TSBL being played at Bit Of Alright – Photo by Jessica Bernard

No Quarter is an event organised by the NYU Game Center, each year they commission some developers to make games for the space, invite people along and frivolity is had. Charles Pratt got in touch with me last year asking if I’d be interested, and my answer was hell yes. I had free reign to make whatever game I wanted to, so I mostly just went with whatever was interesting to me at the time, I only actually started work on There Shall Be Lancing about a month and a half before the event.

The fist thing I worked on was a split-screen knife fighting game. inspired by the cover (and music) of Alexisonfire, I already had a prototype knife-fighting system where the left stick moved the left hand, the right stick the right, and triggers were used to thrust hands forward and back.

Knife fighting concept sketch

The main idea behind it besides the hand-control was that something that seems cool and exciting becomes very real with no way back out once you start. The game would be presented as a fighting game with some pumping rock music, character select where you pick a school and get a randomly generated schoolgirl or schoolboy (different characters every time, since nobody gets to survive to take part in a second knife fight). then once the first cut is made, players will start to bleed, more cuts will cause yet more bleeding (how much bleeding depends on where you are cut and how deep). eventually one player either bleeds to death or is outright killed (a knife deep through the eye or chest), and the “YOU WIN!” screen for the other player shows the winner bleeding to death in an ambulance. on the off-chance a player would win without being cut, she would be seen crying over the corpse of her ‘enemy’. The main problem with this game though (I felt) was that the controls weren’t right for the setting; the prototype I made used pretty much every button on the gamepad (face buttons to change knife grip and also crouch/duck, sticks+triggers for hand control, bumpers for thrusts, d-pad for movement) and it was too much to explain to somebody just picking up the controller for the first time and be able to play the game. I tried to think of ways to make the controls simpler but there was no way to do it without compromising how I wanted the game to feel. Basically I realised I wanted the game to feel complicated, daunting and unwieldly and that wasn’t a good fit for an event where everyone was new to the game and might only play it once. The idea was scrapped.

The next game I had a go at was “ballroom”, kind of like hockey except with giant swords instead of sticks. players could knock a ball towards opponents’ goals to score, or knock spiked balls into opponents to hurt them, or just cut opponents in two.

Ballroom

Like the knife fighting game, this too was built around the analogue stick controls, but this time it used *only* the analogue sticks. Left stick to move, and right stick to manipulate the sword. the controls worked and the game was simple enough to pick up, but I wasn’t exactly in love with it once I had an early prototype, and when I showed it to people the response was generally “there’s already a bunch of No Quarter games like this” so I found something else to work on.

At about this time, I was knee-deep working on Leaper, so I had gyroscope game ideas on the mind and had recently discovered that multiplayer-networked games made in unity (like my game splat death salad) connected fine cross-platform. So I started thinking about games people could connect to with devices they bring to the event, and visions of 32 people in a room spinning around with gyroscope were all I had for a few months.

For the first month playing with this idea it was mostly just a “spinning race” game, people would download the app to their device, join the game and have races to see who could spin in a circle X amount of times the fastest. Eventually I started to think of mixing it up with different tasks, so the game would shout “stay within the circle” and you would have to use the gyroscope to move your avatar within a moving circle, and other such games. but eventually I moved from that to something much more themed which I call “Find Of The Representatives” it was on this that I spent the majority of the No Quarter lead-up time working on.

Find Of The Representatives concept

The idea here was sort of like a multiplayer Leaper, where players control robot ‘representatives’ which have been sent into some deep underground ruins and must solve puzzles and overcome obstacles together.

A Representative

The way this would all be presented to players is a screen that is *just* a news channel, interviews with scientists discussing the newly discovered chasm in south america, and the remote control robots being sent in to explore it (as it’s too dangerous for humans). The news would show interviews with the scientist who made the robots explaining how to control them, though it’s pretty apparent, and sometimes the news would show a live stream of the expert representative pilots operating the robots remotely (a webcam view of the room where the players are). When players make new discoveries in the underground tombs/temple these would be analysed by top researchers on the news feed, they would see ancient texts carved into the walls and discover that whoever built the place believed there was a dark god of some kind trapped in the ruins.

some sketch ideas for Find Of The Representatives

As players travelled further into the temple, the dark god would interfere with the news stream as well as the control screens (ipad/iphones/androids etc) the players were using to control the representatives. and eventually the dark god would straight up summon a meteor to crash into the world. the representatives must then find some way to use the ruins to seal away the dark god they had awakened or the meteor would crash into the world and the players would lose.

gameplay gif

Games would probably last around 10-20 minutes, and players could dip in and out as they wanted. Since representatives could be dropped into the first room as they join or destroyed as they leave. Play would center around carrying items and torches for other players, holding doors open, standing on pressure plates and all the kinds of things you’d expect remote-control robots to be doing deep underground.

gameplay gif

Whilst I really liked this idea (and still do), feature creep, the lack of reliably knowing if a given device would have a good gyroscope, wireless connection issues and a massive depressive dip on tip, I totally stalled for a few weeks. with the No Quarter deadline looming I had to face facts, drop the project and think of a new idea I could realistically finish in the time remaining.

