kavwoosh

Presenting: Hex Tile Blending!

2009-12-18T14:30:00.000-08:00

This was a presentation that I gave to the Drexel Game Developers. It's a little light on details, since I spent more time discussing than just showing it, but you should be able to get the jist of it.

GameJam 2009!

2009-11-03T20:03:00.000-08:00

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted. So much for my "every two weeks" update schedule. It seems that once I start working full-time, my attention to the blog drops off. I'm hoping to change that, but we'll see how that goes.

Either way, here's some news! The weekend before Halloween, I participated in the 2009 Philly GameJam. It was a competition where my team and I had 48 hours to create a game completely from scratch. We were up against some pretty solid competition, including a team that was sent from Kaos Studios! Needless to say, there was little sleep to be had (I got a total of 3.5 hours over the entire competition), but we were very proud of our submission. In the end, we ended up taking 2nd place in the two available categories, earning the most total points overall. While it wasn't great having to walk home essentially empty-handed (there were no prizes for 2nd place), we were very proud to have competed, and pleased with what our sleep deprived minds were able to create.

Here is a link to the game we submitted. This version is actually slightly modified post-gamejam to clear up a few bugs. Also, beware, for there is sound, and you cannot turn it off (sorry). Also, it requires significant CPU resources, so if you're on low-end hardware, it might chug for you.

Dr. Spock's Guide to Caring for Minions

2009-08-10T16:10:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has been a leader in any capacity knows that success hinges heavily on the team that you have. Even an ineffectual manager can generate halfway decent results if their subordinates are rockstars. What does this have to do with video games? Plenty, and not in the way you'd think.

A while ago, I was at a talk given by Corvus Elrod, on storytelling and immersion in games. I asked him how a genre like strategy games could create a story without explicitly hand-holding the player through cutscenes and succeed-or-retry missions. I forget what his exact words were, but the overall message was "make the player care about their units". I thought that it kind of made sense, but sent it to the back of my mind until just a while ago.

I've recently been addicted to Blood Bowl, the PC version of a tabletop miniatures game made by Games Workshop in the 80s. It's the definition of a strategy game. You have two teams, each team takes their turn, the other team takes their turn, everyone's happy. Your team is made up of 11-16 players, which is relatively small for strategy games, but anymore would make the game take forever and feel clunky. At first, I really didn't care about my players at all. They were nothing but short, clumsy, relatively indestructible pawns thatI shuffled towards my opponents' endzones. However, as they leveled up and got more skills, I realized that they were less disposable than I had originally considered. When one of them went down with an injury, I had a momentary panic that they would die, and I'd never be able to use them again. In fact, there was a very sad moment when I had to let a player go because he had suffered a smashed collarbone, making him barely useful as a blocker. At that point, I realized what Corvus had meant. I had formed a story in my head about these characters, who had their own triumphs and failures, without ever needing to see a generated cutscene. One was the dedicated passer, who picked the ball and lobbed it to the runner, who'd already be halfway to scoring. Some blockers were better at tailing opponent's players who were trying to get into our half of the pitch, and others were as immovable as boulders, refusing to break the line even when they were seeing stars.

In his review of Overlord 2, Yahtzee mentions a mechanic where you can bring certain minions back from the dead, for a price in other, less-experienced minions. He felt that it was a stupid mechanic, designed for players who get overattached to specific minions, which I agreed with at the time. Why bother wasting resources on identical units, when for almost-free, you can just bring up a new one? So I picked up a copy of the game myself to check it out. I realized then that the minions actually leveled up and became more effective in combat than fresh ones. At that point, I realized that the mechanic was there not as an emotional crutch for people that get too attached to artificial constructs, but so that you could, in theory, bring back your best fighters. Satisfied in this knowledge, I paid for the two best of my fallon peons, and went on my way. In the next mission, however, I noticed that I was being much more careful with my minions. Before, I'd send my horde careening at a force much larger than them, content in the awareness that I could raise another batch when they died. However, once I was aware that some of them were veterans, and losing that type of combat effectiveness would be costly (either in time or resources), I was using a much more strategic approach, sending in smaller parties to agitate and bait enemies into a trap. I realized again that I was conscious to how my minions were being treated. They were no longer (or at least less) disposable, and I took steps to avoid their untimely demise. I'm not sure if this is what the Overlord 2 design team was hoping for, but it certainly worked in my case.

This is something that I feel is prominently lacking from the arena of strategy games. I don't necessarily want players to bawl their eyes out when their basic infantry unit gets taken out (like in this CAD comic), but it deepens the experience when they care enough to not sacrifice units in a kamikaze run for slight tactical advantage. In my mind, it actually makes the game more realistic. Most generals (managers, etc), can't get more battle-ready units in seconds, with the expenditure of a trivial amount of resources. The suicide run is a last-ditch effort, reserved only for the direst of straits.

