Moore's Wall

[Varsity]

Nothing we haven't heard before, perhaps, but Ralph Koster's take (http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/moore.shtml) on tech design vs. game design, like everyone else's, is subtly different. His coverage of the MMO space in particular has made me realise a few new things.

The first thing to realize is that game play elements have not really become more complex. And by that I mean, the game play that was involved in the games in the early 90s, and the game play that’s involved today, midway through the following decade – they bear substantial similarities to one another. If you look at many of the top-selling genres, you can literally take a game from ten years ago, and set it down in front of someone, and they won’t need to read the manual. You can take one of the latest first-person shooters, send it back in time, and the players of those days would probably be able to understand what to do, even though their computers probably wouldn’t be able to run the game.

The thing about technology is that it has enabled a lot of really cool stuff, a lot of really cool visuals, in theory a lot of cool AI, and stuff, but the biggest effect it has had is to make game development more complicated and more significantly, more expensive.
Read the full essay (http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/moore.shtml)

[Deathbane27]

you can literally take a game from ten years ago, and set it down in front of someone, and they won’t need to read the manual

I don't know about that... FPS games, yes, but for other games (RTS, First-person exploration (Arena, Daggerfall, Ultima Underworld, etc._, some of the interfaces were very unintuitive. That, at least, has improved. :p

[Mason]

I disagree with his thesis. Better AI and simulation is meaningless without the new game genres and metaphors to frame them.

Improve the AI on a FPS all you want, and it is still a FPS until you let that AI be used for something other than responding tactically to the player's presence. Simply making AI opponents a bit smarter in how they fight is the road to nichedom. If some genius made a FPS with NPCs that responded exactly like Navy Seals, an achievement that'd require huge resources and time to accomplish, would the world unite in awe and celebrate its birth? Or would some hardcore gamers argue briefly about its merits on an obscure forum and then forget about it within 6 months? It'd be just another FPS, and only FPS-lovers would care.

Similarly, imagine Diablo III, except instead of the Fallen (those little red guys) standing around waiting for you to come slaughter them, they had a far more advanced simulation, where they scouted, organized, looked for food, moved their camp like nomads, etc. That'd be an improvement, but it also wouldn't matter that much, since you'd still simply cleave them to pieces on sight and move on. To make a simulation like that relevant, you'd need to introduce a lot more gameplay verbs and metaphors to the Action RPG genre. Improving the AI and simulation without that innovation is a dead-end.

So to me, a developer gnashing his teeth about how they're on the wrong side of the technology curve is missing a major point. So long as you're spending huge amounts of time to improve the experience of an established game genre (through graphics, AI, or superficial physics), you're always going to be spending a large amount of time/money for an incrementally better game. Thus, we end up with a few titles dominating previously-fertile genres, and catering to an increasingly-niche audience.

Ralph's right about a lot of things here, but the conclusion makes the assumption that developers aren't free to try anything outside of the farmed-out genres. Based on that, yeah, the technology curve will always eat your lunch. But developers always have the choice of trying to do something different, rather than do something better.

[DeadPixel]

The article states Doom 3 came out in 2003 before FarCry when in fact both games were released in 2004. FarCry came out 4 months before Doom 3.

[lpmiller]

Raph writes great stuff, and his theory is always fascinating. Which is why it's a shame he's never actually created a truly compeling game.

[Nadreck]

Interesting reading, as well as your responses. I must say, though, when I read this post's subject, I thought you were talking about Greg Costikyan's recent post on Moore's Law (http://www.costik.com/weblog/2006_01_01_blogchive.html#113686371523513532). Things to think on -- I'll post my thoughts on it later.

[midrael]

He really is an interesting guy and has some very interesting theories on game design. I got a chance to interact with him some during the Star Wars Galaxies beta. It's a shame he hasn't had more success with his theories so far.

[kathode]

Yeah it's Raph Koster :) I used to confuse it all the time myself.

[dotbomb]

IMO Raph has ideas that just don't matter in games. The whole eco system he developed in UO was pointless to the gamer who only used the deer to grind his skills on and could care less that there was a predator/prey relationship with the wolves, etc. Instead of focusing on the fun factor he seems to take field trips to dullsville and become enamored with the local inhabitants.

Then there's his design of SWG. I only played the first free month but sitting around watching people dance to recover from battle is not fun.

[XenonCJ]

Then there's his design of SWG. I only played the first free month but sitting around watching people dance to recover from battle is not fun.No it's awesome you just don't understand!!!!

