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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

New title and layout

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.