While there is risk inherent in any endeavour, a good leader does their best to minimize costs, and maximize reward. In most resource-based strategy games, the goal is to farm up a larger horde of resources than your oponent, build one giant strike force, and then steamroll the enemy. Any units lost in the fray are just lost firepower. If you've done your calculations correctly, you'll only lose so many that you can still eliminate the enemy base. Games like that become less about strategy, and more about who knows the optimum build tree and can click 8000 times per second. After seeing both Blood Bowl and Overlord 2 in action, I remain hopeful that this is a trend that is being reversed.

5 Suggestions to Make Mobile Games Not Suck

2009-08-03T02:15:00.000-07:00

I wanted to call this list the "5 Laws to Make Mobile Games Not Suck", but I realized that calling them laws would make me seem like some sort of "Game-Dictator" in my own little "Game-Country" telling all the other "Game-Countries" that they had to bend to my will. And if I am one thing, it is not a game-fascist. Also, my game-country is like the size of Sealand, so it's unlikely that anyone would listen anyway.

Anyway, this list is a compilation of observations about mobile games, and what needs to be done to make them suck less. Mobile games are not the kings of the market at the moment, partially because they have been traditionally treated as normal video games, just smaller and on less powerful hardware. They also still carry the stigma of being "kids toys", due to their generally lesser difficulty curve. However, with the iPhone, DSi, and Android phones gaining popularity, they are certainly becoming more and more popular. Therefore, with

You should be able to pause at any time. Also, whenever you're paused, you can save. This has been a pet peeve of mine ever since elementary school, playing Pokemon on my Game Boy Pocket, getting pissed off that I had to restart a battle just because someone was forcing me to go to a funeral or something. Being able to play games in a mobile setting means that people are going to play them whenever they can. The corollary to being able to play wherever you are is that you might not know when you need to take a quick break to board a plane, deal with a teller, or smack your kids around a little. Should this gamus interruptus invalidate the progress you made, even in the short time you may have had? No, it shouldn't.
Make the sections short. This is especially true if you don't follow suggestion #1, but generous even if you do so. It's one of the reasons that tower defense games do so well nowadays. The enemies come in a big, short wave. You kill them all dead. Good job, you stock up on weapons (and save!), and then get ready for the next wave. The gameplay comes at you in short, digestible pieces, so that you can decide whether you just have time for just a can or the whole six pack. One way to kick the childish/loser stigma of mobile games (besides making jokes about higher-class liquor) is to not require gamers to play these games at home. Yeah, if you're playing cell phone games when you're sitting at home while there are perfectly good consoles, PCs, or (heaven forbid) sports equipment available, you probably are a bit of a loser (or just stuck on that damn final boss). Mobile games are thusly named because that's when you should be playing them. When you're mobile.
Realize that human fingers are not mice, they do not have pixel-perfect precision, and most of the time, the cell phone keypad (or board) is generally difficult to use, hidden (by a slider or flip), or even nonexistent. Even the DS's famed touch screen can be troublesome sometimes. The action that needs to come from this realization is that mobile games have different requirements from other games. You cannot just assume that they are going to work just as well on the mobile platform as they will on another. Developers need to take advantage of the hardware. The best example I've seen of this so far is am Android game called Abduction, where you're a cow bouncing up to an alien spaceship trying to save your cow friends. The thing that makes this game great is that your left and right movements are controlled by the accelerometer. Tilt the phone left, you go left, and vice versa. This isn't a novel concept in the accelerometer-enhanced arena of cell phone games, but is one salient example of where it is not overkill or gimmicky, but just feels like it was the only way to truly control the game.
Give us high-contrast art. Yes, it plays into the "cartoony" look, but you know what, you're playing a game on a screen 6 inches square, so telling between different shades of grey is going to be nearly impossible. My heart truly goes out to anyone who decides to buy the iPhone port of RE4, because you are going to die so frequently because you won't be able to tell what you're shooting at in the sea of browns, tans, and blacks (and eventually reds when that crazy chainsaw dude cuts your head off). When you're already getting eye strain from having to hold your phone inches from your face, it doesn't help if you have to squint to figure out where the freaking exit to the dungeon is. It is in fact possible to make colorful games that do not look like their art director used to make Spongebob Squarepants. The original Final Fantasy Tactics DS (one of my favorite games of all time) is one of the most colorful ones I'd ever seen for the platform, and didn't come of as childish at all (except for when the damn moogles kept saying "kupo!").
Stop making crappy ports of old games. This goes for all platforms, but it's particularly bad on the mobile scene. Unless your poker, connect 4, or chess game is going to literally rock faces off, then just leave it as you practice project, don't clutter the stores with another $1 knock-off. Seriously, this point cannot be belabored further. Just stop doing it. I don't even know how these devs are able to get funding to make the same game over and over again, but it needs to stop.

