Carrot v Stick

The value of a games length (or it's short so it sucks)

2012-01-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

Recently I was incredibly fortunate to be a part of the team for Mighty Switch Force! So far the game has gotten an incredibly warm response from the gaming community and reviewers, and as of this writing has an 83% on Metacritic and 84.4 on Gamerankings. Really I couldn't ask for a better reception for the game, even though there seems to be one universal complaint: it's too short.

(Just to be clear, my opinions don't represent those of WayForward, and a lot of this isn't definitive opinion, more introspection. I really want to open a dialogue on the matter and see what other people think using this game as a familiar example.)

Is it too short?

I emphasize the "too" because I am really curious about player expectations in our current world of gaming. Where $.99 and Free(mium) games are readily available on our phones, what are our expectations of a game and the amount of time we spend with it? Traditionally a handheld system, like a Game Boy or DS, has had smaller games than those on console, giving players little nuggets of gameplay and escapism in small session increments between the events of everyday life. I would expect no different for the 3DS, which is arguably going to be the flagship handheld system for the next 5+ years (barring "Lite" versions or alterations to the design which Nintendo always does). Also, downloadable titles are generally smaller than retail releases. So by that logic we should expect a downloadable title on a handheld device to be short, right?

As Designed?

How should we as gamers measure our expectations of a game with the intent of the creators of a game? Take for example this Nintendo Power interview with the game's Director, Matt Bozon, where he addresses the length of the game from June 2011:

Though [the levels] are longer and more action-packed than our previous Mighty titles, the total game will be somewhat shorter, and here’s why. What I love about NES-era games, and especially Contra, Journey to Silius, and Mega Man 2, is that once mastered, they can easily be beaten in a single session. Nowadays if I want the satisfaction of sitting down and “taking in” a game in one sitting, I have to look backward. We’re going to try to change that, and embrace the pocket-sized appeal that’s been lost over the years. That’s the beauty of the eShop–we can experiment with different kinds of releases and see what the players like. So prepare for gaming concentrate.

Yes, Mighty Switch Force! is a short game, but it is intentionally short. It is a game without tutorials, without padding, without unskippable dialogue exchanges, without fake longevity. It embraces the notion of getting to the essence of the fun and experiencing it uninterrupted. But in the end it's short so it sucks, right?

Michael: Okay, okay, what's better? A medium amount of good pizza? Or all you can eat of pretty good pizza?
All: Medium amount of good pizza.

Video games are most often compared to the movie industry, with big teams and big budgets working on epic audio visual experiences. But with indie developers having a platform to deliver work to consumers there are more and more parallels with musicians than ever before. Like musicians getting together and recording songs in a studio, indie devs can get together and put together a game. Traditionally in the music industry there were three kinds of releases: LP's, EP's, and Singles. LP's usually have 10+ songs and are seen as the more standard release in popular music, a full album or CD. Singles are single songs. EP's (short for Extended Play) are longer than a single but shorter than an LP and generally have 4-6 songs.

I'd like to think indie endeavors and downloadable titles are much like EP's. They contain the essence of the art in a smaller package, and without the kind of funding a big budget game, or LP, may receive, but they are also not a tiny snippet of the art like a flash game, or a single, might be.

Games do not have the kind of labels to manage expectations of content quantity the way EP's, Short Films, or even appetizers do.

You beat the game, now what?

One of the more interesting comments I am seeing are people wondering what they can do with the game now that they have beaten it. It brings to mind a few questions:

1. What do you do with any game that you have beaten?
2. Have some of these people beaten games before? I don't mean it to be harsh, but most people don't complete games and it's either a shock or unfamiliar territory. Here's an interesting read on the matter.
3. In today's games can they actually be beaten in the traditional sense because there are too many things to actually be considered complete? 1up did a great feature on this very topic.

One of the company's key goals with MSF! was to have a game people could actually beat. Some of our earlier titles were unforgiving in their difficulty at times, so we made a concerted effort that all challenging puzzles were reasonably difficult but not unfair. I feel we are incredibly successful in this because so many people have beaten the game, which is actually no small feat on the player's part and I applaud them.

But is there something more sinister and psychological than these reasons? Do people prefer simply to have a lot of content available even if they had not beaten the game? If we get 50% through a game in two hours but hit a wall of difficulty where we put the game down for hours or days (and possibly never pick it back up), do we feel the game is a better value (or just better in general) than if we had beaten 100% of the game in those same two hours? Is there a high level of value for potential game to be played even if these potential parts of the game are never played?

It's no longer art

This is an ongoing debate and a hot-button topic, and I am going there: Are games art? If the answer is "yes" then isn't judging the worth of a game based on it's length counterproductive to the notion of games being art? No other medium gets this same kind of direct scrutiny. Paintings are not better for being bigger. Songs are not better for using more instruments. Films are not better for being longer. Books are not better for having more pages. Great chefs are not determined by how much food they can cram on a plate.

Rothko is a great artist because his paintings are huge.

When you begin to value an artistic medium and it's pieces of art based on the amount or size of content provided instead of intent of the creator or artist, the message relayed or the experience that is had, then the medium ceases to be art.

Time heals all wounds

In the end our "game length = value" is upended years after the release of a title in question. Ico and Portal are both games clocking in at around the 4 hour mark for someone playing through on their first time, and both titles were dubbed "short" when they were released. But years after their release the length of the game is no longer a factor in determining whether or not it is a great game. They are revered for their creativity and the overall experience the player has with the game.

I'll shut up now

It's funny to think that 10 years ago a game like Mighty Switch Force! would be released for the GBA at $30, and in those 10 years our expectations as consumers has obviously, and quite fairly, changed. I know mine has. But it leaves me wondering what our expectations are going to be 10 years from now?

