Happion Labs GameDevBlog

The Gamification of Play?

I'm going to try to do Monte Cook's A+ thing next month, so here's my last chance to be negative. Going for it!

In my e-mail this morning, from My Gym, that place where we leave our kids to be babysat and sometimes have birthday parties, they've revealed their new program:

We are proud to announce Building Blocks, our brand new skill and development tracking and recognition system! My Gym Kids are going to love earning ribbons and medals, and they'll radiate with pride when they participate in exciting Awards Presentation Ceremonies as they master My Gym curriculum milestones.  

And my first thought - admittedly, without knowing anything about this program - is yuck.

Remember Jesse Schell's definition of play: play is something you do that you're not obligated to. When you incentivize play, it stops being play. And it can turn people off play - take the study of children being paid to do art vs children who weren't - the children who weren't paid continued to do it, the children who were paid started feeling entitled and didn't want to draw for free anymore.

When my kids go to My Gym, they have all kinds of fun. They are never bored. They need no incentives.

My feeling is that when people 'gamify' - or when they add experience points and levels and achievements and medals and whatnot to a game or to any activity - the motivation is usually from a bad place: "Let's keep our players playing past the point where it stops being fun." It is the Grind.

And I suspect that's where this My Gym initiative has come from.

And a sad thing is it's so effective. It almost breaks my heart when I see my seven year old daughter suckered into these grind economies in her games. She's pretty clearly not having fun (except for those brief moments where she gets the reinforcement) but she grinds along anyway. I assume she'll build up an immunity to their ploys someday, but until then...

Okay, done being negative. There is a positive side to experience points and achievements and scoring systems: they can incentivize players to fully experience the play. Often games have linear arcs, natural stopping points (all the levels completed; all the story revealed) - and players reach the end of these arcs before they've experienced all the play the game has to offer. It can be a guide to play that they've missed.

For example: the Pacifism achievement in Geometry Wars. This not only instantly turned Geometry Wars into two games, it also acted as a teaching tool so players can learn how to experience the regular mode more deeply.

For example: unlocking new races and classes in Desktop Dungeons. These new powers allow the player to experience the game mechanic in new ways, turning it into practically a different game!

For example: scoring systems in general encourage mastery. Attempting to master a skill is a kind of play all by itself. (But if there isn't much skill to the game, if it's Go Fish rather than Bridge, then what's the point?)

Also, 'leveling up' is a somewhat respected method for dynamic difficulty adjustment - I much prefer it to the game switching to easy mode under the hood. If a player is good at challenge type A and terrible at challenge type B, having challenge type A reward the player with buffs that help them get past challenge type B seems like an acceptable crutch to help players get through a game's linear arc. I'm 42. I'm still somewhat sharp but my reflexes are shot. Reward me for solving puzzles with bullet time powerups. Reward Mr. I-Hate-Puzzles with puzzle hints for getting past the hand-eye-coordination bits.

So, yeah, when making a game, ask yourself why you're adding those macro game elements. Just to trick players into coming back? Or something more?

And when playing a game, if you're not having fun, stop. I can't believe I have to say that - it sounds like common sense - but I see it all the time.

This Looks Promising: Critics Want Energy Hook (Even If They Don't Know It)

I haven't played the latest Spider-Man game, but I gather they've excised the swinging mechanic that made Spider-Man 2 what it was, replacing it with a more Arkham City-like just-point-the-crosshairs-and-press-the-button-and-you-go-there leaving the players to ask the question, "Just what are my webs attaching to?"

In other words, sounds like it's regressed back to the Spider-Man 1 days, where 'swinging' was basically flying.

I suppose I should be offended that they've rejected our genius, but I get it. Most people who pick up a Spider-Man movie game probably don't want a skill challenge - they don't want to have to learn how to be Spider-Man - they just want to press a button and be Spider-Man. It appeals to the mass market. 

But it doesn't appeal to the hardcore. Which means it doesn't appeal to most critics. Take Tom Chick for example:

...you’re just holding down a trigger button. At which point web swinging happens. This is a fine way to keep a game from having any meaningful Spider-Man flavor. Web swinging should never just happen. Web swinging should be something you do. It should bring with it some sense of accomplishment, exhilaration, and interactivity. It shouldn’t be something you watch. We have movies for that.

From Quarter To Three

And for my personal taste, yeah. Totally agree. Not to mention - in Arkham City (and, I presume, Amazing Spider-Man) the environment doesn't matter much. You have an objective - you point the camera in that direction - you press the button. Whether there's a big wall or a lot of nothing in your way doesn't really matter. You automatically go over the wall or zip to the next wall or whatever. I want the terrain to matter - different levels with different forms and shapes should be a different experiences that create different sorts of challenges.

