Game Design: Theory & Practice- P4 pdf

Once a scorpion has passed by, the player must now expend effort trying to shoot all the poisoned mushrooms at the top of the screen or be prepared to blast the cen - tipedes as they plummet vertically straight toward the player. So we can see that each of the creatures in the game has a special, unique rela - tionship to the mushrooms. It is the interplay of these relationships that creates the challenge for the player. The more mushrooms the flea drops, the more mushrooms the scorpion has to poison. The spider may take out mushrooms along the bottom of the screen, getting them out of the way of the player, but it may eat so many that the flea starts coming out again. If the player kills the centipede too close to the top of the screen, it will leave a clump of mushrooms which are difficult to destroy at such a distance, and which will cause future centipedes to reach the bottom of the screen at a greater speed. However, if the player waits until the centipede is at the bottom of the screen, the centipede is more likely to kill the player. With the mushrooms almost functioning as puzzle pieces, Centipede becomes something of a hybrid between an arcade shooter and a real-time puzzle game. Indeed, some players were able to develop special strategies that would work to stop the flea from ever coming out, thus making the centipede get to the bottom of the screen less quickly and allowing the player to survive for much longer. It is the interplay of each of the player’s adversaries with these mushrooms and with each other that creates a unique challenge for the player. Escalating Tension A big part of the success of Centipede is how it escalates tension over the length of the game. The game actually has peaks and valleys it creates in which tension esca - lates to an apex and, with the killing of the last centipede segment, relaxes for a moment as the game switches over to the next wave. One small way in which the game escalates tension over a few seconds is through the flea, which is the only enemy in the game the player must shoot twice. When it is shot just once, its speed increases dramatically and the player must quickly shoot it again lest the flea hit the shooter. For that brief speed burst, the player’s tension escalates. In terms of the centipede itself, the game escalates the tension by splitting the centipede each time it is shot. If the player shoots the middle segment of an eleven-segment centipede, it will split into two five-segment centipedes which head in opposite directions. Sure, the player has decreased the total number of segments on the screen by one, but now he has two adversaries to worry about at once. As a result, skilled players will end up going for the head or tail of the centipede to avoid splitting it. Most of the game’s escalating tension over the course of a wave is derived from the centipede’s approach toward the bottom of the screen and the player’s often frantic efforts to kill it before it gets there. Once a centipede head reaches the bot - tom of the screen, a special centipede head generator is activated, which spits out 68 Chapter 4: Game Analysis: Centipede TEAMFLY Team-Fly ® additional centipede heads into the player’s area. If the player is unable to kill the centipede before it reaches the bottom of the screen, which has already increased tension by its very approach, that tension is further escalated by the arrival of these extra heads. And those extra heads keep arriving until the player has managed to kill all of the remaining centipede segments on the screen. The rate at which those extra heads come out increases over time, such that if the player takes her time in killing them, additional centipedes will arrive all the faster, making the player still more frantic. Once the player kills the last segment, the game goes to its next wave, and the centipede is regenerated from the top of the screen. This provides a crucial, tempo - rary reprieve for the player, a moment for her to catch her breath. The player will feel a great rush at having finally defeated the centipede, especially if the extra cen - tipede head generator had been activated. In addition, the newly generated centipede at first appears easier to kill, since it is generated so far from the player’s area. Over the course of the player’s entire game, the mushrooms inevitably become more and more packed on the play-field. Once there are more mushrooms toward the bottom of the screen, the player feels lucky if he can just clear all of the mush - rooms in the lower half of the play-field. He has no chance of destroying the mushrooms toward the top, since the lower mushrooms block his shots. Similarly, if the scorpion has left any poison mushrooms toward the top of the screen, the player has no chance whatsoever of destroying them, and as a result the centipede dive-bombs the bottom of the screen on every single wave. Far into a game, the top Chapter 4: Game Analysis: Centipede 69 Over the course of a game of Centipede, mushrooms become more and more tightly packed on the play-field. of the play-field becomes a solid wall of mushrooms. As the mushrooms become more and more dense, the centipede gets to the bottom of the screen faster. When the centipede can get to the bottom of the screen extremely quickly, the player’s game is that much faster paced, and he is that much more panicked about destroy - ing the centipede before it reaches the bottom of the screen. This increased mushroom density has the effect of escalating tension not just within a wave as the extra centipede head generator