Life at an underground game company.
Development Concerns
More Updates. More Fun Things.
01 month ago
We here at Double Cluepon spend our Saturdays actually working, believe it or not. One of the things we did this weekend? Started tightening up our interface mockup, so the art department can begin working on the actual elements.
While we know and pretty much have the basics set for the Alpha client, as we add functionality for actual feature sets, we of course need a way to visually reference these in the interface. That process has been ongoing in a somewhat off and on basis. As of this quarter however, it’s taken a front seat.
In designing the interface, we wanted to try for something a little less intrusive than what we ourselves have been used to: a lot of scattered functionality. We could name names, but we wont. What we will say is this: there are a lot of badly designed interfaces in the MMO world. We don’t think this is intentional in any way. We think it’s a natural consequence of the way MMO User Interfaces tend to evolve; as new features are added, the UI for them gets sort of “tacked on” the end, which after a year or two tends to make the UI clunky or in some extreme cases, completely unapproachable.
What we really want from the Emerald Kingdom interface then, is something more akin to a dresser full of drawers. We want to be able to organize things in such a way that you can:
- Minimize the number of clicks to get to something.
- Organize things in such a way that it’s natural as to where you will find them.
- Build a system that, when it’s time to add functionality, it blends well with what is already there.
- Build and maintain with a philosophy that viewing the world should not be impeded. i.e: seeing the world is always important.
Awhile back, we posted our basic mockup of what the initial UI should look like:
Our original mockup. We used this as a base for rapid iteration. Ignore the ass hiccups. We're a strange bunch.
While we liked the original, we also realized there was no way any of this was set in stone. For instance, since doing this particular mockup, the way we’re doing quick bar functions has actually changed. Chained attacks will be set up differently. While we have not designed that bit yet, we know full well going into this, we cannot be married to anything we see in the original.
But, the basics are here. We have a mini-map, a modal window, chat, shortcut bar, money indicator, top tabs, and your status in the upper left corner. All of this is raw material, really. What comes next is re-iterating with the raw material you see here, in order to come through with a nicer, easier design. It will still be rough, but at least we can get a handle on where to put things.
There are a few things that will need to be put into the game first and foremost. Number one on the list is character profiles. Character profiles are going to be central to a lot of the social functionality of the game itself. Profiles will tell you a number of things. What the player is rated at for their skills, what aspects they’re currently aligned with, marks they have, achievements they’ve earned, and stuff they own like shops and whatnot. It will also tell you a bit about their social groupings that they are associated with.
A quick and dirty mockup of profiles. This one was generated simply using HTML/CSS.
The original mockup I did for player profiles was quick and dirty, I wanted to start picturing how they would look, what information they would display and how it would display it. As you can see from this basic put together there are some really basic items on here. You can see Marks, Skills, Social Associations, and ownership. You can also see some initial ideas about ratings, along with how they are displayed.
Now, while this profile mockup worked in a web context, and it let me get some of my ideas out of my head, it was in no way anything that was going to be used. It’s important to realize that when you’re designing something, you actually throw away a lot. Learning what goes on the cutting room floor is just as important as learning what goes into the final product. At this stage in the game, you really cannot get hitched to anything. That said, the basics here were looked at, and migrated to where they need to appear first: the client. Even though player profiles will be visible from a regular web browser, they need to fit the client first and foremost, because that’s where they will be primarily used.
Note that, some of the structure of the original profile exists. Some of it was shaved down.
So, then, we got back into the client mockup. Uriel re-organized the layers, and we got down to business. One of the first concerns brought up was this: how to display all the information without creating a feeling of “information overload”. What we learned was important: it felt like we were dumping too much in, at the top under the player name. We had it ordered along the following:
* Faction
* Confederation.
* House.
* Band.
* Military Rank.