But this is all very good news for me. It means for the people out there who want an up-to-date take on a 3d swinging game mechanic - Energy Hook is the place they're going to have to come to. There's no competition right now.

Where's the Indie Game Forum For Me?

What's a good forum about playing indie computer games?

I've been enjoying http://story-games.com for my tabletop roleplaying discussion. It's pretty great, though some complain that it's gotten too crowded of late. Anyhow, it has a couple neat features:

• The moderator has to approve you before you start posting. Although he approves just about everybody, that simple step culls a lot of crap posts.
• It's specifically not about designing games; it's about playing them. So people talk strategy, favorite games, post play reports, what games they're looking forward to, ask 'I'm looking for a game like X, what is there?'
• It has a narrow focus - it's not about roleplaying games in general, it's specifically about playing-for-story.

I'd like to find a forum for indie computer games that does the same or similar things. (TIGSource and IndieDB seem like they're mostly for game makers.) I'd like a forum where players of World of Goo, Journey, Desktop Dungeons, Lugaru, N, Cave Story, Braid, and the like (btw, what is the like? what binds these games together in my mind?) congregate and talk about play.

Anything like that out there? 

How To Make A First-Person-Shooter With Your Kid's Art - For Free!

After making Numbergun! with Sofia I realized that most people wouldn't want to play it but I bet there are a lot of parents out there who have kids in the under-ten range, too young to sit down and make a videogame by themselves, who might think it's a fun project to make a game with their kid. I'm thinking most kids, like Sofia, would be so excited to have their art in a game they won't mind that it doesn't look quite like Call of Duty or Halo when it's done.

So I decided to try my hand at making a video tutorial.

What a big pain that turned out to be. I knew it wouldn't be easy but it was an even bigger task than I imagined. Anyhow, after spending a day on it I decided I really should focus on actually making games, but I did manage to finish ... something. So here it is, warts and all. Really bummed about the recording levels, you'll probably have to turn your computer's speakers all the way up just to hear what I'm saying. And I just realized the mouse cursor is invisible! :( Oh, and now I've noticed that the YouTube video quality is terrible! (Any advice on how to fix that?)

Anyhow, if you can stand watching the video, to do the project, you will need a couple of free programs: Unity and Gimp. And if it turns out I'm going to fast in the tutorial, you may want to use some of their tutorials to familiarize yourself with those programs before diving in here. (And if you're already a Photoshop person, you may prefer to use Photoshop to Gimp.)Also - you'll need images of your kid's art. I simply took Sofia's drawings out into the sunlight, snapped photos of them with my phone, and e-mailed the photos to myself.

And, finally, you'll need these scripts I wrote that I've graciously put in the public domain: kidfpsscripts.

What's I'm covering here includes how to get a FPS up-and-running in Unity with some rudimentary AI using UnitySteer and a diorama-style (kinda-Wolfenstein3D-like) flatcard enemy.

I did record more footage, of putting more than one monster in the level and adding some front-end graphics and text, but editing is enough of a pain that I'm not going to make Part 2 unless someone requests it. So, if you liked this, and want more, let me know and I'll make it so.

Could '10,000 hours' be the new Fixed Mindset?

I used to be one of those people who'd tell you you can't do things. "You'll never be a good programmer." Just a few years ago, I pissed a bunch of people off with a 'we only hire the best of the best' post on my blog when Torpex was hiring. I later learned that I suffered from 'fixed mindset' thinking.

To sum up: 'Fixed mindset' is believing people are born with innate gifts. They can either do it or they can't. 'Growth mindset' is believing most people can do most anything if they work at it. If they train. There are studies these days that show not only is 'fixed mindset' thinking often wrong, but that simply believing the 'growth mindset' can make people more succesful and productive.

In other words, I was an asshole.

There was a somewhat compelling piece of evidence for my 'fixed mindset' thinking: that MIT study where they analyzed when students dropped out of computer science classes. Some were 'unable' to understand that computers did things in a sequential order. Some were 'unable' to understand recursion. Some were 'unable' to understand dynamic data structures. Some were 'unable' to understand concurrency.

Now I realize that study in no way means that the students were truly 'unable' to do these things. All that it established was at certain points they dropped out. All that it established is that some parts of the curriculum were harder than others - obviously those are the points were students who find the going rough are going to give up. It doesn't mean they can't do it - it just means they got to the point where they couldn't justify putting in the effort. More effort may have yielded success. 

Some of those students may even have dropped out because of entrenched fixed mindset thinking. It's also possible the teaching could have been better at MIT - maybe a better teacher would have found better ways to help some of the students over those more difficult humps.