I emailed Charles to apologise but I’d have to change ideas and I’d let him know when I knew what I was making.

Two hours later I sent him this:

first lancers concepts

The idea for a lancing game came to me remarkably easily. I knew I had to drop all of the iOS/Android touchscreen/gyroscope stuff (which was painful as heck btw, I bought a licence I couldn’t afford just so I could make my No Quarter game run on android devices!) and I knew it had to be easy to pick up so I already had the dual-stick control thinking in mind from earlier. the ‘play on a sphere’ where each player has a ‘home’ point where they attack or react to attacks part of the idea comes from a game idea I’ve had in mind for 13 years; I was a kid thinking I’d make a PS2 game (never happened) and made a bunch of design documents and sketches, including this:

combat concept for “feebles”

So yeah, a combat system idea I had when I was 13, plus 13 more years of experience designing and making games, plus a steampunk look and you get There Shall Be Lancing.

early TSBL gif

With a little playtesting I found that with just lancing and blocking alone certain stalemates were possible, so with a suggestion from Terry I added shooting, and then the game was quickly playing in a manner similar to how it plays today.

early TSBL gif

From that point on, I mostly focused on honing the three ‘options’ (lance, block, shoot), so the game was quick to pick up, simple to understand at various ‘levels’ of play. (so it’s fun to play even if you don’t understand the speed meter, or bullets), but remains balanced at all levels of play. My main goal at this point was to have something that was super fun and presentable, even if not as visually slick as I’d like. I didn’t know how much I’d get done in the time left so I avoided any instances of feature creep (apart from allowing a superficial character selection). If the deadline hit me I’d have a really refined play mechanic and the game wouldn’t crash,  it didn’t matter if there were unfinished graphics or whatever.

all that said, development of this game coincided with a massive energy boost. for a few weeks I was nothing but 10000% motivation, and especially unusual I also had the focus to channel all that energy into the project.

Rougefort, Gingelle, Zaffre and Greena. The characters in TSBL

it took just under six weeks to make There Shall Be Lancing, and that’s including a weekend I took off to make Dream Fishing. So I managed to get much more done than just the core gameplay, but I think approaching the game in that way gave me a lot of freedom; I wasn’t afraid of the game not being ready. I find that fear *kills* games for me, it bundles up with depression and a bunch of other things and drags a game down as you’re making it. making this game, everything *flew*. So I had more than enough time to polish up the parts of the game; I managed to make a super slick level set in the clouds, a bunch of character portraits and other bits of polish.

Blimp stadium for TSBL

Things got a bit overwhelming when I asked on twitter for musicians interested in scoring the game, I got a *flood* of really good people all interested. There are so many musicians out there who want to make music for games but rarely get a chance. Amongst all that though, there was someone who made a sample that was *perfect*. That was Stephen Hart, he put some music over a small gameplay video I had made and hit the tone and style I wanted for the music exactly.

Stephen did a brilliant job for the game, I had to turn down everyone else interested and I’m glad I did for the game’s sake. Stephen made a few tracks and also make the “announcer” voices to declare round starts, winners etc. All of it fit the game beautifully and I’m super grateful to have his talent be a part of the game.

A tutorial from the game, John Brindle gave me some excellent advice on newspaper formatting

a couple of weeks before the game was due I had reached a point where I would be happy for the game to be shown, but was beginning a depressive dip; so with my recent understanding that I tend to throw out the baby with the bathwater when I hit a low, I emailed a build of the game to Charles, with the instructions that he must ignore me if I ask him not to show the game.

concept for a level I didn’t have time to make

Fortunately my low didn’t last too long, and about a week later I was ready to work on the game more, though not quite at the pace I had been going before. I spent the time polishing what was there and fixing the couple of bugs that had managed to slip through, making the tutorials simpler and making the game easier to ‘read’. (things like jetpack flashing red when you are out of energy, bullet icon pulsing if you try to shoot without any bullets. just stuff so there is feedback for why you can or can’t perform a certain action). I also worked on adding a couple of secret stages, which remain unfinished, but are passable enough. Deciding early on not to sweat it over final graphics helped a lot, even the flying cars in the main stage are very rough compared to the concepts I originally painted for them, but it’s OK since I focused on gameplay and things in the foreground. The low-quality cars in the background are enough to set the scene and that’s OK.

Flying car concepts

By the time the event rolled around, not only did I have a game that was OK to show; I had a game I was very proud of, and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt that. I couldn’t be at No Quarter myself, but I saw some video and pics and it looks like most people had a good time, and people enjoyed playing my game. So I couldn’t really ask for more than that

Here is a video about the game and the event that kotaku posted recently, where they spoke to Charles Pratt:

The game hasn’t actually been ‘released’ yet, I’m still deciding what I want to do with it. however if you have a PC or Mac, two xbox gamepads and some friends, email me and I’ll send you the game.