Ultimately I think hearing a few people out in the world wishing for more game is a good thing. They saw the entirety of the game, got a taste of something wonderful, and want more! Any great song, any great meal, any great story always leaves the masses wanting more.

Mighty Switch Force in Nintendo Power

2011-12-13T20:27:00.000-08:00

Stopped by the local magazine store tonight and caught a glimpse of the Mighty Switch Force full page preview in the new Nintendo Power, featuring a layout of level 4 from the game I put together. It's pretty satisfying to see this finally getting some coverage. It has been the object of my undivided attention for the last 4 months and one of the best games I have ever worked on.

If It's Not One Thing, It's Another

2011-03-16T08:54:00.000-07:00

Fair warning, spoilers ahead. Now on with it!

Bulletstorm. I bought it for my wife for Valentine's Day and she absolutely loved it. It is an incredibly fun and over the top game. One of the things my wife really liked (aside from the Acid Rain skillshot) was the character Trischka, the strong female lead with a mouth like a sailor. My wife absolutely loved being able to play a game with a strong female character who isn't rubbing your face with her breast or ass cleavage at every opportunity (aside from Halo Reach's Kat).

This is of course thanks in no small part to Tanya Jessen who specifically said "...Trischka’s character is very much a product of me because I wanted a strong female character that wasn’t stereotypically hot." I too once had a huge debate on what "sexy" really is, and argued vehemently to subdue the sluttyness of a female character we were creating for a world where all the men looked like they dressed themselves, yet the women looked like they were dressed by a 12 year old whose fantasy had materialized in front of them. I was pretty blown away by how strongly I was being fought, and ultimately we didn't get the game, but I'm sure it was for unrelated reasons.

So of course after my wife's new-found fandom for Trischka I felt like buying her Trischka's outfit for her Avatar. And what I found was this:

"Daddy's Girl". This is shitty. Here is why: 1) It is revealing a spoiler, albeit a minor one, prominently as a decoration on the shirt. 2) It doesn't match the in-game character. That should be argument enough not to create this thing in the first place. 3) It perpetuates a "girl gamer" stereotype. Not every female gamer has a gamertag like "GamingGurlOMG", "HaloCutie1983", "HottieMcKillstreak", and it's frustrating for women who consider themselves just "gamers" and not "girls" first and "gamers" second. But that's a whole can of worms I don't feel like getting into just yet. I'll save it for another time.

I really believe that if I were in Tanya Jessen's shoes, and I fought for months to create a badasss character and shared the harrowing experience with the world, I would be infuriated to have my character relegated to a stereotype.

Of course, one of my biggest complaints as an artist and designer is ruining a character design, so I thought I would share some ideas for other really cool avatar outfits.

First up: Ghost from Modern Warfare 2

It really defines his character, right? I'm sure I would have bought this outfit if only it revealed such a key component to the story.

Next: John Marston from Red Dead Redemption

Here we have a beautiful bullet hole pattern to constantly remind you of your eminent demise.

Last and certainly least is Alan Wake:

No real spoilers here, but who wouldn't want a stylish reminder of what makes you so important? Yeah, FLASHLIGHT! (I didn't play Alan Wake, sorry.)

These are all the ones I could think up and have the time to make. Anyone have any better ideas?

The problem with game credits

2011-01-13T03:34:00.000-08:00

I have a problem with game credits, and it isn't just people not getting recognized for the work. It's that a multitude of games' credits can not be accessed without playing through the game, which itself can be a laborious and time consuming task. I would argue that a large percentage of people who have their name in the game credits wouldn't be able to access them at all. There is no requirement for a standardized "credits" at the beginning of games, but it is impressive how common it is to see this these days and I applaud it, there are still games being published today where credits are not available from the outset.

To make matters worse publishers are rarely putting credits into manuals. So if you do happen to get a copy of a game which isn't a cartridge or disc only, there is no guarantee you can show off to anyone without needing to power on the game.

My other issue comes from a spot of love. I absolutely love IMDB.com and visit it regularly to look things up. I often find myself lost in a twisted web of looking into people and who they have worked with in past projects, and I become fascinated with the knowledge. So it begs the question for me: Where is our gaming IMDB? There is MobyGames.com, but for some reason I don't think of it as being on the same plane as an IMDB. Maybe that is my fault for not getting their layout or flow, but it feels like a site from 10 years ago.

As for me, I have vowed to make game credits accessible from some main menu of every game I ever work on. I feel that anyone who has worked on a game should be able to power up the game and show anyone they want without much hassle. If I had more sway, I would also print all the credits in a game manual, but I don't have publisher money so there is only so much I can do on this one. I have only directed two games, and the first one never had accessible credits built into any front-end menus, and it is one of the bigger regrets I have on the project.

My Love For Dark Water

2010-08-31T23:55:00.000-07:00

It was recently announced that the complete series of "The Pirates of Dark Water" is being released to DVD. Wired.com is having a little contest to win a free copy of the DVD, so rather than spend my money to support one of the most important pieces of media in my life, I will put wear my heart on my sleeve instead. I mean, I don't have to write about only video games, right?

"Dark Water" first appeared as a 5 part kind of mini-series on afternoon TV while I was in the 5th grade. I remember the Monday it came on the air: I was home sick with laryngitis, which was such a shock to me at the time because I had never had it before. So I basically got to sit at the house all day playing with toys and video games and watching TV. By Thursday I felt fine, but the show was being aired at 2:00 and school didn't let out until 3:00, and after four days of sitting around in pajamas watching this new amazing show I wasn't about to miss the last episode so I lied and said I was still sick. That was the first and only time I missed a complete week of school, and it was a serendipitous one.

