So what's a young independent game designer to do? Charlie took a few months to develop a casual game - hoping that the larger market and royalties will help fuel his ideas for first-person shooters and real-time strategy games. Voila: Zen of Sudoku. Charlie is transparent about the process. It's refreshing to see how someone works hard at driving his game developer dreams.

For the last few years, I've been playing my games mostly on hard. I used to want to tour, to explore the far corners of all the levels and characters. But recently I've wanted more of a challenge, where I have to struggle through the game and overcome foes. I feel it makes me a more skilled player and invests me more in the action.

Doox and I have two different approaches to enjoying the same games. This came up in a discussion in an Interactive Media class at USC Film School. Some students were asking each other whether specific games were fun. It got kinda useless - one person's fun is another persons headache. I brought up Marc LeBlanc's "Eight Kinds of Fun" - finding more specific language to describe what we enjoy in games. I read through his list of eight: sensation / fantasy / narrative / challenge / fellowship / discovery / expression / submission.

The teacher, Erik Loyer, listened to the list, and brought up a terrific point: games today offer difficulty levels for players. What if, Loyer proposed, game designers presented a few different modes for experiencing the game?

So next time you boot up that first-person adventure RPG shooter, instead of choosing between Easy, Medium or Hard, you could choose between Tour, Expression or Challenge. It would describe more of the emphasis in the gameplay - is the game going to slack off on enemies and ease up on some puzzles to let you wander through the landscapes and architectures (Tour, or Discovery as LeBlanc calls it)? Maybe the game is going to spend more polygons on character customization, allowing the player to leave a greater impact on the world (Expression). Or maybe the focus is on foes, waves of cunning enemies testing a players resolve and the discipline of ammunition conservation.

Writing this out, it seems a great solution - game designers could build more complex titles than the game hardware can support, and allow the players to emphasize the gameplay they crave. Then the game allocates processing power to AI, architecture, or physics. Modular play! Umm, that's not sounding so great any more. Too much complexity and overhead.

It's the same problem I have with most fantasy RPGs - when a game starts, how do I know whether I want to play a thief, a fighter, or a magic user? I haven't even tested their powers or seen what the landscape looks like. Same with tour, expression or challenge - I don't know the shape of the world; how I want to play depends on the game, not the menu beforehand. Moreover, my mood might shift and I might feel like a touring break one Sunday morning, or a crazy fight after a few beers. Choosing modes of gaming based on gameplay is less broken then choosing a difficulty level, but it still ain't optimal. It's enough to make me want to study Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment! Maybe there can be Dynamic Gameplay Adjustment? Building in the game's ability to accommodate touring, expressive, or challenging players, behind the scenes.

I was somewhat cheered, glumly cheered, reading my state Senator's response:

The provision could affect millions of American women, according to Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, who warned Friday that she would use procedural tactics to slow Senate business to a crawl if the language was not altered.

"I am willing to stand on my feet and slow this thing down," Ms. Boxer said. "Everyone wants to go home, I know that, and I know I will not win a popularity contest in the Senate. But they should not be doing this. On a huge spending bill they're writing law, and they're taking away rights from women."

If you look at the skewed gender balance of the US Senate (86% men) then it makes sense that women's health issues would not receieve due process. And it seems appropriate that one of the fourteen female Senators would feel charged to put herself between this proposal and the law.

I went to bed shortly after reading about this, and I had a dream: dozens of women climbing into the Warthogs from Halo 2, riding through the streets, weilding giant alien plasma cannons. It was a brief image, but it seemed like a suitable direct response to these politics.

Then Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came out. His Sims died as he played hours as a gangsta wearing a Groucho Marx mask, riding stolen dirt bikes around fake California. It's the best GTA game yet, he argued persuasively - the music is fantastic. The mini-games are awesome, the world is huge, riding bikes is rad.

Then I bought Halo 2. He came over to my house and played hours of it with me. That was great fun, but he doesn't have an Xbox. I was happy enough with that though. Multiplayer was fantastic - waging total mayhem.