Art commissions are: CLOSED! (Sorry, check back later!)

So, want me to draw/paint something for you? here’s the process:

1. Make sure commissions are open.
2. Email me (with a description of what you want if you already have something in mind).
3. I’ll give you a quote on what it will cost, or turn you down as gently as I can.
4. I’ll draw a sketch to make sure I’m going in the direction you want, then start on the final image. (If you’re just commissioning a little doodle I’ll skip straight to the final thing)
5. I show you a watermarked and/or small resolution version of the final image and ask for payment
6. You paypal me the money, then I send you the final image.

some notes:

• prices will vary depending on what you want, a small sketch of a single character might be around $15-30, a massive print resolution thing with colour and multiple characters/buildings/vehicles is going to cost more.
• I want the right to display the finished work on the internet and elsewhere, though not at full resolution for bigger pics. If you *don’t* want me doing this, let me know and I’ll adjust the quote accordingly
• I’m not against drawing porn/kink/furry/whatever stuff, but I do have some things I’m not comfortable with so if you want something in particular just say and I’ll let you know if I’m OK or not. also I promise I’ll not be judging you, everyone has something crazy that they are into after all
• Sometimes you’ll get the finished art a day after first getting in touch, sometimes it will take a couple of weeks before I get round to you. Either way I won’t ever ask for money until I have done the final work.
• You will own the artwork, but if you claim that you made it I’ll hunt you down <3
• If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment, or email me

For your reference here are some works of mine:

To explain, in skill-based games players rely on their own ability or understanding to succeed. however in time-investment/grinding games, the only thing a player must do to succeed is invest time. so long as the player has more time to spare they can grind whatever variable is holding them back until the chances of victory approach 1.

Few games are *purely* about time-investment, though some come close. Even the most grind-heavy J-RPG tends to have systems where certain attacks are better in certain situations, party formations impact performance and so-on. But even with the perfect strategy and technique, Sephiroth is going to win every time if I fight him at the level I start the game at.

The entire point of grinding/levelling systems is so *anyone* can win, it’s a self-adjusting system for varying skill (in theory); players who struggle using skill alone  can grind a little and have an easier time playing with their skills, or grind further and not have to worry about the skill challenge at all. (In this respect; grinding is like a difficulty setting in the options menu, except takes hours to adjust.)

If you look at the history of grinding in games, it sort of makes sense; it’s a way to represent a character becoming more experienced over the course of the game, and prevents them from overcoming certain obstacles until the character is suitably experienced. It’d be like if a hero in a movie stepped onto the dance floor for the first time, won the trophy right away and never had the training montage. (In this respect; grinding is like a training montage from a movie, except it takes hours to watch.)

The thing is, though characters may not have it early on in the game, many players do have the experience required to overcome the obstacles already. I spent many, many hours grinding in many, many games. I already know if you don’t equip the right accessory when you face an enemy with a bunch of status-effect inducing spells you’re gonna have a bad time. But little Oliver, he doesn’t know that. He still has to grind, he still has to collect that experience until he becomes anywhere as close to a master wizard as I am. This kinda sucks for me.

But here’s the thing; almost nobody is using time investment/grinding for the purposes of conveying ‘narrative of character improvement’, or even as a difficulty setting; it’s a safety net for designers.

You can make the game you think sounds cool, “it’s all about skill and tactics and stuff”. but you implement a levelling system so that when you screw up your design players can just grind a little, to improve the odds and get through that skill bottleneck that you didn’t have time to fix. This is precisely what it does in Ni No Kuni and so many other games. Narrative-wise, Oliver is a great wizard because it is his fate and <spoilers>it’s in his blood</spoilers>; the kid doesn’t *need* experience. Grinding serves no mechanical purpose, other than to allow players to up the victory odds because the skill-based part of the combat is massively flawed.

Whenever I see levelling up in a game these days, I consider it as an admission of failure. “I know *players* can’t improve as they play the game, so I added grinding” or “The game doesn’t take as long as I want it to take, so I added grinding”, perhaps “I couldn’t make a consistent skill-requirement throughout the game like I wanted, so I added grinding” or maybe even the worst “Every other game was doing it, so I added grinding”

There’s simply no good argument *for* levelling up mechanics in a video game.

• As a difficulty safety-net so anyone can finish the game; if anyone can finish, why force weaker players to waste more time to progress?
• As a narrative technique; Do it like the movies do montages; keep it short, address that it happened and then let the players get on without having to do repetitive nonsense.
• As padding to keep the game longer; fuck you and wanting to waste people’s time, don’t you know your players are all going to die someday? Why are you wasting their precious moments alive?

There is one thing I’ll say for grinding; it’s realistic. Everything I have gotten good at in life I grinded to get my own skills there. To be able to make games in a weekend without a second thought has taken thousands of hours screwing around with code, studying and experimenting. Same with drawing, 3D modelling, and even getting amazingly exceptionally good at pure skill-based games (hello SSX, guitar hero etc).

