The Two Minute Look at STO

As seen on my FB wall:

this is where i was disappointed with STO and where i hope it will go as I know this is a longer term design thing.

to me, Star Trek is about three things, and I list them in order of what I feel is important: exploration, creativity (here, meaning creative choices), action.

STO definitely has some measure of action, it is combat oriented.

There’s some exploration, but it’s very structured. The random quest generator is okay in this area but not enough. I think EVE actually does a really good job with exploration. You’ve skills and probes, which you triangulate in space and then let them do the work for you. It becomes a really interesting mini-game that can be, at times, a little frustrating. Wormhole space expands the play area tremendously. Would wormholes work in STO? maybe not, but definitely probing and exploring would. And it would fit the IP perfectly.

Creativity. I would love more opportunities to make choices with meaning in the game that have consequences. For example, let’s say a station on some planet is being blockaded by a race of ugly guys. The game could make some suggestions for me. Attack them in space. Beam down and do something nefarious to their plans. Bribe them with trilithium. Based on skill or something, the option would have a consequence. What if I’m a shitty diplomat, and I try the bribe option. I would have a low chance of success. If I fail, how will the ugly guys respond? This is actually something I’d really like to see in games in general, but I think it would really expand STO’s capabilities really nicely.

A secondary thing to creativity would be a real crafting system. But one in which I can experiment. Perhaps improve my drives, or create a new product that has some use to someone. I like collecting, and many players do as well, but giving it to some NPC on some distant sector doesn’t cut it. The current design for crafting is a really strong indicator that Atari forced Cryptic to cut corners.

Action. I’d like to see politics, treaties between differing groups, conquerable space, etc. The ability to set up stations, that kind of thing. That’s very EVE as well, but it fits with the IP and from EVE we know it’s doable and brings a whole different measure of fun to the game. And players who don’t want to be involved in that don’t have to be.

No Twinkies For You!

Ernest Adams, who’s articles we studied in my Concepts in Gaming Class (I: student, not teacher!) has published the latest in his great series of “Bad Designer, No Twinkie.” Read the tenth article in the series here.

Adams also has a No Twinkie database, which you can check out here.

new lundum dare

Lundum Dare 15 is out this weekend and the theme is caverns. I thought about it for a little bit, and the idea I came up with was building structures to prevent a cave-in, a sort of reverse World of Goo. Structures would become weak and would need additional support or fixing. Cave-ins are deadly and end your game.

best (or worst) puzzle design ever

From FAIL Blog:

If only all our designs were this FABULOUS!

Game Design Concepts Course

Challenges for Game Designers

For those of you interested in game design yet don’t have the funds to go to one of them fancy schools, designer and scholar Ian Schreiber has constructed a free online course for you to take part in. The classes are held every Monday and Thursday via a wordpress blog, and there’s also a message board and wiki available to students as well. You can find the syllabus for the course here.

For those of you simply interested in finding out what the textbook is as well as what the recommended reading are:

• Challenges for Game Designers – Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber
• Understanding Comics – Scott McCloud
• A Theory of Fun – Raph Koster

New Game Design Challenge: What You Say?

N-V-U-J

Game Career Guide published a new Game Design Challenge. The newest challenge, due on June 24, 2009, is as follows:

Design a social interaction system for a massively multiplayer game featuring friendly characters who can’t understand each other.

My vote is for semaphore-like gesturing and curling a la Help!

Freebook: Well Played 1.0

Well Played 1.0

I’ve not yet read it, but you can obtain a free copy of Well Played 1.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning from Lulu. Here’s the description:

Video games can be “well played” in two senses. On the one hand, well played is to games as well read is to books. On the other hand, well played as in well done. This book is full of in-depth close readings of video games that parse out the various meanings to be found in the experience of playing a game. 22 contributors (developers, scholars, reviewers and bloggers) look at video games through both senses of “well played.” The goal is to help develop and define a literacy of games as well as a sense of their value as an experience. Video games are a complex medium that merits careful interpretation and insightful analysis.

looking at lundum dare

Lundum Dar #14 Games

Lundum Dare #14 came and went and while I didn’t actually compete due to not coding my own game, I was very pleased with what I did do: design a very basic game using the theme LD voters came up with. That was my goal for the weekend, and I accomplished just that. I am, to be perfectly honest, quite proud of myself as I’ve been trying to inspire myself to actually use these kinds of contests not to program games, but to use my nogin to come up with designs, no matter how simple.

This was the perfect exercise for me. “Simple” and “basic” were the two most important words in my vocabulary this weekend. My tendency is to sit down and think a lot about a game design and then explode the idea. The idea then tends to float around in my head all bloated, and I never actually get around to writing it all down because I never know where to begin. By forcing myself to keep to a simple design I was able to easily craft a game that would have, had I been a coder, been something I could whip up relatively quickly and most likely well within the timeframe of this contest. Now I don’t know if my game would pass the playability feature, but that’s the beauty of keeping it simple: I would have been much more able to tweak with a simpler design than I would have if I thought it out to death.

That’s not to say that I didn’t start coming up with all sorts of complications to my basic beat-the-walls-back theme. Several times I wanted to take pen to paper, map out changes, write down ideas, but I was able to stop myself for once. The challenge for me was to keep it simple, shithead, and I’m really glad that for once I did.

I noticed that a lot of the participants ran into this problem fairly early in the competition. They most likely did not map out their concept, or if they did they weren’t thorough enough. Or, and this is another most likely, simply said to themselves, “hey, what if I add this, or let me tweak this and see…” and then get wrapped up in their work all the while leaving the basic design that should have gotten them through the first phase of coding behind.

Another thing that I noticed is that some focused on the wrong thing first, such as graphics and splash screen before they actual had a playable something (by “playable” I mean at least their basic game play functionality coded). When you have only 48 hours in which to design and code a game, don’t get caught up in pretifying the whole thing, especially if you have to playtest (another thing some competitors did not have time to do) your game.

I liked how various participates interpreted “advancing wall of doom.” Some interpreted it literally as I did, creating a moving wall or walls, some with spikes, some entirely made of flames or lava, moving towards a player. Some turned the AWOD into a maze, others, numerous spherical objects. Two (that I saw) turned the wall into a static object that the players had to climb. One created an interactive fiction game, which amused me because I had said to myself, “wouldn’t that be an interesting challenge.” Imagine my surprise when I saw someone take up that mantle!

You can check out all 121 entrants by pointing your browser here.

kevin codes “advancing wall of doom game”

Kevin has been threatening to code my game ideas for the last year or so. I had told him about the Ludum Dare contest, but he said he couldn’t design his way out of a paper bag (or something like that). So we’re unofficially teaming up on this. We can’t enter because teams are not allowed.

Kev’s design inspiration is Rogue, a game he passionately plays. He has yet to code the walls. Here’s what it looks like so far.

Advancing Wall of Doom sans walls

He’s created two difficulty levels, and you fire with the arrow keys.

Design Idea for Ludum Dare #14 Competition

The newest Ludum Dare competition has been announced for this weekend, and the theme is “advancing wall of doom.” As I’m not a coder I can’t compete, but I can still come up with an idea! So here’s mine.

• 4 wall tiles: N, S, E, W.
• avatar in middle of screen
• wall tiles advance towards avatar
• avatar shoots them back
  • 4 bullets on screen at one time maximum

advancing wall of doom concept game

• gun direction/fire:
  • W – north
  • A – west
  • S – south
  • D – east
• each hit moves wall back 1 space
• game difficulty increases with time – faster wall movement towards avatar
• end game – when a wall hits avatar

thus goes my first casual game!