These days, people I talk to tend to subscribe to 'growth mindset'. The word is out. And it's empowering - particularly in indie game development. Jesse Schell used to make his experimental game workshop students draw even if they thought they weren't artists. People (including myself) are making games that suck in some respects because we know if we keep trying we'll get better.

But now I'm hearing something else. From Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers - you have to put in 10,000 hours to be great at something. You'll never be a success unless you put in those 10,000 hours. (Not crazy about Malcolm Gladwell. The science is Not At All Rigorous in The Tipping Point or Blink. I haven't read Outliers ... because I wasn't that crazy about the other two books.)

Anyhow, 'put in 10,000 hours' seems like a valuable piece of advice. It is growth mindset. And, duh, when you expect to be awesome at something when you haven't put in the work you infuriate everyone around you, particularly the people who have been doing it for twenty years.

That said, you can easily use 'put in 10,000 hours' as a club - to dismiss people.

You're saying, 'In order to do this, you have to make it your full-time job for the next five years. So maybe you shouldn't bother if you don't have the time. Focus on what you're already good at - don't switch careers.' And then you can back it up with "Science". 'Just look at Outliers.'

Here's the thing. Gladwell's book - even if it is absolutely 100% right - is talking about the people who are mega-successes. The Beatles. Bill Gates. Oppenheimer. 

We don't need to be them. We just need to get by. 

Competence comes much sooner than 10,000 hours. I believe you can become 'sorta good' at something with a year of practice, maybe an hour or two a day.  (Maybe not good enough to go pro - depends on the demand for that skill - after about 500 hours I was a 'sorta good' guitarist but not good enough to get paid doing it - and after thousands of hours I was a 'sorta good' fiction writer but not good enough to get paid for that.)

I'll let you in on a secret. When I started designing the swinging system for Spider-Man 2 I had very little 'design' experience. Sure, I'd been making games for more than 10,000 hours at that point, but actually designing gameplay mechanics? Nowhere near 10,000 hours. But I listened to a lot of feedback and had a lot of help and believed I could do it. Turned out pretty great. Turned out being 'sorta good' was good enough. 

Also, I don't know this for sure, but I don't think Kyle Gabler put in 10,000 hours of musical composition practice before he did the music for World of Goo. It's still good enough - I might even say 'perfect.' 

So, yeah. Next time someone says to you, 'You can't do X' or 'You'll never be good at X' or even 'It'll take you 10,000 hours to get good at X' ... don't listen to them. Take it as a challenge. Start putting in the time - you'll get to 'sorta good' a lot sooner than they say.

What about you? What are the things you're good at that you haven't logged 10,000 hours at yet?

[Side note: I was inspired to write this because a friend told me I'd need to log 10,000 hours at graphic design before I could stop sucking at graphic design. He's since told me that this isn't what he meant. So this whole post was based on an anecdotal comment that turned out to not exist. Oh well - if anybody does ever tell us 'don't bother unless you have 10,000 hours', and actually means it, we'll be ready.]

What could be Ouya's Killer App?

I'm cautiously optimistic about the Ouya. I'd love to be able to put Energy Hook on the big screen in my livingroom without having to jump through endless TCR or being tied to XNA. 

I think the 'killer app' thing is something of a myth - people say that GTA3 sold the PS2, for example, but at the time I checked the data there were 20 times as many PS2's out there as GTA3's. People go a little crazy and they just buy the shiny new console even if they don't know what they're going to play on it. The amount of funding the Ouya kickstarter has already raised is kind of proof of that - people don't even know what they're going to be playing on this thing and already they're lining up to buy one.

But me, there's some game I want to play that makes me buy a console. With the Xbox 360 it was Chromehounds (and what a disappointment that was - my 360 ended up being a Geometry Wars server for the longest time) ... with the PS2 it was Ico ... 

What about you? Is there a game that's currently available on Mac or PC - or coming soon - but not on one of your consoles that would make you say, "Yeah, I'll drop $100 so I can play that on the big screen."

Notes on Resonance

Just finished Resonance. You gotta play it.

I don't think I've played an adventure game of this stripe since *The Shivah*, so I'm a bit out of the loop. Maybe this kind of thing is standard now, but there are things Resonance does that are new to me but very clever.

One thing is you have inventories of not just objects - but memories. Which you can then use in dialog. And you can drag things into your memories to ask people about them later. So the branching-dialog trees that are kind of standard for Monkey Island - which is a pretty boring game mechanic once you strip away the color - sort of like navigating a not-very-interesting maze - becomes as interesting as the meat of adventure games: use the right objects with each other - find the right combinations in the sparsely populated matrix.

