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To give some context, this article comes from a blog written by an indie dev team. Here, one of the team members discusses a particular facet of game development that is important to the entire process, but often goes unrecognized. Source Adrian Chmielarz of The Astronauts says: posted:Can you guess what’s doubling game budgets and development time? It’s not technology. It’s not “finding the fun”. It’s not asset creation. The discussion of Half Life 2 really rang true for me. I spent most of that game tossing things around and jumping on top of every object possible.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 05:51 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 00:22 |
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gently caress you trolls (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:09 |
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It seems like what the author is mostly saying is "open world games are a lot of work", and yeah, any big software project (games or otherwise) involves a pretty staggering amount of effort to smooth up edge cases that aren't directly visible to most players. A well-developed "gently caress around factor" gives a lot of life and a lot of charm to a game. It's a nice surprise when you try something fairly obscure and the game responds in a way that lets you know the designers anticipated that kind of screwball thinking (probably some of the earliest examples I can think of are the old Infocom text adventures). More linear, directed gameplay can be good too, though it usually doesn't have as much longevity or replayability. Half Life 2 is an interesting example because in some ways it feels pretty open, it has an impressive gently caress-around-factor with regard to the object physics, vehicles, and soforth. But it remains a disappointment that if I use the gravity gun to chuck a barrel at a scientist or Alyx, they just stand there, they don't react at all, even to flinch or complain. I guess you could make an argument that it was a stylistic choice, that they didn't want to break the mood by acknowledging that kind of tomfoolery, but it still put a bit of a damper on things for me.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:15 |
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I don't get why she's calling people exploring their environment trolls. I'm not pushing around things or breaking glass or staring at a mirror because I want to tick off the game developers, but because I'm curious. It's human nature to want to investigate your environment, and in a sandbox where doing things like jumping from great heights won't kill you and smashing chairs won't get you in trouble, who wouldn't do these things?
Gyre fucked around with this message at Feb 8, 2013 around 06:24 |
| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:19 |
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sounds like an issue with designing experiences that deliberately get people motivated to behave in specific ways. Making those experiences is hard, because your end-users fall on a spectrum of 'first time playing video games' to 'I know how to make video games' I hate the term "flow", but it describes a position in which people feel intrinsically motivated to do something.  Games like counter strike and TF2 have lasted so long because the "flow" for users is based upon what server you play on, and what the skill level of your teammates/opposing team is. Edit: I think the author refers to trolls with the wrong word. They're "cheaters", or better yet people with hacker mentalities. I think games are essentially obstacles put in between the end user and their goal. When you figure out what these obstacles are, say only having 100hp and not being able to move through walls, and remove them--the game vanishes and the experience is just the end user and whatever the game's objective is. What the author fails to mention is what new obstacles emerge from changing the rules (and how some games encourage, and design with this in mind *cough Elder Scrolls is mod friendly cough*) Users create their own goals with new rules. When you have infinite gold in sim city, you can build stuff you'd probably never have time to do within the traditional rule set. On the other side of that, is completely trivializing the game and making it no longer fun to play (especially if you have god mode on, while the whole mechanic of a game may be to keep your HP above 0). My takeaway from this is: don't make games that can be broken when the rules are bent or ignored, make games that work even while using cheats. Gamers are stupidly smart, and intelligently stupid so design accordingly for all skill levels with appropriate challenges. Easier said than done, but not impossible to do. Don't cry because someone actually played your game and 'broke it' because the game's design is incomplete or lacking. The goal of many games is to create experiences that evoke real emotions from users--when that 4th wall is broken (with a bug or oversight) and the immersion magic goes away, the experience is diluted and the game becomes mediocre instantly. If you can't design something to account for what humans naturally do within experiences, than you're not designing a game properly. You can address your bottom line and the 'trolls' if you create experiences that can't be broken simply by doing something that's not scripted or expected. That's hard to do, and there's not many people who can design these kinds of experiences; tough. It's the difference between buying an iPhone and unwrapping it from it's box, and struggling with a plastic sleeve-package that you can only cut with scissors to open. Good enough doesn't apply itself easily to games that have the goal of selling lots of copies, which is why I think we've got such a glut of mediocre 'big title' games of late. Also, I think the author is making a false equivalence between huge budget games and indie games that are successful. Designing for "Trolls" isn't expensive. Designing bad game mechanics, having vague acceptance criteria, assuming users will 'play' the game how you want them to, and poor planning is expensive. Users tell their own stories, and when you stick a script in front of them like a pretentious Broadway director, you get sassed and poo poo on because that's what people do when they're told what to do. Warpigeon fucked around with this message at Feb 8, 2013 around 06:59 |
| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:22 |
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If there's a bug in our game it's the players fault for finding it. loving TROLLS.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:25 |
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I am of two minds of this: On the one hand, as a gamer, I do not appreciate being called a troll for wanting to just play with the tools given to us in a game, and the entire thing reads as excessively whiny. As someone who works as a developer for a business application...I can see his point, easily. In my experience, a large amount of planning and QA goes into essentially idiot proofing any new feature, and I imagine it is not even close to what game developers need to deal with. "Troll" is a loaded term, so it is kind of hard not to. Now that look over the article again, it seems a little more good natured. VVVVVV Unlucky7 fucked around with this message at Feb 8, 2013 around 06:34 |
| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:27 |
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I think you guys are taking the author's use of the word 'troll' a bit too seriously. To me, it reads like a humorous way of describing the way that gamers interact with their games in unexpected ways, and how this can lead to extra challenges in the way those games need to be developed.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:30 |
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This reeks of "guys please stop examining our projects and products closely you big meanies we want to be as lazy as possible." especially in an era where you have scripts, engine presets and all sorts of other poo poo that already have physics, waving grass and whatnot baked in.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:32 |
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Throughout this article I kept thinking back to how I spent a solid ten to fifteen minutes stuck at the start of the more recent Chronicles of Riddick game. Dark Athena, I think. Couldn't figure out where to go after exploring the nooks and crannies of the few corridors. It took me way too long to realize that a glass window was breakable. At first I thought it was because having breakable glass in a space station seemed ridiculous, but soon I thought that it might be because so many games have trained me to assume that all walls and most windows are impervious to ballistics and explosions. Unless they were made up of cracked rubble or covered with haphazardly nailed boards, of course. The knife cuts both ways with this type of game design, I suppose. Or maybe I'm just an idiot.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 06:57 |
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I think the fault lies with anyone who tries to sell you game with major "realistic" elements. Which seems to be the case with this guy, who's last games was a Gears of war game. People are going to expect more out of games like this, than some developers are willing to put in, like physics in environmental objects, and legs. When you're trying to sell them any game with realistic elements in it. It shows effort and attention to detail, which is always a lovely thing to have and makes your game stand out. Bottom line, can't wait to see how his next game will turn out. I'm betting that the game will be poo poo if he follows the solutions he listed as they are basically just limiting player interaction, essentially making the game a glorified movie, or making the game buggy as hell, which isn't as big of a problem(and can be kind of fun) in an open world type game like fallout and elder scrolls, but would probably spell doom for him Wasper fucked around with this message at Feb 8, 2013 around 07:20 |
| # ? Feb 8, 2013 07:14 |
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I think a great counter-example to this is Alpha Protocol, where "Wait, you can do THAT?" is pretty much always answered with a resounding yes, and the gameplay and replayability is so much better off for it. Having said that, I don't think we should harp too much on his use of the word "trolls". The impression I got from the article was not so much that he was calling out this kind of exploratory behavior as bad, but more as part of human nature that designers have to account for. I suppose the key difference is how you approach this kind of accounting - whether it's a slog and you just have to lock the player out of all the "stupid poo poo" he might do, or whether you have fun with it (as kind of was his example with Skyrim), or expand upon it enough that it's an asset of the game (as in Alpha Protocol) or a middle-ground where you at least don't want to make the player feel like he's being locked in and lead around by the nose along the One True Path (Call of Duty and other corridor shooters tend to be brought up as examples of this).
