Developing an iPhone Game On Nights and Weekends, Part 2

Peter…founder of Magnetic Studio…and developer of 123 Pop, talks about developing an iPhone game…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/123pop-part2.mp3

Or listen to it here…

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Developing an iPhone Game On Nights and Weekends, Part 1

Peter…founder of Magnetic Studio…and developer of 123 Pop, talks about developing an iPhone game…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/123pop-part1.mp3

Or listen to it here…

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Guest Post: Alternate Endings

One of the things that make video games unique compared to all other forms of art/entertainment is their ability to change in response to the player. This is a great aspect of games, as it allows players to make meaningful decisions, which are at the spine of every game, and watch their effects play out in a unique way. This is one thing books, movies, and other forms of entertainment can’t do – the novel’s course is not affected by who the reader is or what his/her point of view is. However, alternate endings should be used with caution, as including them for the wrong reasons can actually hurt the overall experience.

Alternate endings in games go way back, and many significant games have included them, like Chrono Trigger, Deus Ex, Half Life, and Metroid. But when is it necessary to include multiple endings in games? When is it foolish to include multiple endings?

Back in the day, most games which included alternate endings did so as a gimmick, as most games used little or no deviation from the main storyline. There were no choices that changed the story (although there are some exceptions). More and more today, though, it would be unreasonable to NOT include alternate endings. For example: Heavy Rain.

In Heavy Rain, the player switches between the lives of four different protagonists, all going after the origami killer. Along the way, you paved the story, as messing up in a critical situation would lead to your character’s death (permanently). You may miss out on some clues that directly change where the story is going. Therefore, not including many different endings for each route you take through the game would be not foolish, but impossible, as the game features a branching story.

Some games’ alternate endings do not enhance the experience, like Half Life’s endings. At the very end of the game, after the climax, Gman gives you the choice of either working for him, or fighting him in a fight which Gordan cannot win. Choosing to obey Gman pops up a screen of text, informing you that Gordan is now working for Gman. Choosing to disobey Gman leads to your death, shown in a three-second clip and a page of text. That is it. The alternate endings are not decided by how you chose to play the game or important choices you made along the way, but are decided by a gimmicky decision that had nothing to do with the plot (well, not really anyway).

In fact, choosing to disobey Gman leads to a rather disappointing ending which,contrary to what the rest of the game did, punished you for sticking up for yourself. After playing for hours, the player does not want to learn that it was all for nothing. Even though you could replay it, the first ending you acquire is the real ending for the player (and Half Life 2 assumed you made the choice, the “correct” choice, to obey Gman).

These alternate endings that are based only on a small portion of the game towards the end are weak, as the player does not feel as though he/she deserved the ending he/she got. Instead, the player should have an idea about what kind of ending they are going to get, so it is important to inform the player if he/she has no way of knowing what the consequences of his/her actions are.

In Infamous, playing corruptly, making selfish decisions and creating havoc for the innocents of the city, is going to lead to an evil ending, in which Cole becomes corrupt with power over the people. Playing heroically, putting others before you and going out of your way to help people, is going to lead to a heroic ending, in which Cole struggles with being seen as a hero, worried he will not meet their expectations.

The endings in Half Life are uneducated – although Gman tells you he is impossible to defeat, the player should not actually be expected to believe this. The player feels challenged, and most often will refuse to work for Gman, not even getting a chance to fight. The choice was not gradual and was not worked towards throughout the game, rather it was something tacked on, completely unnecessary, that was made to intrigue the player, not close the game.

The endings in Infamous, the paths you choose throughout the game, fit your actions and the way you played the game. It ties in with the story, and closes at the climax. Rather than choosing after the boss fight whether you want to be good or bad, taking your story in dramatically different directions, you play good or evil throughout the game, earning your given ending. And better yet, you can play heroically and halfway through the game turn to the dark side to save your love, get your way, or whatever. Even though there are two endings, there are many stories that could be played out because of the story’s ability to adapt to your style and decisions.

If a video game embraces aspects only found in games, like adaptive storytelling, various playing styles, story decisions, etc., it could be bettered by alternate endings, as YOU are the character. This is a very important truth of gaming. In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens creates a character – Pip’s story is going to close a certain way, and only one way, because his personality and background directly decides what he will do next – the story is linear. A game designer has no way of knowing what the player is like, and as designers let players play a certain way or make certain decisions (based on who they are and what they have experienced in their life), the story has to go certain ways – the story is nonlinear. And although multiple endings improve replayability, that should not be a reason for creating multiple endings – the first ending is the one that counts, and the rest are just the player messing with the possibility space.

