This is entire entry is going to cover PAX-Dev and PAX which will last around a week and a half.
Today while listening to podcasts a game idea came into my head. The background for this is two weeks of playing Lowlands. The key mechanic of the game is the dike building vs. the sheep building. If players contribute to the dike then the dike holds, sheep are worth more, and dike contributing is worth less. If players produce sheep then the dike fails and sheep are worth less and dike contributions are worth more. It's more subtle than this but this mechanic ands some interesting interaction to an otherwise multiple-player solitaire game without adding excessive politics.
One podcast I listend to was a freakonomics podcast that described the two sides of the ecology debate as prophets (doom is coming and we must stop doing things) and wizards (we must build all kinds of things to bring improvents and fix the problems cause by the things we build).
A second podcast talked about how there are different kinds of leaders but there are also followers and there must always be followers to get something accomplished.
The game idea is that there is a community where you can choose the role of wizard, prophet or follower. Wizards and Prophets are generally opposed. Followers must choose a Wizard or Prophet to follow. Somehow the actions affect a communal games state, improve future actions, and allow for VP. This is all I have so far.
I've had problems with genre in the past. So that I don't pick a problematic genre too soon, let's go through a list of genres and try to find roles for Wizard, Prophet and Follower.
| Genre | Prophet | Wizard | Follower |
|---|---|---|---|
| Age of Reason | |||
| American Civil War | |||
| American Indian Wars | |||
| American Rev War | |||
| Amererican West | Cowboys | Settlers | |
| Ancient (300 BC) | Shaman | ||
| Ancient Egypt | Priest | Pharoah | |
| Arabian | |||
| Environmental | |||
| Fantasy | Cleric | Wizard | King |
| Farming | |||
| Horror | Science | Exorsist | |
| Mafia | |||
| Medieval | |||
| Napoleanic | Revolution | Aristocracy | Mob |
| Nautical | Greenpeace | Whalers | |
| Pirates | |||
| Political | |||
| Religious | |||
| Renaissance | Church | Science/Art | Prince |
| Sci Fi | |||
Trying a different take on this. Instead of starting with the theme, let's start with the basic mechanics and go from there. Starting with four players and 3 cards: wizard, prophet, follower, let's see how we can play these in a round and device a working game with minimal mechanics.
I used squib to mock up some cards.
A two round play where each player plays a single card over two rounds. Players can play in the first or second round. Playing a card early means it is unbound. Playing a card late means it must bind with an appropriate type if possible. The second player chooses the bind if choices are available.
Eric has some ideas.
- reminds him of Modern Art
- imagined having more cards, perhaps a hand
- thought about having a secret action that may come in
- thinks it would be easier to have a game in mind that models this mechanic
Had some ideas overnight and talked with Eric. Some ideas
- follower mechanic is more important than wizard/prophet mechanic
- start with just lead/follow
- can have multiple actions but just start with build
- buildiings can have different effects if
- built solo
- leader: when joint building
- follower: when joint building
- start with just a few buildings and make a number of dupes
- get to playable version quickly an try to play and revise.
- future things to not worry about right away
- multiple actions
- community vs wealth; civil unrest
- tile shaped buildings; just use poker cards
I had trouble thinking of basic buildings that would accept actions. Eric's advice to look for an existing game is probably a good idea.
- Poker deck
- Players are trying to build a winning poker hand
- there are two drafts of face up cards
- solo leader chooses a card from the small draft
- joined card draws from large or small draft
- follower draws one card from face down
- joined follower draws two cards from face down keeps one
- when someone completes a hand there are two more rounds
Played poker with Eric and wolfe. Eric had the idea of pairing a couple follower cards wtih one faceup and one facedown leader card. This pairing gives the follower incentive to correctly guess what the leader does.
Added lead/follower to Splendor. Played with Eric. It was nice to have leader pay his coins to the follower. For our first version the leader didn't get any benefit from being followed. That seemed ok but maybe it could be better if he got a one discount. This would allow leaders to gamble with a lead when that may not get followed. This can lead to goose eggs if the leader is not able to do anything. We should try it with four.
Little things.
Game should be responsive; controls. Minimize time to fun; login, setup, etc. Story can get in the way of the game having fun.
Eric: are most of these things tuning issues or do they have to be designed into the game from the beginning?
Eric: is winrate different for co-op games? Is losing important in co-op games? How important is rules winning as opposed to other definitions of winning?
Breaks economies
Bugs
Duplication bugs.
Inflation. Rome, Yuan Dynasty is a good example from history.
Uninteded Currencies. Unreal awkward currency caused players to switch. Caused by hyperinflation and player frustration.
Resource Farming. Caused when grinding is a chore.