[Logik]

I disagree with his thesis. Better AI and simulation is meaningless without the new game genres and metaphors to frame them.

Improve the AI on a FPS all you want, and it is still a FPS until you let that AI be used for something other than responding tactically to the player's presence. Simply making AI opponents a bit smarter in how they fight is the road to nichedom. If some genius made a FPS with NPCs that responded exactly like Navy Seals, an achievement that'd require huge resources and time to accomplish, would the world unite in awe and celebrate its birth? Or would some hardcore gamers argue briefly about its merits on an obscure forum and then forget about it within 6 months? It'd be just another FPS, and only FPS-lovers would care.

Similarly, imagine Diablo III, except instead of the Fallen (those little red guys) standing around waiting for you to come slaughter them, they had a far more advanced simulation, where they scouted, organized, looked for food, moved their camp like nomads, etc. That'd be an improvement, but it also wouldn't matter that much, since you'd still simply cleave them to pieces on sight and move on. To make a simulation like that relevant, you'd need to introduce a lot more gameplay verbs and metaphors to the Action RPG genre. Improving the AI and simulation without that innovation is a dead-end.

So to me, a developer gnashing his teeth about how they're on the wrong side of the technology curve is missing a major point. So long as you're spending huge amounts of time to improve the experience of an established game genre (through graphics, AI, or superficial physics), you're always going to be spending a large amount of time/money for an incrementally better game. Thus, we end up with a few titles dominating previously-fertile genres, and catering to an increasingly-niche audience.

Ralph's right about a lot of things here, but the conclusion makes the assumption that developers aren't free to try anything outside of the farmed-out genres. Based on that, yeah, the technology curve will always eat your lunch. But developers always have the choice of trying to do something different, rather than do something better.
I think he's talking about broader innovation than that. Every example up there, while correct in it's own context, is still short of where I think he was going with his speech.

[Demo_Boy]

Innovation is usually rewarded with an abcence of players, and the cold jadedness of the leet.

A specific examples I can think of would be:
Wheel of Time Deathmatch which was a cross between FPS and Magic the Gathering. Frikkin brilliant.
Unreal 2 XMP multiplayer which distilled teamplay down to a beautifl symettry of three classes, 2 primary resources and 1 goal. Players at the time busy playing UT2004 "Lattice redux".

Any time new games try to innovate or try something new there is a cost. Graphics or scope. Then the game gets slammed to oblivion for "coulda been done on teh PS2" even though really, no it couldnt have. Do you want design, or do you want glowie gfx?

Well we know how well design gets rewarded:
Oddworlds anything
Beyond Good and Evil
insert luminary game here...

You want to make a difference? then make a point of enjoying fresh ideas even when the sku might have flaws. tell people why a game did it different rather than gunning it down for "sheetty gfx man".

[XenonCJ]

Ultimatly there will be no need for innovation... Look at Chess, it's a great player vs. player game. No matter how cool you make the board or game pieces look, it's still Chess.

"Innovate" i.e. change the rules, or concepts of the game, and then it just isn't Chess anymore...

You eventually have to ask the question, "do we need to change this?"

[dotbomb]

Well we know how well design gets rewarded:
Oddworlds anything

Just sold my mint ps1 and abe's oddysee today via garage sale. That was a good game. No Raph involved.

I think us consumers/gamers are to blame for this. How many fps do we need to buy? Racing games? MMO's? Why not just cherry pick one of each genre and stop feeding the cycle? Game studios would shut down as a result and we'd be left with truly innovative designs that were fun. This won't ever happen but one can dream... it is too ingrained in our psyche to lust after the latest shiny bauble.

[Mason]

I think he's talking about broader innovation than that. Every example up there, while correct in it's own context, is still short of where I think he was going with his speech.
IMO Raph has ideas that just don't matter in games. The whole eco system he developed in UO was pointless to the gamer who only used the deer to grind his skills on and could care less that there was a predator/prey relationship with the wolves, etc. Instead of focusing on the fun factor he seems to take field trips to dullsville and become enamored with the local inhabitants.

Looking at the stuff that Raph has actually worked on, he tends to often try to add hugely complex systems which aren't adequately expressed as interesting new game metaphors. SWG's economy (at launch, probably been redone 3 times by now) is a fine example, as is the mentioned UO ecology. They're all interesting systems, but the problem is that there's never a very interesting role for a human player in the system.

