Tom used to be a lawyer. Now he's a game designer. The two have more in common than you think.
Another great resource, sadly not centrally indexed anywhere: Julia Keren-Detar’s talk on designing video game tutorials.
What’s particularly striking to me about this situation is that this talk isn’t hosted on the GDC website, or DiGRA’s, or at any other location where one commonly goes for this sort of discussion. One has to know it exists to find it. That’s clearly not OK; we really need a better clearinghouse for industry knowledge!
Oof! This ended up being a half day of work:
Try not to laugh too loud. 😉
A few weeks ago I posted a game I’d built for my MFA program. I’ve since returned to that game, polishing it to improve the player experience. I’ve also given it a new name–Phalanx–though that’s nowhere reflected in the game itself just yet. 😉
Unfortunately, that has meant returning to the dark and dangerous halls of Javascript, with all the incomprehensible error messages and general awfulness that implies. Send good thoughts my way; I’m sorely in need of them . . . .
I’m having a bit of trouble with WordPress’ new editor.
Yesterday I got to hear a spectacular talk by Mark Herman, longtime wargame developer and former CEO of Victory Games. Among the things I learned:
Records of conferences are one of the best sources for game design information. As a field, we don’t do a good job of storing information over the long term (a point Leigh Alexander made at a conference this past weekend!), but we at least have central locations were the data is made available. The recordings and documents that come out of those conferences become the closest thing the field has to searchable, peer-reviewed journals.
For that reason, I’d encourage you to take a look at the Tumblr for PRACTICE 2015. The conference was excellent, and the people running the Tumblr did an amazing job of getting key information down. Give it a look!
Occasionally I return to the idea of a story-driven, Dynasty Warriors-inspired minis game. Here’s an interesting way to think about the goal of that design:
RPGs fall, roughly, into two categories. In some, the rules are a simulation of the physics of the universe. FFG’s Warhammer 40K RPGs work this way; when a player rolls to hit, the target number is based on in-world factors like distance, visibility, and the characteristics of the weapon.
Other RPGs direct the rules toward the narrative rather than what’s happening in the fictional world. A lot of indie RPGs (without trying to get into a debate about what counts as an “indie” RPG) are of this school. Polaris’ rules, for example, are all about which player gets to decide what happens rather than whether her character can then carry out the decision.
Current minis games fall into the former category. The rules are designed to simulate the in-universe rules of the world. Admittedly those rules might be strange, because the world is a magitech kingdom or an alternate dimension, but they’re still meant as a simulation.
The proposed minis game takes a completely separate tack. The rules aren’t about simulating a character’s attacks. They’re about driving the narrative forward and wrestling for control over the story.
In Three Days to Retirement your day starts out something like this:
It ends up like this:
I think these screenshots give you something of the feeling of the game . . . and demonstrate why my sprite art is nothing to write home about. 😉
Warmachine recently unveiled a new format: Champions, in which only certain pieces are legal. Champions is probably a great solution to some troubles Warmachine has been having. It also, however, points up an interesting design problem: how to keep games that have more and more content released manageable without resort to rotation.
By way of background: up until now every piece ever created for Warmachine was tournament-legal. It didn’t matter whether the piece’s rules just came out a month ago, or whether it was the first piece ever released for the game. Absolutely everything could be put on the table.
Over time that system has become less and less manageable for players. The sheer number of pieces and combinations has become overwhelming. Can your army handle a general like Morvahna, who can manipulate dice in her favor? What if she instead focuses on endlessly resurrecting her army? Deneghra can flatline your army’s stats for a turn; will you survive? Bradigus and the High Reclaimer both block line of sight, but in entirely different ways; can your army see through both? Saeryn’s army can’t be engaged in close combat for a turn, while Vlad can shut down most ranged attacks; you’ll probably want both options so you can always get through losing one. Sorcha will freeze you in place if you don’t have a way to become immune to ice attacks . . . .
The list goes on, but you can see the problem. It’s impossible for any one army to deal with all of these threats. As a result, players inevitably started to get into rock-paper-scissors matchups, wherein they didn’t have ice immunity or the ability to stop resurrection or whatever. Unsatisfying games invariably followed.
Magic: the Gathering had a similar problem of multiplying complexity, and answered it with rotation, a system in which older cards are excluded from tournaments as new cards come out. Rotation proved so effective at keeping complexity manageable that it’s become the accepted answer to the problem of “how do we keep releasing product for this game without rendering it incomprehensible.”
Warmachine will, I think, benefit from having a rotation; only needing to think about Saeryn without also needing an answer to Vlad will be a big help. Privateer Press’ form of rotation is even especially generous to players, since older pieces will rotate back in over time; Magic forces players into “eternal” formats when they want to use their old cards.
Nevertheless, I find I’m a bit disappointed. Rotation is a good solution, but it’s only one solution. I have to think that there are others, if we’re imaginative enough to find them.
The specific form of rotation Privateer Press has chosen demonstrates that there’s still thought to how it should be implemented. I’d still like, though, to push out the boundaries in this area. We know rotation is a good tool; now let’s put our energy into finding some equally good alternatives!
The Law of Game Design 