It was at this point Uriel spoke up, and said it felt like it was “too much” stuff. We then went into a discussion about “how much was too much?”. Looking back on it, that was the wrong way to go, because what we discovered was that it was not the volume, but the format in which it was displayed. Uriel then changed it up a bit, and what it wound up being was what you see in the shot:
* Band
* Faction
* Confederation
** Rank.
* House.
It’s the same amount of information, but ordering it in a more sane fashion made it easier to parse from a human standpoint. That’s another important lesson here: knowing when to change things up a bit, as opposed to cutting. Sometimes, you can have your cake and eat it too.
The next thing we covered, was the picture of the player. Originally, I simply wanted a user Picture. (We plan on having photobooths, where you can take really detailed and nice looking pictures) but Sandalphon got into the game: she felt it was important that we’re able to see the player as they are at that moment; She wanted to see the players avatar as it appeared “in the world”. My initial concern was this: if we do that, what drive do people have to get Pictures taken? It was suggested that perhaps we give the player an option: use the avatar by default, if the player wants to replace this with a picture, which will look nicer, they can.
Let me jump in here and just say: if we can give the user an option, especially when that option has to do with how they present themselves..we will where its possible. I personally think that all too often, user options are sacrificed out of sheer laziness.
The next thing we got into the UI was how marks are displayed. The Mark display is shown in the above picture, as purple boxes above the picture/avatar. Now, there are 32 Sprite Marks in Emerald Kingdom. While it’s not possible to gather them all, it is possible to get a fairly significant number. How to display them? We eventually decided that a hover over the marks would “Window shade” them down, over the user avatar/picture. We will add a preference to let someone choose 5 marks to display at the top.
From there, we placed the Aspects. Aspects in Emerald Kingdom relate to our “Pluggable Attribute” system. (We wont be getting into that now). Up next was: how to display skills. Skills in Emerald Kingdom do not have numerics. (In fact, if you have not noticed by now, there are next to no user facing metrics. This is by design. Numbers suck!) What skills in Emerald Kingdom do have, is ratings based on your skill with them. This design choice then, was really simple and straightforward: iconography, followed by a rating.
Achievements and Ownership are pretty straightforward; Iconography is used, with hover over tooltip style labels. Again, options for what to display will be available to the player, and a link provided for other players so they can view all of them.
One of the things you may notice is the background of the player profile. This is the “Mark of Grief”. We’ve spoken about this a bit in the past. One of the Sprites can bestow the “Mark of Grief” on players, literally our front end on the Anti Griefing system we are developing. If a player has it, it will show up in the background of their profile, as well as be transparently masked over their picture or avatar. Why? We want other players to know if someone has been a less than desirable player. We want this apparent as immediately as possible. We think if you’ve been griefing people, then it should show. The Mark of Grief (like other marks) fades over time, and will do so here as well. If the player does has not been Marked with Grief, again, we will place an option for the player to display the mark of their choice in the background.
The original status indicator.
Once we had the main profile laid out, we turned our attention to Status. The Status indicator as it was, contained a few simple things. It had the “Knockout bar”, A place for the head of your avatar, and the “Soul Meter”.
While this worked, we soon realized that something was missing here. In Emerald Kingdom, we have what amounts to a separate “sub economy”: Gel. Gel powers everything in Emerald Kingdom. Weapons, Spell Wheels, “Magic” Weaving, eventually it will also power other bigger ticket items and other large stuff as well. Gel is planned as a natural environmental feature as well; everyone will be able to collect, refine and use it. Even in the field.
But the thing is, if you’re using a pistol, or a spell wheel…both of which rely on Gel Batteries, knowing the status on this is going to obviously be pretty freaking important. As Uriel was already itching to redesign the status display, we went to work.
The old status indicator on top, with a very rough sketch in of the new. Note that we did try to work with the old one first, but felt it was a bit too tacked on, and important stuff was hard to discern.
We tried many variations, using the original status display. We used a gel meter on the bottom, we shifted the Soul Meter a few times. Tried different ways of displaying the number of batteries left in your inventory.