So yes, I disagree with him, if he thinks that grafting those sorts of tactical AI or superficial simulations onto existing genres is the best path. He's focused on building a better RPG or FPS, and the case I tried to make above is that such a view is simply not sufficient for the bulk of the industry.

Let's consider a positive example. Dungeon Keeper. The units have fairly complex AI, but very little of that is tactical in nature. The units are smart about trying to meet their individual needs, and react interestingly if those needs aren't met. This isn't just grafted onto the standard RTS template, however, as the genre's traditional dynamics of unit hiring and management are entirely scrapped in favor of AI control (units come and go as they please, and need to be coerced into doing your will). Other RTS dynamics (competition for resources, optimizing systems) are in place, but the core of how the player interacts with his or her units is innovative and unique.

Compare this to AI's role in a first-person shooter. Now, a player's power-relationship in a FPS is limited. Either the player faces many enemies which they individually overpower, or they face single enemies of comparable strength. This dynamic is fundamentally limiting to how far you can take FPS AI, since if you organize the troops in a base into an intelligent and reactive squad-based system, suddenly they could be smart enough to a trap and kill the player the first time he tries to enter the base (since any capable AI wouldn't let its troops be killed off 2 or 3 at a time). Let's face it, your enemies in a FPS basically need to be stupid (or so weak that their intelligence doesn't matter) for you to pull off your one-man Rambo operation. Giving them smarter tactics isn't a bad thing, but it is not a path to any form of innovation.

[Mason]

Ultimatly there will be no need for innovation... Look at Chess, it's a great player vs. player game. No matter how cool you make the board or game pieces look, it's still Chess.

"Innovate" i.e. change the rules, or concepts of the game, and then it just isn't Chess anymore...

You eventually have to ask the question, "do we need to change this?"
The same reason we keep writing novels or making films. Not because we're always making better things than we did in the past, but rather because all of these things are forms of creative expression, and when inspiration hits we can create fundamentally new things.

No work is perfect. Chess, for all its worth, has no moral component. Its narrative metaphor of war and hierarchy is minimalist at best. No teamwork component, or questions of trust. These are random examples, but still, they are dynamics which cannot be found in chess, but which can be found in other games. So I'd say that's plenty of justification right there for the existence of different games.

A very different proposition than many slightly different versions of the same game, however. We don't need to dink around with the rules of chess, as that wouldn't create anything truly new. Throwing out chess altogether and starting from scratch does allow for real innovation, though.

[ElectricMonk]

"game designer" artsy rants always amuse me. i'm of the mind that innovation can't be forced, you just have to do what you want and maybe you'll get an idea somewhere along the way. take van gogh, you don't think he sat around over tea and whined about how the new brushes and paint technology were killing innovation. it sounds like ralph is just coming up with excuses to why he hasn't done anything good. sure. blame technology. katamari damacy wasn't possible on an nes.

[Qoz]

fine example, as is the mentioned UO ecology. They're all interesting systems, but the problem is that there's never a very interesting role for a human player in the system.

The best times I had was with UO. It was a brilliant game after the first
6 months. I remember walking into the woods and spotting a dire wolf taking down a deer and eating it. I quickly ran by and felt I was part of a breathing complex world, where I was not the center of attention all the time. I was small.
I also remember the first time 2 monsters got in a fight in Doom, because they had hit each other by accident. Great stuff!
I agree that you need to focus on the players interaction with the simulation too see if it really is worth it and if it is possible technically. The Diablo3 example is great because in the game context the AI mentioned really doesn't add any to the experience. For me it did in UO.

I stumbled across a great paper on the "The In-game Economics of Ultima Online" some time ago. It is a good read - check it out.
http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html

I really wish a game could get it right and make a cool MMORPG with a functioning game economy. WOW has a laughbale economy with "bind on pickup" and silly vendor prices. UO tried it, but they gave in to the players. They all wanted to be "heroes" and get rich faster - it ruined the game slowly.

[Lint of Death]

I really wish a game could get it right and make a cool MMORPG with a functioning game economy.

EVE. Duh. Perhaps the best economy simulator around, in addition to all that space stuff.

[dotbomb]

The best times I had was with UO. It was a brilliant game after the first
6 months.

Don't get me wrong, UO holds a special place in this gamer's heart. I loved it and have great memories of long gaming sessions. Did beta, collector's edition, etc.