There's a lot of potential in the mobile platform. No one expected the casual game market to ever be worth working in, and now it's practically the main driver for the next generation of games and consoles. US culture in particular has been moving towards total mobility at a quick rate. Those people are the ones who are going to want to be entertained. Would you rather give them something they'll like, or not?

On LEGO Battles and Intellectual Properties

2009-07-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

I was able to pick up a copy of LEGO Battles cheaply, thanks to a personal connection and jumped at the chance to get a relatively new game (as a poor college student, I'm usually relegated to waiting months after release before I have the spare cash to get new titles). The LEGO game seriess have been fairly well received, both in terms of ratings and with players (my little step-brothers are always telling me about who they've unlocked in LEGO Star Wars), but I haven't played one since the original LEGO Racers. I've also been a huge fan of LEGO, so the chance to combine it with videogames seemed like a match made in heaven.

Don't get me wrong, I like LEGO Battles. It's a fairly solid, if simple RTS game. You have objectives, and can build bases, go out and smite thine enemies, et cetera. It's been dumbed down a bit, partially to cater to the younger players, and also to compensate for the fact that a more complex RTS needs a much larger screen, as well as a more complex control scheme. It's definitely not pushing any boundaries, but there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

My problem with it, however, is that there is no reason for it to be LEGO branded. The characters that were represented could have easily just been knights and pirates and whatever from a different art style, with the exact same story, without losing anything. In fact, the pixelization of lego blocks sometimes looked worse than an art style focused on pixelization, and was very noticeable at some points. There wasn't even the personalization aspect in the LEGO racers game I played, wherein you could design your own car. It's a LEGO branded game, with none of the things that actually make LEGO fun. After a while, I started to feel like I was just playing an extended commercial for the LEGO pirate, space, and castle sets, rather than playing a game that was supposed to be based off of those source materials. Even a cursory mechanic wherein you have to build your units out of larger pieces would have been interesting.

To be fair, though, I wouldn't have bought this game if not for the LEGO branding (and my discount). It's actually the only RTS I've heard of for the DS, which is surprising given the DS's potential for strategy gaming. It is unfortunate that for the game to even be recognized, it had to have an existing IP shoehorned into it, without much consideration of what makes the IP popular. However, when playing through it, I feel a sense of dissonance because I'm expecting RTS fun combined with LEGO fun and only getting one. This happens less frequently nowadays, especially since the "bad old days" where almost every movie had a boilerplate 2d platformer to go along with it are gone, but it is still unfortunate when it happens.

What I'd like to see, going forward, is that when a game is based around a specific IP, that the developers take the characteristics of that IP into account when making their game. I mean, honestly, a LEGO game with no more building than Starcraft? It's akin to making a Transformers game where the main characters are all humans, and not giant robots.

This is actually a problem I've been running into with creating a "campaign" for Hexcape, to be used in a box set. I designed the rules to be IP-independent, so my current attempts to make an IP around these rules that make sense seems forced. Striking a balance between total IP independance, which can give a ruleset a breadth of applications and IP dependence, wherein the rules are so engrained into the IP that there isn't any potential for independent expansion, is a difficult task indeed. Like just about everything else in this process, however, it has been a great learning experience indeed.

Map Template!

2009-06-25T12:58:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone!

Not a lot of news (that I can release), but here's a freebie! I recently updated the templates that I use for making maps. These templates are now going to be used for all official Hexcape maps, and you're more than welcome to use them for un-official ones as well! Here are the links to the files, though they're fairly large, so be patient. Enjoy!

http://kavwoosh.s3.amazonaws.com/maptemplate8halfby11.png

http://kavwoosh.s3.amazonaws.com/maptemplate11by17.png

May 18th Photos

2009-06-08T23:09:00.000-07:00

I know that these have been a long time, but I've been very busy with the wrapping up of this term, not to mention looking for my next co-op position, and applying for my BS/MS program. These are the photos from the Hexcape day on May 18th, which coincidentally was my birthday! A good time (and cake) was had by all!

Also, in nice news, Hexcape (the game) is the first 3 results when you search "Hexcape" on Google. Hooray!

Hexcape Maps

2009-05-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

I know that these have been a long time coming, but here they are, the first official Hexcape maps! For the first time, all you need to play Hexcape are a printer, some tokens, a six sided die, a white-erase marker...you get the point. Here they are, free to download and enjoy.

http://kavwoosh.s3.amazonaws.com/map1.png

http://kavwoosh.s3.amazonaws.com/map2.png

This is how I recommend playing the game:

Print out the map (hopefully in color, but black in white is fine)
Get a transparent sheet cover
Put the map in the TSC
And then use a dry-erase marker to record changes to hex MC's

Enjoy!

