Good Game Design in 2014

This is more of a set of notes, than a post, at some point in the future I'll come back to this and re-write it after contributions from readers in the comments section.

Meta Game is very important in modern game design, the game above the game, upgrades between levels. One aspect I like, is the idea of your success % relating directly to your upgrades. some games use the 3 stars as upgrade currency, you can probably pass the first 2-5 levels with 1 star, but to get 3 stars needs skill. The upgrades cost stars, so the better you do in each level, the better you can do.

Meta game spoiling the game. Like Pay to Win, I'm not keen on games using the meta game as a requirement to win the game. There is a fine line here.. and I will need to rethink this though on the difference between meta game, and game mechanics.. but in essence, I belong to the school to thought that the game should be fun & playable, & winable without the meta game.. but as though its on hardest difficulty. only the best of the best can do so. the meta makes the game easier so its more casual.. but when the game is impossible unless you buy $1.99 worth of purple crystal, or you 'churn' level 14 over and over to earn purple crystal.. this is just bad game design.

And Yet, this seems to be the prevalent style of game design right now.. churn your players into quitters or payers (and the rarer 'must win without giving you one red cent' gamer - like me)

Game Dev: Upgrade Clicker Madness

Ahh what sad times we live in, where a game consisting of only the most elementary system, Clicking your mouse, and upgrading the abilities of that click, has become a genre unto itself.

I take in point 3 games: Must-a-mine a more recent edition to these style of games, and two quite popular versions in online game communities: Clicker Heroes and Adventure Capitalist

Must-a-mine is a bit of an interesting case, in that its broken. I'll get to that later, but lets first look at Clicker Heroes to get a feel for some underlying mechanics.

In CH, You click on the creature to damage it, based on your main Hero's damage. that's it. no retaliation, no HP, nothing else, just click to damage. when its dead, get cash, use cash to directly upgrade your hero.

Once 10 creatures are dead in the region, click the next region over, harder creatures, with more HP and more $, after 5 rounds, you are presented with a boss creature which has incredibly high hit points, you must defeat him in 30 seconds, or he heals back to full, and you cannot progress further until he/it is defeated.

At first I felt like I was playing the core basics of a Dungeon Crawl, kill monster, get reward, buy upgrade.

the 1st Boss Monster was easy, the second, nigh on impossible, I could not get enough cash to get enough upgrades to click fast enough to kill his 10,000HP in 30 seconds.. a quick calculation revealed I would have to kill 200 odd creatures in a previous level to gain enough gold to gain enough upgrades to beat the boss.. OR I'd have to upgrade the hero Helper..

The Helper (which comes along in many forms in other games) clicks for you. So instead of having to click 300 times myself, I could click 200, and my helper would click the rest.

Many Helpers don't actually click, they merely do a damage per second (or minutes, or hours.. more on that)

So, Helper in tow, I now defeat the 2nd Boss.. Levels are a grind, but my helper clears enough of them, and with enough upgrades for him/her, I can actually stop clicking....

I stop.. clicking... which is the whole point of the game..

So they've dumbed down the very mechanic that the game is based around.. your finger is too sore to play on, so instead of proving your endurance, your ability to click faster, or more than the average joe, no, we introduced the element of not needing to even play that part of the game.. it was there just to get you interested..

Is that what is happening in games? we're taking away the difficulty until it doesn't exist? why not just go watch a movie!!!

Adventure Capitalist makes a point of this, sure you begin clicking, with the lemonade stand, 2-3 clicks to upgrade, but its not clicks for the sake of clicking, the clicking means something, like any game, click the menu, click the button to activate, click on the monster, click the healing potion.. no AC is a different game again.

in AC, you don't click for the sake of clicking.. you click only to get the first few upgrades in place, once you have two or three managers (Helpers?) to do the clicking for you, you just make decisions of what to upgrade.

The Upgrades increase your income, each choice gives you more income, be it a new business venture, Investing into that venture to improve your takings, buying upgrades to improve profits or speed of said profits.

