Life at an underground game company.
Emerald Kingdom
This is a category that deals with Emerald Kingdom, a Flash based MMORPG under development by Double Cluepon Software.
As Alpha gets closer, let’s talk about policy.
34 weeks 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!
Advice for Writers
22 months ago
I hope all you American readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! I know I did. It was wonderful to go back home and see my family and my pets! But most of all – the weekend signaled the end of my Fall Quarter at University… So that means, I SURVIVED FINALS. \(^o^)/
I wish I had that much dedication...
I took three screenwriting courses this quarter. I know – I’m a masochist.
And tugging in the back of my mind was the fact that Emerald Kingdom was waiting for me. I felt so bad that I hadn’t written anything for the story in days.
But I’m here now and ready to go!
So I’d like to give you guys some advice to fellow writers that I’ve discovered while on my little hiatus. I was aiming it more for screenwriting advice, but luckily most of these overlap for all kinds of writing!
1.) Write every day. I know it can be a little tricky, especially if you have work, school or both – but it is crucial. I made a promise to myself that I would write at least a page or two every night before bed whether it is for my classes or for some short stories to keep the creative juices flowing. NaNoWriMo is a good example of having a deadline with a certain amount of content that needs to be reached per day. Did any of you participate? Leave a comment and tell me how you’re doing!
2.) Keep going. This one can be a little hard to get one’s head around, especially if you’re so passionate about your project. It’s so easy to keep going back over the pages you’ve written and keep editing. But guess what – you’re not going anywhere! Keep typing and just finish it. You can always go back later. Trust me, you’ll end up rewriting the first ten pages of your story before you realize you don’t even have an ending and your deadline is tomorrow. And you’ll probably edit your whole thing about one hundred times anyway; so just spare yourself the agony. Speaking of agony…
3.) Hurt your characters. From watching many of his productions, Joss Whedon has an unspoken rule: “If your audience likes a character, kill him. Or at least maim him.” Probably the most recent example of this is in Game of Thrones. Oh man, do people get trampled in that show. But I always come back for more. That’s what’s so great about it! As Kurt Vonnegut said, “Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters are, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” Without that, the characters aren’t challenged and they don’t grow. If you’re not feeling particularly evil that day, you can always hurt them psychologically or emotionally. You have my permission to ruin a character’s life. d(^.^)
4.) Raise the stakes. Things need to happen in stories, if you didn’t already figure that out. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, something always has to happen. In each little “chapter” that I write for a character, I make sure there is some sort of conflict that the character has to overcome. It creates a little mini-movie that also builds the character’s personality. Without that, I can’t make things worse and worse for the character to overcome in the grand scheme of things and then become something different at the end. Without raising the stakes, my characters can’t change – they, and I, become complacent.
5.) READ. Author John Green said, “I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you’re trying to be a writer because it’s the only apprenticeship we have – the only way of learning HOW to write a story.” Read good books; read bad books; blogs (Look, you’re already ahead of the game!), articles, friend’s stories, scripts – just do it! You’ll learn what to do, what not to do, and how you would do it differently. Hell, read John Green’s Paper Towns while you’re at it! It’s one of my favorites.
Andromeda's best writer is Bleepblurp of the Ninth Sector. High five, buddy!
So there you have it! It’s a little short, but you’ve got the general idea. But don’t take just my word for it. After all, the best advice doesn’t come from anyone else but you. You can look up so many articles on how to be the best writer in the galaxy but it will never teach you what you can learn yourself.
Today’s question of the day is as follows:
What are you reading lately? I need some new stuff. I really should read A Song of Ice and Fire, though…
See you soon!
<3 Castiel
P.S. You might want to be on the lookout for a special sneak peek into the first chapter of the story with a little bit of art to go along with it! ^_~ More info on the way!
How Music is Composed for EK
03 months ago
Hey, it’s my first post up here on the DC dev blog. If you don’t know me, I’m Chatto, EK’s Music Director. My job here is to create the soundtrack for EK and make sure it sound BADASS. The whole soundtrack creation process can involve many individual processes, such as composition, instrumentation, arrangement, and tweaking many knobs/mixing. The method I use for making a completed track consists of creating a base, composing around it, and concurrently adjusting knobs and sliders for the mixing process. Also I sometimes mix in some performances which adds some extra steps to the process.
The type of mood I want to set for a track usually comes first. If an EK battle theme were a person, this is what the “mood” on their face would look like:
What NINE THOUSAND? I had to do the reference...Did you see..did you see what I did...there?
For example, if I want a very mellow and atmospheric track, I may start by actually composing first with chord progressions mixed with a harp-fashioned riff and a recessive melody. If I am creating fast paced battle music, I may start with a base of rhythm and percussive effects. The reason that I use a base is because there are 4 main components that determine the mood of a song: Rythm, Atmosphere, Melody, and Instrumentation. Rhythm(or lack of) usually affects the pace of a song. This would definitely be a factor if you were composing a battle theme as opposed to a surreal environmental piece. Sometimes you may want to even add changes to tempo and beat in your piece, but that’s actually part of what I would do in the arrangement process.
