring

As I'm going to be awy from my computer for the next few days I'd just like to make a plea to all those who generally post lots of interesting items on their sites: Try to keep it down so that I don't have too much to read when I return.

I'm taking my camera with me to ECTS and EGN and will also be taking notes, so I'll likely do some kind of report at the weekend. If I have time. I'm also away for a few days next week, so part of the weekend will be spent preparing for that.

Have hardly spent any time playing games over the last two weeks. When I haven't been working at the computer I've been watching the Olympics. The standard of coverage has been excellent with such variety that it's difficult not to be impressed by the extremely high level of competition and the skill and dedication of all the competitors. I can't wait to see the next one in four years' time.

Developing Thoughts

The latest column, this time on the subject of dialogue, has just been published over at the Randomville site.

"While there are many games that handle dialogue very well, others contain character speeches that really don’t fit the true meaning of the word dialogue."

Comic Strip Updated

The latest edition of my gaming-related comic strip, Dane & Joe has just been published on the Just Adventure site, here.

The Real Reason Games Aren't As Good As They Used To Be

I've just been reading a piece about the potential episodes 7, 8 and 9 of the Star Wars series. Regardless of whether the films will ever be made or not, such speculation always strays into how bad episodes 1 and 2 were. I'm not convinced that we wouldn't have been equally enamoured of the first trilogy if it had started with episode 1 back in 1977.

While it is possible to tell stories in a non-sequential manner, when attempting to do so in a format that relies on a very traditional method of story telling it simply doesn't work. I believe that a major part of the disappointment of the newer Star Wars films is the fact that we know how it "ends" we have seen these films' future. We knew that Anekin would survive because he becomes Darth Vader (if you didn't know this, where have you been?) and Obi-Wan lives to a reasonably good age. We knew the relationship between Luke and Darth, so we could easily work out the relationship between Anekin and Amidala almost instantly. With no story tension is there any wonder it falls flat? It's like reading the last chapter of a novel first and then wondering why you didn't enjoy reading the rest of it.

The same is true of television. People constantly complain that TV isn't as good as it used to be (you may see where I'm going here, if not please be patient), but I don't think that's really the case. I believe that it's because they know too much. Magazines and tabloid newspapers constantly run features on TV programmes where they give away important story lines well in advance, so when people watch it there are no surprises and they come away disappointed.

This is the fundamental problem with today's games. We all know way too much about new games before we ever get to play them. Way too many screenshots are published on the internet and in gaming magazines so that when you come to play the game you end up being disappointed because there is nothing new to discover. There is nothing better in a game than discovering a completely new area, either as part of the unfolding story or by beating the end of level boss. When that new level isn't new because you've seen fifty shots from it plastered over the internet, then your gameplay experience is reduced.

I think that the approach that Doom3 and Half-Life2 have taken where the exposure is restricted have really worked in the favour of the games. People get more hyped up because they are seeing so little. Perhaps when the industry matures a little more we will have a more mature approach to marketing than simply throwing out fifty new screenshots every month.

Running before I can walk

I've never been very good at following examples in order to learn. What I mean is that if a tutorial for a new piece of software has been written to show my how to do something very simple, you can guarantee that before the tutoial is over I will have subverted it to my own ends and have done something more complex or something that interests me. Why should I use the tutorial to create what everyone else doing the tutorial has done? Where is the creativity in that? Hello World? Please, can't you come up with something better than that?

Part of what I think is behind this is the fact that reading about how to do simple things often means I understand how to do it just in the reading, so when it actually comes to doing it myself I'm ready to move on to something more complex. Another part is because software tends to follow along similar principles because it would be foolish to do otherwise. What would be the point of developing a windows application that didn't make use of the established vocabulary of such things as copy, paste, etc?

I was thinking about the above in terms of gameplay. We clearly see that certain games have established a common vocabulary of interface, which means that if you enjoy a particular genre it's easier to play a new game in that genre because you aren't fighting the interface. The downside of this can be that as an experienced player you may feel that the first section of a game may be too easy if it's designed to introduce the uninitiated into the way the game works.

We should never disregard the new player when designing a game, but it's really difficult to know where to put the tutorial. Should it be a completely separate section so that the experienced can get stuck straight into the action without the need to refer to this? Or should it be an intergral part of building the player's involvement with the character(s) and story at the same time as introducing the different aspects of gameplay in a controlled manner?