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 07:21 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think a great counter-example to this is Alpha Protocol, where "Wait, you can do THAT?" is pretty much always answered with a resounding yes, and the gameplay and replayability is so much better off for it.
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| # ? Feb 8, 2013 07:32 |
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Whiny industry people are the worst. You call it trolling when people show you how crappily made your game is; the consumer calls it quality assurance. Edit: Never mind that Gears of War is the best loved modern video game franchise there is, and is making you millions of dollars. Some guy at E3 tried to stand on the chair you lovingly placed. DON'T YOU KNOW THIS IS MY HOME. Seraphic Sphere fucked around with this message at Feb 9, 2013 around 04:50 |
| # ? Feb 9, 2013 04:48 |
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Seraphic Sphere posted:Whiny industry people are the worst. You call it trolling when people show you how crappily made your game is; the consumer calls it quality assurance. Whiny gamers who completely miss the point of the article are even worse gently caress you i'll stand on the chair and complain how lovely your game is when it doesn't move YOU'RE NOT EVEN MY REAL DAD
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 04:59 |
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Keep in mind that Adrian Chmieralz is from Poland, english isn't his first language and nowhere does he really state that players are assholes for dicking around in a video game. Just that development becomes significantly more difficult and costly when every sequence has to come with a dozen caveats programmed in to keep the game from being broken by peoples' natural tendency to fiddle with everything they can.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 05:10 |
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1stGear posted:Whiny gamers who completely miss the point of the article are even worse gently caress you i'll stand on the chair and complain how lovely your game is when it doesn't move YOU'RE NOT EVEN MY REAL DAD Did I miss the point? I did gloss over the part where he goes "but seriously you guys are great AHHH don't yell at me for my fake problem." I guess that's the most important part of all though.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 05:10 |
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I think the takeaway here is that games are games and exist outside the boundaries of any real world consequences. Why wouldn't you melee a wall in real life? Because you might break your airsoft gun, and there's pretty much zero chance that you're gonna end up clipping through it and sequence breaking your cops-and-robbers game.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 05:11 |
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Seraphic Sphere posted:Did I miss the point? I did gloss over the part where he goes "but seriously you guys are great AHHH don't yell at me for my fake problem." I guess that's the most important part of all though. The point is just a goofy look at some of the things designers have to consider about player behavior and how that affects development. The "Player stays in a water-filled room" is the most concrete example because he points out that making that an actual threat to the player would require additional coding, voice work, animation, and generally a bunch more money and man-hours for a one-use feature. But if they don't put it in and the player just stands in that room and doesn't die, then the game looks shoddily-made. He's not even super-mad about it. He's just bringing it to light in a playful way, not complaining about how they have to bug-test games.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 05:15 |
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Unlucky7 posted:I am of two minds of this: On the one hand, as a gamer, I do not appreciate being called a troll for wanting to just play with the tools given to us in a game, and the entire thing reads as excessively whiny. As someone who works as a developer for a business application...I can see his point, easily. In my experience, a large amount of planning and QA goes into essentially idiot proofing any new feature, and I imagine it is not even close to what game developers need to deal with. I have no programming knowledge, but wouldn't developing a business application be more straightforward than a game? You'd know specifically what the business needs/wants, and you build toward that. But a game, it's more of a creative work, and unless you're on contract to produce something specific it's your choice what kind of game to make and how to go about it. Don't want people to move around the game? Make it on rails, make more ways to confine the player; is it a 3d game? what about a 2d game? It would just seem to me that a game developer's ambitions for a game may be more than they're capable of producing and need to scale back or readjust the design if these problems are too great for them to handle. Are you part of this indie dev team Mego, did you write the article? I see you registered today and this OP is your first and only post.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 05:16 |
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I'm really glad you joined just to post this. There are a ton of hidden costs to features or setpieces that most players never see, or that are handled in a cost-effective way that leads to griping (invisible walls, invincible allies, kill zones, etc). This article is a terrible attempt at bringing that to light, unfortunately, as the entire tone is whiny as hell.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 05:28 |
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Games are too expensive anyway so it all balances out
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 05:35 |
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Warpigeon posted:Games like counter strike and TF2 have lasted so long because the "flow" for users is based upon what server you play on, and what the skill level of your teammates/opposing team is. Both of those games and Dota 2 allow players creating their own experiences with each other in game instead of the game holding their hand which I think is the crux of the matter.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 05:46 |
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1stGear posted:The point is just a goofy look at some of the things designers have to consider about player behavior and how that affects development. The "Player stays in a water-filled room" is the most concrete example because he points out that making that an actual threat to the player would require additional coding, voice work, animation, and generally a bunch more money and man-hours for a one-use feature. But if they don't put it in and the player just stands in that room and doesn't die, then the game looks shoddily-made. That example confused me, because is this the only instance of water appearing in this hypothetical game? Otherwise you'd have swimming / drowning animations or whatever already, right? And isn't this kind of thing what QA teams exist for?