We spent a lot of time trying to save what had been previously done. Sometimes, it pans out, sometimes it does not.
In this case, it did not. The old meter had to go. What Uriel sketched out looked a lot cleaner, and more readable in the long term.
Gone was the “tacked on” feel of the old iterations. The fill bars move in opposite directions, which we think will enhance their viewing ability. The Gel meter empties up, the knock out meter empties down. It’s also easy to understand: the gel meter is “tied” to the battery count, and the knock out meter is “tied” to the Soul Meter. This reinforces the idea that getting your clock cleaned by something bigger than you may affect your “Soul Meter”, just like running out of juice on your Spell Wheel’s battery will affect your battery count.
All in all, everyone liked the new design. We went on to figure out how many pieces it would wind up being in terms of layers and parts.
By this time, however…it had gotten to beer ‘o clock. So, we saved everything, and Sandalphon got the first Blue Moon of the evening. Caelum took a full hour before he started asking for wild concoctions.
It was a productive day. We have another one of these UI/UX Sessions this Saturday as well. If you have questions or ideas…let us know. You never know, you might be able to one day point at an element in the Emerald Kingdom client and be able to say…”I suggested this!”
Everyone wins. =)
As creators, we will not recuse ourselves.
41 month ago
Recently, much hay has been made of the ending of Mass Effect 3. Some people have even gone so far as to make complaints with the United States Federal Trade Commission, and the Better Business Bureau. They are pushing to blur a line that should not, in our opinion ever be blurred.
That line is the border between ownership or those who own or create, and the viewership or those who play or experience a creative work.
As some of you may know, Emerald Kingdom is trying something a little different in respect to the common MMORPG. We’re going to be implementing a linear, moving story. The folks who start on Day 0, will have had a different experience in the world than the people who start on day 472. The world will change, and grow. As people interact with the Major NPC’s (The Sprites) of the world, and different things happen, the story will evolve and move in a direction that is ultimately player population controlled to a large degree.
However, as we are the ones writing not only the story, but the story branches…it can be said that we are the authors of the world. No doubt. While we are moving the story along, and programming the game with tools to implement a sequential and forward moving series of events, there are going to be people who will like, love or hate the events that occur.
As creators, we expect this. Like life, unexpected and unfavorable things happen. What we, as a company will not do is attempt to backtrack. We will not bend one knee to those who feel we should make changes to the story because, well, they feel it should happen differently, or it should go this way instead of that way.
I will state here and now that while we expect people to live in, and enjoy the world of Emerald Kingdom, we want to make it completely clear that as people who want to tell a story, we control what we create. We will not recuse ourselves, or abdicate our role in creating the world, the story, and the events. No matter how many petitions a group of players put up.
Now, that’s not to say we will not listen to what players have to say, and heed their feedback. We are after all, committed to eating our own dog food, and listening to the good council of the people who play.
But there is a big big difference between players who are giving feedback, and players who want control. There is a huge difference between those would would suggest, and those who feel it’s their heaven sent right to dictate what they feel should be done.
We will always listen and more often than not, heed and take into consideration feedback. We will never give in to a demand. Especially when we are the creators. We will not relinquish control of what we have created to that very minor subset of gamers who feel that, having played, they have ownership of the characters, the world, and the direction. To those gamers we would say: the author, the creator has the final say. Always.
Nobody threatened Warner Brothers because of the way The Matrix trilogy ended. Stephen King was not reported to the FTC for how he chose to end his Dark Tower series. I have yet to see a Final Fantasy fan file a complaint with the BBB over Aerith’s death in Final Fantasy 7.
Do you know why? Because while you enjoy these characters, at the end of the day, they are not yours. They are not within your power to dictate. That role is reserved for the creator of works. If you cannot accept this, if you cannot abide by this then I have a few suggestions for you.
1) Turn off your computer.
