Life at an underground game company.
General
As Alpha gets closer, let’s talk about policy.
31 month 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!
The sad tale of Squeenix.
1I was asked by a couple of people I know to say a few words about Square-Enix. While I have a great deal of mixed feelings regarding this company, I’m going to set down how I feel about it, because it does relate in some ways to Double Cluepon, how Emerald Kingdom got some of its start, and where Square went wrong. (Hint: It was not North American fans, or Japanese fans, or inferior NA releases over better JP releases)
The impetus for Emerald Kingdom has some of its roots in Squaresoft titles. I personally was amazed at the story on Final Fantasy VIII. It grabbed me, but then…so did the battle system. (Yes, yes…a great many do not like junction/draw, but I did, and that’s a topic for another post…)
But there is something to be said for Square in it’s heyday: they had the balls to try new things, to throw it all on the table and take chances…take risks. They had no choice, really; the RPG space was a wild and dangerous frontier on consoles. It was fast becoming a better genre on the PC side of things too.
But after that trilogy of VII, VIII, and IX, something began to change. The beginning of the change was Final Fantasy X, and the height of the change came when Square bought their last real competitor: Enix. The end of that change came when they had finally squandered everything they had, lost their way and released unfettered crap.
We can extol the virtues of Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 9 all we want. Everyone who played in that golden age has their favorite. I will tell you right now, that the Gel, Mark and Weaves in Emerald Kingdom have their spiritual roots in the draw and junction system of Final Fantasy 8.
When Final Fantasy X came out, I immediately purchased a Playstation2, and a copy of it. I was relocating at the time, so I rigged it up to the hotel TV, and went at it. Now, I happened to think it was a very compelling story. The Sphere Grid was about as close as you can get to a pure RPG; you could plan your characters with the same finesse as you could in pen and paper. But Final Fantasy X ushered in a trend that has only grown with time and new FF titles. The trend of evolving from real RPG games to that of interactive movies.
It started with Final Fantasy X. It was subtle, but it was there. They were sacrificing their pedigree in RPG’s by upsetting the awesome balance between story and game play. You could see it in many ways: the side quests were weaker, and not as fun. The battle systems limit breaks were really kind of rehashed, dumbed down and not worthy.
Don’t get me wrong, that first night? I stayed up till about 3 AM playing FFX. I was enthralled. I happen to love story, but I also happen to like seeing how well I can do damage, or fight strategically.
Then came XI, and X-2. XI was a halfway decent foray into Online Gaming with the Final Fantasy franchise. Final Fantasy X-2 was absolutely terrible. X-2 was Hot TopicRPG. It actually lowered and somewhat debased strong female characters in games. It’s battle system was terrible, the characters were weak, the story was contrived and its environments were wretched. I realize there are fans of X-2, and I am not saying that, for those fans…it does not have redeeming qualities. What I am saying is: it’s a weak title when held up to former Square titles, and other contemporaries. But one thing was certain: the Interactive Movie nature of Final Fantasy titles was well on it’s way to becoming a firmly grounded thing at Square.
I stopped playing the Final Fantasy series after X-2. I’ll be even more direct: I stopped playing X-2 less than 1 quarter of the way into it. Stuffing band members into the elevator in the right order? Seriously? I was done. It was wretched.
Kingdom Hearts was a breath of fresh air. Ironically enough, it had an awesome battle system, great story, and revitalized characters from two old stalwarts in their respective areas: Square and Disney. Kingdom Hearts was an amazingly fresh game. Tetsuya Nomura rarely misses the mark when it comes to character design, and you’ll notice that my favorites are typically the ones where he’s left his mark.
So, what happened? Why is XIII rated the way it is, and why was XIV practically D.O.A? Why was Kingdom Hearts II inferior after all of the hype, and the awesome that was the Deep Dive trailer?
It’s simple really: Square bought and merged with Enix. (I dont expect things to get better since they have aquired Eidos either. Although a glimmer of hope was released this year in Deus Ex, so you never know)
I’ll say it right here: buying Enix was a bigger mistake for Square than making that ridiculous “Spirits Within” movie which almost bankrupted them.