The game's appeal for me though was not the eco system and had the designer's efforts been properly focused it could have been an even better game in the first six months. If I recall correctly the majority of issues they had at launch were lag issues, server crashes, and not enough spawn. These issues could be attributed, at least partially if not in great part, to the complex systems Raph designed. By the end of that initial break in period they increased spawn and turned down the dials on his eco system. It was a valiant effort but a failed one and he shouldn't continue to focus on this area of gaming at the expense of the overall gaming fun factor. (see swg).

[Nadreck]

It's an interesting article, and brings up a lot of really excellent points. I would like to point out to the trash talkers that there is a difference between having sound ideas, and implementing ideas soundly; Raph falls into that first category. His ideas for greater immersion are sound; the implementations however, have been less so, thanks in large part to market pressure leading to partial or weak implementation, and lack of market acceptance due to genre calcification.

We cite Katamari Damacy as truly original and innovative; the innovation it has is in looking at a thoroughly calcified and tired game dynamic, and reinventing it (which is exactly what Raph is asking people to do in that essay). What's the old gameplay? Pac Man. You run around an environment trying to collect as much as you can; creatures move around the environment as well, which can hinder or stop your progress; if you "power up" (collect a large enough ball), you can defeat those creatures. The pedigree is obvious, and there is no reason we can't examine other game patterns to make other innovative games.

Moving into the MMORPG section of his talk, I'd say his concerns are spot on: how are we supposed to manage a team of several hundred people and keep them all on track? I disagree that game development is inherently iterative in nature, however: establishing core content can be pre-established in the form of a roadmap; once core content has been developed, THEN reduce the team and go iterative, tweaking what's there for the sake of gameplay and fun. I for one am eager to see what sort of MMOs could be made integrating procedural content, traditional MMO static-game elements, user created content, and sandbox elements. If it's done well, I think it could be remarkably fun to play, and entice a far wider demographic of players.

Anyway, definitely some food for thought. Kudos on the great essay find. :)

[bean19]

Directed gameplay vs. Sandbox gameplay - They both have their merits, but the important thing is that they are done WELL.

Would I like to have more of an impact on MMO worlds. . . Yes, certainly. However, I'm just as hungry for good stories that are TOLD WELL. Not just good stories that are delivered in text bubbles, but stories that have single-player delivery. Voice-acting, cut-scenes (I know some of you hate these, but I dig them), etc.

The problem with sandbox content is that too often developers think that a sandbox should be independent of the game world. Let players do what they want. . . create their village, town, or decorate their home. I think that in a persistent online setting, players have really wanted to make towns or to fight and destroy other towns, but while creating towns has been enabled to some degree in various MMOs, they do a poor job of integrating the creations of players into the world.

For one, they never balance the difficulty of creating a town with the ease of destroying a town. . . or they make destroying a town so difficult that destroying it would be extremely frustrating for those involved. Second, the towns aren't interactive. . . You can create buildings, and sometimes even decorate them but only rarely can you actually do anything worthwhile from them. . . even when you can, it is limited to crafting, etc.

CoH and CoVs supergroup bases are a nice touch. There is alot of sandbox in their creation. Additionally, there is a crafting game, social area, teleporter for easy movement between zones, supergroup strikeforces that can be started from the SG computer, and eventually there will be SG raids. . . an ongoing struggle for items of power. It will be possible as the defending supergroup to equip your base with defenses that can swing the struggle in your SG's favor.

SWG's huge amount of sandbox content was horrible. I returned to the game briefly to see the new combat system (which is a lot more fun than the original, btw), but once you get out of the space station there is very little content, and you have to go far, far away from any of the launch shuttles to escape the urban sprawl of player housing that litters every planet.

I think that sandbox content, and making worlds more changeable are good ideas for making MMOs better, but they also need to improve their static content. People expect production values like WoW's now. I'd prefer to get one WoW or CoH/CoV each year and play it for months and months than to get a bunch of bad ones.

Mr. Koster's biggest mistake with SWG was making it far too much of a sandbox. Players want fun, directed content that makes them feel like the hero, and while SWG had all kinds of sandbox elements (and continues to), there was no central gameplay experience to tie them into.

I'd like to see another Star Wars MMO. It would be awesome if they would follow the class format they are doing with the game now and design good directed content as well as sandbox elements that relate directly to the Intergallactic war. I'd love to pitch in to build or repair a starship that a group of friends (or my guild) would crew in order to launch an attack on a DeathStar (with other players helping, or those other players substituted with AI). I'd love to help create a Rebel base on Hoth (or somewhere less obvious) and use it to run special Rebel missions that are directed content with great stories and have single-player game production values. . . then defend it from Imperial attack.