Show off!

As I write this I can see a small aircraft doing aerobatic stunts in the evening sky. Although whoever is doing it is pretty good, the noise of it is disturbing the beautiful peace of a Sunday evening. This morning the peace was broken by a Spitfire doing some aerobatics nearby, which seemed more than a little bizarre...

It's been a beautiful day and I even managed to dig a new trench for the path I'm re-laying. Need to get some hardcore before I can finish it off. One thing about physical exercise is that it helps clear your mind when you have so much running through it you can't think straight.

Just watched the women's marathon from the Olympics. An excellent win for the Japanese athlete (whose name I've forgotten, sorry), but Britain's Paula Radcliffe (the favourite) dropped out with about 5Km to go.

Comfort

Just bought myself a new chair. It got to the point with the old one that I was no longer comfortable with it and as I'm a person who doesn't work well at the computer if I'm not feeling right, I decided that rather than risk long term problems I would bite the bullet and buy a new chair. Now I'm just testing it out, making sure that it's at the perfect angle for typing. Though it's so comfortable that I may just sleep in it tonight...

Developing Thoughts

It's Friday, so that means a new Developing Thoughts column has just been published over on the Randomville site. See what I have to say about characters.

Shelf Life

It often seems to me that games are marketed and promoted as though they only expected to have a short shelf-life. Considering that most consoles have a four or five year life span and some are backwards compatible, this seems like a very short-sighted approach to me.

Increasingly I go into Game and see that the titles are arranged on the shelves in a way that's increasongly reminiscent of a bookshop, particularly in the budget PC section, which more often than not displays the game cases with the spines facing outwards to maximise shelf space and show the customer the titles more easily. The potential for holding games on the shelves for longer and allowing the customer to find just what they are looking for is on the verge of making a big difference, but perhaps needs a little more work in order for it to succeed.

In a bookshop, the books are usually sectioned very clearly into non-fiction and fiction and then sectioned off still further for crime, horror, science fiction, etc. Perhaps the game shops need to use this as a way of providing an easier way of the customer getting to the games they want to buy.

If, for instance, the PC games were divided up into FPS, RTS, RPG, Platform, Adventure and so forth, the customer who goes into the shop looking for an FPS doesn't have to trawl through all the games in order to find something suitable.

Many within the industry complain that games are not reaching a wider market, but for the inexperienced, looking though the games in a shop can be very bewildering at times. If you're in the market for something specific it's easy to get frustrated and walk out of the shop not having made a purchase at all.

Perhaps publishers and retailers could get together and work out how the categorisation approach may work best to improve the way that games are sold to the customer.

Losing posts

I'm sorry that posts haven't been appearing very often this week, but I have been trying to update the blog. I created two longish posts over the last two days and both were lost in the process of posting. Something in the Blogger system seems to be screwing up on a regular basis. Often posts are saved and can be republished by trying again at a later time, but this week they've just been disappearing altogether. So my great words of wisdom ( :) ) have been lost forever...

Good Design Day

Not necessarily a day of good design (though, of course, I hope so) but a day of design work that's been very good. Not only did I finish my first pass of the GN12 proposal, I also finished off a five-page idea outline that only started life after a coversation I had with someone in the latter half of last week.

These two games are very different in style which has enabled me to bouce back and forth between them both over the last few days with no possibility of overlap. The characters are different, the setting is very different and the gameplay has very little in common with each other.

The new idea is very clear and already I can see the world in my head - I even drew a map. I'm actually a little over-whelmed by the speed it's all started coming together and falling into place.

Developing thoughts

The latest of my weekly columns has just been published on the Randomville site.

Excerpt

Thoughts turned over and over in a mind that had no means of acting upon them, trapped in a ceaseless, yet timeless existence. Utter madness and clear sanity alternated with one another in an endless cycle repeating without measure. With no frame of reference it was impossible to tell how long the succession had been taking place, how many iterations had passed by.

The madness brought with it a forgetfulness that was its kindest feature; the sanity, in its turn, brought clear insights that, after a time, created a longing for the madness to return. Which of course it did, and the mind forgot its troubles for a time...