-Aaron

Jason Rohrer Recap

2009-05-16T22:04:00.000-07:00

I'm working on those Hexcape maps, I promise! This, however, just fell into my lap and definitely deserved its own post.

Philadelphia is certainly not a hotspot of game industry activity, so it's a bit of a big deal when a big name comes in to speak at an event. This past Thursday, Drexel University's Great Works Symposium brought Jason Rohrer, the freelance game designer best known for his game Passage, in to speak on two topics: copyright and game design as art.

As a content creator, I've always been interested in copyright, as well as the legal and moral issues surrounding it. On one hand, I'd like to see my creations experienced by as many people as possible. On the other, however, I'd also like to get paid for the fruits of my labor. Obviously, from the fact that I've released Hexcape under a CC licence, I'm not attempting to hoard the rules, because that's what I'd like to spread far and wide. However, I'm planning on putting together a "box set" containing the rules, hand-made tokens, and "premium" maps that are only distributed in said set. Other maps will be released for general consumption, to go along with the rules (which I AM working on, it's just tough to balance them).

The overall message of Jason's first talk was that US Copyright has gotten ridiculously out of hand. For the first 13 years of the country's existence, there wasn't any laws regarding copyright, and the first one required registration and could only be maxed out at 28 years from the creation date. Nowadays, the copyright for content is 95 years for corporate copyrights, or the lifespan of the creator plus 75 years. The extensions have been lobbied for heavily by the Disney Corporation, who is seeking to protect the character of Mickey Mouse. In fact, while attempting to "break the law" and show Mickey's first cartoon, "Plane Crazy", we were all amused to see that the video had been removed from YouTube at Disney's request.

From what I've come to understand, a person's right only extends as far as their fist. This usually means that you can exercise your rights as far as you want without infringing on someone else's. However, I think when it comes to IP, the phase can be interpreted a different way. The ultimate form of content protection is to keep it a secret. If you never tell anyone your story, release your artwork, or create or invention, it is unlikely that it will ever take form (depending on how unique the idea is, of course). The instant you make it available to people, it becomes part of the public consciousness, even if it only occupies a small part of said consciousness. Personally, it is my opinion that intellectual property should be in the public domain, but the implementation of that IP can be sold. For example, a story should be able to be told by anyone, but only the creator should be allowed to sell the book (or license it, etc etc). This is more of a knee-jerk reaction to what is a very convoluted issue, and definitely requires further study on my part, but I don't see why I shouldn't be able to watch "Steamboat Willie" on YouTube.

The other part of Jason's lecture was on Game Design as Art. It was a very passionately given lecture, and I definitely agree with him on several points. First off, it is very difficult to define what "Art" is, but he had a fairly solid definition, which is one of the points I agreed on, and feel is an excellent barometer for what is and isn't "Art". According to Jason, "Art":

Successfully explores complex and subtle aspects of the human condition
Gives viewers valuable and lasting insights about themselves or the world
Leaves viewers thinking about the work long after experiencing the work

When one looks at the number of games that meet this criteria, the list is fairly small. That's one of the reasons why game detractors like Roger Ebert claim that games will never be art. Besides the snarky response of "How many films meet that criteria either?", it is important to note that all works in a medium do not necessarily count as art.

One of the reasons that so few games meet the art criteria, according to Jason, is that they don't begin the process attempting to be art. I very much enjoyed his analysis of Bioshock, which had one of the best stories I've experienced in a game ever. No matter how engaging the story, visuals, sound, experience, etc, actually affected the players, one has to realize that the game is still a first person shooter. Yes, it could be argued that since Randian Objectivism is so focused on being the best individual one can be, that a first-person perspective where the player demolishes everyone the meet is appropriate. However, the Bioshock team did not set out to make a game about Objectivism, they set out to make a first-person shooter, and found the social message to make a conveniently powerful message.

It's both very true, and very pompous to look down at the sea of current games and declare them pedestrian amusements. Sure, every game that's made will not expose some fundamental truth, or cause its players to look at them or their fellow man in a new way. There's nothing wrong with that, nothing at all. Just like film, music, books, theater, and every other medium that's existed before games, the potential for art exists, but it isn't required to be enjoyable. And in the end, isn't that what really matters?