But I don’t get into games for realism (usually). Games don’t start at the ‘beginning’ usually after all. all the characters tend to at least have made it through puberty; there’s no playing Vaan as a baby, collecting experience every time he shits himself until he’s a high enough level to hold it in and use a toilet. We can just take it as read he has that experience and get on with playing the game. We players don’t need to experience it *all* with him, and the same is true for ‘gaining experience’. If we need to see the characters (as opposed to the player) get get more skilled, montage that shit! Games don’t have to be so… ‘narratively real-time’, give Thirty Flights of Loving a go to see what I mean. There are cuts in it much like you see in movies, there’s no reason Cloud couldn’t walk into a dojo someplace and walk out tougher seconds later in player-time. Or even have him walk away from any battle with the strength required to overcome the next one.

But this is besides the point really, it only helps solve the issue of wasting players time. My real point is if you’re going to have skill-based gameplay, don’t make it redundant through grinding, get rid of that safety net.

Let’s look at Dark Souls (I know, I know, it’s almost cliche to pull design tips from Dark Souls at this point but you’ll get over it). You can beat Dark Souls at level one. You don’t have to, but you can. You can grind to make it easier on yourself, but because grinding is entirely optional it means the skill-based play aspects are working just fine. The safety net is there if players want it, but they can totally play skill-only if they want.

Compare Ni No Kuni; You automatically level up as you play so level one runs are impossible, but that’s not the problem. The real problem is there is no way in hell you finish the game without grinding. If you just run through the story you will come against enemies that can’t be beaten until you are a higher level. The game has skill-based play during battles but it’s all irrelevant; at high levels you win whatever, at low levels you can’t win at all, and in-between you need to rely on luck because the core combat system itself is massively flawed.

If your skill-based gameplay doesn’t add anything to the game; take it out. Take it right out of there, you’re mocking the player by leaving it in. There is little more frustrating than being told “it is within your power to effect the outcome” when any possible action is going to result in failure.

So, some final summary to tie this up I guess;

- Using Level-up mechanics as a safety net is admitting your game is broken, grinding is a quick-fix that makes players suffer for it.

- Don’t be afraid separate the character and the player for a time, the player doesn’t need to be there as the character builds up their muscles/reflexes/whatever

- If you have a skill-based system, it only counts if the player can win using their skill alone, otherwise it’s a grinding system with crap tacked on to hide how ugly it is.

- A player’s time is valuable, don’t force them to do the same stuff over and over to progress. (if it’s fun to do repetitive bullshit, they will opt to do it themselves, heck knows how many times I’ve dropped down zombies with jetpacks)

just some stuff to think about

Ultimately a lot of “what’s the point” thinking has led me to some decisions. One is swift*stitch becoming free (see below) and;

Leaper★, and a commissioned game (that I can’t talk about yet) may be my last games as a full time indie.

I just can’t afford to keep going like this, I haven’t been able to afford the past three years really. Sales have paid for food but I’ve just racked up debt when it comes to everything else. It has gotten to the point where I try to spend time working on short projects as an attempt to make enough money to pay for the stuff I really care about making, but it doesn’t work and it’s making my games worse as a result.

I want to make my dream games. I enjoy all the jamming, the short projects and all the other interesting gamedev stuff that builds my skills and is just plain fun to do. I also enjoy knowing I can afford food, not crying myself to sleep and the thought of not owing friends ridiculous amounts of money sounds kind of neat. If I can’t work on the things I really want to work on, then all of this ‘full time indie’ stuff is just a waste of time. I’d be better off just getting a regular job and making stuff I care about in my spare time.

I have enough money left to eat for a month, maybe two. I’m going to work on Leaper and this commissioned game. These are things I want to do. I’m going to do them how I want and fuck the money. – this is my attitude normally, but there is always the hope that money will come. I’m sure it would if I stuck with it long enough, but I can’t afford that, so fuck the hope of getting paid.

Either Leaper will sell enough to cover all the money I owe or it won’t. I’m not going to hold my breath either way because I *do not* need the stress. If it sells enough I’ll stick to this indie thing, if it doesn’t I won’t. I’ll at least have made a game that I care about as more than a ‘project’.

(If anyone is wondering, the commissioned game has already had the payment decided and most of that is going on software to make it, it’s not going to anywhere-near save me from my money troubles but it is also a game I want to make).

So that’s where I’m at right now, I also have the following updates:

Swift*Stitch:

Swift*Stitch has done more than well really, having been in a couple of bundles and having had the nice ‘pay-when-you-want’ sale in January 2012. however… outside of sales, nobody is buying it. and even with the sales the game has not paid off any of the debt I hoped it would, and it’s not really covering the costs of living while I develop other games. It has paid for food and bills, some software and even got me the opportunity to work with the awesome guys at nicalis for the iOS version.