5th grade was my height of fascination with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I had fashioned myself as an artist amongst the kids at school and extensively drew Ninja Turtles, and only Ninja Turtles. And then came Dark Water...

I remember being immediately amazed by this world. It was fantasy, but it didn't feel like what I thought of as "typical" fantasy worlds like The Hobbit or Legend. I never liked horses, never cared for fairies, and didn't like how everything felt old-english and ostensibly in the middle ages of Earth. The setting and tone of Dark Water shaped my create sensibilities to think of fantasy worlds and picture them as planets in other solar systems. To pull worlds and ideas from something like Star Wars (with binary solar systems and forest moons) and think of those worlds in their respective ancient times. By and large the look and setting of the show really made me more of a critical thinker in terms of fantasy and inspired years and years of world and character development which now comprises dozens of sketchbooks and multiple filing cabinets in my home.

Of course these lofty aspirations had a very carbon copy starting point. I don't remember the specific time, but either the week of the show's first airing or the following week I broke from the mold of TMNT and drew my first "original" concept. I called it "(Austin Ivansmith's) The 4 Rulers of Izon: the Three Rubies of Zarkon." I was elated with the work I had done. It was my first attempt at drawing humans, coming up with original names for them, and naming the world itself. And most of all, I did it all in one try without much erasing or re-dos. It was a complete success from start to finish, and I imagine if I had messed up in any major way I would have given up and never tried again. As any good 5th grader would do, I drew it on yellow lined paper and stapled all the sheets together to make it a complete set to show off to friends and family.

I created a cover page, complete with the signature sword which looked nothing like the one in the Dark Water logo.

The four heroes sail the globe in their own ship, getting into adventures along the way. From left to right:

Longwing was like Niddler, but with an attitude. He was sick of monkeybirds being complete morons and wanted to prove there were a few brave souls amongst them. He is outfitted with a crossbow and even wears a stylish medallion.

Martin is the son of the king of Izon but does not know it. He is a great warrior with a sword, bow and arrow, or even a knife. He has a small stud and small hoop earring in his left ear, and his fashionable shirt features the red forked tongue.

Gardeina is not your stereotypical woman. She is a tough fighter but still wears a pink outfit. Really my first foray into the idea that a woman does not need to be helpless. When I created this name I was sure it was 100% original.

Arrowhead is a master marksman. He was once a warrior for Cleaton (as you can see by his elbow and knee pad) but has changed his ways. He has bigger hooped earrings and his hair covers his eyes.

Then there is the group of enemies (which I stapled before the heroes page. Good job me)

Cleaton is the baddest dude in all of Izon. He captains his own ship and has a slew of soldiers at his disposal. He of course has a bare chest and beard, the signs of a brutish evil man. His right eye is dead and petrified, and looks like a piece of onyx in the socket (really the only cool thing I came up with.) He is not big and fat, because I didn't feel that added any fear to the equation.

Sluth is a vicious right hand man to Cleaton. Despite him being of very small stature, I never thought of it as a disadvantage to him. I gave him a deformed face because it made him look more evil, like the monsters from the Last Starfighter. And the peg-leg is made of metal like the arm of Colossus from Marvel comics. I never pictured him being scrappy in any way, just shorter.

Cleaton's Soldiers have a uniform which has some kind of padded chest armor, dark pants and shirts, and some kind of evil hockey masks. I liked this idea a lot because it reminded me of Stormtroopers or the Foot Clan; faceless drones.

This little piece of art really was the impetus for years of character and story development. I spent countless hours drawing in class when I should have been taking notes. I failed many tests and a few classes because I preferred to draw over doing anything else. I was offended when someone called it "doodling", because each drawing had a purpose; each character was integral to the world, and each drawing I made told their story and spoke volumes to their importance. After graduating from high school and not having any boring classes to draw in during lectures I found myself drawing less and less, and spending more time helping to take care of the family (and grow up, I guess. But I still have all the stories in the back of my head and plan on putting together something featuring them, someday.)

I really owe a lot to Dark Water because it was the first, biggest influence on me creatively, inspiring me to create worlds of my own and pursue the idea of being more than just a passive viewer; It drove me to be creative. The unique worlds and style really set a creative tone for me I carry to this day, always looking for a more unique approach for any unique piece of art or story I create. I always loved the show and knew it was important to me, but I never really tried putting it into words before and I am glad that I did, because now I know more than ever how important Dark Water is to my life and I will cherish the memories of it forever.

Why all the swearing?

2010-08-19T22:24:00.000-07:00

Recently I was touting the amazing time I am having with Monday Night Combat to my buddy at work: "Oh man me and the wife were playing split screen and shooting a bunch of robots and it's so worth the money because can play online or locally" and then my jaw melted and fell of my face. So yeah, it is a face melting good time, but he asked "Can I play it with my 7 and 9 year old kids?" Sure there is violence, but is there any swear words in the game? I think the answer is "no" and that it is safe to play in that regard, but should swearing be the deal-breaker?

As for me, 10+ years ago I played Perfect Dark with my younger brother all the time. I was somewhere around 20 years old at the time, and he was about 8. Our favorite thing to do was team up against a couple of tough sims, handguns only, and turn on slo mo. It allowed him time to react to what was going on around him and created some really intense moments while waiting for the aiming reticule to make its way across the face of the opponent. All around a lot of laughs were had, some digital blood was shed, all the while not a swear word was heard (not even during any of my temper tantrums.) Now if the game had swearing in it, we would never have played.

To some people this may seem odd: why would someone care about swearing and not about the guns, violence, or death? To me the answer is simple: The violence in games, no matter how realistic they are trying to be, is stylized, but words are not.