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 05:58 |
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raditts posted:That example confused me, because is this the only instance of water appearing in this hypothetical game? Otherwise you'd have swimming / drowning animations or whatever already, right? It is, in the hypothetical game, and attacking the specifics of his hypothetical doesn't actually detract from his argument. Especially since there are still a bunch of other things he lists that are specific to this room (like the voice acting and specific flooding effects). I fail to see how having QA fixes the issue he's complaining about. QA exists largely to find the kind of breaks he's talking about, but the issue he seems to be complaining about is the work/costs it takes to fix them, which QA does not reduce (in fact, QA is one of the work/costs). As a game grows in complexity, the number of systems grows much more, and no simple statement of "and then a thing happens" while describing a gameplay moment can exist without a dozen bits to make sure that the thing happens.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 06:15 |
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This isn't some struggling indie developer making an ambitious game on a shoestring. The guy who designs levels for the most lucrative game franchise in the world is complaining about the effort and cost associated with making a level that doesn't explode when you go back over the bridge.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 06:51 |
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Yeah this poo poo is like level design 101. If you're making a loving linear as poo poo level design, make sure that you test to see if people can do stupid poo poo. It's why in old text adventures you could die from any wrong mistake-- it was easier to just kill the player than add a bunch of poo poo for if they wanted to do wacky off-track poo poo. I'll always remember in the original Thief if you put a skull in the door of the haunted Cathedral before you steal The Eye, it bitches at you for taking the easy way out :dog:
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 17:52 |
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inkj4yop5P8 I don't think the player did this
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 18:13 |
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The author's repeated use of the word "trolls" is goddamn irritating. I agree that it's incredibly common to start a new game and try to explore the environment you're presented with, but you're not "trolling the developer" by exploring their world. You're exploring their creation! An example is given about sitting down to a family meal. The author says "well of course you won't start smashing dishes and throwing food at your dinner guests" well no loving poo poo, buddy. We'd be in an environment that we are totally accustomed to and have a very thorough understanding of what the plates are made out of, what happens if you drop one, the taste of the food, the effects of gravity on a thrown glass of wine, etc. However, when we're placed at a dinner table on the planet ZigZor in the solar system XXSZHA12 in the year 999995, I'd be pretty drat keen to explore the environment around me. The dinner plates and drinking glasses certainly would be foreign to me and if nothing else, the new environment would pique my curiosity and of course I'd be tempted to touch and feel everything around me to get a sense of the world. Maybe social constraints would prevent some exploration and plate-smashing, but that's something that can be simulated in a gaming environment as well. My point is that human beings are inherently curious about their surroundings and we want to understand the world we live in. We're more or less grown adults at this point and we have a decent understanding of the world because we've had years and years to explore and discover what breaking glass and spilled liquids do. Game worlds are completely foreign and we never knnow what exists there. Perhaps in this world I'm incapable of jumping or liquids simply pool in one spot on the ground regardless of terrain. Maybe glass doesn't shatter or gravity behaves differently. New players to a game are like infants discovering the world for the first time who are putting objects in their mouths and smashing toys together to feel the impact and see the damage it causes. Hell, I'd go so far as to draw the comparison to kids touching a hot burner. You know it's hot, you can tell them "hey, this is hot, please do not touch it" but in order to REALLY understand the situation, a lot of kids will end up touching it. Sure, some will listen to their parents or not give a poo poo, and I'm sure that there are people out there who have (luckily) never burned themselves on a hotplate, but it's not a universal experience. Modern gaming continues to provide developers with amazing new technologies to immerse gamers in the worlds they create, so seeing an article admonishing players for doing that very thing is unthinkable. The author comes