The clearest moments of lucidity held the greatest despair, for the mind always returned to thoughts of the true situation and how there was no escape from its imprisonment. How there was nothing to look forward to but the thoughts themselves, falling over each other forever – of an endless series of circular reasoning that spiralled into repeating insanity.

Of an eternity without the contact of others.

A mind could play tricks on itself when thinking of others. Did they even exist any more? Had they ever existed? Was their memory simply a construction of the mind brought about by being deprived of contact? Or was the lack of contact simply punishment meted out for crimes the mind could no longer remember?

A mind, given enough time and unstable sanity, could imagine the most despicable of injustices being served up in the name of punishment.

A mind could plan revenge to the tiniest detail.

Dane & Joe

For those of you who don't know, Dane & Joe is a gaming and computer related comic strip that I've been creating, on and off, for over a year. The latest strip has just been published over at the Just Adventure+ site.

More design work

Spent much of yesterday working on game design ideas for SC1. This is a fun title indeed and such was the high time I was having that I managed to fit in some work on the dialogue for the first section. I always get a buzz from writing dialogue, particularly when it went as well as it did yesterday. No doubt there will be much to do before I'm totally happy with it, but the flavour was flowing well and the characters are becoming well-established.

Spent most of today working on the GN12 proposal - developing the interface and mechanics some more. Sometimes that can be so frustrating when I'm trying to think everything through. Just when I thought I'd got the perfect mouse and key combinations for one aspect of the game, I realised that there was a conflict with another and that if I wanted to combine the two (which I did) I had to think it through again. Luckily the solution wasn't as major as it could have been and now I'm pleased with the result.

Spent this evening putting the polishing touches to my weekly column.

Experience

You look at job adverts in magazines and you can bet your bottom dollar that the company involved will be asking for experience. But for a writer, what does that experience involve? Is it simply the experience of having put pen to paper (so to speak) previously? Or is it the greater experience that comes from having a life for the last however many years?

So with that in mind, here's a little something that sprung into my thoughts unbidden.

A number of years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I used to work for a company called Mecca as assistant manager in their bingo clubs. Over a period of two years I moved around a number of clubs in the south west region of England. I became proficient in all kinds of weird tasks - calling the numbers, selling the books, managing the bar, and so forth.

Near the beginning of one posting, the club I was working in wasn't the most up-to-date and had no electronic display for the prize money. This meant that before each game someone had to go up on the stage and post up the prize money by hand. This particular evening the job fell to me and from the very first moment I stepped upon the stage everyone in the club started to laugh. At first I thought nothing of it and assumed that it was something to do with the fact that I was relatively new. When it continued I became a little worried and began to check my flies and looked in the miror to see if I had anything wrong with my face (aside from the regular stuff). I could see nothing.

The end of the evening session came and, exhausted, I made my way to the office to get changed out of the evening jacket I wore. Imagine my surprise when I found that someone had taped a huge L-plate (learner driver) onto the back of my jacket without me even noticing.

Inappropriate

My partner, June, was reading the paper and suddenly announced, "Fay Wray's died."

"King Kong finally got her?" was my immediate response.

"She was ninety-six," June said, ignoring my remark.

"She's bound to have slowed down a bit, then."

This is the way your mind has to think if you want to write and design games for a living...

Don't blame the scripting, blame the design

Over at Game Girl Advance there is a piece on the Perils of Scripting. While I agree that the monsters-appearing-from-behind-a-secret-door idea seems weak, it's not the problem of the scripting but of the design. You can only script what's been designed, after all.

The problem with secret panels opening to reveal the monsters behind is how do you rationalise it within the context of the world you've created? Why on earth are there secret panels in the first place? Who built them and for what purpose? Who on earth put the monsters behind the panels ("Just hide in here will you, please?") and set up the triggers? How on earth did they know you were going to be coming along and from that direction? If you can't answer these questions, then the world that's been created isn't as believable as the creators would like to think.

European Games Network

As well as registering for ECTS, I have just registered for EGN, too. If anyone is going who'd like to get together to talk business, then please get in contact.

Educational Standards are Lowering

The Guardian website has an article on the lowering of educational standards in British universities to the point where some people are questioning whether the qualifications they provide are worth the paper they are written upon.