did, but also from wave to wave, since the mush - rooms never go away unless the player shoots them. Centipede also balances its monsters to become harder and harder as the player’s score increases. And since the player’s score can never decrease, the ten - sion escalates over the course of the game. Most obvious is the spider, whose speed approximately doubles once the player’s score reaches 5000 (1000 if the game’s operator has set the game to “hard”). The spider also maneuvers in a smaller and smaller area of the bottom of the screen as the player’s score gets really high, even- tually moving only one row out of the player’s six-row area. With the spider thus constrained, it is both more likely to hit the player and less likely for the player to be able to shoot it. Recall that the flea drops from the top of the screen based on the quantity of mushrooms in the bottom half of the screen. When the player starts the game, if there are less than five mushrooms in that area the flea will come down, dropping more as it does so. As the player’s score increases, however, so does the quantity of mushrooms needed to prevent the flea’s appearance. Now the player must leave more and more mushrooms in that space to prevent the flea from com- ing out and cluttering the top of the screen with mushrooms. At the start of each wave, the game always generates a total of twelve centipede segments and heads at the top of the screen. This means that if a twelve-segment centipede appears at the top of the screen, that will be the only centipede. If a seven-segment centipede appears, then five other centipede heads will appear as well, thus totaling the magic number of twelve. The more centipedes that appear, the more challenging it is for the player to shoot them all, and the more likely one will sneak to the bottom of the screen. The game starts by releasing a single twelve-segment centipede. In the next wave, a slow eleven-segment centipede appears along with one head. In the following wave, a fast eleven-segment and one head combination arrive. Then a slow ten-segment and two heads appear. With each wave there are a greater number of individual centipedes for the player to keep track of and a greater escalation of tension. The game wraps around once twelve individual heads are spawned, but then the game becomes harder by only spawning fast centipedes. The player’s death also provides a brief respite from the tension. When the player’s ship is destroyed, the wave starts over and hence the centipede returns to the top of the screen. Before this, however, all of the mushrooms on the screen are reset. This means that all the partially destroyed mushrooms are returned to their 70 Chapter 4: Game Analysis: Centipede undamaged state. But also all of the mushrooms poisoned by the scorpion are returned to their unpoisoned state. Many waves into the game, the increased mush - room density makes shooting poisoned mushrooms all but impossible, and with those poisoned mushrooms in place, the player is bombarded by centipedes hurtling toward him in every single wave. Thus, a player is almost relieved when his shooter is destroyed and all those poisoned mushrooms are removed from the top of the screen. This causes the player’s game to be much more relaxed, at least for the time being. Centipede is marvelous at creating and maintaining a tense situation for the player, while still providing brief “breathing periods” within the action. Designers of modern games, who are always concerned with ramping up difficulty for the player, could learn much by analyzing how Centipede keeps the player constantly on his toes without ever unfairly overwhelming him. One Person, One Game Many may scoff at Centipede twenty years after its creation. There is no question that it is a less technically astounding accomplishment than more modern works, and those who do not examine it closely are likely to dismiss it as more of a light diversion instead of a serious game. But what Centipede does, it does with such facility, featuring game mechanics so precisely and perfectly balanced and gameplay so uniquely compelling, that it truly is a marvel of computer game design. One must remember that Centipede was created in the days of the Chapter 4: Game Analysis: Centipede 71 Centipede’s frantic gameplay keeps the player tense most of the time, though it provides some breaks in the action during which the player can relax. one-person-one-game system, when the development team for a game consisted pri - marily of one person, in this case Ed Logg. By having one person in total control of a project, where a single talented individual fully understands every last nuance of the game, the final product is much more likely to come out with a clearness of vision and brilliance of execution. Of course, one person can create a terrible game just as easily as a large team, but one must wonder if the lone wolf developer does not have a better chance at creating the perfect game. 72 Chapter 4: Game Analysis: Centipede Chapter 5 Focus “Feel the flow. . . To become one with the flow is to realize purpose.” — Warrel Dane D eveloping a game for two years with a team of twenty people can some - times more resemble a war than the creation of art. Many would say that a decent amount of conflict can lead to great art, especially in collaborative forms such as modern commercial computer games. A stronger game may arise from the ashes of team members arguing over the best way to implement some aspect of gameplay. If the game merely becomes unfocused as a result of these squabbles, then a good game is not likely