Then again, SWG is still too big a license to really do all of this well. There is simply too much to this universe and whatever a AAA MMO costs would have to be more than doubled to create this universe to my satisfaction. In the meantime, other MMOs with less incredibly vast licenses can capture my fancy and my dollars.

[Qoz]

If I recall correctly the majority of issues they had at launch were lag issues, server crashes, and not enough spawn. These issues could be attributed, at least partially if not in great part, to the complex systems Raph designed. By the end of that initial break in period they increased spawn and turned down the dials on his eco system.

I agree with you. The first six months had several problems and one of them was the incredible slow spawn. Perhaps due to the complex nature of the simulation. Raph is too focused on the simulation - he believes that once you have the sandbox people will somehow stumble across some gameplay. I think he is right, but not right now. When alot of complex systems are possible we will see more of the sandbox gameplay effectively done. We are limited by hardware and manpower (once the online worlds become mainstream the budgets will ultimately rise). Imagine a world where you can chop individual branches off trees to build your own house. With realistic climbing physics etc.

What Raph seems to neglect is creating some fundamental gameplay. A functioning eco-system is only a small boost to the gameplay and if it is not working as intended, you should not do it.

On the other hand I think games like WOW are doing the opposite and I don't like it. For me MMORPGS should not be a threadmill and WOW is so tightly designed to never let the player do anything surprising or innovative. Everything is controlled and everyone is taken the exact same linear path until they get bored. I really missed some freedom and life in WOW. You only stayed at the different maps because you had some quests there in your levelrange. Once you levelled you were on your way.. The UO economics link describe problems associated with free trade of every item, limiting vendors etc. All the things WOW did not dare implement because its hard - it made the game very stale to me.

And I haven't had the time to try EVE. Space sims are not my cup of tea, but I hear some great things about it. I have no idea, but I would guess the functioning economy simulation is partly responsible for people staying.

[Mason]

It's an interesting article, and brings up a lot of really excellent points. I would like to point out to the trash talkers that there is a difference between having sound ideas, and implementing ideas soundly; Raph falls into that first category. His ideas for greater immersion are sound; the implementations however, have been less so, thanks in large part to market pressure leading to partial or weak implementation, and lack of market acceptance due to genre calcification.

I continue to heartily disagree. Raph's ideas were bad, not because complexity or simulation aren't worthwhile pursuits, but because he never figured out how to do anything but sloppily glue them onto an existing genre.

SWG's economy wouldn't be a bad system, except that it is part of a MMORPG. So you have tons of sprawl and meaningless economic activity simply for the purpose of raising one's skill level. And there's a pretty fixed market for the wares produced by that economy, which is very easily saturated. Thus, you need to make everyone's stuff degrade permanently in order to keep demand above a zero level. But people don't enjoy having their stuff degrade. Big negative.

It isn't the implementation that sucked, it was the basic idea that having this economic complexity was worth the trade-offs in sprawl, item degradation, and non-economic xp-centric behavior, which are absolutely required by the system.

The point I'm trying to make is very easy to misunderstand, so don't miss it. Complexity, simulation, and AI which are added as auxiliary or upgraded components of a preexisting genre really tend to suck. Replacing many of the dynamics of a genre with these systems so as to create a whole new gametype, though, has produced many unique and amazing games. Raph will always be full of neat ideas with sucky implementations so long as he insists on sticking simulations on existing games and expecting it to instantly be meaningful to the player, even when the simulations are disruptive to the player's core experience.

Katamari is not just Pac-man, that's painfully reductive. They share one dynamic, directing your avatar over objects to consume them as a means of advancement. But the path you take and the items you consume are governed by very, very different dynamics. It's like saying that ping-pong and baseball are essentially one and the same, just because they share the dynamic of trying to hit balls with wooden tools, with a penalty associated for missing.

[ElectricMonk]

anybody ever play X? was based on elite, which i never played, so i just assume it was the same core game. the gamplay in X _was_ the economy. it was rediculously fun to go around and blow up all the competing food supply stations, replace them with your own, and then jack the prices way up.

[schizoslayer]

I've met many designers like Raph who revel in creating complex systems for things like Eco systems, markets and even weather. They never actually add anything substantial to the game though. In one example on an MMORPG the combat system was incredibly complex used alot of server resources and while technicaly brilliant wasn't any fun to play.