My relationship with the game is thus; the game has paid for itself (more or less), I think it is kind of neat. But I also hate it because it’s not the kind of game I want to spend my time working on, especially if it can’t pay for me to work on the games I really do care about. It is a fun little arcade thing, with a couple of interesting design and mechanic things happening. I don’t think the world is significantly better for me having made it.

That hate has only getting worse, I’ve been wanting and wanting it to sell, but nobody has been buying it. I can’t be relying on something I hate to feed me, and pay rent and bills. So now you can download it or play it in the browser for free.

Now that I’m not expecting anything from the game, I don’t hate it anywhere near as much. I still kind of wish I’d spent my time working on something else, but I am proud of what I did accomplish and hope some more people can enjoy it now.

The iOS version is still a paid-upgrade for $1.99 (you get the first few levels free) and I expect that will stay for quite a while because despite my feelings towards the game, the guys at nicalis put in a lot of work for that version and they deserve to get some money for it. if you like the PC version please do consider buying it for iOS too so you can carry it with you

Android is still a possibility, and if it happens it will likely be with nicalis again, because frankly, they are pretty cool guys

Rose&Time:

I recently spent a couple of days fixing up Rose&Time’s graphics, I also fixed a bug and released a Linux version too. you can check it out here.

I considered making Rose&Time free also, however I don’t hate the game so much. whilst I was hoping for cash when I was making it, the game is all about a bunch of themes I care about (emotionally and mechanically) and I still think it’s worth the money. In fact lately I’ve been loving the game more and more, I think I made something a little special just by accident on this one ^__^;

Lottie’s Dungeon:

So if I do quit making games full time, what happens to Lottie’s Dungeon? honestly I don’t know. This is one of the games I really want to finish and most everything I’ve done since taking a break from it has been in the hopes it would pay for Lottie. maybe I’ll work on it after Leaper, maybe I wont. I want to but don’t need the stress of worrying about something I care about so much. I have to put it out of my mind for the time being, I’m sorry.

(This blog post was originally a talk I gave at the winter world of love event, then it spent two years in my blog’s ‘draft posts’ bit, I found it tonight and tidied it up since it’s still something I get super excited to talk about )

(warning: links in this blog may be spoilers, including THAT spoiler from FF7)

Surprising an audience is something games can/could be super good at, but I think when we are making games we don’t think about surprises enough. I’m not saying it’s something we should all focus on but it’s pretty interesting and I think we should keep it in mind from time to time

What is surprise?

First things first, we need to know what we are talking about when we say ‘surprise’. People often don’t realise it, but surprise is an EMOTION!

When we are talk about making something in a game surprising, we are talking about making something that results in this emotional response.

The second most important thing about surprise, is it only lasts for a very short period of time, otherwise it’s something rather different that we call ‘shock’.

Off-topic but don’t-want-to-delete paragraph! – I’m not really going to go into shock here, not because I think surprise is better or more important (IMO shock can be even more valuable), but because there are no shortage of games trying to shock anyway, and it’s much harder to shock right than surprise right. I’m pretty sure it’s not hard for you to think of a few games that are trying to be shocking, and whilst there are some where the game is better for it, I feel they are in the minority. (also just a minor thing, I think sex shocks can be good, IMO the sexuality displayed in mighty jill off is probably shocking to some, but it’s valuable to the game, Jill would do anything for her queen, wheras you would never see some GTA protaganist climbing a tower of death for a hooker.)

anyway, that’s enough about shock, just remember that it’s easy to do wrong, tricky to do right.

So, where was I… oh surprises don’t last long, BUT, the memory of them can last a very long time, sometimes even for a lifetime.

They are wonderful because they takes us to new places emotionally, places we never even expected to go. At the very least, this is good for keeping things fresh. In games we often find ourself in the position where players will get bored after a while, but with surprises we can take what the player is expecting and subvert it. This changes the way the player relates to the game. From their perspective, the game has actually changed, and they are now less certain what the game will present them next, it has more possibilites!

It’s important to note that I’m not saying you should take a boring game and put in surprises here and there to keep the player glued to it, that’s actually EVIL. (and yeah, I’m going off topic again here, but whatever) your priority should always be providing a valuable experience for the player. If your aim is only to hold the players attention, then you don’t really care about your player and you should do something else with your life. Ultimately you are creating something that will take up people’s time, and time is a limited resource for humans, so make sure if you are taking it you give something valuable back. (so just don’t be an asshole k? thx)

Surprises are not about random drops (though you can surprise people with random drops), they’re not about some unknown reward (though sometimes they can be), what THEY ARE about, is making people feel something.

THE SCIENCE OF SURPRISE!

Let’s get academic, or at least pretend to (since academic types are way smarter than me). The University of Southern California had some clever people to look into surprise and they then had some clever things to say about it.