Then tonight he got on chat with me.

Aaron: man half life 2 is incredible
Justin: ?
Justin: wtf
Justin: I'm sick of new games
Aaron: yea
Aaron: but half life 2 probably eclipses them all
Justin: WTF
Justin: you gotta be kidding me
Justin: why is that?
Aaron: its just amazing
Justin: what's so amazing?
Aaron: its the most immersive interactive game world i feel like i've ever seen
Justin: ?!?!
Aaron: and just the whole world of it is so well crafted
Justin: them's big words homie
Aaron: yeah. this is far more impressive than GTA SA
Aaron: you don't even get a weapon for like the first half hour or so
Aaron: you're just sort of experiencing this world and being led around by very subtle cues
Justin: how are you supposed to immerse without a weapon?
Aaron: well you can pick up various objects and throw them around
Aaron: stack them and stuff
Justin: um
Justin: like tetris?
Aaron: yea
Justin: but with more graphics?
Justin: um
Aaron: haha
Aaron: the way the narrative is told is great
Aaron: its basically a must play
Justin: you fuck
Justin: I'm broke and tired

This just sucks.

I went back to play more City of Heroes after hearing Eddo Stern speak of his CoH addiction and hijinks there. I had a character on his server Protector; I've been on a few times in the last week now (mostly playing on my PC desktop during times when my Mac laptop is compressing video). I'm hanging out online, seeing if Eddo logs on. But I have characters and friends on other servers! If the core dynamic of MMOGs is social play, then having to choose a neighborhood to hang out in is a perfectly flawed version of the bodyless cyberspace.

Email works between any internet-connected computer and any other. And yet I log into some state of the art MMOG and I can't send an in-game message to a friend on another server? Let alone join them on an adventure, unless we each chose the same game server when we were ripping open our software boxes and logging on to the game for the first time.

I understand this has to be about server load issues, about population management, about providing a good game experience to users. I'm sure there's an essay out there about how a single-server MMOG might (or might not) be possible - that's what I'm fishing for with this post - some signs of hope that I'll be able to play with everyone who is playing the same game I am online!

Then months later, playing System Shock 2, I saw an opening sequence where a mutant chased a human survivor with a wrench, muttering insanely as the victim screamed. It was straight horror shlock, but it sent a shiver up my spine - I was wandering through a gameworld that was fucked beyond my control. Of course I was picking up guns and grenades to try to make a difference. But there was some drama in all of this!

I was arguing with some game designers, suggesting that more of these scripted sequences would make shooters and adventure games more exciting. And they were arguing in favor of emergent gameplay - give the units real brains and elaborate behaviors, and let unscripted things happen. Otherwise, they argued, the gameplay can seem too contrived.

In his Doom 3 review on Firing Squad, Jakub Wojnarowicz illustrates the perils of too much scripting:

It's not even like Half-Life where a scripted event was a rare, pleasant bonus. The levels and action in Doom III feel very alive because the scripting isn't a big deal.

Of course, all that simply highlights the fact how poorly the action is really done. It's almost beyond belief that at no time during development the team didn't stop and say "Wait, are we actually having monsters pop out from behind secret doors in walls? Wasn't this one of the lamer decisions back when we developed the original Doom?" It's not that the enemies come through the ventilation system - which they sometimes do - or are climbing above you and then drop down.

They're quite literally waiting for the player to pass by, setting off a scripted trigger, then their door opens automagically without noise and they shoot you in the back. OK, fine, you got me id, that was sneaky. Made me jump back in the seat and I needed to take a break just two hours into the game. After eight hours of that, however, the feeling of fear is replaced with irritation.

The upcoming Half-Life 2 seems to offer both rich physics, and some scripted events. From the technology demonstrations, it looked awesome - "Hey! You can shoot out that crane holding up that beam which knocks over those barrels, killing those dudes!" My third time watching it, I wondered whether that wasn't just a more elaborate form of a script, choreographed hot physics action. A sort of Buster Keaton moment where the ladder, the Model T car and the falling piano miraculously come together into hilarity.