Swearing is relatively new to the gaming industry. Early on the only games which prominently featured swearing were also full of other adult themes. Games like the Grand Theft Auto series where characters talked about having sex, doing drugs, and killing. The game was already so full of adult content that the swearing fit right in, both in the narrative cut-scenes and in the everyday shouting of the people roaming the streets. It felt as natural as watching the Sopranos or the Godfather; the swearing accentuated the tone of everything. But some games with swearing just feel like a 13 year old trying to be cool by swearing a lot but not really saying anything.

There are two things recently which really made me think about the swearing in the content: Nip/Tuck and Crackdown.

Nip/Tuck was a series on FX featuring a lot of sex, a lot of drama, some killing, and a lot of graphic plastic surgery. My wife only recently started (and not long-after stopped) watching the show on Netflix, and I got suckered into joining her on a few occasions. By all accounts the show is incredibly adult in nature, but there is really no more swearing to speak of compared to other shows on network TV (other than the ONE "shit"-bomb per episode they are allotted.) I sat in amazement as characters grew more and more angry at each other (or when a sexy nympho looked into the eyes of the hunk of man-meat star just before banging), and I waited for their lips to make a ripped paper sound with their upper teeth against their lip, but the fffff's never came. It is strange to see, but the kicker is: it works! Shows like this, and some good network dramas, illustrate that swearing isn't necessary to add impact to language.

Which brings me to my other example: Crackdown. For the sake of argument, lets compare Crackdown to Halo. Both games do not feel like M rated games to me. The colors are bright, the characters are heroic, and the deaths of the enemies are very "ragdoll" and only occasionally have a blood splatter, but the splatter feels small, quick, and insignificant; to me they feel no more violent than a good PG-13 action film. I can play Halo online with the TV blasting at any time of day and not worry about offending prudes in my vicinity. But Crackdown is another story. Random pedestrians drop the f-bomb on numerous occasions, and it feels completely out of place for the tone of the rest of the game. Friends of mine can't play that game in their home during regular hours of the day because random profanity coming from the speakers will go against the house rules they set up with their families, but they can play Halo without any problems.

No matter what your opinion is on the subject (IE: "You're an idiot for not caring about violence." Save it, Dr. Douchebag Phd, I've heard it all before), developers need to recognize this as an issue for their customers and pursue simple, low-risk, low-impact solutions. I myself am someone who enjoys swearing, almost too much, but don't feel that those around me need to be forced to feel the same way, especially people who will be playing the games I make. So what are our options?

Developers can replace swear words with silly words, but I am personally against that option. Sure there are your Battlestar Galactica's, Firefly's, and Pirates of Dark Water's with their Fraks, Gorams, and Noiji-Tuts, respectively. But there are only so many times I can hear "fudge" or "hecka" without wanting to throttle anyone in my vicinity. (If you need an adverb that bad, just say the word, you sound immature.) Or they can cut whole lines. But either way you do it, simply make it an option for the player.

There have already been measures made to adjust violence in games; turning off gore or blood in violent games allows players to still play the game but with less elements of realism in terms of the violence, and the same could be done with audio with ease.

The developers of a game like Crackdown could easily set a flag to all of the phrases in which the pedestrians swear. Then when the player chooses "No Swear Words" from the options menu they won't be surprised by random f-bombs being dropped. For games like this, or online shooters like Modern Warfare, players can play to their hearts content with their TV volume turned up without offending someone in another room with profanity (or in some occasions, being offended themselves.) And while this is easy for most of the sandbox elements of a game where there are multiple, interchangeable phrases, a story section like in the GTA series wouldn't be able to simply drop whole lines of text, so the developers would have to record alternate lines with different words or phrases. A pain in the butt, I'll grant anyone that, but it is not that complex of a solution.

Ultimately, no matter your own personal opinions, this is a medium full of options and choices for the end-user, and it would be great if consumers who are concerned about such things could benefit from these options and still enjoy fun games without having to worry about being offended by profanity.

"Castlevania Harmony of Disappointment" or "Do People Even Like Pixels Anymore?"

2010-08-06T01:48:00.000-07:00

So first off, obviously, Konami yet again blows me away with their titling system (I know, it's a bit mean, but I think it's simultaneously adorable and sad each time they kidnap an abbreviation.)

My real gripe with the game comes specifically from the angle of art and presentation. I can't claim to be the biggest Castlevania fan in the world; I have started just about every Castlevania game that ever existed but finished none. But even I, someone not in love with the series, was disappointed with the tone of the Harmony of Despair. The magic is completely gone. A game like Castlevania is all about tone and setting. Starting you off outside what I assume is a castle, for some reason. You work your way through the different areas: attics, catacombs, dining halls, etc. Each section has a tone and theme of enemies, each separated by a good distance of running, exploration, and conflict. And that is completely lost on this new release.

My bigger gripe is, hands down, the art featured in the game. It doesn't help things that the very first camera setting you are exposed to is such a zoomed out view that it gives you a headache (in addition to not having written ANYWHERE that clicking the right stick will change the camera, and an in-fucking-credulous menu system for the camera which seems to be a big "fuck you" to the player because it makes no damned sense). The art is completely, completely, flat. There is no parallax scrolling to be seen anywhere. One of the most amazing innovations of the SNES was the number of parallax layers the games could accomplish, and it added so much depth to the graphics that this new game feels like a huge step back.

Why do I take such offense to this? Specifically because I can't fathom something like this getting high praise for it's classic pixel graphics when they don't look as good as they did on the systems they were copied and pasted from. But I also take offense because I am surrounded by an immense amount of talent at my job, and I feel like it is lost on the general public.