First of all, they demonstrated their exceptional coolness by deciding that 1 unit of surprise should be called a ‘wow’. They then proceeded to measure people’s wows per second when exposed to various input data… none of that is really too relevent to us but they were very clever about it so I trust them when they say things that do apply, such as:

For a definition of surprise, we need 2 things, There must be uncertainty (this is extra important to us because we actually have a strong influence over this) and we must realise people react to the same situations differently (less important to us, but do keep it in mind)

in other words, so long as a person isn’t omnipotent you can surprise them, and when exposed to even the exact same stimulus different people will react with varying levels of surprise.

The USC boffins then go on to say “an event is surprising when the distance between posterior and prior distributions of beliefs over all models is large”. And if you translate that into English: Surprise is a big change in what you expect.

For example, I can show you a black screen. The longer the screen is black, the more you expect it to remain that way. When the screen turns white, it’s something you don’t expect and you are surprised! OK… you aren’t surprised much, it’s not a great difference in what you were expecting. but if the black screen instead sprouted limbs and started doing the macarena… the odds are that would be an example of a greater change in your expectations and therefore a greater surprise to you.

Here, I made a graph for you:

At the start, the person has little or no expectation of X occouring, then at some point X does occour, their expectations change rapidly and they are surprised. Then following the occourance of X, whilst it is not occouring the person expects it less.

I’m aware we seem to have moved away from games, but we have just gone over the most important sciency bit that is most relevent to us. You see the axis on that graph, with ‘expectation’ and ‘time’?

We can influence both of these things.

So my point, (yes we have finally reached it!) is that:

Engineering surprise is achieved by engineering people’s expectations.

But what if people are expecting the surprise? This is what we in the human-feelings business call ‘anticipation‘. I’d argue that anticipation is also a type of surprise, just with different timing. since you are expecting something that doesn’t happen, each moment it doesn’t happen is a change in expectations, a tiny surprise. But since it’s many tiny surprises drawn out over a period of time, it can have as much of an effect on players as a sudden surprise.

When people are anticipating stuff you can give them what they are expecting to relieve them… or make out like it was never going to happen (the killer wasn’t really behind the curtain, nothing to be afraid of I guess…) and/or then throw it at them a second later anyway (the killer was actually behind the door! *stab stab stab*). This way you get all the cool stuff of building wows gradually with anticipation, and also dropping a bucketload of wows on people at once.

Playing with expectation and time is what it’s all about really, for both surprise and anticipation

Point made, The following paragraphs are disorganised! \:D/

Even the great so-called ‘masters’ of surprise, the ninja, are WEAK in comparison to our power. A ninja must adapt to it’s surroundings, play to whatever their victim’s expectations are, and make their move at just the right time. For us game developers however, we don’t have to adapt to the surroundings, we own the surroundings. we don’t have to play to our victim’s player’s expectations, we create their world, their expectations are built from the experiences we have already given them.

Therefore game developers are better than ninjas. >__>

You know who the *real* masters of surprise are? Magicians! A good magician is in complete control of their audience’s expectations (just as we can be). Every word, smile and flourish leads the audience a certain way, sometimes the magician gives the audience what they expect, sometimes they don’t. To a magician, the audience’s expectation is like a toy, or better yet, a tool. Magicians use this tool to engineer that sense of wonder the best magicians are known for.

We can do better!

Magicians are still limited by reality, I can pull a rabbit out of a hat in a virtual space, I can do it with a million rabbits in under a second. Our virtual world exists not in reality, not even in the computer, but in the mind of our audience. Magicians have to conceal the reality of their tricks, whereas we are kind of the opposite, we create a reality for our tricks. In this way our tricks can exist in any world we can make the player believe they are happening in. The conventions don’t exist until you make them, and you can break them later, just to make the player feel.

That’s not to say every player is a blank slate of expectations when coming into your game the first time, the reality is quite the opposite. But you can work this to your advantage too. There are many conventions players take for granted and you can easily have fun subverting these. Things like walls being solid (you can walk through that bit!), always jumping the same height (jumping in sunlight makes you go twice as high!), conversation won’t advance till you press the button (make NPCs act concerned about the player spacing out after a while!) and so-on and so-forth.

And let’s not pretend you don’t have any impact on expectations of players before they start the game! The name of your game, trailer, screenshots, description and so-on all paint a picture in the mind of people who are going to play, you can use this to your advantage by planting ideas and expectations that the game then subverts. Remember all those metal gear solid 2 previews with snake looking cool and doing snake stuff? then people got the game and half of the players didn’t see snake for hours! Kojima probably had a grin a mile wide from all the “wtf!?” he caused there.

Expert level expectation-engineering: make an entirely different game and send that out to reviewers, use it for screenshots and all other stuff! or give different players different games all together, tell no-one!

And you can do it too both in your game and elsewhere; you can influence players’ expectations and surprise them where it suits you most!