I enjoy Buster Keaton as much as the next undergraduate film student, maybe even more. Beautiful scripting is a high form of design. Jackie Chan keeps this tradition alive - unnatural physical acting, choreography. Maybe Doom 3 didn't have too much scripting, but rather scripting that was not subtle enough, balanced by different flavors. Something else besides "Boo!"

Postscript: Wojnarowicz used this line: "id, hire some women. They know the trick - to always leave someone wanting a little more." I have mixed feelings about this. Yes, hire more women; No, women aren't fixed in sexual distance.

The reviewer has interesting things to say about scripting, so I want to quote him. But I'm concerned that that line detracts from the overall intelligence of the piece. I guess you take what insight you can get.

They're launching their effort with a call for answers to "difficult questions about video games" - belyingly basic stuff. "What is a videogame?" and "What makes a video game rubbish?" and "Where do you play games?" I'm going to take a stab at answering; mostly because I like to see new efforts to frame this medium. And it's a chance to frame a self-portrait as gamer. The call for answers is open; you can download a sheet in the right column and give their questions a stab yourself.

I tried Tyrant which added some pretty little graphics on top of NetHack-type play.

I looked at MegaMek, an old-school BattleTech hex-gaming clone. But it wasn't as drop-in-and-play friendly as Tyrant, so I could put that off.

Mostly, I'm just delighted to see that there's 814 projects in development there. A lot to check out! And that's just turn-based strategy -

But games are the best hope for the future of communication! They encourage us to grab ahold of what we see on-screen and twist it and make it ours. Literally, to play with it - to understand media, situations, all of life as something fun, to experiment with. We cast ourselves into another world, try, fail, try and succeed, and we emerge unscathed - entertained, inspired, awake and aware, prepared for technology and citizenship.

How can we see that our culture of video games stays true to this spirit of innovation? This spirit of failure and play? To keep games from being training for passivity, to ensure games remain the domain of hard-rocking innovators hell bent on making their own stories?

It may already be too late -

]]> Features 2004-07-03T14:54:13-08:00 http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2004/06/27/children_of_heroes_avatar_aesthetics.html Posting photos of your online MMOG characters is kinda like showing people baby pictures maybe? There's a measure of pride,... 637@http://www.gamegirladvance.com/ Posting photos of your online MMOG characters is kinda like showing people baby pictures maybe? There's a measure of pride, and definite investment. After seeing Professor Burke's post on City of Heroes from last month, with a picture of his own character Faust, I was inspired to foist these photos on you folks.

As I wrote in my first GGA post on City of Heroes, I was laughing and chortling and enjoying myself immensely designing my characters for this game. I like to experiment with different character types in MMOGs so I end up with a number of lower-level characters. This is fun in CoH because I get a chance to develop my character-making technique, to improve my avatar aesthetics.

	Phyrric - Technology Blaster Virtue Server My first character - let's make him look like a gleeful idiot! I thought - Phyrric, a victory that defeats. And it looks like fire - many of the powers in City of Heroes are based around the elements, so making a fire character was easy. And making him look silly, like a winner who has lost his marbles, was easy too - wide grin, silly glasses, tall hair, lines on his chest, non-sequitor radiation symbol on his chest, pink fingerless gloves, flaming metal jodhpurs, boots with fins. Then I found out I'd mispelled Phyrric (I used Google as my spellchecker) and I felt even better about the whole thing.
	Delphine - Mutant Controller Pinnacle Server You ever notice: in many role-playing games, men are the brutes and women are the enchantresses? I didn't exactly break form here - I wanted to make a more magic-type of character, and play with playing a woman. City of Heroes offers three gender choices - male, female, and giant brutish male. And astonishingly, the fashion choices for women are rather limited if you don't want her to be wearing a bikini or bustier. I was working on a mutant controller - someone who can manipulate gravity and energy to help friends and hurt foes. Powers of the mind, unknown, perhaps erratic - like the Oracle at Delphi! Delphine was her name then. Playing on this idea of someone from the Mediterranean, near the middle of the old world, I outfitted her in a mix of dark, formal Western business attire and the closest I could get to a muslim head scarf, or shadour. Beneath that, glowing eyes and a beaming third eye. Subdued pink and black colors, with just some superhero freak freak happening in her legs.
	Maggma - Magic Tanker Protector Server A friend was on Protector - I wanted a character on that server. And I wanted to play one of the thick characters that could charge into combat without fretting hit points so much. The brutish male gender-type was a natural for this style of play, and the chracter class "Tanker." It would be differently fun to play a tiny shrimpy person who was a tanker, yes, and a brutish male healer maybe. But this was not the image I had in my mind. I wanted something earthy thick and powerful. I was playing with the different effects in the character designer, the tattoos and art you could inscribe on your hero, and I found this electricity effect on his shoulders might look like lava if you colored the lines orange on a brown body. So I created this idea of a volcanic force - power of rock, power of fire. Born of unspoken magic, that's why he has those goofy glyphs on his pants, and celtic boots. I wanted him to have bare feet, but that's not an option here yet. Magic horns on his head. Deep earth tones with orange accents. This is my latest character, and probably my favorite to look at.