As the industry grows and technology improves, games are going to allow more and more possibilities to the player, and the 88 possible final cutscenes found in Star Ocean: The Second Story are going to be necessary to give the player the feeling that what he/she did mattered, and the decisions he/she made left an important influence on the story. As the possibility space offered to the players expands, so do the number of closings possible.

So, alternate endings are just a gimmick, something the company can write on the back of the box (–over 175 possible endings for unlimited replay!), unless they are made to close every possible path a player could take on his/her special way through the game that reflects his/her thought process and own self. THEY ARE NOT NECESSARY IN ALL, OR EVEN MOST CASES THOUGH. In games that focus on the character the designers created, there is only one possible outcome that you play out (most games do this).

If you want to learn about exploring a possibility space and the necessity or unnecessity of multiple endings, try out some of these games with multiple endings; some of them you might not have even known there were multiple endings (list)! I also recommend you play an interactive fiction game called Aisle (game), which explores the possibility of the possibility space in just one choice (with 136 alternate endings). After you play through as many actions you can think of, try going through this list (guide), during which you will learn a lot about the character and his history, all made possible through inventively using the alternate ending.

Dylan Woodbury lives with his family in Southern California. He runs http://dtwgames.com, a game design website that posts intriguing new articles every week, both beginner’s tutorials and theoretical ideas. He also has an interest in writing, and is planning his first novel. His primary goal is to change the world through video games.

Developing The Point and Click Adventure Game, Dream Machine

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/gdco-dream-machine.mp3

Or listen to it here…

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Catapult for Hire = Physics Game + Comedy

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/gdco-catapult.mp3

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Why You Should Develop Games for A Mobile Social Network

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/podcast-mocospace.mp3

Or listen to it here…

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The Joy of Running an Online MMO For Over 15 Years

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/gdco-frogdice.mp3

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Thomas talks about developing the IndiePub Audio Design Winner, Coma

Thomas talks about developing the IndiePub Audio Design Winner, Coma

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/gdco-coma.mp3

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Guest Post: The Difficulty of Difficulty

Difficulty in games is a very confusing topic. All designers must know how difficult they want their game to be before the design process even begins. It decides what kind of audience you are shooting for. Casual vs Hardcore.

There is a major misconception that in order to please the most hardcore, the difficulty needs to be raised, shutting out a large part of the market. The alternative to this would be to make the game so easy that anyone can beat it. In fact, companies have been cheating lately. In Super Mario Galaxy 2, Nintendo allowed the player to skip over challenges the player deemed to difficult. NO! Bad designer.

Cheating is the enemy of gaming. Allowing the player to cheat is the designers not doing their job. In school, some teachers are always “curving” test scores, getting rid of problems that most students missed (pretty much extra credit). This “curve” is the teacher acknowledging that the teaching was not good enough, and that the students should not be held accountable for it. If they are required to use these skills that haven’t counted, that they have not correctly learned, they are going to fail. In a video game, being able to skip challenges, which are designed to test your skills while teach/train your skills, leads to you missing out on important concepts and such, not to mention the terrible feeling the player has inside.

The same goes for online walkthroughs – they ruin the satisfaction that the player is supposed to feel. Many skills are learned by trial and error, and the player may miss out on important things by just reading the solution to the challenge online. Although this is a very big pitfall of video game design, it is a very important signal.

If a player absolutely cannot solve the challenge, to the point where they give up or look it up online, it is a signal that there is a gap in the learning curve. Something is not clicking, and the player is not able to draw on a skill or piece of knowledge that is required of him/her. How do we solve this? More challenges.

Example: In Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, there was a small challenge that gave me trouble. Goal: get to floor below ground. Obstacle: the two holes one can use to get to bottom floor are covered in spider webs, making them impossible to go through. I tried everything I could think of – shooting my boomerang, arrows, and slingshot at the web. I tried shooting my boomerang from the torch on the wall to the web, hoping to burn it. I tried rolling onto the web, hoping my weight would break apart the web. Nothing worked.

I didn’t want to do this, but I eventually had to – I looked at the walkthrough online. I am ashamed to say it, but there is a point where you become so frustrated with a challenge, that cheating is the only thing that can keep you engrossed in the game, as not doing so would lead to you not being able to play it anymore. The solution: pull out your lantern and roll onto the web – the fire will break open the web.