( Slight disclaimer/warning: getting people to expect one thing and doing another is a deception. It’s pretty easy to argue it’s OK for our purposes and all, but it’s still important to know when you lie, and make a judgement call on whether your conscience can handle it )

TL;DR:

• Surprise is an emotion
• It’s over quickly (otherwise it’s shock, not surprise)
• Big changes in expectations make for big surprises
• We get to decide what is expected
• That starts before anyone even starts playing our game

Extra stuff to note:

• Presenting things consistently will lead the player to expect them
• Surprises don’t have to be big, you can use them as small accents wherever you like.
• “The game isn’t over” is always a cool surprise, give people more than they expect
• surprise is measured in units of “wow”, that is crazy awesome!

End of post! thanks for reading!

I’ve kind of run off a bit with this blog, and missed some points so here is the original notes for the talk (.txt), the second draft (.odt), and the presentation slides (.odp)

(I promise I tried to present this post well, but I kept getting super excited because this is so interesting, it’s hard to stay on track and explain clearly when you’re in love with a subject, double-thanks for reading it anyway!)

First of all, none of this shit:

Expiring links are the BANE of digital distribution. What if I want to download later? What if I want to get the updated version of the game? What if I want to gift the game to someone, but their birthday happens after the link expires?

If you are having BMTMicro/FastSpring deliver your files, those links will expire (BMT also has a habit of becoming blocked if the person doesn’t download the files when they get their link). I don’t know about other services so much, but it seems to be a standard.

Expiring links are only worthwhile to businesses who want to treat their customers like shit, that isn’t us. so here’s what you do;

Have a download page on your own site with all the download links:

Just one address for everyone is fine, but if you really want some key-based download pages feel free to work that out so long as those keys don’t expire. Put your updates here and people can always return for the latest version of a game.

If you are using BMTMicro/FastSpring, you probably have to upload a file to their servers (that will expire). But you can also specify what goes into the email customers are sent, so GIVE THEM A LINK TO GET THE GAME FROM YOUR SITE.

Providing a link that never expires is kind of what makes steam such a reliable service. For all the issues I have with steam, they deliver a fucking excellent process for buying games and getting them.

In my browser, I have a folder of bookmarks with game downloads. I can just click it and see a list of games I’ve bought. I get a sense of pride every time I open it, these are things I own, these are things I supported. Give your customers a chance at this pride, it’s the same enjoyment folks get from adding games to their steam library.

Right now my folder of games is pretty small. Not enough developers are providing bookmarkable downloads. If we want to exist outside of steam we need to get rid of this expiring link bullshit, and make it easier for customers to browse and get games they have bought from us.

LET’S DO THIS! \:D/

Spent today putting together this little comic, it shows the events right before the game begins, and shows off a little of the world

until I figure out a better way to present it, here are the links to the pages:

• Page 1
• Page 2
• Page 3
• Page 4
• Page 5

That’s all for now, sorry if you were expecting another snarky/ranty blog post

So, do pictures like Whistler’s Mother or that one with the dreary-farmer-couple have a place alongside classics like Final Fantasy 7 or thatgamecompany’s latest masterpiece ‘Journey’?

To tell the truth, I’m not very well versed in art, having spent most of my life dedicated to more serious pursuits such as skateboarding, playing computer games and hanging out on twitter. I had always assumed that ‘art’ was something for a different generation. So to get a better understanding I ordered an art from the internet, to give it a go.

What I got was a framed ‘print‘ of a painting (what that means is that it’s not actually the source painting, but a copy of it. Much like how the games you play rarely contain their source code). I’m told that there are many types of art, but this is by far the most popular.

“I had always assumed that ‘art’ was something for a different generation. So to get a better understanding I ordered an art from the internet, to give it a go.”

Unfortunately I had trouble soon after I unpacked the thing. The default display was kind of nice, a picture of a pretty landscape with children playing under a tree… but that was all there was to it! The screen was entirely frozen, unresponsive to touches and I couldn’t find any switches to turn the thing on. I thought perhaps the battery had run out but couldn’t find any cables to charge it with.

Clearly not a good start, I had wanted to get a good idea of art on my own, but ultimately I had to give in and call over my friend Emily for help.

Now reader, if you want to see your friend at their most frustrated, all you have to do is ask them to help you use art. “You just have to hang it on the wall, that’s all!” Emily tried to explain, but this was totally outside my range of experience. “But how do I interact with it?” I asked, “You don’t interact, you just look at it!”

Now I do like my friend Emily, but how was I supposed to know that? What came naturally to Emily was a chore for me, the art didn’t even come with any instructions or tutorial. It seems art is easy for people like Emily who grew up with it, but I fear regular folk like you and me will forever be out of touch.

Having situated the art on a wall in the living room, I asked Emily if there was a special way to look at it to make the art work. “No, you just look at it.” she explained, clearly as frustrated with the experience as I, “Like a TV?” I asked. The look on Emily’s face then became that look you get when you’re at risk of losing a friend, so I quickly said “Oh never-mind, I think I’ve got it figured out.” and stared at the lifeless picture, pretending it gave me a similar sense of emotion I got from actually exploring the beautiful landscapes that developers craft for their games.

After Emily left I checked on the internet and it turns out she was right, you really do just look at it, that’s all!