Part of the fun of City of Heroes is playing through these character creation choices from an aethetic point of view. Not - I'm a sneaky archer who can make robes. But I'm a volcano-inspired creature of magic who wears earth-tones. It's an important evolution in these kinds of games to be able to approach character creation from the outset as an aesthetic experience. Accordingly, the gameplay is filled with people expressing themselves, using the City of Heroes toolset to make some kind of personal statement on heroism, play and identity.

Here's a screenshot of Delphine standing with a fellow adventurer named Messiahnator, who fights with a large gun, yelling "bless you my children" as he shoots people down:

Hurrah! Atlas City is safer! Until the respawn.

At E3 earlier this month, someone handed me a copy of City of Heroes, a super-hero based MMOG from NCSoft in the US. I hadn't planned on paying much attention to the game - I have a lot to do, articles to write, moving to Los Angeles this summer. But it's a holiday, and I decided to install it and check it out. A friend saw me, "Oh," he chortled, "you're playing the widow maker!"

My impressions from the first few days of play follow.

Fortunately, Ian from Watercooler games was present, and he has written up a rather lengthy report of Education Arcade, day 1. Remarks summarized from Henry Jenkins, Wagner James Au, James Paul Gee, Warren Spector, Brenda Laurel, Kurt Squire, Amy Bruckman, Ben Sawyer, Scott Fisher, Andrew Court, Alex Chisolm, Bonnie Bracey, Todd Logan, Celia Pearce, Johnny Wilson and Tom Piper.

Mogi is brilliant because it ties the desktop web to the mobile internet. Hardcore players using web terminals can command mobile casual players to work in a team effort.

Mogi is brilliant because it anchors the reality of a massively multiplayer online game in physical space. You travel the "real" world, and as you do, you impact and interact with the virtual world. There have been other "location-based" multiplayer games that use the real world, but none have strewn items and people all over town for a pickup.

Mogi is brilliant because the gameplay is non-combative - people get started by collecting, and continue by trading. This should involve a broader range of people in more relaxing fun, meanwhile encouraging everyone who plays to engage mobile social networks in new ways.

Presumedly Mogi should be a big success. Today, it's a beta-tested French game running on a few handsets in Tokyo. In other words, Mogi should be a guiding light for the entire mobile and multiplayer online games industries.

I was on a panel at South by Southwest Interactive: The State of the Game Nation, with Sheri Graner Ray and Wagner James Au.

There are some notes from Joho the blog and from Molly Steenson.

The panel discussed three question, rather broadly. First, how do game designers shape communities and societies in online communities? Second, how do players or users respond to developer's programmatic guidance? And finally, what's in the future for virtual societies?

We only had a hour, so we glossed over these questions, but I think it went well and a surprising number of people were there for a Tuesday morning session!

Thanks again to James and Sheri for being so generous with their time and expertise.