On the Calendar

2009-05-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

Sorry about missing updating last week, it was midterms for me, which meant an unabated string of studying, working, caffinating, and passing out occasionally. I was able to get something accomplished, but didnt get confirmation until the weekend, which is why I'm posting it now. I've still got some midterms, but I'm planning on publishing some MAPS for you to play with at the end of the week. Anways, here's what I did:

There's a Hex(s)cape (should've checked their copy, but oh well) event on May 18th! It's a Monday, but hopefully there'll be enough intrigue to bring people to check it out. Redcap's Corner is a local game store here in Philly that hosted my demo days. If you're in the area, you should check it out!

http://redcapscorner.com/

Hexcape Rules Version 1 Released!

2009-04-23T22:44:00.000-07:00

After almost 4 months of trying, retrying, and testing, I've decided to launch Hexcape out into the wild. Anyone can download the rules and play for free, so long as they aren't making a profit off of sales of the game. The rules have been released with a Creative Commons lisence, as I would love to see derivative works come forth.

I'd like to thank my girlfriend, Diane, first and foremost for all of her help getting this project out of my brain and into reality. Without her help and support, it would most likely still be sitting on a page in my moleskine. I'd also like to thank the beta testers for taking a chance and coming out to try something new.

Without further ado, here they are, the official version 1.0 Rules for Hexcape:

PDF

OpenOffice

Word 2007

Hexcape Game Rules by Aaron Chapin licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(By the way, in case you were wondering, THIS was the big news I was talking about.)

Casual is King In the Land of AAA Titles

2009-04-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry I missed updating last week. I was planning on having content, but there was a hold-up, so I but this post together over the weekend. There should be some additional (and EXCITING) content this week, but I can't be 100% sure.

In the past few years, there's been an explosive growth in "casual" gaming. I use that term loosely, because there are some people that are so addicted to it they put heroin junkies to shame. At their base, casual games are usually smaller scale flash games, focused around one or two mechanics. They're generally single player (with leaderboards for points), and a single "game" only lasts 3 to 5 minutes. Anyone you ask will tell you that they're great because they're good timewasters.

While I agree with that sentiment, I feel that there's something else at work here. One of the things that I've noticed, playing some of the higher-quality examples, is that they're very similar (in terms of scope) to games like pitfall, cubert, asteroids, pac-man, etc. The arcade games that have died such a horrible death are receiving due credit for their simplicity and replayability now that the kids who used to throw quarters in their cabinets are old enough to be bored at work.

It really comes down to replayability. If the game is fun, people wont mind playing time after time, trying to get a high score. I've bought games that are triple-A titles, beat them, and never looked back (aside for the rare co-op match), but occasionally I'll play a couple rounds of Audiosurf to unwind.

The introduction of cellphones with 2d and 3d rendering, as well as the DS and flash games, have been leading this charge. Anytime someone is bored is an opportunity for casual games to capitalize on. What used to be the experience of going to the arcade or firing up the atari/nes has been replaced for the nostalgic, the newly initiated, or the bored.

A lot of games don't make money, and so producers only tend to go with similar experiences, but I'd wager that half the reason that many games don't do well is because they're samey first or third person shooters, RTSes, or driving games. Side scrollers are finally starting to become novel again, after the market was glutted with them in the nineties. As I mentioned at my other blog, tower defense-style games are probably going to die out next, following the "match the x colored y to the other x colored ys" genre.

Both of these are interesting examples, since they're both from what would be considered the "casual" market. Since they take less time to develop, there are a lot more of them available, and people tend to move on a bit faster. Depending on the game, though, there's usually more of a "cycling" between games. Either way, since they take less time to produce, consumers don't care as much about one that is basically the same as another one. If they're bored with that mechanic, there's no story or graphics enhancements worth looking at, and they move on.

This is not a bad thing, in fact quite the opposite. It means that anyone that wants to compete in the casual game market is going to have to be innovative and interesting. New concepts are born in casual games, and all of the "experimental" games I've worked on/seen have definitely fallen into that category. Personally, I feel that any subset of any market that fosters this much innovation more than makes up for any failed experiments that may come out of it.

Perfect Packaging

2009-04-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

When I was referring to "all the boring stuff" involved in making a board game, one of the particular elements I was referring to was the packaging. The box, instruction booklets, even the way the boards are presented are all very important, especially for a game that is new in the market. Also, I'd like to mention that I don't actually think that this sort of thing is boring, that was just a joke. I'm actually try to be as attentive as I can for all aspects of my game, I just tend to prefer the actual gameplay design and testing stages.

There is a problem with game boxes and art at the moment. Simply put, in my opinion, they're just too busy. They're trying to fit too much onto too small a space. Let's look at one particular example.

This is the box for the 25th anniversary box for Trivial Pursuit, which is one of the most popular board games ever. There is so much on the cover, that one wonders why they didn't just make it with a 3-d popout as well.