2) Go out side, and take a good 5 mile walk.
3) Start your own game company, with your own characters, that you control. It’s never been easier.
But do not dare to think for one moment that because you are a fan of a work, that lets you form a mob to dictate how creativity is directed. If you bring such a mob to our door, you will be met with equal measure. We will not cower in the face of such a mob, because we know them to be a bogey monster under the bed: a vocal minority. A vocal minority’s only route of effectiveness boils down to bullying.
There is not one among us here who will put up with a bully. We will always listen, but we will not be browbeaten, or cowed by anyone. We do what we do because we are creative, because we have things in our heads we must express, for a variety of reasons. But our creative efforts are just that, our creative efforts. The act of creating piece of art, or story, a sculpture…the primary driving force is the need for the artist to express themselves. Secondary to this, while it is always welcome, is that other people enjoy the art. But what’s been lost in this discussion is “One persons art, is another persons garbage”.
If our art is garbage to you, that’s okay. We cannot possibly hope to please all people. But do not dare to think this gives you a right to dictate what it is to everyone, including the creator. You may have the right to critique, praise it, or be critical of it. But no creator asked for you to sanction it. It is what it is, if you like it, or love it…awesome. If you don’t move along.
You will get no countenance from this group of creators.
Interests, Money, Contracts and the pitfalls of who owns what.
02 months ago
I woke this morning, to find that there’s been a bit of a dust up over at Spilt Milk Studios. I wanted to talk about this a bit, because in this world of games, with IP issues relating to code and art and people sweating equity and love into a product…things like this distract, and generally cause good studios to go bad.
When I started Double Cluepon with some of the original members, I knew there were things I had no way of doing myself. I am not a developer. I am not an artist. I know nothing of modern animation techniques. While I do know how to get into source code and fix issues, or hack into place a workable kludge, I would never call myself a programmer. While I can sketch out something in what amounts to a rough approximation, I am certainly no artist. I can work in Illustrator and After Effects, but I am certainly not an animator. In my 25 years of I.T. work, I have done a little of everything. For what it’s worth? I handle almost all of the infrastructure here at Double Cluepon, in addition to my duties as a corporate officer, and producer of Emerald Kingdom.
But, when it came time to set up Double Cluepon, one of the ugliest duties I had to take on was: contracts, fairness, and equity. I could sit here and lecture you on the high minded principles of all three of those. But at the end of the day, if there is one thing I have learned is, when money is the frame of the conversation, it stops being a conversation. What it evolves into is a game of stacking scales to achieve what everyone thinks might and could be a balanced equation. Even more bluntly: it’s a losing proposition.
I could also bore you with the details of how Double Cluepon is a real corporation, with all the paperwork and fun extraneous crap that goes with it. But, really…that’s just the means to the end. What it really boils down to is this: all of our contracts are based on the premise of inherent fairness across the board, without reference to, or notice of money, except when absolutely necessary.
We have contractors, and some of them get paid retainers. Those contractors sign a release for the IP they create, and they are paid. They are under an NDA. That’s about it. I keep it simple.
People who are actually owners here? They are also under an NDA. They have all signed IP releases. (Even I have done so). The IP belongs to Double Cluepon. Period. Who owns Double Cluepon? Anyone who owns stock & works here, and is not on contract. We don’t have to worry about money and percentages. Nobody here is greedy, but we want to make money. We all care about our products. There have been owners who have come and gone for various reasons. In the end, we have a solid group of folks dedicated to getting Emerald Kingdom out the door. Nobody’s thinking about residuals, or royalties. Nobody’s thinking about revenue sharing. Why? Because as a stockholder, with an open process they examine themselves…they know collectively they are in control. While they give up some measure of that control when they elect me as CEO, or Raguel as CFO…they know they could easily reclaim it with ease.