Why was it such a big mistake? I’ll tell you why: by buying their main competitor, the drive to innovate stopped to a large degree. There was no need to take big risks. Square “won”. They could rest on their laurels knowing they had come out on top. There are some problems with this attitude. Chief of which is arrogance that your view is the only view that really matters. The next problem is, complacency sets in and begins to stagnate you.
Don’t believe me? “After release, director Motomu Toriyama felt that the lower-than-expected review scores for a main Final Fantasy series game came from reviewers who approached the game from a Western point of view.” If that’s not the height of arrogance, I really don’t know what is. It couldnt possibly be the designers, no…it was the players, they’re wrong. How dare they?
But the real proof in the pudding here is what Yoichi Wada had to say on the same subject, which goes to the point of stagnation:
“Some value it highly, while others really don’t like it.” He added, “Should Final Fantasy become a new type of game or should Final Fantasy not become a new type of game? The customers have different opinions. It’s very difficult to determine which way it should go.”
Even Square does not know which path to follow at this juncture. Lost, rudderless on a tumultuous sea of a changing game landscape. But this was not even the worst thing.
No, the worst was yet to come. It’s name was Final Fantasy XIV. A game so bad the company has issued not one, but two official apologies for it. Square has lost it’s way. From the aspects of design, game play…and most recently…they have lost their way financially as well:
Arrogance, short-sightedness, complacency. You can think whatever you want about their audiences. You can think their failures are because of North American players, or Japanese Players, or people who are hating on them for whatever reason. But the facts are this: Square-Enix has been waning for a long while. Their slide has been going on for years, and they have only themselves to blame. It’s the direct result of not listening to players, and thinking that, having bought all the competition, they are king of the hill. The problem with this is, eventually you have to defend the hill, and there are plenty of people sharpening their swords right now to challenge Square in what has traditionally been their bread and butter staple: the immersive RPG. There are people trying on brass knuckles right now, to steal Square’s milk money in another genre: MMORPGs. XIV is an utter failure, it has harmed the Final Fantasy brand badly. It’s going to take years of development, and release to fix the harm done to the brand itself. (Not XIV, even if they fix the problems, it’s D.O.A. and I am nearly 100% certain it will never break even, and will close with a net loss)
When you remove all competition, and you remove the need to be competitive, and you lose your objectivity. You lose your ability to think in terms of “My competitor just did this, well…I’ll show them…I’ll do THIS. HA HA!”. This, more than anything has salted the soil at Square. Their complete and wholesale dilution of the Final Fantasy franchise is going to haunt them for years to come. At some point, a Mark Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin of RPG’s is going to come along and knock Square the hell out. That’s how the market works…the weak die, and get swallowed up.
Square needs to get their house in order. They need to do it quick. They can start by listening to the players, and perhaps…going back to the basics. People have been telling square for years what they want, and Square has arrogantly time and again told them they know what’s best. It’s time for them to take a step back, listen, and grow.
The opposite of growing is dying. The choice is theirs.
Salute to Three Rings Design. I bid you adieu.
23 months ago
It might come as no surprise to some folks that I am sad to see Three Rings Design get snapped up by Sega. It might also come as no surprise that, in an industry of prima donnas, arrogant and idiotic people bent on exploiting players rather than servicing them…Three Rings, and more specifically Daniel James was, at least for me, an inspirational figure…worthy of admiration for his accomplishments.
In the same way people dream of being the next Babe Ruth, or Michael Jordan…I looked to Three Rings as an inspirational model of what a good independent game developer should be. I learned a great deal from them, and in the end…while they showed me a great deal of what to do, they also showed me what not to do. Daniel James was a great leader in that he published not only his successes, but his failures as well. He opened his books on several occasions. Before Puzzle Pirates, micro-transactions in games were a very untested niche. Doubloons changed that. Doubloons changed the landscape, and paved the way for new business models that did not depend on getting a box on a shelf.