The fact that it's the 25 year anniversary is mentioned twice on the front of the box. One instance is ostensibly in the middle of what appears to be the hood ornament of a car that is running down the blonde model, who is too busy to notice, since she is rolling a die that is almost the size of her head. The pie-style token and circular game board are also featured, just in case the viewer didn't realize that this was *that* Trivial Pursuit, the one they've been hearing so much about for the past 25 years. On top of that, there's also random stars and bangles and other such flotsam and jetsam flying about, either to indicate the coma-induced hallucinations of our car accident model, or just as a feeble attempt to make a game that is about answering trivia questions more exciting.

The "Adult" text at the bottom left would lead one to think that the 25th anniversary edition is also the Kinsey Institute-sponsored edition, though the 12+ contradicts that somewhat (though, I'd have to concede that with the internet, who knows how much the average 12 year old knows nowadays).

It's even worse for products targeted at "nerds" and "gamers". You'd think that a demographic that is widely panned for its lack of physical activity would require less pandering that "average" people and families, but apparently not. I took this picture to highlight a few prime examples.

Besides showing how big of a dork I am, the key thing to note about all of these boxes is that they have action, or the anticpation of action, like the contents are about ready to burst out and do a merry jig for your amusement. Only the Munchkin box is somewhat reserved, and is by far one of my favorite game boxes (along with its expansions, such as Unnatural Axe or Clerical Error). Though not pictured, the ____ Munchkin expansions, such as Star Munchkin, Munkin Fu, etc, unfortunately went the opposite way from this example, which is unfortunate, but not unexpected.

As a counterpoint, I looked for examples of packaging that I very much like. This photo may be shocking to some, as I have frequently railed against Macintosh computers, and the Flash platform, but in this industry, you sometimes have to make concessions to take an easier path.

Although, I will be quick to point out that my favorite of the group is unequivocally the G1's box. Even if I hadn't spent months slavering over it, I probably would have purchased it anyway, just for that packaging. The common thread for all of these containers is that they're reserved. Yes, they can each do all sorts of awesome things that are more than worthy of mowing down countless stock models, but they are all content to show a picture of what the customer is actually buying (though Flash's is a bit more abstract).

While being simple is all well and good for technology and software, how should a game or game product go about packaging itself so that it doesn't look something concocted by a 12 year old hopped up on Mountain Dew (or Mtn Dew now, I guess) and Slipknot? While going for as little as possible, I would advocate that the following is visisble on the front cover of the box.

The name (obviously)
A one-line (max) tagline
An illustration that depicts either the contents of the box (if its a component), or an abstraction of the game's most prevalent mechanic.
The appropriate age group for the game. Maybe. I would almost suggest relegating this to the side or back. If it was done in such a way that it actually meshes with the rest of the cover, I would begrudgingly allow it to sit at the grown-up table.

The illustration is very key. It is easy to take it way too far, and have a mess of "BOOM BOOM ACTION" on a cover, but the line between too much and not enough is so fine and blurry that I leave a question like that up to my art director.

I would highly recommend this Photoshop Phriday from SomethingAwful. When looking at it, search for the actual game box cover art, and ask yourself which looks better. You may be surprised.

Hexcape Demo Day 2: Recap

2009-03-31T06:14:00.000-07:00

Wow! What an excellent day. About a dozen people showed up on Sunday to play Hexcape, so many that we had to take over another table of the game store!

All in all, the testing went very well. The changes to the rules were very well received, and I think that my plan to release the rules sometime this or next week will ago ahead as scheduled. However, the beta testers surprised me somewhat, using the rules in ways I hadn't anticipated. In particular, there was a lot more "griefing" from players in the back, excessively lashing out at the players in the front, even when they could have been moving forward. The key to this, I found, is that there shouldn't be as many "choke points" right near the finish. Yes, the choke points were popular for messing with people, but at the very end, there was a clustering effect where no one wanted to let anyone else through, and the person (or people) in the very back were doing all they could to prolong the traffic jam. The long/short of this was that the maps need to be changed, not the rules. Having too many narrow passages or making it too complex causes issues with the players.

That being said, I think that Hexcape is ready to move on to the next phase. After retooling the maps a bit, I'm going to be putting out a call for artists to re-do them with an "artistic flair". I'll also be looking into packaging, printing, and all the other painfully boring parts of putting a game together. These are very exciting times, and I'm glad that things have progressed this far!

Also, here are some photos of the event. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to photograph when we were at max capacity, since I was busy giving introductions and helping new players.

Hexcape Demo Day 2!

2009-03-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

Not even a month after the first demo day, I've got Hexcape ready for it's second demo day! Again at Redcap's Corner, 4040 Sansom street in Philadelphia, but this one is on Sunday, the 29th, at 2pm.