Reimagine game design as customer loyalty.
Being able to play and engage is common to all industries.
Look at popular games to see what game concepts general players understand. e.g. colors of rarities. common, uncommon, rare. Also "level" is totally overused in gaming but gamers understand them.
Eric: look at map of popular board games. Market Basket approach.
Understand why game mechanics work. skill progression, acheivements.
daily rewards: fixed interval reinforcement. Also describe the research behind it.
"Draftkings is not selling people the ability to win money but rather the dream to win money."
Punch card with holes already punched is more valuable.
Game industry is bad on publishing research due to NDAs.
"Homo Ludens", collecting papers.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=991962
Vanessa Hemovich, Ph.D.
How Cognition Predicts Player Spatial Coding Systems
Schemas predict behavior. An organized mental representation of stimuli to help relate concepts to one another. Stored in long-term memory. Very subjective.
Assimilation is th process of fitting information into an existing mental framework.
Accommodation is changing schemas to fit criteria and characteristics of new stimuli.
Conceptual disfluency creates attentional blink. e.g. OJ and chocolate chip cookies.
part one available on the GDC vault
Various spacial mapping definitions.
Action gamers are good at mental rotaion tasks. Gaming inervention greatly imporoves this. Reduce angle disparity in either 2D or 3D for better understandability.
Feature search can easily pull the odd thing out of a sea of consistent things. Feature search. Number of distractors doesn't seem to make a difference. Adding more features that are required to differentiate it makes it much more difficult--more distractores matter.
Design games on the opposite spectrum of where you are at.
Lots of science behind this. prediction, understanding, control.
UX should come before UI.
randomness: unpredictable outcome
uncertainty: unknown outcome (hidden information). A superset of randomness.
purpose:
- excitement
- player balance
- replayability
- player ego
tune with strategy
Randomness can reward people that can read probability.
Julian Quijano - Beautiful Glitch
Made Monster Prom on the cheap. Started with $10K, $40K from kickstarter. team of 4-5
< 2 months $1M sales
- don't do everything yourself; surround yourself with more talent than yourself
- childish urges: don't jump to the first enfatuation you have
- hyper complex ideas: don't mash many concepts together; start simple
- mammoth structures: don't start a multi million dollar game
- sunk cost falacy: sometimes you have to cancel a project
- fuck milestones:
- I won't fail because I'm not even trying: strange bullshit; this prevents you from going all in but feels like it protects you from failure.
- money is for sellout, i do art:
- i don;t care for the market, i'm indie:
parable of the market: you never really leave the market; to break the conventions you need to know the conventions
triangle of creativity
- enjoy it
- avoid whims and short trends
- you will enjoy it for a couple years
- joy of playing and making games are not the same
viability
- don't go to big
- reesources: money, time, talent
- not a rule but be cautius and keep it simpple
strategy
- how does the game fit in the market
- dont have to go with the market
- big players can help success
- how to assess this? build your wonderful checklist
The Wonderful Checklist
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how to communicate with the big players
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have more than one idea and then use a checklist to choose the best project
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look at the game: foundations and enhancers
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foundation #1 "a hook"; a one line test to convince someone to play the game
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#2 twist: buzz, more than a stunt; the game revolves around the twist
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#3 Fuckton of variables; permutations
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#4 emerging storytelling; permutations creates tiny stories
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#5 prosumer ready; allow the player to be creative
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#6 humor; jokes are the foundation for player's jokes; joke material; gag material
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#7 horribly hard: frustration is a great combustible for fun on you tube
enhancers not listed
mechanics to dynamics; think how people interact; comes from board games
details; for board games, lots of thought into cards/tiles
conclusion: be analynical, avoid ego, be professional
guys worked on anew the distant light
great kubrick quote on subtext; subtext is more powerful than overt
subtext is the hidden meaning that is contained in images sounds and actions
Star Wars example: even subtext can be heavy handed.
design risks: developers relinquish control to the player
not always necessary
Game Trust. The publishing arm of Gamestop.
What is the future of genre, monetization, platforms
Growth of the passive gamer.
Goal: Save time and money, focus on what's important
Setup
cost and time different for phases of different creative things: digital game, board game, filem
Every production problem can be solvd in pre-production
prototype
- intenral communication tool
- explains to your team what the game is
- quick iteration on story design mechanics
- low cost , disposable , will be thrown away
If you think you cant throw the prototype away then you spent too much money on it.
fun should be in prototype
game designers don;t make products they may experiences inside a user
beware of things that users have never seen before
if you have multiple mechanics then you need to have the prototype show them working together.
Confrontation
null
Resolution
double or tripple coding can help color blind
Can augment paper prototypes with some AR kits
Epilogue