Anyone with any nonce, maths or just plain intuition knows delayed gratification is usually more profitable. and this game teaches this.. sure you could spend 2 billion for the 300th Upgrade to lemon stand, but that brings a meagre $7.50 increase to the stand income (seriously? 2 billion for a $7 increase?) or the same can be spent on your sports team for a 20 million dollar increase... but there are smaller aspects too.. get 25 upgrades to the lemon stand and double all profits! yet again, do the math, and you'll find that its always cheaper to buy the most expensive item

If you can stand waiting... 

That's the core to the game, can you wait? Its a test of your ability to wait for the best prize, vs go for the (seemingly)cheaper boost, because you know, it might just help you get to the bigger prize faster.

Sure, you can be like me, and write up a massive spreadsheet to determine if clicking the 81 billion upgrade to Oil Rig is going to be worth the same 81 billion spent on Doughnut shops.. its not, but if you cross reference the x3 multiplier for hitting 100 upgrades + the fact that you'll get 3515 payouts of 15 mil, before you get that one 500 bil payout.. then sure, those come once every 10 upgrades...

See what I mean? Who else other than a fellow sheldonite is going to go to that degree of trouble.

So, we come back to Must-a-mine.. who attempted to monetize the game.

There is a strange kind of problem with these multi-billion clickers.. When would you spend money? At the start, you don't realise how big the game gets, trillions, quadrillions, septillions, .. luckily the Americanized version, 7 sets of 000 + a 000 thrown in for good measure, and not the classic 1,000^7 as I was trained. If you spend $10 at the start of the game, you'd be likely to buy $1,000,000 with 10 of your diamonds.. worth $0.75, and think you were going to burn this game... to discover after 3 hours, that you'd be earning $1mil every 10 seconds.. or worse, after 24 hours, getting a billion every 10 seconds..

Its all just Big numbers.. and that's probably why people want to see it.. that little inner billionaire wanting to see the big cheques. 

So MaM added equipment, unlockable chests, and more upgrades.. I won't bore you with the maths, but you should either spend $40 at the start of the game, buy all the platinum chests, chew through 300 hours of play in roughly 10 minutes and ignore the whole equipment system or play the 300 hours, and realise that you'll never get enough of anything to resemble any kind of worthwhile bonus to offset the rising costs of all the other mechaMoustaches in the game and know that you just wasted 300 hours for no real reason.

But then again, thats what games do right? waste excess time? But this is worse, it makes you WAIT to waste that time.. you need to get another game, to play, while waiting for the ability to play this one!

Its a test of your sadomasochistic mental state to see how far you'll go before you give up.. (just one more click, maybe it'll unlock the next big thing and I'll chew through the level faster and get to the end?)

Some quick googling reveals, there is no end... all these games have a meta game.. when you're tired of waiting.. or when you get close to the end, or when you get all the upgrades, self reset and earn special bonus angels or tritanium or treasure chests, and play again.. with a 5% speed booster!

Seriously?

Game Dev: Upgrade Games

Improvement or Upgrade Games involve the player starting on a stage, a problem, a way to solve the problem, which cannot be done first attempt, but each attempt give you some kind of currency (information, cash, whathaveyou) which allows you to improve the stage/solution to be better at each attempt. Usually within 5-15 minutes, you've played it enough rounds to win. Your Meta Goal is to play again and beat your previous score. 

The Interesting thing about such games, is that the Upgrade is a component of bigger games, but has been simplified to just that one aspect, upgrading. Usually though, upgrade games involve an actual game task, as simple as it can be, from just clicking (Must-a-mine) steering (Hedgehog Launcher) Timing (Berzerk Ball) or 

How to Monetize?

Upgrade games are time wasters, which typically means a player is very unlikely to waste money on it as well. That said...

Upfront cost would require the user really wanting to play the game (word of mouth or competitive challenge) or the game having some further reaching goals.

Theoretically, a pay to win formula might be to have some far reaching trophy goal, one that you could achieve by playing a million times, or by paying $5 worth of upgrades, which unlocks the trophy.. you get to see the content which you paid for with your $5.. or someone without the means, with their million plays (maybe they should have different endings)

Microtransactions, Potentially the game could be far more fun if you use special upgrades that don't change the game play, but add a different style for the paid gamer.. again, if they know they are paying for the different graphic content, they might be more likely to buy into it.