to emerge. Over the course of the many battles you must fight, skirmishes you must endure, and defeats you must overcome 73 in the course of a game’s development, with conflicts potentially arising with other team members or from within yourself, it is far too easy to lose track of just why you were creating the game in the first place. Is it possible that at one point the game you are working on captivated your imagination? Was there some vision you had for why this game would be fun, compelling, and unique? Is it possible that at one point you actually liked computer games at all? Sometimes in the middle of a project it is easy to get sidetracked—sidetracked by technological obstacles that are thrown in your path, sidetracked by altercations between team members, or sidetracked when your publisher tells you features A, B, and C simply have to be changed. It is at these junctures where you come to doubt that your game will ever be fun, or whether it will even be completed. These peri - ods of doubt are the ones that separate the good game designers from the merely passable ones. Good game designers will be able to overcome these difficulties and stay on track by remembering their focus. The technique I will be exploring in this chapter is certainly not one that all game designers use, but I think it is one that all game designers could benefit from. Many designers may use the technique but not realize it. Others may have entirely different methods for assuring their game comes together as a fun, consistent whole. You cannot expect to go up to any game designer and say, “What’s your focus for your current project?” and expect them to produce an answer in line with the method I explore in this chapter. But if you start being rigorous in maintaining focus in your projects, I think you will see very positive results in the final quality of your games. Establishing Focus A game’s focus is the designer’s idea of what is most important about a game. In this chapter I encourage designers to write their focus down in a short paragraph, since putting it down in writing can often clarify and solidify a designer’s thoughts. However, it is the idea of the focus which is of paramount importance. In a way, a game’s focus is similar to a corporation’s “mission statement,” assuming such mis - sion statements are actually meaningful and used to guide all of a corporation’s decisions. As a game designer you should start concerning yourself with your game’s focus from the very beginning of the project. When the project is in its infancy, before work has started on the design document and the project exists primarily as an idea in your head, you should ask yourself a series of questions about the game you are envisioning: l What is it about this game that is most compelling? l What is this game trying to accomplish? 74 Chapter 5: Focus l What sort of emotions is the game trying to evoke in the player? l What should the player take away from the game? l How is this game unique? What differentiates it from other games? l What sort of control will the player have over the game-world? By going over these questions, you should be able to determine the core nature of the game you are planning to create. If you have trouble answering these questions, now is the time to think about the game until the answers to these questions become obvious. Now—before there is anyone else working on the project, before “burn rate” is being spent and driving up the game’s budget, before the marketing depart - ment starts trying to influence the game’s content and directions—now is the time to focus. Only by firmly establishing the vision of the game early on will you have any chance of seeing it carried out. If you do not have too much trouble divining answers to these questions, you may have written an entire page or more delineating the game’s points of differenti- ation. But a page is too much. The focus that we are striving for needs to be succinct—a few sentences, a short paragraph at the most. It should be something you can quickly read to your colleagues without their eyes glazing over. You should take whatever notes you have in answer to these questions and whittle them down until they are short enough to fill only a few sentences, a mid-sized paragraph. Keep only your most compelling ideas. You do not need to list every single feature of the game, or even everything it does differently from other games. Keep only what is most important to your vision of the game, only those points which, if you took them away, would irreparably weaken the game. You do not need to include the setting of your game if that is not inherent to the actual focus of the game. It may not matter if your game has a fantasy, science fic - tion, or 1920s crime fiction setting, if what is really at the heart of your game is exploring the relationships between characters in a stressful situation, or the subtle - ties of siege warfare. If the setting is not vital to what you want to do with the game, leave it out. Of course, your primary motivation for working on a project may be hopelessly intertwined with the setting. If you actually started with a setting you wanted to explore in a game, such as costumed superheroes in small-town America, and your vision of the gameplay formed around the idea of these charac - ters in a certain environment, then you will want to include it in your focus. The focus is exclusively for the concepts that are most central to the game you are hop - ing to develop. All that should remain in your focus are the elements without which the game would no longer