It was later pulled down to a much simpler system that didn't even involve random numbers (such a development almost made the lead designer resign in frustration) but allowed players to interact with each other far quicker and with a more immediate feedback. It proved to be very popular.

Similarly he spent weeks designing a complex system of npc traders not dissimmilar to Elite. It was scraped on the basis that a real economy regulates itself and a system similar to Eve's was used consisting of Item Brokers. Take your items to a broker and tell him to sell them for you at a certain price. You can also ask the broker to buy items at a given price. This way ALL money stayed within the economy and the worth of items was determined by the players. It was a simple system that had no requirement at all for lots of cpu resources or technology. It gave rise to the Trader profession without any actual work required to create content for it.

In the same project we simulated an entire ecology for the spawns, in theory this was going to save us alot of effort manually seeding the game world. In reality it lead to creatures being hard to find and their AI which often lead to them grouping together made them impossible to kill without raising an entire army of players. Now as brilliant a vision as that may be: It doesn't happen when you launch the game.

While some of these things are clearly what Raph has in mind I find that he sometimes misses the point of them. That is to entertain the player/s not to create a stunning simulation for simulations sake. The reason that games seemingly haven't progressed for ten years beyond the graphical is that the actual design of a game ceased to be limited by technology years ago and instead became limited by market forces and imagination. It in fact has sod all to do with Moores law.

If more technology is equating to more content and bigger budgets it's only because the market forces developers to compete on Marketable Attributes. Not Design. It is in effect a videogaming cold war. The 360 and PS3 are the very embodiment of that metaphore I think.

[Dr Quincy]

The article states Doom 3 came out in 2003 before FarCry when in fact both games were released in 2004. FarCry came out 4 months before Doom 3.

Missing. The. Point.

[bean19]

schizoslayer - Great post.

That is the problem with Raph Koster's ideas. No other entertainment media is iterative. Before a movie starts shooting, they have the entire film written, storyboarded, cast, locations rented, sets made, etc. Books have a complete story outline and usually a sample chapter written before getting a publisher's go ahead. None of this is left to chance. . . none of it is left to a simulation.

That isn't to say that all games must be completely created with directed, linear content, but sandbox content or simulation needs to be directed towards enhancing the player experience. They cannot simply throw in sandbox elements or simulations as a replacement for directed content. . . they have to direct the sandbox elements and/or simulation to enhance the gameplay.

Sandbox elements are good. Games like The Sims have proven that giving players toys and freedom can make for fun gameplay, but even The Sims has directed content. You can tell by the aspiration system and the expansions that they have a very good idea what types of goals people will set for themselves, and that they provided for these goals in the first installment and formalized them with the aspiration system in the second installment. You can bet that Spore will have similar goals for players (whether expressed or implied).

In MMOs, I would welcome more sandbox elements. . . more things that allow me, as a player, to impact the world, but they would need to be meaningful impacts and they should not interfere with the play experience of other players.

I think CoH/CoV's supergroup bases are really well done (or at least on the way to being really well done) in that they are useful and meaningful to the gameplay. They could have just made SG bases something for people to pretty up and meet for social events, but instead they are giving them functionality and thus some use in the game world they are creating. They designed for the play experience.

[Speed_D]

If some genius made a FPS with NPCs that responded exactly like Navy Seals, an achievement that'd require huge resources and time to accomplish, would the world unite in awe and celebrate its birth? Or would some hardcore gamers argue briefly about its merits on an obscure forum and then forget about it within 6 months?
Nah, in reality the forums would be filled with people bitching about how the AI is "too hard and cheats", and how the company in question doesn't adequately test their products before release.

Making truly clever AI isn't usually the goal when you're working on a game. The real target is keeping it fun, but also challenging and somewhat unpredictable (replay value).

[Speed_D]

Also for what it's worth, I generally disagree with most of Raph Koster's game design dissertations. He is more concerned about showcasing his human psychology theories than creating compelling gameplay.

However, he is correct about the increase in the cost of making AAA games. His charts would be more meaningful if he separated out the games by genre. A MMORPG is going to have a much larger budget and team than a vanilla FPS game. In any case, the costs are pretty startling and I think we'll see a lot more progress on the tool-side of game development in the future. Because development costs are going to be the bottleneck to flashy games more than hardware.