I am so excited for our games to drop soon, because I am simultaneously scared and elated at what people will think about the games as a whole, but also because the pixel art in these games is just in-fucking-credible. I played through the entirety of the new Shantae, and I felt like someone handed me a top 10 game from the era of SNES. I also played through Batman Brave and the Bold for the DS and was blown away by the experience and the sheer amount of character work which went into that game, but the majority of all press coverage is strictly about the Wii version of the game and I am curious to see if any reviewer even BOTHERS to play the DS one and recognize it for its accomplishments. Plus, there is a game I played which isn't even out yet that I absolutely had to put down because it was creeping me out too much (talk about atmosphere.) And there is of course the Three Musketeer Barbie game we made which pulled heavily from Castlevania, and apparently had its own share of difficulty, but I actually didn't play that one.

And now I find myself in the Director's chair on Thor for the DS, working with THE most talented pixel artists in the biz. The calibre of work is unbelievable, and I am so flipping pumped for art from the game to be shared with the world (not to single out the artists, because really the whole team is unbelievably motivated and talented). It really is a culmination of talent and knowledge rooting from the GBA days at the company, to Contra 4, passed through to today when we are the true pixel art pioneers on the system. We are creating a level of detail and polish I have never seen with 16 bit art, and I leave work every day amazed at what we are accomplishing.

But is it for nothing? Can gamers (and reviewers) see past the fact that it is a licensed game? Can they appreciate the midi music if it doesn't sound like chiptunes? Will they appreciate the pixel work if it doesn't have the word "retro" thrown into every facet of it?

Ultimately, I guess the bigger question is, will people even care that we are working under the same constraints of palettes and memory which have plagued pixel game developers for years, while our competition makes games which look pixelated but really have no constraints to speak of? That the same trip people take down memory lane, hearkening back to with bucket-fulls of nostalgia, is same path we have been on, and perfecting, and never really left? That we are creating the true top-tier versions (not only in name, but in technical execution and talent) of the very elements countless people wear as a kind of badge of honor to show they miss the days of pixels? I am hopeful that someone will take notice, and see the talent in our products and give our games the chance they really deserve, but we may end up simply being tortured souls in the grand scheme of the history of pixel based games.

New title and layout

2010-07-16T15:33:00.001-07:00

As the few of you who come here may have noticed I have changed the layout of my site a bit. Pretty nice, right?

Also I decided to change the title of my site. "Carrot v Stick" obviously is not something coined by me, but it is always a key aspect of design I come back to on a very regular basis. The definition is obvious and simple, because as a designer you are creating a world and inviting a player to explore that world. When the player, inevitably, does things in this world which you never intended for them to do you are ostensibly left with two choices: punishing the player for doing something you don't want them to do, or rewarding them into doing what you want the player to do. Punishment and reward.

I am a big believer in positive reinforcement in all facets of life, and it is such a part of me that it finds its way into my design with little resistance. But I feel a common misstep among many designers, and would-be designers, is to immediately go for the stick. It is the easy answer If the player is doing something undesirable then the first thing to do is punish them. Of course this may be the ideal answer when the player is outright capable of breaking the logic of the game.

I think a great example of well implemented Carrot is the multiplayer of Modern Warfare 2. I could only imagine how play sessions went during development, but if it is anything like the flow of "anger" from the mouths of scrubs playing the game then surely there were major balance decisions to be made.

A common complaint is the power of the grenade launcher, or noob toob. Now the developers can either nerf the launcher; make it less accurate, less powerful, slower reload time, (all examples of "stick.") Or take the carrot route and introduce items like the riot shield and blast shield. When combined, explosions do little or no damage. But now you have a turtle running around the stage invulnerable to many attacks, so now what do you do? Slow their speed down more, have the shield break over time, don't let them carry a second weapon? Or follow the path of the carrot again and introduce the Semtex grenade, which sticks to whatever it is thrown on. The shield is a larger, slower moving target, and is a guaranteed kill when stuck to the riot shield (though my wife swears wearing the blast shield in tandem will save you, but I never had such luck), and is a really quick way to accomplish the challenge of sticking semtex to 25 players.

That is the only good example I can think of, but I know the moment I come across it in another game I am going to make hop on here and write about it immediately. In the meantime I am looking forward to analyzing my own approach at design and hunting down the carrots and sticks in any games I play from now on.

On Reading and Proofreading

2010-07-01T23:35:00.000-07:00

I enjoy reading Kotaku. Whether I agree with the person posting for them or not, they are on top of most of the goings on in games and I have fun commenting on their forums. Two days ago Stephen Totilo of Kotaku wrote about his hesitation to kill buffalo in Red Dead Redemption. I had written of the same hesitance in a post on the 20th of June, so I linked him to my blog to show him my thoughts. I guess I could have copied and pasted it into an email, but I thought it would be fun to send him along to my blog and see what transpired. Much to my chagrin he wrote a Kotaku post about it, with a very large image of a Bison, and at the time of this writing has received over 18,000 hits and nearly 400 comments on the subject. Not the highest Kotaku reading of the day, but on average not too shabby.

It was pretty neat seeing my name on there, and completely unexpected. I had anticipated some kind of email from Stephen, but not a direct quote to my shitty post I wrote when I was very, very tired and on the verge of passing out from sleep deprivation and gaming to all hours of the morning. And in a few ways, maybe this was a bad thing. A lot of the Kotaku readers who shared in their comments were either upset and criticizing me for not being able to discern reality from fantasy, and others were agreeing and sharing their own hesitation to kill the buffalo in the game because they found it deplorable (though there were a rare few, and you know who you are, and you are rad). To me it was very odd because in a lot of ways my blog post had nothing to do with either opinion and I probably did a shitty job making this clear.

For the most part, it was an introspective look at WHY I was having any hesitation at all. I was actually quite shocked that I felt any hesitation as it was a rare occurrence when playing most of these games, and I commended Rockstar for inciting this kind of reaction in me. It is something I rarely encounter and I found it fascinating and thought provoking and I had to let it out in writing. And now I am struck by a whole new fascination; the idea that people do not read shit.