exist. Your focus should be something that grabs you viscerally, stirs your creative juices, and makes you feel absolutely exhilarated. If it is not something that thrills you, even at this early stage, it is going to be hard for you to muster enthusiasm Chapter 5: Focus 75 when your deadlines are slipping, your budget is skyrocketing, you still have three levels to create, and your lead artist just left for another company. Chris Crawford touched on the idea of a game’s focus in his book, The Art of Computer Game Design, as he was discussing what he called a game’s goal: “This is your opportu - nity to express yourself; choose a goal in which you believe, a goal that expresses your sense of aesthetic, your world view. . . It matters not what your goal is, so long as it is congruent with your own interests, beliefs, and passions.” If you do not believe in your game, it is not going to be the best game you can make. Even if you are working under the constraints of a license, a domineering pub - lisher, or a prima donna lead programmer, make your own goals for the project. If the game you have been assigned to work on is not one in which you are interested, figure out some way to transform it into something you can get excited about. No situation is so bad that, given enough time, you cannot make something out of it that you find personally compelling. You want your focus to be something you will fight intensely for until the game finally ships. Much of this chapter is written in a fashion that implies that you are in charge of your project, at least from a game design standpoint. Of course, this may not be the case. You may be one of several designers on the project. You may even be one of seven and you were just hired last week, so you are at the bottom of the seniority ladder. This does not excuse you from determining what your game’s focus is and doing everything you can to keep the game on track. Hopefully the lead designer has already determined what the project’s goals are and should have included this information in the introduction to the design document. If you cannot find it there, you may wish to go talk to your lead. Ask her what the project is really trying to do, not necessarily in a confrontational way, but just so you get a good idea of where the project is going, and how your contribution to the game can be properly aligned with that direction. If it turns out the design lead does not really have a focus in mind, it may be held by another member of the team, say a lead programmer or lead artist. How - ever, if despite your best research efforts, the project seems to be goal-less, you may need to take matters into your own hands. Try to figure out where the project seems to be heading, and start talking with people about it. Chat with the other designers, artists, programmers, and producers. Try to talk to them about what the game is all about, and try to get everyone to agree. Meetings may be a good place to do this; when everyone is present any conflicts between different perspectives or personalities on the team can be weeded out. You do not need to be in a lead posi - tion in order to keep your project on track. As a designer in any capacity on a project, it is ultimately your responsibility that the game always has a clear direc - tion and that a fun game emerges at the end of the tunnel. 76 Chapter 5: Focus An Example: Snow Carnage Derby Let us suppose you have a vision for a game involving snowmobiles and combat. What is it about snowmobile riding that excites you? Is it adventuring across Can - ada’s Northwest Territories, trying to realistically simulate a great snowmobile trek? No? Perhaps what gets you going is that a snowmobile looks like a fun vehicle to drive, and you enjoy the idea of handling one in a safe game-world, where you can make jumps and spin donuts in the snow without actually injuring yourself. In this case, reality is not so much the issue as having fun with driving a snowmobile, in an environment that allows for plenty of cool maneuvers. Since the snowmobile com - ponent seems fairly central to your idea, you will need to include it in the focus. So your focus can start with a sentence that explains this: “The player’s experience will revolve around the seemingly realistic physics of controlling snowmobiles, with the player being able to do fun and challenging moves and jumps in a snowy environ - ment; the game will be balanced not for realism but for fun.” Now, what is it about this combat element that grabs you? You see visions of blood soaking into snow, snowmobiles ramming into other snowmobiles, riders hanging on to their snowmobiles for dear life, desperately clutching the handlebars to avoid being thrown. Why are these snowmobiles battling? That is not as impor- tant, you decide, as the excitement of the combat. Why it is happening is irrelevant. The vision of snowmobiles smashing into each other turns you on, with the vio- lence cranked up to absurd levels. You may have trouble getting your game into censorship-minded retailers, but this is your vision. So include a sentence about the nature of the combat: “The game will provide a visceral thrill by allowing for the decapitation and otherwise crippling of enemy snowmobile riders, and said vio - lence will be played out to maximum comedic effect.” What else about your snowmobile battle game is a central part of your vision? Do you want to realistically simulate fuel and snowmobiles breaking down? Is fix - ing your snowmobile an intrinsic part of your game? Not really; it seems that though that could be added to the game, it is