The current stable of maps is up to 10 now (2 are 8.5x11, the rest are 11x17). My plan is to have 10 11x17 maps fully fleshed out (including nice art, and possible some cursory plot) for the game's first box set. At the moment, the maps are still being laminated, but I have a few ideas as to how to get around that for the final product. I'm keeping these ideas close to my chest, though, since I haven't decided 100%.

Also, I've given the rules their next full revision, version 0.5, which may turn into version 1.0, depending on how well the demo day goes. The changes that were made were mostly in regards to moving.

From the suggestions of my testers, I decided to add two kinds of "warp" tiles to the maps. There are random warps, and directed warps. If a player moves onto a directed warp, they have the option of moving to the matching directed warp hex (indicated by a letter). Random warps have a number (or numbers), 1 through 6. If a player moves onto a random warp hex, they immediately roll a die. That corresponding random warp hex is the next one the player can move to. The catch for both types of warp hexes, however, is that the player must have enough AP to get to their destination hex, or else they can't teleport. If the player starts on a warp tile, they must move off it, and then back on it again to take advantage of it.

Also, on the first demo day, there were several instances where players ended up getting stuck in a line, where one player was stuck behind another, and couldn't pass the player in front of them. We tried allowing the players to "swap" positions with the player in front of them, without costing anything additional. This turned out to allow for too many swaps, so for version .4 and .5, the MC of a hex with a player already in it is 1 greater than it is marked as. However, entering said hex moves the current occupant into the hex the usurper was previously in. I felt that this would cause players to "watch their backs" a little bit better. However, to prevent backups from happening as much, the newer maps have more paths from start to finish.

The last change, and the one I've done the least with, is in regards to "item cards." In theory, there will be some hexes that, when entered by a player, will allow the player to randomly draw an item card from a deck of item cards. These items will be one-time use only, and provide some sort of benefit. For the initial launch, I don't plan on including a deck of item cards, or any maps that utilize them. However, I like the option to be open for anyone who wants to create their own decks/maps.

I'm looking forward to the demo day, especially given how well the first event went. This time, I plan on being more vigilant at taking photos, so I can post them here. Hope to see you on Sunday!

MMORPG Grey Markets, and How To Dismantle Them

2009-03-16T07:35:00.000-07:00

A casual ebay search reveals a ton of items, characters, and resources for World of Warcraft that can be bought with real money. There are even companies that provide services to raise a character's level, or provide them with in-game currency for a set rate. I tried one of the sites that sells WOW gold, which gave me a 1.5:1 rate for cents/gold pieces. WOW wasn't singled out, either, this site had services for just about every MMO on the market right now. One of the things that really confuses me about this phenomenon is the fact that the game developers seem to be doing nearly nothing (or at least nothing effective) to combat this. While I don't have, and can't get, definite numbers on the costs/profits made by these grey markets, to keep in business, they must be earning enough money to make a significant profit. I can only
imagine that developers allow this because:
(a) They can't do anything about it, and/or
(b) Farmers and grinders still pay their monthly subscription fees.
It's kind of a consolation prize, but it's something

The only tool I've seen developers use combat this so far is only allowing players to use equipment they've earned/bought themselves. This is the most restrictive option, as it doesn't allow players to trade, or give things they don't want/need to their friends. Players cannot help out friends who are less experienced, as they are forced to hang on to junk they don't want anymore. The problem is compounded if a player can't even utilize some equipment, either because of level restrictions or a "class" system. On top of that, this method doesn't hamper character selling/power leveling at all.

A developer that allows players to buy useful items, whether in regular or "premium" flavors, generallly gets the stink-eye from the gaming community as a whole. It creates the feeling of there being two "classes" of players: ones who can/will pay for their equipment, and those who don't. In games that have player vs player combat, the feeling is compounded, since players who pay for experience/items are given an advantage over those who don't. Free players feel that paying players are lazy, and paying players want their money to provide a benefit over those who don't.

I've been thinking about this problem for a while, and have come up with a solution. One of the major tenets flies in the face of most MMORPG conventions: let your players start their character at whatever level they want, either for free, or for a (small) fee. It's almost exactly like buying a character from some farmer, except that the money goes straight to the developer. One of the major criticisms of MMORPGS is that you have to grind for a ton of time to advance to the "fun parts" or the game. I'm not really sure why this convention has held for so long, but I don't see anything that would be lost by removing this barrier. This way, if you have a bunch of friends who all play a particular game, and want you to play said game,
and they all have level 7 characters, you can jump right in, and be playing at their level, even if they'd started their characters out at level 1. Personally, I've always liked this freedom in pen-and-paper RPGs, so why not bring it to its digital counterparts?