As a video game developer I am starting to get used to it, and that kind of sucks. For each game design document I write, I can tell who does and does not read the design document and/or pitches, and who just looks at table of contents and pictures. "Please make sure we do this in the game" a publisher will say, and all I can respond with is "oh, did you miss page 37 of the gdd?" when all I want to say is "yeah, I know, I already accounted for that, read the goddamn gdd motherfucker!" But of course someone paid to read documents would read those, but why would some random person cruising Kotaku bother to follow Mr. Totilo's link and read my blog post, even when instructed to "Read the whole post. And explain your buffalo-killing ways."? I mean, why would they bother to read beyond the two paragraphs Mr. Totilo felt were a good representation of what I had to say, to be sure they didn't take anything out of context, or to be sure Mr. Totilo didn't grab paragraphs in which I did a shitty job fully encapsulating my thoughts?

I can not IMAGINE being a writer, especially on one of these blogs. It must pain people like Stephen Totilo to write an article only to have a majority of people read only the headline, misinterpret it, and then post their messages as fast as they can just so people can see what their opinion is. That kind of thing would aggravate the shit out of me to no extent. Although, I can relate in a few ways. In my short five years in the industry (I am a veteran in gaming years mind you) I have released a handful of games mostly to shitty reviews, and I have seen a very similar thing in both reviews and message boards. Some people want to go out of their way to have an opinion and beat down your game, but not really take the time to understand it (I guess this is kind of a vague statement, but anyone who has worked hard on a project can relate in one form or another I am sure.) I am really hoping people will be able to play Galactic Tazball, Despicable Me, and the game I am currently directing, and look at them objectively for what we attempt to do, and not just what the reviewer is expecting from the game based on some arbitrary biases they bring to the table. But in some ways, every review is approached with this same shitty bias, so maybe the playfield is even.

In other ways, I should be a better writer and a better proofreader. If, in the future, I want people like Stephen Totilo to quote me and take my professional opinion seriously, then I should have paragraphs which are easily more quotable with less that can be misinterpreted. I may forever go down as the wuss who could not shoot Buffalo in Red Dead Redemption when googling my name, when I could have just as easily (with the simple stroke of some keys and better grammar) been the guy who pointed out how buffalo don't come back and it is a rare thing in games. I suppose from here on out I will proofread my writing better, and become the writer and designer I want to be, and perhaps incite as much thought and debate as I did today with a large number of Kotaku readers (but after tonight, because I have had way too much wine to validate any proofreading.)

And to anyone who actually ventured to this blog and read through each shittily worded paragraph, I thank you and ask you to comment here so that I can someday high five you and call you my friend.

Extinction within a game?

2010-06-20T04:31:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been up to my eyeballs in Red Dead Redemption. I am quickly coming to the end of the game and starting to pursue achievements I feel I could easily... achieve. While looking over the list of achievements I came across "Manifest Destiny", worth 5 achievement points, where I must: "Kill the last buffalo in the Great Plains in Single Player."

For some reason this makes me feel oddly uncomfortable. This is strange to me because it is a feeling I have never come across in a game before. It is one thing to run around shooting animals I know to be on the endangered species list. So far I didn't mind shooting beavers, cougars, or owls; there seems to be no end to them. Like most games they are killed and replenished.

A part of me feels that if the achievement simply called for killing a whole number, maybe 30 buffalo, and knowing that more will appear on the plains at some point, is something I am ok with. But in a game where storytelling elements have pointed out the stupidity of the white man, and the atrocities imposed on the natives of the land, I feel like I am morally wrong to pursue this achievement.

Now maybe I would be less inclined to care if it was simply a hunting game, instead of a game which introduces many moral dilemmas throughout the narrative, and a character who, surprisingly, is of a higher level of moral fortitude than I was expecting. And because the game so liberally portrays characters and situations in a strong good and evil light, I feel like I am partaking in too much of the evil. Perhaps it has more to do with the context of the game itself and how I feel I will shape the world of the game than it does with feeling like I am recreating a horrible portion of the past.

I guess I feel almost sad in the same way I would feel sad to kill a major character in Fallout, knowing full-well that they are never going to be alive again within my saved game, and that is the end. It is truly the exception, game characters which can be killed off at the discretion of the player, not by the forced narrative or intended structure of the main game, never to be respawned again. It is something that literally makes me stop and think, because I need to weigh whether I will want this person around in later playthroughs of the game.

But with the buffalo, there is no real benefit. They are simply animals wandering a section of the game world. So in a way I suppose there is a combination of guilt and discomfort, performing an act with overarching social implications. Knowing that the thing you are going to do will set a chain of events creating years of despair and completely ruining the lives of millions of people. It is different than simply killing an individual character in the game which is a carbon copy of a seemingly endless supply of the same character.

I have no problem killing an individual character in a game, usually because I have no idea who this person is or how they exist in the world. But I suppose if I saw a flash into this characters life the moment I pointed a gun at them I would feel different. Imagine it: you aim your pistol at their head, then the screen flashes to white. You are given a glimpse of them at home, providing for their family, playing with their children, and other happy things. Then you are brought back to the game with the crosshairs on their head. Do you continue and kill this character, or are you second guessing?

I know I was in a similar predicament when I knew I was face to face with a cannibal in the game, and I had to hogtie a man and bring him to the cannibal. I didn't want to do it. I already knew this guy was bad, I had seen multiple family members crying over missing loved ones, seen the piles of bones out in the wilderness, then heard the cries of the man I chased down as he said "Don't do this, he is crazy." But when I tried shooting the cannibal first, I failed the mission. I begrudgingly did the mission again, and was able to kill the cannibal before he killed the man, so I felt ok in the longrun, but I was really sucked in by the whole thing, and I am still impressed by how emotionally swayed I was by this simple mission.