That’s not to say we’re blissfully ignorant by choice about matters of money: we have angel funding. We keep a tight reign on the books. I report to both our financiers, and the board of directors. But we all know straight up: income has to be there in order to get your share. The best way to make sure the fairness was there, from the get go was to split ownership of the company around. Some folks hold more stock than others. The ones who hold more? They’ve voted to not only dilute their own stock in the past to accommodate the need of the company, but the ones who hold less have never held back either…they know they’re first in line for more when the time comes.
Now, you’re saying to yourself…Azrael? How did you get so many folks to work like this?
Easy: I was open, got to the point, and told them exactly how it was, why it needed to be like that…and oh yeah…here’s the books and the charter. Read as you want. I also had a business plan, (long and short). In short: people like it when you can demonstrate that you in fact do have your shit together.
I didn’t act coy, or evasive. I tried to answer every question. I was honest, direct and to the point. The biggest point was this: I don’t know if this will work or not…but take a look at the calculations: it’s worth the risk. That’s why we have an awesome group of people, they believe, and they want this as much as everyone else. By coming to the table with clean hands, and open dealing…I secured the trust, and the loyalty of the people here.
Let me clarify that a bit too: I secured their trust and loyalty to Double Cluepon, as a whole. Not to me, or any one person. I am not the corporate body. I may be the mouthpiece at times, and the face of it at others…but this is bigger than any one of us. Out of this grew a culture at Double Cluepon that is one of the finest I have ever been a party to: we love what we do, without a lot of ego. We don’t feel we need to take shit from anyone, and we feel suitably equipped to take on conventional thinking and do not give a jot or a tittle about what folks might say. We do not need to be stroked, or petted. We do what we do, in the hopes of being successful.
By framing the conversation of credit due as success, rather than money…I could be fair on a level anyone could understand, without being pedantic. Without having to worry about one person having 5 cents more than this other person. Success is the reward here at Double Cluepon. The money will be nice too. But success for ourselves, and our products is the real compensation. Being fair, open and being honest when you present success as the compensation, as opposed to money…you can get talented, awesome people who care, give a shit…and take pride in the work they sign their name to. If we ever have a contract dispute in this company, it will be with someone outside the corporate body. Not in it. The likelihood of that happening is low too: we tend to cultivate people, and keep them close. We don’t try to screw anyone.
We feel for the two parties of Spilt Milk Studio. It has less a chance of happening here. Why? Because success is our yardstick, our currency. We know the rest of the compensation comes if we reach the mile marker “Success!”.
Ja Mata!
As Alpha gets closer, let’s talk about policy.
34 months ago
I know, I know. A game company that wants to talk turkey on the subject of Policy. To be honest, when it comes to End User Agreements, and Privacy Policies…that’s pretty much boiler plate. We have those done, and we fully intend to not gank the public with mealy mouthed small print.
No, the policy I want to talk about today comes down to something that will affect each and every person who logs into Emerald Kingdom. It’s been discussed a lot over the last couple years, and it’s something we have thought about seriously. The number one policy for Emerald Kingdom is going to be a little something we like to call: The Syndrome Policy.
It states, very clearly the following:
“In every game, there should be two clearly defined groups. These groups are the people who win, and the people who do not. Winning is a recognizable achievement, and should not be diluted, or minimized through wanting to placate or soften the blow to the people who have not won.“
Or to put it more simply: the uniqueness of snowflakes diminishes as the volume increases.
The policy is named after the villain Syndrome, from the movie The Incredibles. In the movie, he states the issue with remarkable clarity:
Everyone can be super! And when everyone’s super, …no-one will be.
Really sort of hits the nail on the head these days, doesn’t it? Everyone’s a winner these days it seems. While we don’t necessarily have a problem with easy “gimmie” achievements on a base level, (They can tell others of how far you have progressed) we do have a problem with the over use of them. But more to the point, Emerald Kingdom is a game that we have designed with personal achievement in mind. We have designed the game to eventually incorporate the mid and high level game. There are going to be people who are the first to do this, or that. There are going to be people who perform remarkable feats. Those people will be immortalized in the player wiki we have planned. Notability will be something we not only plan for, but will encourage.