“pretending it gave me a similar sense of emotion I got from actually exploring the beautiful landscapes that developers craft for their games”

Where was the engagement-building interaction of games? Where was the sense of teamwork and community you get from multiplayer games? Where was the emotional investment you can only get from stories and characters that actually involve you, a real person?

I had no sense of accomplishment from looking at the art (hanging the thing on the wall didn’t even unlock an achievement!), and ultimately I didn’t feel like I had improved as a person. I mean, I see pretty pictures all the time so why would one more affect me the same way an engrossing game does?

I think if we inspect art, it certainly has its uses. I won’t deny that my wall looks more interesting now that I put an art on it… but does art compare to games? No.

Perhaps I’ll reconsider if some art comes along that could make me cry (like the part of Final Fantasy X-2 on the thunder plains where Yuna sung with a ghost murdered 1000 years ago, or Kingdom Hearts II when Roxas has to face his end and becomes forgotten by everyone he held dear). Ultimately though, I don’t think art could ever have the emotional impact that games do.

-

I would argue then, that steam *should* be as good to indies as people *think* that they are. If steam are the only way *most* people get their games, then it’s nothing less than steam’s RESPONSIBILITY to give all indie developers a decent chance.

I then continued that because steam are a business, it was not in their interest to be good for all indie developers, just the developers they thought would make them a decent amount of money.

But let’s say steam genuinely wanted to be awesome for all indie developers, let’s say they could do it with barely any added cost (and would in fact make more money from indie games than they currently do). It’s totally possible, and if they did this I would put a strikethrough all the text of my ‘Fuck Steam’ post and leave a note at the top saying steam are fucking wonderful. What’s more, if steam did this they would not lose face at all, all the people pissed about greenlight before, and all the people in favour would be on steam’s side together.

So here’s what steam should do.

• Keep greenlight
• Keep the $100 fee to get on it
• Move greenlight into the store

Instead of the greenlight buttons ‘would you buy this game if it was on steam? yes/no’, just have steam’s regular ‘add to cart’ button. Developers will have already uploaded the game, they get money if somebody buys the game (instead of a hypothetical “oh I’d totally buy this”), steam gets a cut of the money, and gamers who want the game have it in their library right away without waiting for the game to get the rubber stamp and added to steam.

It really is that simple. Steam’s catalogue explodes, any developer with $100 gets to sell their game on steam, and steam makes money from greenlight. It’s in everyone’s best interests, the developer, steam and their customers.

About now a bunch of people reading this hate the idea because it will saturate steam with really shit games, ‘If you flood what’s available on steam it’s not good for anyone, surely?‘ I totally agree, most of the games submitted would be shit. So keep greenlight off the front page of steam. Just how right now greenlight games dont get put in front of people unless they prove themselves with a lot of people clicking the “I’d buy this” button, don’t feature any greenlight games as part of the main store unless they prove themselves with people actually buying the games.

So just picture that for a moment, steam employee-person, for every single “I’d buy this game if it was on steam” click under the current system, even on games that haven’t been greenlit, an indie developer would have been paid and you would have taken your cut too.

Those “I’d buy this if it was on steam” clicks suddenly stop being something intangible, they become meals for indie developers and go towards real things like rent and bills. That $100 greenlight fee is no longer a lottery ticket that *may* result in a chance to sell to steam users, it is an actual pass to sell to actual steam users.

So there you have it, simply put, this is what steam will do if they care about indie games development as a whole. It’s what steam will do if they want to make an extra buck. It’s what steam will do if they want more games available to their customers. It’s what steam will do if they want to cross out the number one google result for “fuck steam”.

It’s true this would not address the problems of steam’s near monopoly on game download sales but it would stop smaller indies, who currently have to try and survive outside steam, from shouldering the burden.

Swift☆Stitch:

the 1.1 version is available, for windows, Mac and LINUX! This update is mostly about running smoother than the last version, and it also brings across a few improvements I made whilst porting the game to iOS.

If you bought the game from me you can get the update from the download page, if you bought the game elsewhere, you can get the update from there whenever that service decides to do stuff

Phone Phantom:

So for Indie Buskers I made a game called ‘Phone Phantom‘, I’m going to polish it up a little before I start selling it myself (like I am doing with my last indie buskers game, Rose&Time) but I’m super happy with it

Swift÷Swap:

This is something I started ages ago but put on hold, recently it’s started sitting on my mind so I’m finishing it so I can get on with other stuff, it’ll be primarily a mobile game, but I’ll consider putting it on PC in the future, not much reason not to.

Leaper★:

I submitted Leaper★ to the IGF, wooo! mostly it’s getting to be pretty solid and when I am working on it now, it’s mostly on the art which is tiiiiiiiime conssuuuuuuuuuming. also I spoke to an awesome musician about making music for it, and he said yes. woo!

NaNoWriMo:

I’m also taking part in NaNoWriMo this year too, if you’re taking part make sure to buddy me!

…so yeah, I’m doing a lot right now!