When making a base, I focus on the conceptual side of the music. The next component in a base is atmosphere. A sculpture artist may use a certain material for their piece. For example, clay. Clay has a certain texture and look to it. It will affect the aesthetic of the piece a lot. If they used metal, it would affect the piece a lot more different than clay. The atmosphere of a piece is also slightly related to instrumentation and positioning. If you close your eyes and listen to a recording of an orchestra, you can get a sense of where instruments are, as well as how they change the atmosphere of a piece. Oh, I actually have a really good example of use of atmosphere in a piece:
This piece has a very calm atmosphere to start, and then changes when the piano comes in slightly, then goes back to being calm again. This is mainly caused because of the “ringing” pad sound Yoko uses. This piece however, has a bit of a different atmosphere:
There is a pad in this one as well, however, it has a different sound to it which makes the atmosphere slightly less calm and instead gives it an atmosphere of beauty and wonder. This one kinda makes me want to explore. It’s better to have a clear concept of where you want the piece to go unless you want a big clusterf- of music buffet that has all the sounds you like, but no coherency. Without any coherent theme, you’ll end up with something that sounds like mashed potatoes rather than a baked potato.
The next component to a base is melody(or lack of). If you want to compose music for a part of the game with lots of exploration, you generally want the melody to blend more closely into the background. I’d want an environmental piece to pack most of its power in the instrumentation and rhythm. The benefit of not having a dominant melody is that people won’t get annoyed by a “catchy” melody that plays over and over again.
The reason that melody can be annoying is because our brains are very good at picking out melody. Eventually the brain will memorize the melody and say “hey it’s that melody playing again” and will try to tune it out. If you’re wanting to create a good character theme that IS memorable, you’d want to have a very dominant melody. This is slightly related to one of my pet peeves about games with Generic Korean MMO music:
This flipping song plays every time you double click on a monster.
Some good old C&H
Alone, this is a good composition, however, it absolutely wears down quickly when it plays EVERY TIME YOU ARE FIGHTING IN THE GAME. Generally this is not a song I would want looping on my media player forever because of the strong repetitive melody. However, I’d definitely be just fine with a song like this:
Some less annoying and less repetitive music (Notice the lack of headache when put on loop)
The fourth thing that is important for a good base is instrumentation. You want to create the actual sounds you are using for the piece. For example, fast electric guitar with heavy distortion might not be the best choice for environmental music, but would fit great for a battle theme. Instrumentation is basically what sounds/instruments you group together. Some people will group instruments together that belong to different genres(eg. An upright fretless bass is from the Jazz era, let’s use one of those in a Jazz piece). However, conceptually you want to be in the middle ground to make a good theme. Conceptually your base should have a variety of styles in the instrumentation. For example:
Let’s consult the pro on how to successfully fuse electronica and Jazz. Mostly Jazz though.
The instrumentation of this piece contains funk, Jazz, and electronic sounds/instruments. They work well together and give the piece a unique feel. This is where the decision also comes in for whether to use synthesis, live recording, samples, or something else. Instrumentation has a lot of influence on the style of a piece as well.
The second half of my music creation process involves fleshing out anything that isn’t conceptual in the piece. This would involve adding alternate melodies, arranging, and lengthening the song. The actual arrangement process is what gives a song variation, length, and depth.
Usually I will take a long break in-between the conceptual and arranging stages so that I can “reset my ears”. Sometimes when I come back to a piece for arrangement I will like the concept, and other times I will hate the concept and tweak it or start over. I also want to give my ears a break before doing any mixing or mastering because ears will become less sensitive to changes in volume/pitch over time.
Another good practice I have when composing music is to study a piece of music that is similar to what I am composing for. I not only get inspiration from the piece, but I can also pick out the specific parts that make it a good piece. If I don’t care for a piece of music though, I usually will have a harder time with inspiration. True story one time I was given a JUMBLE OF A MOODBOARD as reference for a piece. I won’t say what/who this was for, but I imagine they picked the references by throwing darts at a musical dartboard and ended up with Polka, Screamo, and Country Western(see picture).
This is just one of the methods I have used for composing music. There are certainly other ways to compose and think about music, but this way tends to lead to really good results and is very unifying. It does occasionally lead to some atrocities of music, but I usually have no problem ditching bad ideas for better ones.
Anyways, that’s just about it for my post. It was a pleasure to post in this particular development blog!
A quick update on Emerald Kingdom & StoryTeller
04 months ago
We have props…
Props in storyteller. The RGB lines delineate the iso boundaries.
We have animations…
StoryTeller's animation importer and editor
We have our item editor…
StoryTeller's Item Editor. It's pretty straightforward.