This line to be edited, when I post the "Pay to..." topic in the future.

Game World Religions & the Biggest Problem

Sketching on the bus to Uni, I wrote about a religion which believes in a heaven/hell concept. They world as they knew it was a coin, but since no-one (they knew of) had ever traveled to the other side and returned, it was reasoned that the other side was hell.

The Religion is known as the Coynerites. They follow the concept that in the beginning, the world was flipped like a coin, as a bet between good and evil. If the coin lands (in the distance future, or maybe tomorrow) on any given side, its because its the heavier side. that side will be crushed, all who reside will be destroyed, and good & evil will know their place in this world, i.e. part of or banished.

So, in order to be the winning side, its imperative that the good side must make as many people bad, without being bad themselves, so that the bad side becomes heavier, and thus squashed, so the good side will be the inheritor of the world.

Mixed up logic.. but logical in its process (as any religion would be) and theoretically its right.. except that as creator of the world, I know that its not.. but that never stopped any religion before, from believing that its right.

And I begun to think.. hang on.. I don't ever remember reading about a gaming religion that had it wrong.. most of them, believe in a god, and that god exists, and they know it, because occasionally he does things and can be seen & heard. Clerics ask for powers, and receive them, so they know their god exists (albeit, the reasoning for the god might not match what the followers believe)

Does a religion, based on faith alone, belong in gaming? can it exist?

I've done a little research into different worlds, different gods, for the most part, its always true (cept some planescape) each religion believes in a god/power that exists, as such there is no real faith, its all choice. 

Ill Gotten Gains

Something that my players may or may not be aware of, but most likely should be at some point, is the idea that you are watched..

maybe not always,

maybe not specifically,

but if you notice your neighbours, a new car, new paint on the house, doing up the garden, maybe some expensive looking things, coming and going.. fridges, washing machines.. you cast your mind back to before it all happened, and they were having some big party, late into the night..

could it not be likely, they just won the lottery?

So, in a medi-eval town, where no television or radio exists, and the most common entertainment would be gossip. Everyone is watching, and talking and comparing notes..

Everyone.

They watch, they talk, they whisper.. and word gets around.. who lives where, what do you think they do, what have you seen them doing, do they display means of wealth or are they poor as dirt, do they have manners, or are they drunkards (or both)


So, if you lived in a medieval city, and you acquired a few thousand gold, even without spending.. the sheer joy and fear of having that much, would surely be noticed...

World Development: Civilization 2, 3 and 4

There's one thing I seem to be very good at, figuring out how to be lazy and yet still get good results.

Civs Tech Tree, Mine Tripled it, for just the Middle Ages

So Way back in '96 I got Civilisation II, and while I played it probably non stop for a year, I got bored enough with its generic, simplification of technologies and the early years of the game.. so like many Civ players, I learn how to Mod the game.

But I had more purpose than that.

Civ created a Map for you, Major cities, borders, races and politics, within the Cities you could list the basic buildings available to its citizens, you had access to a wide variety of information, did they have access to resources, what kind of population was happy (rich) vs unhappy (poor, criminals)

You could create an entire roleplay world in a matter of hours, what would take an average writer months and months..

So I did... but it wasn't good enough,

Lord of the Rings Icons suits many a fantasy setting!

So I edited CivII, Added in more relevant techs for a historical setting, high fantasy but low magic world, I joined Civ Fanatics, I wrote about changes, I uploaded and downloaded images, shared ideas and developed a Fantasy Themed Civ game..

Then I inflicted it upon my friends and roleplay group.. Civ II only allowed 4 human players. so we had to replay the map in sections to create a decent enough history & backstory..

My group liked it well enough to want to do it again, So I decided to create some 'back story' maps too.

Tyranosaurus Rexicus Maxiumus Invades Cairo

 There was a Mod for Civ II something to do with dinosaurs, they 'ate' forests to increase their size, nested for created baby dinosaurs, some could chew up the land to create lakes & if nearby sea beds..