Certainly, I've seen portfolios and showreels that look as though they've been put together by a fourteen-year-old rather than someone leaving university in their early twenties. Sometimes these samples come with glowing references from tutors who seem to think that the person involved will be a fine addition to any professional team. The reality is that a good amateur team would be loath to take them on, so why aren't university standards much higher?

This isn't just a worry for the games industry, but for all industries. And even worse for the genuinely talented students. It could be that certain universities are going to become "untouchable" to employers and students from those places may well find it's difficult even getting an interview because of where they studied.

Developing Thoughts

The latest of my weekly columns has been posted here.

"This week’s column was actually going to be about something else entirely, but I felt that I was in danger of taking myself too seriously (particularly after the sombre nature of the last column) and decided it was time to lighten up and have some fun. After all, that’s what games are meant to be about. Aren’t they?"

Wrong scoring system

How many times have you seen a gaming review site give a score of 3.5/5 (3.5 out of 5) or something similar? Aside from the fact that it just looks a little odd written down like that, it strikes me that they are "breaking a rule" of their own system.

Surely the original intention of choosing a five point scoring system was that they would only ever be giving scores that were in fixed large increments? If there are regular reviews with .5 increments, I can't help but feel that the site should have chosen to go with points out of 10. The 3.5 would then become 7/10, which just looks better on the page to me.

Of course, I've also seen sites which give scores like 8.4/10, which suggests to me that they should be using a percentage system...

Fun with game design

I'm just having a break after a productive morning workin on both RC1 and SC1. I'm having some real fun with these designs and the characters are shaping up nicely:

Danny: Don't worry yourself over it. I'll find the proof we need.
Estelle: You?! You couldn’t find the floor unless it was covered in beer.

It was a little strange at one point because I'd be typing up something in one document and I'd get an idea for the other project and have to quickly switch over to the other document. then the reverse would happen and I must have been flying back and forth between the two like crazy. Because they are very different styles of games, there is no chance that they become confused and so it's actually a way of each one catalysing the other.

GN12 and other projects

Spent quite a lot of today doing some work on Game Number 12, fleshing out the mechanics and interface ideas. I'm rather pleased with the way it's coming together. I've been thinking about the balance of the game and the way that some of the different aspects will come together in order make the balance right. It's funny that I'm in the middle of deciding what the right mouse button will do under one specific set of circumstances when suddenly it occurs to me that I haven't even made a mention of how to do the basics of simply walking around the world. It's easy to take things for granted and while moving around the world isn't offering anything new, it always has to be stated so that there can be no questions left hanging.

I also managed to spend a couple of hours developing some ideas for two other projects, RC1 and SC1. These are both games with a humorous slant, but very different in style. I love working on more than one thing at a time because it means that I'm never stuck. If I have problems in one project I can simply switch over to another one for a short time and it usually works out that by the time I return to the first one the solution will have presentied itself in a timely manner.

Guardian Games Blog

The Guardian Games Blog went live today and has certainly started off spritely. However, you need to register to post comments and the page on which to register is down for some reason. Not a good start to that side of things...

In the garden

Spent most of the day in the garden doing physical things to trees and hedges or sitting and reading Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors.

Working in the garden can be very gratifying, knowing that I'm somehow controlling my own little bit of nature and in the process making the gardn a pleasure to be in, particularly when reading a good book. Sometimes my mind becomes too filled with all my own stuff and just to have a break from that and come down to earth again is a breath of fresh air (all puns intended).

However, my mind being what it is, I should have known it couldn't leave me alone for long and as I sat at one point, enjoying a cool drink, thoughts began to turn over. I began to have an idea for a story set in a garden, starting from the very point I was at that moment. So, what could I do but grab a pad from the house and start jotting down some notes before the ideas fled my flighty mind.

As I look at the piece of paper sitting in front of me now I realise that I need a proper hook for the story. My notes concentrate on the setting without the real meat of the story itself coming through. As I have so many other things to do at the moment, I shall let it play out in the subconscious (and murky, I often suspect) realms of my mind and I'm sure that it will resolve itself.

In between all that, I actually managed to sketch up one of my cartoon strips. I may get the inking done this evening. If so, I'll colour it tomorrow...