across like an angry technical support agent complaining about how all of their users are so infuriating and make their jobs the worst in the world. He's speaking from such an insulated environment where gamers have stopped being people he wishes to entertain and provide a fantastic experience for and have instead become some obstacle to be overcome just so that their game can be published (but who are they publishing it for if not their gamers?). If a developer has created a world where the player feels free to explore the environment in new and surprising (possibly gamebreaking) ways, then that developer just created a world that the player believes in and is capable of truly experiencing. If they want to tell a story while the user wears blinders and is only shown what the devs want them to see, perhaps an interactive video game isn't the best medium to be used. Perhaps a book, instead? Richard M Nixon fucked around with this message at Feb 9, 2013 around 18:49 |
| # ? Feb 9, 2013 18:45 |
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I don't think of it as trolling at all. The simple fact of the matter is that if something can be done in your game, one of your players will do it, so you better account for it. The scenario in the article where they have a room being flooded but haven't accounted for what might happen if a player stays in it just feels stupid to me. Oh no! We have to program a hazard to deal damage!? What horrible trolls gamers are!
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 18:53 |
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Yeah, I don't know why they used trolls either. First time I read the phrase I thought they meant all of the fans who troll them online bashing them for how all of their hard work and long hours can be made into lovely end products. (IE: the poor animators who spent a few months/years of their life to animate Jar Jar Binks in 1998)
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 19:03 |
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Also, isn't what this guy describes as "trolling" literally the entirety of what playtesters are supposed to do? Reasoning like his is how Sonic 2006 happened.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 19:06 |
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Edit: ^^^^^ I'm not trolling, I'm playtesting. You guys are a bunch of trolls for not just taking his post at face value, and questioning his motives and reasons for writing it. You must be a bunch of filthy loving gamers!
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 19:07 |
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You guys are really easily angered and manage to totally miss the point when someone calls you a bad name, drat!
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 19:14 |
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Zigmidge posted:You guys are really easily angered and manage to totally miss the point when someone calls you a bad name, drat!
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 19:16 |
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Zigmidge posted:You guys are really easily angered and manage to totally miss the point when someone calls you a bad name, drat! Even without the word troll I would still completely disagree with the article but um okay
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 19:19 |
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Farecoal posted:Even without the word troll I would still completely disagree with the article but um okay See, I wasn't even talking about you but it was a negative post and you felt the need to miss my point! I guess this is a comment more on the author than the posters in this thread.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 19:23 |
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Farecoal posted:Even without the word troll I would still completely disagree with the article but um okay
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 19:24 |
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Strudel Man posted:About all the article says is "players tend to try doing things counter to the intended flow of a game" and "dealing with this consumes designer hours." Once again, my problem with it is that he has literally described the job of playtesters. It's very basic design fundamentals he's treating as some sort of crisis.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 19:27 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 00:22 |
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Strudel Man posted:What exactly would you disagree with? About all the article says is "players tend to try doing things counter to the intended flow of a game" and "dealing with this consumes designer hours." It's pretty heavily implied that things that they don't intend are bad things, especially since their examples are adding a whole bunch of sound and code to satisfy some 'assholes' and the bad PR example.
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| # ? Feb 9, 2013 19:27 |
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