When that happened, James didnt cover up the numbers. He did not try to obfuscate or throw up obstacles…he showed people how it worked, and how he did it. In an industry that loves keeping secrets of success close to the vest…Three Rings came out and said, “here is how we did it, and here are the metrics which can help you understand how we did it.” Before Puzzle Pirates, ARPU really didn’t exist.
But they did other things too. They built games which required strategy, planning and cooperation. They created multiplayer online games whose measure of success did not immediately depend on how many times you were willing to click a mouse. They designed games with low, mid and high end content. They created challenging puzzles and thinking games. Some were hits, some were misses. They were not the messiah of independent game design any more than Mojang are. But they were willing to try new things, explore new ideas…and more importantly, refused to listen to reasons why it couldn’t be done, in favor of listening to their hearts as to why it could be done.
We don’t know what possibly led Three Rings down the path of instability, which invariably may have resulted in Sega acquiring them. I saw some signs of faltering with titles like Whirled, and some of the things James has pointed to over the years made me wonder if they lost some of the magic. While a press release may be glowing, its always good to remember that there are three sides to the truth. While these kinds of things, good or bad, happen… It’s important to remember that it does not take away from their many accomplishments though.
I don’t expect Three Rings Design to remain too much of a bastion of independence under Sega’s stewardship. Sega, in my opinion tends to ruin a lot of what it touches. That’s okay too. All things end, and change is always happening and inevitable. That said, if the folks at Three Rings are happy, then I am happy for them too. While I am sad to see them go I also realize and understand that “started and ran an Innovative Multi-million dollar making game developer for 10 years which was aquired by Sega” does not look bad on any resume. No matter what your personal feelings are.
But in the end, Three Rings Design has always been my high water mark for what it means to be successful in this business. Not for the amount of money made or lost. But because they challenged a status quo. Many of them in fact. For that, they deserve nothing less than to be held up as an example of how great it can get, and how far you can fall sometimes in the underground/independent game developer world.
I am sure there are people who think, well TRD will remain as a part of Sega and do more cool stuff. They could be right, but somehow I have my doubts. This industry has a track record for swallowing innovative companies and watering them down into irrelevancy. It’s that very reason that I wanted to say: Thank you Three Rings, for being something awesome, and worth admiration. I hope you continue to be awesome and worth admiration, but even if you don’t…I can always look back and look at your success and failure, as a guide for my own path.
A couple quick blurbs on Exploitative Engineering and Ethics.
04 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.
How stuff is designed here…
06 months ago
One of the things we have been trying to do in producing Emerald Kingdom: being open about some or most of our process. Sure, we have done things like Open Source our server, and we have talked in the past about features and things planned for Emerald Kingdom.
Today I want to talk to you a bit about how things get designed for Emerald Kingdom. I am going to focus today on Code and Art.
You can learn how “industry standards” work, or how workflow happens in most offices. But one of the things we try to do is keep the process open to change up until the very last moments before something becomes “final”. This gives us a very specific advantage in some ways…our stuff is almost always in a “revision state” until we stick it in Storyteller, or on our game wiki. Despite this method, we manage to avoid things like feature creep in code, ridiculous changes to artwork, and having to redo animation processes. Why? Because we have some really professional and smart folks here who take quality very seriously. Another big one? Double Cluepon is a close knit group. Very close. While we like to have fun, we’re also highly disciplined in our various core competencies. We all have a deep respect for each others area of expertise. It’s why an artist can tell a producer “no”. It’s why a writer can pan on a story idea. It’s why a floater can suggest new methods of producing props.
We also do this without boring the hell out of each other with constant daily meetings.
But, on to the show. I’ll start with code:
Believe it or not, on some levels…designing what happens is more about question and answer sessions, to flesh out a specification. In the spec for Emerald Kingdom, Server, StoryTeller and Client….we obviously have “items” on there. We even flesh it out with English; “Characters can hold items in a bank or inventory”. To a person actually writing the code…this is about as useful as bucket with a hole in it. The developers need to know what an item is, and even just as importantly…what an item is not. You might think your +10 sword of pastrami slicing is badass. You have no idea how many attributes it has behind the scenes. Developers need to know things like:
- What are the initial properties? (which also in and of themselves need to be defined!): Are they Wooden? Do they have Edge? Fire, Ice, Stone? Sharp, Dull, Rusty?