Some people might think it'd be sleazy to buy their character at a higher level, and that's their opinion, but those people wouldn't be the kind to buy a character in the first place. If the option is made available to everyone, the only difference between a bought and a played character would be the user's investment in them. The "cheapening" feel by could be mitigated with an "achievement" system, with milestones for raising your character X levels, killing Y enemies, etc. Someone who leveled up the traditional way would definitely have more achievements then someone who just bought a maxed out character, and that effort would be rewarded (or at least acknowledged). It would still be possible to start at level 1, and go from there, but the point would be that it isn't required. This will minimize the cost of entry, in terms of time, and hopefully continue the trend of bringing more people who aren't schoolkids or zealots into gaming.

Items and resources, on the other hand, are little trickier. You should be able to be able to trade/give things to other players, as it can foster in-game friendships and enrich player-to-player interactions. However, if people can buy items with real money, there's automatically an exchange rate created between the in-game currency, and real currency, which much be watched very carefully. When the price to buy items in-game is too high, the grey market will appear, with people undercutting the developer by earning or buying items (with virtual currency) in-game, and then reselling them (with real dollars). Setting the prices too low, on the other hand, will cause more people to buy their gear instead of working for it. This might not be terrible, but would definitely increase the paid-free player animosity. The best way I can think to deal with this process is thus: you can buy items from the developer, BUT you can only use those items yourself. Or, somewhere in the buying process, you can specify that the item is a gift, and give the player ID of the person to whom you're gifting it to. In theory, there could still be a grey market for items that people have earned, but my guess is that as long as the developer prices are fairly reasonable, people would rather buy from the source than from a shady third party. Trades could also be tracked in order to identify and prevent grey marketing.

When all is said and done, it is going to be nearly impossible to ever completely edge grey markets out of MMOs without seriously restricting player freedom. Removing starting point restrictions, and providing greater access to things that players want will help keep players in the arms of the developers, rather than with questionable third parties.

Hexcape Demo Recap

2009-03-13T09:02:00.000-07:00

I probably should have published this last Sunday, but I've been putting together a pretty big post on combat mechanics, and it fell by the wayside.

The Demo Day on the 7th was a rousing success. There definitely was not a crowd, but in my mind, that was better, since it allowed me to observe and interact with people more than I would've been able to if I had been running from game to game, explaining and clarifying rules. We ran through one of the smaller maps I prepared, and two of the larger ones. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to make better tokens, so we played with number-marked pennies.

Everyone seemed to have a good time playing the game, which is ultimately what I like to hear. There were a few issues, though. In the .3 version of the rules, a player could not move through or into a space that is occupied by another player. With that, I had been hoping to allow players to block other players behind them, and force them to take another route. However, most people just seemed to want to follow the person ahead of them, and try to pass when the path opened up. The cost of going back and down another path was just too much. So, for the last game we changed the rules to allow a player to "swap" positions with another player, for no additional cost. This was funny, because at this point all of the players got pretty vicious towards each other, swapping when they didn't have to, just to send the person back a space. In the end, I decided that it would be better to impose an additional cost, so that a player would have to REALLY want to wither pass or screw over another player to make the cost worth it. I toyed with the idea of the two players having a roll-off, but in my opinion, that might create a little too much animosity.

The other main issue was right at the end. Since all of the maps I've created have the finish position at the side of the map, there are only 2 or 3 spaces that can access the finish position, and since players can't occupy the same space, what happened every time was a jam-up at the finish, that ended either when one player rolled significantly higher than the others for two rounds, or the player who was in last place (who wouldn't be able to catch up and get past the players in front) would simply let one of the front-runners win. Honestly, I like the jam-up that the end, because it actually allowed some players that were in the back to catch up a bit, and the swapping rule definitely helped, but the overarching message I took from that experience was that the maps need to be slightly more open, and allow players more access to the end space. I'm going to be offline for a good while this weekend, I'm hoping I can get some work done on some new maps for the next demo day (whose date will be announced soon).

Either way, it was a good time, and I'm very please with how it turns out. I'm hoping the next one will have more players, so I can get some simultaneous games going. I'll probably offer some sort of incentive to people, and give more notice (I'm thinking free pizza and two weeks notice of the event).

Inaugural Post

2009-03-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

Greetings!

This is my new blog, kavwoosh! While I'm going to continue to post at my old blog, Handguns and Tequila, I felt the divergent foci required a separate page. H&T will continue to be about issues I encounter in the software development world. This blog, however, will be more about industry and business, primarily focused on software and gaming. Its not going to be entirely boring, however, as I also plan on discussing design, and releasing my projects through here as well.

So without further ado, here's the first item of note:

I will be demoing/testing my new board game, Hexcape, at Redcap's Corner game store, located at 4040 Locust Street, Philadelphia PA. The games begin at 2, but feel free to show up afterward, as there is no end time set. If you plan on coming, please RSVP either via email, or by commenting on this post