And as for killing the buffalo? I don't think it is weird for me to feel this way. Yes these are just characters in a game, but so was Aeris and I cried when Sephiroth killed her. But there is a lot more going on here, everything I listed that I don't feel like listing again, which the developers did an amazing job layering over and over in order to illicit and emotional response and investment from the player, and I have to applaud Rockstar San Diego for creating such a moral dilemma for myself.

Quote me

2010-04-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

You can't overcome tyranny using decency. - Me

Halloween 2000

2009-10-26T14:36:00.001-07:00

Wow, I can't believe it has been more than 3 weeks since my promise to write more on this thing. Stupid deadlines and paychecks.

There are so many video game related pumpkins this year, I had to get in on the action.

Back in 2000, I carved this Akuma / Gouki pumpkin. I think this is the only picture I took, and it is at night, so you can't see the actual pumpkin in the shot. All of the sections are completely cut out. I apologize for the poor scan and picture quality.

I miss the pumpkin dearly.

My First Pixel Art Painting

2009-10-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

Here is the final result. See below for a walkthrough of making this painting.

Noteworthy:

Measures 22"x28"

All colors are mixed except Mars Black and Titanium White

Completed off and on throughout the month of September and in the first week of October.

Each "pixel" is 0.5" square

Painted with acrylics

On an occasional basis I run across someone making some piece of art, reminiscent of classic 8 or 16-bit gaming. I always love seeing them, whether they're made out of paper scraps, colored magnets, or paints. But one day it clicked: why the hell haven't you done one of these?

Inspiration struck. I had a big canvas sitting at home, waiting to be painted on. I had purchased it 5+ years ago at a BigLots for few bucks. I originally drew a design to paint, and never got off my butt to do it. I no longer liked the design, and couldn't think of a better thing to paint. But what should be the subject?

Seeing as how Super Mario World is my favorite game of all time, I opted for a scene from it. With the canvas measuring about 22x28 inches, I didn't want to paint the "pixels" smaller than a half inch each, and after some soul searching I found my subject and arrangement. It was a perfect fit.

Prepping the canvas

First thing to do was clear out all the pencil drawing which was already there. I layed down a few layers of gesso until I couldn't see the original pencil marks very well.

Then came the meticulous task of drawing a grid across the whole canvas. There were a lot of crooked lines, and there are a number of non-square pixels in the painting, but they are hidden better after painting.

After creating the grid, I did another thin layer of gesso to be sure the pencil wouldn't smudge. I then drew out the basic outline of the character, with a focus on which pixels would then be black.

Attacking the Background

After that it was on to the background. You can see I took up most of the butcher pan to mix the background green.

For those who don't paint, the pan is a simple metal pan for mixing with a palette knife, with all the sample colors sitting on a damp paper towel to help them dry slower. Simple stuff.

The Right Tools

At this point I am a few days/sessions in. I had done a lot of the earlier work during the daytime with plenty of daylight, but later moved a nice lamp from the living room. My lovely wife took notice of this and went and bought me a new desk lamp.

I used to have a 2 lamp setup back in the college days, which is VERY useful for both painting and sculpture, but have given the lamps away since then. It was so nice of her to get the lamp for me, and it made my life so much easier. Plus it is very flexible and doesn't get hot to the touch. Good deal. Viva Ikea.

Only bad thing was the light showed me all of my mistakes I had missed in the simpler light. I then had to re-mix the right shade of green and do touch-ups to a large number of areas. This had a huge impact on me, and I made sure to mix plenty of paint and do it right for every color I was to lay down from here on out.

If you look close you can see a splotch of brown at the base of Yoshi's foot. I hadn't realized until after I started painting that I had no Mars Black. I tried mixing some colors to see if I could get something dark enough to pass as a base, but quickly opted against it. I went and bought some new paints the next day.

Going Black

The black pixels seemed like a great anchor to be able to count and measure all the other pixels from. Knowing this I painted in all of the black pixels

Going for Yoshi

Yoshi seemed like the next best thing to hit. I purchased a lime green tube of paint to require less unique mixing with my phthalo and hooker's green. A touch of raw sienna and a hint of titanium white and he was good to go.

I got through Yoshi faster than I had originally anticipated. I figured I would start some other night, but then I dove in and was done with it fairly swiftly. I was also surprised to not see much aliasing in his colors, and how orange the cinch of his saddle is.

Here you can get a pretty good sense that this is an acrylic painting. I didn't mix any kind of matte medium so the paint is thick and fairly glossy. Personally I love seeing the brushstrokes and thicker sections of the piece from up close, it gives it a lot of character.

Wait, that's not Yoshi's Saddle?

I was shocked to learn, after completing the painting, that the big orange object in the dead center of Yoshi IS HIS ARM! I have no idea why his arm is orange, but nonetheless, it is orange. A small part of me feels like my childhood has been ripped to shreds. I was tempted to take a blade to the thing and destroy it, but I held back the urge... for now.

Process Discovery

On occasion my unsteady hands were creating sloppy results. I tried my hardest to be careful, not wanting to re-mix paint, but then decided to allow myself to bleed the brush into the areas with black or white. Because I wasn't mixing those colors, I didn't need to be as meticulous, and could go back over the sections later. This allowed me to work a little faster and ease my brain a bit.

Looking back it seems like a no brainer.

Full Setup

Here you can see the arrangement I have been working with. I always had the laptop off to the side to match colors and count pixels. I almost knocked my water cup into the laptop only ONCE.

You can also see the outline of Mario, which I was surprised to find was a very dark red, and his glove.