For some reason then, I was frustrated with this solution. I did not understand why at the time, but I think I do now. In the game, they taught you that swinging your lantern (by shaking the remote) infront of a web in your way will break it. There were enough challenges here and there for the player to remember this throughout the game. In the entire portion of the game before this challenge, the player was never required to roll to solve a challenge, nor was the player required to use a lantern in a way besides shaking the remote in front of a web.

So some people may have figured out, maybe right away, but there was not enough training beforehand to make that challenge reasonable for many. How could they have solved this? How about a couple challenges prior to this one that require rolling to complete the challenge. This doesn’t make the answer obvious, but it doesn’t take much away from the player who found the solution and felt awesome afterwards. It simply gives the player the complete skills they need to figure out the solution – it may be to much to ask from the player, figuring out both new skills and how you can use them to solve a new problem.

Much of these problems are found by just testing. Designers should find out which challenges are too difficult or broken, why they were too difficult (to the point where the player gave up, now completely unabsorbed, or looked up the answer, hurting his/her experience in the long run), and how to help this by training the player better beforehand.

Challenge’s difficulty should arise from their problem solving, pattern recognition, and lateral thinking (amond others), with a given set of skills and tools to work with. Challenges should not arise from solving a problem with a skill that has not been well established yet (Twilight Princess example). Challenges should also not require the player to use a skill that has not been used in quite a while (people are forgetful).

An example of this is seen in Half Life 2: Episode 2. Near the end, at Black Forest, the player was thrown into areas that required him/her to make use of the steam valves, which had not been utilized in quite a while. The designers through in a mini challenge before the real action started, requiring the player to get from one side of a pipe shooting out steam to the other. One cannot get through the steam, so the player would see the big red wheel, interact with it, and what do you know, the steam is shut off. Suddenly, the player has learned a lot about a certain skill, recalling from memory. Instead of the player having to figure out the corrollation between the wheel and steam and such during the heat of battle, he/she is taught it beforehand, making for a more pleasurable, and rewarding, challenge.

This example shows my point well, and leads me to another important point. Challenges should either be about solving a challenge or learning a new skill (with a very easy challenge, like the Half Life 2 example) – not both… usually. When a player is given a challenge, he/she is going to try to solve it, and usually, he/she will not figure out a new skill (a new use of a tool/asset), as he/she expects to be able to solve the challenge using only what he/she knows already – it is the way our brains work. A player could learn a skill if it is obvious (like turning the wheel to stop the steam), and these type of challenges tend to be very rewarding. These kind of challenges require the most testing (be prepared to change or throw them out).

Now to finish my point – difficulty should not include only button mashing, quick timing, etc. The difficulty is reliant on using skills to complete challenges, with the occasional new skill introduced to open up new kinds of challenges. When you get a new tool in Zelda, you are given a VERY basic challenge to learn the basics of that skill. When given the hookshot, you are in a small room, and must shoot the hookshot at the red dot to get out of the room. Just like that, the player knows a new skill, and many challenges that require this skill can be thrown at him/her.

The relative difficulty of the game, surprising to some, should remain about the same throughout the game (it does not get 10X harder – in may even be harder in the beginning). As you play through a well designed game, you get better and better at the skills it quizzes you on. You tackle new skills constantly, always improving on old concepts for new ways to tackle solutions. The absolute difficulty of a challenge at the end of the game is very hard – a brand new player would have a extremely (it is almost impossible) hard time with it. But, if the relative difficulty is about the same – a player playing the game all the way through that point will have about as hard of a time as he/she did solving a challenge from way back to level 3.

Designing a game’s series of challenges is very difficult – each challenge needs to reinforce skills, open the player’s mind to using skills in new ways, teach the player to combine certain skills, or learn entire new skills. The skills/knowledge a challenge requires must be well taught through previous challenges – the difficulty lies in using these tools (whether you use them in a different way, or in a more difficult way).

The level of difficulty can be suitable to both the casual and hardcore audience, and still be wildly fun for both, if the learning curve and individual challenges are not broken.

Dylan Woodbury lives with his family in Southern California. He runs http://dtwgames.com, a game design website that posts intriguing new articles every week, both beginner’s tutorials and theoretical ideas. He also has an interest in writing, and is planning his first novel. His primary goal is to change the world through video games.

A Casual Game Designer Talks About Developing the #1 Hit…Sally’s Salon

Dan, a game designer, talks about designing casual games

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cc-sallys-salon.mp3

Or listen to it here…

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