But, on the back end of things, we here at Double Cluepon plan to apply the Syndrome Rule to the inevitable crowd of folks who will eventually ask for a pony. The ones who will ask for specific things to be made easier for consumption by a wider audience. While we sympathize with the folks who feel everyone should be a winner…we disagree that everyone can, and should be one. Winning is an accomplishment. From slaying a monster to being best and above all others at a specific skill. The rewards should be special, and set the winners apart from the people who do not win. This is called accomplishment, and it should not be diluted or watered down.
While we appreciate that everyone wants to feel like a winner, games are about, at the core: skill and achievement. The staff here do not feel this should be muddied in any way. The spirit of this policy is that, being special should be because you have done something special, not because you happen to have a pulse. Recognition should not be diluted into meaninglessness. If you do something difficult, better than everyone else…you should be rewarded. Part of that reward is not diluting the accomplishment by then making the same task easier. Whether it be the next day, or 3 years from that day.
We have seen a few games do this, and we have to say: a lot of the time it’s done at the behest of two prime drivers. The first one is greed. If they dilute the challenge, more people will play, and pay. The second one is laziness (or, if you will, complacency)…creating and maintaining challenges is hard work. It’s easier to let everyone be a precious snowflake than it is to build pedestals for those who have earned the right to be recognized.
In the end, we believe accomplishment, and skill are good things, and they should be praised. They should certainly scale, and the reward should be equal to the accomplishment. But they should not be watered down, or diminished. So, what have we learned here?
If you do something awesome in Emerald Kingdom, myself..and the other staff will make sure the rest of the citizenry know, via mechanics, or forums, or the wiki. We also will not cavalierly throw your deeds into the fire of obsolescence by nerfing the challenge to open it up to a broader audience. (The only way I could see us modifying a puzzle, or a mechanic in such an instance is if there is a flaw, or it goes beyond our original design intent…but even then, we could never withdraw your accomplishment, and it would be noted regardless).
In the end, Emerald Kingdom should be about what all games are about: challenges, and how to meet them. We intend to try our damnedest to make sure that is in no way diminished.
What do you think about such a policy? How do you feel when your accomplishments are somehow diminished? Comment and tell us!
A couple quick blurbs on Exploitative Engineering and Ethics.
06 months ago
1) Adamatomic has his say here.
And..
2) Tim Rogers hit the nail on the head here, with a pile driver.
I ask the simple, and honest question, when it comes to ethical and moral values in game design.
Could Pavlov’s experiments with dogs, be considered a “game” for Pavlov, the Dogs, both or neither?
- If it is a game, why is it so hard to accept that a lot of F2P games are engineered to provoke a conditioned response from the people who play it?
- If it’s not a game, then why is it so hard to accept that a lot of F2P games are engineered to look like a game, but are in actuality simply very pretty condition/response systems?
Why is it, some folks have such a hard time understanding that there is a difference between something that is fun, and something that is psychologically engineered to elicit a response?
And before you start in with “people have a choice”…you’re ignoring the last 100 years of scientific research into getting people to do things counter to free will. Choice can be directed, engineered. There’s a reason why psychological warfare, propaganda and push polls , and even Three Card Monte and The Shell Game work. I get why people use “Free Will” as an counter argument here…we like to believe we’re always in control. We have trouble as human beings, admitting and accepting that we can be manipulated, that while we have reason, and logic…we’re also animals…
Now, if you think psychologically engineering conditioned responses from people is in any way ethical when it comes to game design, and contributing positively to the art and mechanical design of game play…please do us all a favor…find another industry. Or rather, go back from whence you game: wall street and brokerage houses. Those are the places where mathematically and scientifically engineering money is accepted practice.
Just my $0.02.