This was like a terraforming Mod (I went on to make this into 3 games) which worked brilliantly.. It got my players interested in making the land masses, shaping the world, choosing if a region should be forested, or chewed up by the dinosaurs to become grasslands (or when a dinosaur died, become oil fields)

My team, inflicted once again, played out 3 rounds of this.. I amalgamated the maps into one, and this determined some 'ancient structures' as well as some 'interesting landscapes'.

Around 1998-1999, Civ III came out... with a far easier editor.. but better yet 16 players! I took a year to create a Mod for this, all new graphics, all new designs, new Units, new tech tree..

Dragons, Magicians, Knights, Castles. Civ IV has enough models, I could do it all again!!

and we never played it. Real life took everyone in new paths..

But, it did give me the impetus for Fantasy Kingdoms, years later, I would discover, this idea that players are very willing to participate in world generation.. if you give them the right tools.

So, if you're looking at this great big world you're thinking of creating, and it seems like such a huge job.. why not do the same.. Start one of the many Map ownership games that exist out there, with some friends (maybe even your gaming group) and build the back story of your world together.. share the workload in a fun manner

Your play team will often surprise you and include things you could have never thought of.....

Original Stats: The Mage

When we first started looking at putting together the Mage in our system, we had 3 players who tried magic, Mattius the Thaumaturge, was an experimenter, he had no real spells, just things he picked up along the way, Reym the Elven Mage/Fighter, who had some augmentation for combat, and finally Sutekh, the sprite, who had a range of natural abilities, but not specific magics.

Remember, this was back in 2nd Edition Rules, The Amalgamation of all systems had begun, but magic was far down the list.. so in order to make a playable game, I just hobbled together the spell lists, averaged out some spells and levels to match something clean, and ended up with a hodgepodge of mismatched rules that made little to no real sense..

which is magic, when you think about it.

Magic is either science or its Not

My First big problem was that I was reading far too much Science Fiction at the time, Issac Asimovs stories of Azazel the 'Demon' using high level technology to create the effects, which seemed like magic. 

In '96 I went to a community college to get a degree on Computer Science and was learning about databases.. one thing I put together was a structure of 'cause & effect' for spells.

Then at the Same College I met some teachers, who put me onto some Professors at University, who were very keen to discuss how magic could work under the laws of Thermodynamics, Electromagnetism and Looking into Spirituality and how it could be represented in a magical system.

Now, while I have remade the rules of Combat several times, Archery several times, Stealth several times, Magic remained the same system for many many years..

Here's how it worked then, and still does for Version 3..

All spells, based on their school, had a difficulty level to study, A Study requirement, an Imperfection level to cast spells. The Caster would roll for cast spell, if passed, they had an imperfection chance %, but if failed, this value was increased by the spell difficulty x The failure result.

Back then, Magic worked on a number of d8s  x the spell level. so 1st level spells could fail up to 8 pts (if you had no score) and the highest 16th level spells, could theoretically fail by 128pts. We were experimenting with varied dice pools at the time.. my colleague was trying to make a 3d8 version of the whole system, arguing if 2 dice gave a good bell curve, 3 dice would be better.

Again though, Maybe because the magic was so broken, or so difficult to learn a spell, or the number of players I had was so limited, I needed a group to play some mages..

So the OS team were born.. 5 Mages, down on their luck, driven out of town after town for some shocking trickster attempts, vowed to return to vent their revenge, sought out some powerful magics and blew themselves to smithereens when the imperfection failed far too much. But in that time, I did manage to clean up the magic rules from v2 to v3.

v3.5 is another story for another day.. 

The Lists

In the endeavours of my system, my best friend Craig, had joined me in the idea of creating this awesome system. He introduced me to rolemaster, Wow, I thought my game was complex... I am curious how modern gamer kids view it, or if they even come across it..

But what we did back then was to grab all the systems we had access to and write out this big lists..

All the Skills, All the Spells, All The Traits, Flaws, Statistics, Modifier charts, Everything.. including all double-ups.. until we had this big BIG set of lists..