Finally, we also now have areas…
Areas let us define custom events, sounds and ..... other surprises!
But, wait…there’s more. Two tabs in StoryTeller have yet to make an appearance. (Can you guess what they are?) While those are being worked on…the main focus right now is the alpha client, which is in full swing. Additionally, Xaphan and Uriel are burning the midnight oil on the actual beta artwork painting. What you see in this is not even the final artwork…we consider this rough work. We’ve been using what you see for internal test work.
If you have not already done so, now is the time to head over to the Emerald Kingdom website to sign up for Alpha testing. It’s rapidly approaching. While we have been collecting names for some time…we have not selected the initial tester list.
The Sprites, what they will mean for you, and why they are important.
05 months ago
One of the big centerpieces for Emerald Kingdom will be The Sprites. We are not talking about the game terminology. When we talk about Sprites in Emerald Kingdom, we’re talking about a race of people. We’ve spoken of them before, of course. Today though, I want to tell you a bit more about their role in terms of mechanics. I don’t mean the Mark system. I’m talking about the story system.
Emerald Kingdom has it’s share of what we feel are “new” features for an MMO. But, one of the centerpieces for the engine we are building is: the ability to publish, keep and roll out continuous content, more specifically…story based content. The Sprites are one of the keys to this system for us. Their story, and how it will impact you if you choose to involve yourself is of utmost importance to us.
Sprites are, to the players…ancient survivors of the previous civilization which inhabited Magna. (Magna is where Emerald Kingdom takes place) In Emerald Kingdom, one of the main features is: a moving, linear storyline. You can choose to involve yourself, or not. If you elect to get involved in the world at large…well then you will be dealing with the Sprites. Sprites are the only beings who can Mark you, we have covered this before. However, despite that ability, they may also have their own goals, desires and plans for Magna. This is where the players come in. We wanted to get past some of the typical “Quest Vending” practices you see in so many MMORPG’s. To do that from a back end point of view, we have to change up the typical approach to MMO production. Which is fine, even though it’s extra work: we want to play this game as much as you do…and thus, that justifies the effort and cost.
Back to The Sprites…
One of the things we set out to do in the beginning was to get a completely fleshed out back story. We had to figure out what happened before you, the player, started playing. Why you might ask? Well for one thing, we did not want another situation like this. Another reason was, as we were going to be writing constant content for the game, we needed to have the mythos, and settings pre-defined. We vowed early on that, in order for story to work in a game like this, it could never appear contrived, or invented at the spur of the moment. One of the things happening right now is, Castiel is doing a complete re-write of this back story.
As said before, the story of Emerald Kingdom takes place on Magna. Magna is a diverse world, which has been subject to rapid change, chaos and upheaval. The Sprites are members of a civilization long past, and remain on Magna. They are immortal in a true sense, but they are not Gods. You, the player are quite mortal. The Sprites, having misused Magna and the Gel she provided.. during their own civilization, witnessed untold disaster. At the end, most of their population died off, or evolved/ascended into the form of what we call Sprites. Most of them left Magna for parts unknown. But the Sprites on Magna felt compelled to stay behind.
Many ages have past, only for them to see new life grow and evolve on Magna. New civilizations, new ideas, new people. While the Sprites are happy they are no longer alone…the growth of new civilizations has led to new strife. Old wounds re-opening. Magna now is a new world with new cities built upon the dust of the old, and while a significant number of the giants left the playground, some remain…and they left a great many playthings behind.
This is the world you, the player, are going to take part in. You’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that not every Sprite has your best interest at heart. It wont matter if your intentions are good or bad either. You might find aligning yourself with Kerix to be fun, thrilling, exciting. Realizing you might just be a cats paw of his may bolster or diminish how you feel about your path. While Beatrice, Starla and even Avatea might seem nice, they also have their own issues and you may find once caught up in them, it wont be so easy to turn one of these ladies down.
You might think these things are standard fare, but they are not. No story system in an MMO, in 2011 and beyond is going to be able to work, and engage players unless the players themselves can affect the world through their interactions. To do this, and to keep the content flowing in (and out!) we are actually assembling a writing department. While code is always necessary, to add features…our development department will not need to be consulted when new consumed content is added to the game. This is, we feel, the key to providing a linear, fun story. It’s also the key to adding areas, maps, etc. One key difference between Emerald Kingdom and other games is, 99% of the time we will be publishing our changes, not patching for them. If you understand that difference, then you understand why Emerald Kingdom’s story system is different, and a departure from the norm.
We have even taken the time to separate story from jobs. Gathering 10 logs for a townie NPC is not a quest. It’s a job. It should be treated as such. Anyone can generate jobs for a world such as this. Why mix it with story?
Because Emerald Kingdom has an actual story, and a moving plot…one of the other things we have to do is start introducing you to the world on a tangible basis. Castiel and I are actually working on this very thing.
In fact, in the next week or so…you should look for an excerpt.
Ja Mata!