The Cape and Nose

Another shocking thing I learned while making this, most of the cape has the same color pink as the bottom of Mario's nose. The whole time I was painting the pink on the cape, I thought it looked odd and I was doing it wrong. But I kept going, and after taking a step back noticed that it finally felt right.

And upon further inspection, the pink I had used was far too saturated. So when I mixed the pink for the cape, I went back over the nose, hence the sloppy bleed into the mustache.

Proofing

Saving the red for last was a choice, and a somewhat stupid one.

A little background: I am always the biggest proponent for proofing colors when making art which is either going to get printed or put onto a TV.

Here is an example of proofing. On the left is the Mario image pulled straight from the game rom snapshot on a pc. Running it through the proof feature of Photoshop (ctrl y) displays the colors as they would appear in their final medium, in this case NTSC TV.

I first noticed when I was mixing the red, and it wasn't very red, but more pink. I opted to fake the colors a bit and pump the red a touch. In the end I think the red I ended up with was a great result.

Final Touches

And finally I went back over the sloppy overlap with the mars black paint. I tried using a bit of drafting tape at first, but it wasn't keeping the paint out very well, so I went back with a steady hand to finish the job.

It's a me

Everyone I was showing pictures to thought the painting was quite small. So I had someone take a picture of me next to the piece to show the scale. I was quite happy to have a picture taken of me.

The End

Thanks for reading. I hope it wasn't too wordy. And if you have any questions about the process, or anything else, please feel free to contact me.

Up next... either Super Metroid, or chibi Ken from Puzzle Fighter.

Might as well

2009-09-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

And so it begins (again.)

Last July when my father passed away, I created a blog. The first post was a bit of a brain dump, getting my feelings and thoughts out of my head so I could find a little inner clarity. I had intended to turn the blog into a game design blog shortly after, trying to take a step towards a bit of professionalism and critical thinking. The past year has been a roller coaster of chaos and happiness, and I feel stable and driven enough to forge ahead and get these thoughts out more often.

Most of my inspiration comes from reading user blogs and comments on Gamasutra.com and Kotaku.com. There are always strong opinions on a multitude of subjects, both serious and light-hearted, and I often have a strong opinion, which I have molded over the 4.5+ years I have been in the industry. The experiences I have had and the people I have met have helped me grow drastically, and I feel I am ready to get some of these thoughts out to educate and entertain.

So I hope you enjoy reading this, and hope some of it is somewhat entertaining.

Enjoy!

1939 - 2008

2008-07-22T01:05:00.000-07:00

My relationship with my father was, and is, incredibly complicated. Growing up there wasn't a man I respected and adored more than my dad. He sincerely cared for me and my brothers and I have years of fond memories of him and our family.

He was the epitome of what a father should be:

Stature: He was taller than me.
Strong: He could lift things right over his head.
Smart: He knew the answers to a lot of Jeopardy questions.
Sophisticated: He drank wine, and only sometimes was it in a box.
Skillful: When anything broke, he could fix it. Car, fridge, bike, anything.

In all, a bunch of S's.

My fondest memories of him were probably picking him up at the airport. My dad would work in other parts of the country, and sometimes other parts of the world, and my mom would count down the days to when he would be getting home. The day he arrived was an event. My brother and I would bring our newest toys to show off, we would sit excitedly on the ride to the SLC airport to pick him up, we would even go past the amazing diorama displaying the layout of the airport complete with miniature planes. We knew exactly where to go and where to wait for him. We had that airport memorized. And all the people would walk off that plane and somewhere never quite in the beginning, and never quite at the end, he would pop his head out of the pack. His handlebar mustache and cowboy hat were always a dead giveaway. He would kiss us all with his prickly chin and scruffy stache, hug us while smelling of some other city on some jacket I'd never seen, and then I would carry one of his bags for him (which wasn't always a chore when it had wheels, that was bonus fun.)

Throughout the years my childhood admiration faded, I grew to know him for who he was and the adult choices he made. He broke the hearts of every member of my family one by one, and sometimes all at once. He abandoned his responsibilities and abandoned his blood relations, on numerous occasions. I can never really describe what he did wrong, it was always more of a matter of how he did wrong. If you look back on all the things he did to make the family upset, it would seem that we are all petty for complaining about such small things, but it was every single instance of every single small thing that ever took place which compiled into the very thing we grew to despise about him over the years; complacency and neglect, not your average father qualities. When I would talk to him on the phone (while he was in another country) he would never try to stop and see where I was coming from, trying to be the diplomat for the stranded family in the states. He would only ever defend himself incessently and never hear a single word I said. I stopped talking to my dad in 2002, fed up with his lies and excuses.

On June 16th I was told my father was diagnosed with Myeloblastic Acute Leukemia. My co-worker looked it up on wikipedia, he said I probably shouldn't read the details. Apparently it can be contracted by coming into contact with high levels of some substance, which I assume (and hope) was a result of years in the tunnel engineering and boring business. I wrote him a (long) letter before he went in for the chemo. Even after all my anger and frustration, I couldn't let him leave without saying something. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of leaving thinking I was ungrateful or misunderstood him. He understood.

He remained in Bolivia, his home since 1999, and spent the last few weeks of his life going through chemotherapy and laying in a bed in a hospital. I spoke to him on the phone, but he couldn't talk back. I could only hear the breathing machines and faint grunts and sobs while I said my goodbyes.

Antony Ivansmith passed away on July 21, in the evening.

So here we are, complicated. I've spent the past seven years or so determined that I would hate him and I would never care if he died, and yet things are complicated. I'm still mad at him for what he did, and I don't imagine I will ever not be mad any time soon, but that doesn't mean I never loved him, I never had fond memories, or that I'll never cry when I think back on missing the father I actually had, the father I wish I had, and the father I wish I still had.