- Are they used in creating some other thing?
- Does this existence of this change something else?
- Is the item defensive or offensive?
- Is the item usable?
- What is the base cost of the item?
- Is the item equippable? (just because something is usable, does not mean you can necessarily equip it)
Once they have all the information they need for something most players consider trivial, or standard…like items, they go off, and start working on the code. They add some tables/rows to the db to accommodate this new piece of functionality. Then, it has to be tested, and tweaked. Etc. But, even while we test or play with the functions…we either get clarification on what we feel does not work, or we suggest something and play around with it in discussion to make sure it’s elegant. The number one rule: elegant solutions are the prime mover. We never care who’s idea it is, as long as it solves the problem neatly, and with some innovative or novel thinking. There’s even a balance equation there as well, just because something seems slick does not always mean it’s the best way to do something.
Code at Double Cluepon is really all about group specification writing. As a producer, it’s my job to translate between the various native dialects. I explain to the artists what the programmers are trying to say, I act as a go between for the writers and the developers on the story system. It’s actually a great deal of work, but it’s also a great deal of fun too.
With the Art Department, it’s another kettle of fish entirely.
Designing Thrynity was all about finding references.
With the Art Department, there are two very distinct stages. There is the concept, and design stage. This is where we get to dream up how the world will look. How it will feel. Then there is the production stage: turning the pretty concepts into assets, animations, and pretty in game things. I’m going to focus today on the first stage, and touch on the second.
When something needs to be designed, or conceptualized….I don’t leave it to chance. I, or the person requesting studio work try to work very closely with Uriel. Literally. The first step in this, is learning how not to waste hers, or any other artists’ time. You can do this very simply: research what you want! A talented and trained artist can take references and pictures…even something torn out of a magazine with a circle around the desired feature…and transform it into a whole from the parts you bring them.
How did I want Thrynity (or for that matter, any of the Sprites…) designed? I’ll tell you: I went looking for references. I found a picture of a girl with a beret on. I found a girl with hair I liked/wanted for the character. I found several pictures of girls with the facial features I felt would work for the character I envisioned in my minds eye.
I then took these references, and my own ideas I could not get from references and sat down with Uriel. She then started a very rough sketch of Thrynity. I nixed some things, and told her to run with others. With the references in hand, I told Uriel I wanted something of a more stylish looking skater girl, who exuded a great deal of attitude…and you could tell by looking at her.
I got exactly what I asked for. But I think one of the things that’s important to point out here is, during the design process, Uriel has the right to come out and tell me “no”. When she does, she always has a reason for doing so. She’s a professional artist, and it would make no sense whatsoever to not listen to a person trained in the profession. If you are not going to listen to people who are trained for their core competency, and you just want to bark out orders…you’re not going to be an effective manager, producer or game designer.
Not all of the concepts are designed this way, a good example of this are the Gremmies. Believe it or not, the Gremmies were designed from doodles, and an extreme case of Uriel being over-tired.
When we get concepts done for things like clothes, or body models…the base parts of it are drawn out, handed to Caelum for pathing in Illustrator, and then handed to Sandalphon for animating. For things like buildings and props…Caelum takes a flat drawing, runs them through Maya, does a render…and then we take both the isometric angles we need from the render. Uriel then paints these.
But, even the artists get to contribute to things like code too. The animation editor in StoryTeller? Sandalphon has had a hand in how it looks and how it works. She had to work with Raguel on things like, whether or not we would use sprite sheets, animation timing, offsets, etc.
In closing, 75% of the stuff we do here is centered around design. We take it very seriously. We love cool stuff as much as you do. We could have settled for shiny stuff you see in facebook or flash games…but, it was not going to cut it. Not for us. Not for you. We have even delayed decisions in some cases, in order to ask the public what they think. We honestly just care that much. It’s why we try to encourage people to poke us, ask questions, point things out.
