Category: Games

I don’t often do link lists but I have a few articles to share.

• After spending some time with NI’s television industry yesterday, I have to give a shout out to Greg Darby, Philip Morrow, Colin Williams and Michael Hewitt. It was good to see the TV industry united under a single cause. I would welcome many more of the indies to rally together.
• Slightly related is a C21Media article with notes from Gamesbrief director Nicholas Lovell on what TV companies get wrong when making games about their IP
  1. It’s not about story
  2. Find the fun
  3. Make it iterative
  4. Commission earlier
  5. Have a post-transmission plan
  6. Games are about retention
  7. Make it free, make it profitable
  8. Don’t think about revenue after the design
  9. Cater to the whales
  10. Learn

  And to understand those, read the article.

• A poignant tweet by RocketCat Games:
  

  Things that the game industry will never bother to touch (short list): Emergence, player agency, permadeath. It’s up to modders/small devs.

  Emergence – The development of solutions and strategies not originally designed by the creators of a game, using provided tools in novel ways. This can also include social mechanics (without in-game rules) that are supported by players; e.g. the notion of conduct or fair play. (Wikipedia)
  Player Agency: – “the feeling of empowerment that comes from being able to take actions in the [virtual] world whose effects relate to the player’s intention” and it “depend[s] on what’s going on in the interactor’s head, on what’s communicated between the technical system and the person, not only on technical facts like counting the number of system actions that are available at each moment.” [Quote: Micheal Mateas]
  Permadeath – a situation in which player characters (PCs) die permanently and are removed from the game as opposed to having the option of restoration. The implication of a consequence to actions resulting in permadeath can create new emergent gameplay. (Wikipedia)

While surfing around, I spotted this. It’s a spoof of the Left 4 Dead game mechanic re-told in terms of Super Mario Brothers. The irony being that it helps you realise that the episodic content of Left 4 Dead is just Mario, regurgitated for your pleasure (and with zombies).

which reminded me of…

An 8 bit re-make of Little Big Planet. This is kinda what Minecraft already delivers (in pixelated 3D). But making it 2D could be a lot of fun as well. The joy, in terms of the player enjoyment, is not only the variety of backgrounds and scenarios but also the customisation of characters which would involve the player a lot more (because it’s theoretically easier to place pixels than to build 3D models). Games like Cordy or Paper Monsters deliver some of this but without the 2D charm.

You feel like you’re watching a Mario clone. The backgrounds are different but the object of the game is the same. Jump this, solve that and do it quickly before the time runs out.

So, if you had to make a 2D version of the rather brilliant Mirror’s Edge on iPad game, it would look like this. Not surprisingly similar to the iPad version, really, and miles better, IMO, than the First Person Shooter version that I have on PS3. The touch controls, especially, make this game a little bit special.

You can see more of this on 8-Bit Demakes..

What I’d like to do, probably this summer, with some of our university and college students, is have an 8-bit remake Game Jam. A couple of teams, a few great programmers, a selection of students and industry people and let’s make some 8-bit de-makes of classic (or just popular) games.

Paul Wedgewood, Splash Damage, talking about Player Engagement:

“You’ll have seen this recently with games like Mass Effect 3 — we really think that the future of video game development and content marketing is going to rely on you being able to take a general idea for a universe and bring it to lots of different platforms so people can enjoy it in different ways and at different times,” he says.

“It’s frustrating to be obsessed with a fantastic free-to-play game on PC, and then not be able to do anything when you’re on your iPhone, or in a browser, and so on.”

This is why forums matter so much. My brother and I share an interest in video games though, in my opinion, he takes it to a level that I simply cannot. Joining clans, producing training videos…

There are lots of ways to make this easier for players to interact with your game (their friends, their clans, their loadouts) and the game world (the factions, the supply chains, the narrative) when not in front of the main console.

If your game is good, players will seek out ways to interact with it. The trick is to make it possible for them to easily create their own ways to interact. You can make it easy to record games, to produce screenshots, to post their own content within the game (like the Spray command in Valve games), the individual customisation of characters, creation of emergent virtual currencies (the ‘hats‘ thing). Let them love you.