Early on, we check for things that were similar duplicates, but also, different duplicates.. wrote notes about how or why they were different.

Skills were broken into three groups.. easy medium and hard.

Spells were left in a big pile for much later.

While things changed, we always came back to these lists to check if we missed something.. sometimes it was a tweak of an idea, where we had the concept wrong from the start.. other times it needed to be scratched out.. too many skills based on the same thing, just because English language has two words for it, doesn't make it separate skills (but often it does)

Original Stats: Ranger

After Reading the Players Hand book on Rangers, AD&D, I thought that making a Hunter Profession was too specific.. By about now, I'd figured that while I liked the concept of Professions, like Warhammer, I also liked to group classes, like D&D.

Warrior was Obvious, Rogues too, One was the straight up fighter, in your face, strength, brawn, maybe leadership for the common good.. and Rogues were more about Self, sneaky, back handed, back stabbing, maybe stealing or conning, or just not giving two shits about another person..

D&D Rangers are/were warriors.. but there were so many aspects, hunters, travellers, herbalists, that didn't fit this concept.. so we though about the loner..

Warriors are about leading groups, and direct confrontation, and rogues, no confrontation, but maybe rangers were in between distanced.. ranged confrontation.. so anything archery based, scouting at a distance,. travelling distances.. became the rangers style.. Rogues were about people, rangers about places.. so Three (of my eventual eight) classes were forming.. but they were more than classes.. they were underlying themes.. lifestyles if you will.

Soon Enough we identified that while a Warrior was about power in combat, Mages were about Power in Magic.. or just power without punching.. maybe they should be rangers counter part, now that I think about it, Clerics and Priests are about people, but either by using them (for their god) or benefitting them (for the people).. is more the Rogues Priest vs the Warrior Priest.. Hmm, seems we're onto something here.. The Idea of Psionic was definately in my notes.. but it seemed that D&D had sewn up that in legal rights at the time, so I wanted to be clear of such things.. and we had Thaumaturge listed from the extended professions list that we created..

Oh the lists.. you should have seen them,,..

So, After some time we had 6 nice clean Classes, Warrior, Ranger, Rogue, Mage, Priest and Thaumaturge. something wasn't quite right.. and still today has been under the ringer... 

The Original Stats: Warrior

For the Longest Time, The DW stats were just the same as Dragon Warrior Stats, with the addition of Ranged Attack...

But we had some problems..

Dragon Warriors Stats are: Attack, defence, Evasion, Stealth, Perception, Magical Attack, Magical Defence.

But how do you compare a Monks attack skill to a knights defence? Monks use Hand fighting.. so.. a knight has a defence modifier? or Monk has attack modifier?

Again I was kitting this wall of 'modifiers' Sure sure, it makes your charactersheet look cleaner to have one stat, then your GM has a table of modifiers to play with.. but either I was too lazy or my players wanted to have more information, we decided that this wasn't good enough..

So we had to have Melee Attack, Melee Defence, Weapon Attack and Weapon Defence.. which was sorta cool..

Then there were some great skills in Warhammer.. Strike Mighty blow, Strike to Stun, Strike to Injure. Some of the other game system had more skills of combat.. always there was a modifier.. -7, -5, -6.. when looking at what they did.. it seemed that they were just the same values, just different to what they actually did.. so why have 3 skills.. 5 skills.. 100 skills.. so we spoke to some Combat Simulations Experts, and for the most part what we got was, a strike, no matter what type.. was a kind of moment when you felt that your opponent had left themselves open, and you took advantage of that to get in a decent blow.. be it harder, faster, or to incapacitate.

So, this Damaging strike.. it was really a kind of regular skill, which in many systems were just Statistics..

Thats really what a Stat is.. its a skill thats used so regularly, by so many classes that you need its value on the front page. So thats where we put it..

Of course, the names needed a change.. Melee, Weapon Skill, Damage Strike, Block, Parry .. but sometimes you just need to get out of the way.. so.. Dodge.

Warrior Stats Down.. what next  Archer..