not absolutely essential to your vision. Will the game be in 3D or in 2D? Well, actually, the game could work in either. To be commercially viable in today’s marketplace it will probably need to be 3D but that is not central to your vision. In your focus, do not include aspects of your game that are more about getting the project funded and published than making the game you want to make. You can worry about commercial considerations later. Right now you are concerned with your vision, and if you start compromising your vision before absolutely necessary you are going to be blind at the end of the day. So you do not need to specify 2D or 3D. Indeed, maybe you have everything you need for the focus. Remember, the focus should not be very long. Now is the time to put your two sentences together in a paragraph and name the game. Though it may seem premature, naming the game is actually a good idea at Chapter 5: Focus 77 [...]... the game they are imitating so compelling in the first place Then they proceed to make their own game top-heavy with tacked-on features that exist only to hide the fact their game is just like Game X Removing references to other games from your focus will help expose the true nature of the project you are undertaking Establishing a focus for your project does not need to limit the scope of your game, ... do so Your game can still be a massively complex game with an epic sweep In fact, if appropriate, this complexity and depth should probably be mentioned in your focus, but you should still be able to describe the game in a few sentences in order to succinctly communicate what is most important about your undertaking Your game can even include multiple styles of gameplay within the same game Suppose... about the game excites you but which did not come across in your focus If you persist in thinking your game is compelling and that your focus properly reflects why, the second conclusion you can come to is that the team assembled is simply the wrong one to develop this game Not every team can develop every type of game A team that has been making sports games for years, likes working on sports games,... This will have a direct effect on many aspects of the game, including what level of simulation will need to be created (the hard-core gamers will demand a more involved and complex gameplay experience), as well as the control system the game will use (hard-core gamers can put up with a more obtuse and convoluted control scheme, while more casual gamers will need something they can pick up quickly) Arbitrarily,... Many game designers do not have a focus when they are working on a game, and it shows Of course, it is possible to make a good game without really having any idea of what your game is all about It is also possible to win the lottery When your livelihood, reputation, and the quality of your final game are on the line, however, you want something more than a random number generator to determine if your game. .. computer games, it is virtually impossible to create a good game if you do not have the majority of your team excited to be working on it If you are working on a project largely by yourself with others contributing significantly less to the game than you, you may not need to sell your focus at all Indeed, games created by lone wolf designer/programmer/artists can be among the most focused of computer games... scatterbrained and unfocused herself, chances are good the game will not be very focused either Even if she is a more sane, organized person, if she does not keep track of her game s focus over the course of the project, her game may end up being just as unfocused as the most uncoordinated, over-budgeted, fifty-developer game If you are working as a designer on a game with a team, it is essential to make sure... of the game that people can read quickly (The nature and creation of design documents is more fully explored in Chapter 17, “The Design Document.”) The design document should take the game suggested by your focus and expand on it, detailing how the goals in your focus will be accomplished by gameplay and how precisely that gameplay will function You will also be sketching out the flow of the game, what... being on one level for the entire game as Centipede was, Centipede 3D takes the player through a progression of levels The new game also embraces certain gameplay norms of modern console games, such as replayable levels, bonus objectives, and obstacle navigation The action and combat portions of Centipede 3D, however, will be extremely reminiscent of the original game, employing identical AI wherever... or a sequel, the game you are making has a direct relation to the other game you refer to in the focus, and a large part of whether the game is deemed a success or not will rest on how well it follows up its predecessor As such, throughout the game s development, the team members should be asking 88 Chapter 5: Focus Sub-Focuses AM FL Y themselves how their work relates to the original game, and whether . develop this game. Not every team can develop every type of game. A team that has been mak - ing sports games for years, likes working on sports games, and knows how to make a sports game fun is. about the game you are envisioning: l What is it about this game that is most compelling? l What is this game trying to accomplish? 74 Chapter 5: Focus l What sort of emotions is the game trying. should the player take away from the game? l How is this game unique? What differentiates it from other games? l What sort of control will the player have over the game- world? By going over these