You may point out text adventures were doing this back in the dark ages with "ASK MRS. ROBNER ABOUT BLOOD" and, yes, that's true, but it's nice to see graphic adventures catch up.

Another cool thing is you get to control four charaters and switch between them. Each character has their own abilities so often you have to use the right character for the job. Orthogonal unit design applied to adventure games.

The four-character model allows them to build the hint book into the game as well - you have one character ask another character what they think, and they give a clue.

Where it really shines is its story, which is quite good by videogame standards. But I won't spoil that for you.

One thing I will say is each character has or seems to have their own interests and agenda; some of the characters may or may not be what they seem. Even though you, the player, are controlling them, you don't necessarily know what they really want or why they're going along with this adventure. It's a really cool feeling - (a bit like playing a you-have-amnesia story game like Psi*Run or Penny For My Thoughts where the other players are allowed to endow your character with characteristics you may not like) - the characters are you-and-not-you.

Finally, it has a strong female character who is not one of the many offensive tropes. She's a doctor and a person of color. And the game (narrowly) passes the Bechdel test, avoiding the Smurfette trope, by allowing her to converse with a (admittedly rather cliched) receptionist.

Resonance.

Where the women at?

So far the Energy Hook roster is a lily-white sausage fest, though part of that is that the concept art is in black and white. People are already piping up and asking where are the women and people of color for Energy Hook? 

You know, I was going to mention something in the last post but it was already getting kind of big and, well, I forgot.

Anyhow, the women are on their way. (Paul drew the guys first is all.) Two of them, to avoid the Smurfette trope. We're trying our best to avoid other offensive tropes, but, hey, dumb males here. Wish us luck.

As for people of color, I think Slim is half-Korean. I'll have to double check with Paul about that. Does that count?

I'd also like to point out we're giving some love to a couple minorities that rarely get any in videogames. I hope people will notice the strides we're making against agism with Papi. Also, that muscle-bound actuary? He's Jewish. Non-practicing, though, like me.

Just a reminder: if you want to be notified when the crowdfunding campaign will go live, you can subscribe to the mailing list:  http://ymlp.com/xgjmmqeqgmgb.

Artist On Board

Paul Whitehead and I are totally having a superhero team-up.

In case you don't know Paul, he's a long-time industry vet who has worked at Treyarch, Sucker Punch, and is currently working at Arena.Net.  So, yes, Energy Hook is going to be a side project for him, but he assures me he doesn't sleep. And he's awesome - a renaissance man of game art, able to do concept, model, texture, create effects, and animate.

So that's good news. Other good news is that although I kind of want to just throw Energy Hook at the kickstarter wall as soon as possible, asking for peanuts and making whatever game we can make with whatever money we happen to raise, Paul wants to do an actual Good Job. He wants concepts of the characters AND environments; AND he wants to do a test level showing the look we're going for; he wants to really demonstrate to the crowdfunding public what they're going to get. He's a better man than I am.

Bad news is that's going to take time. (In the meantime I'll be working on a secret project which I can announce in a month or so.) More possibly bad news is that once we've set a visual bar we'll need to make sure we raise enough money to hit that bar - wouldn't want to disappoint everyone. So our kickstarter is going to be something of a hail mary.

Anyhow - here's a look at the sketches for Energy Hook he's done so far.

This is our buff cannonball-like character. An actuary by day, he crunched some numbers and decided he really wanted to get in on this highly fatal Energy Hook thing. While most Energy Hook athletes have an exoskeletal or force-field rig to help them hold it together under the massive forces that accrue when you're swinging around a frickin' building at 100 kph, he just has a lot of upper body strength. Good for defenestration.

This guy is totally old school. He was doing parkour back before energy hooks were even invented, yo. He's just in it for the fun and zen of it all. Note the furry slippers. Working name: Papi.

And this guy is a total hipster - not only is he an Energy Hook champion but he also has his own clothing line. Working name: Slim.

Note the jetpacks! Although you won't be able to fly while playing the game you will be able to use your jetpack to change course, glide for short distances, and do super-jumps. (And the exhaust from the jetpack will give you, the player, great feedback about how the controls work - pushing left on the stick in mid-air will push your character left, and you'll see the thrust from your jetpack to make it clear.)

Oh, and, by the way, that zipline-down-sloping-ceilings thing? Paul's idea.

Totally stoked.

Just a reminder: if you want to be notified when the crowdfunding campaign will go live, you can subscribe to the mailing list:  http://ymlp.com/xgjmmqeqgmgb.

 

Numbergun! got some more coverage!

Clearly Lana Polansky of Gameranx is a critic of refined taste.

We at Happion Labs would like to thank her for helping us on our mission to continually refine happiness.

And what is this *Ponycorn* people keep mentioning? Must investigate.