[Vulture]

Oh Hell, I have known Raphael since I was hosting UO lunches. The man still has a problem implementing ideas and thinks all people should RP and thus "create" content and gameplay.

Now as to those DBs, sorry, you want a petabyte of content storage, just ask I can build the cluster. AS for static DB (ie artist CGI) , we need better tools .

Just like we need better world building tools, you don't draw a map. You take a world based on scientific rules , and it evolves from starting conditions. Then you go in an place quest specific content.

/Always remember that idea guys rarely get their "content" realized.

[Raph]

I ended up writing a whole blog post (http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=267) in reply to some of this thread...

[bean19]

I ended up writing a whole blog post (http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=267) in reply to some of this thread...

Design documents are not representative artwork. They are specification documents. Design documents are analogous to creating a movie based on the director’s film commentary; they are comparable to finishing a painting bsed on a verbal description of what it’s like. Reading a design document and assessing its strengths and weaknesses is akin to judging a song seeing only its harmonic analysis.

This is what I think is incorrect. . . the flaw in the initial document that I perceived.

If I were to code ANYTHING from start to finish, I've been trained with the old "How do you make a peanut butter sandwich?" question. I'd know exactly how I got there from here, or I'd learn how exactly to get there before starting.

While there will always be adjustments to a game throughout the creation process (as you aptly pointed out is the case also with movies), there should be a better effort made before the cash investment to describe a game's various systems.

Why does this have to remain a "conceptual" design document that is too vague to allow mistakes to be avoided or a hugely expensive "vertical slice"? Why is the movie industry capable of delivering scripts and storyboards for film, but the game industry is incapable of delivering the same along with a description of the gameplay. . . possibly one written from the player's perspective? Wouldn't this lead to better quality games? Why must a prototype be made before we consider Sturgeon's Law?

You seem to answer this by stating that the only ways to get better at the first draft, without actual play-testing, are to 1) be derivative, 2) innovate by smaller degrees by being experienced in the craft of game design, or 3) be a genius.

Allegedly useless psychological theories about why players do what they do, which may help in prediction of how they will react to gameplay

Systems of notation that better capture the core mechanics of gameplay, such as the intellectual masturbation I apparently wasted that designer’s time with at GDC

These are really good game design tools (sans the snarkiness). In fact, I think that player experience (or their player response/gameplay) should be the entire focus of designing a game. Psychology can only help with this, and better documentation during design that is very interested in gameplay is what needs to evolve. We need to start "moving the camera" and creating our own film language (don't follow that analogy beyond it's immediate intent as it does stumble on fallacies fairly quickly).

What might have gotten lost in the message, and what is the overwhelming point in most of the EA posts, is that even sandbox elements in games should be designed around a player focus. I've already given examples of how The Sims obviously had implied directed content. . . meta-challenges that were fun and interesting for the player that were formalized in the game's sequel as aspirations.

[bean19]

Also, Mr. Koster - you were the lead designer of SWG. There is a price in reputation for that "sin" and you'll probably not live it down until you design something less vehemently detested by so many gamers. . . or never. . . you know, even after you are dead. That is because you are enough of an innovater that I expect you will be studied as one of the early artists in this medium by future generations.

I wish you success in improving your name in gaming history (and making something fun to play), and/or improving the way games are created.

[Raph]

This is what I think is incorrect. . . the flaw in the initial document that I perceived.

If I were to code ANYTHING from start to finish, I've been trained with the old "How do you make a peanut butter sandwich?" question. I'd know exactly how I got there from here, or I'd learn how exactly to get there before starting.

Yeah, of course. There's just no recipes in games, yet, short of copying another game. :) It's like with every new game design (as opposed to reskins of existing games) you're trying to come up with peanut-butter-meets-chocolate from scratch, or at least sliced bread. ;)

While there will always be adjustments to a game throughout the creation process (as you aptly pointed out is the case also with movies), there should be a better effort made before the cash investment to describe a game's various systems.

Why does this have to remain a "conceptual" design document that is too vague to allow mistakes to be avoided or a hugely expensive "vertical slice"? Why is the movie industry capable of delivering scripts and storyboards for film, but the game industry is incapable of delivering the same along with a description of the gameplay. . . possibly one written from the player's perspective? Wouldn't this lead to better quality games? Why must a prototype be made before we consider Sturgeon's Law?

Perhaps it isn't clear that games today HAVE storyboards, walkthroughs, player experience documents, scripts, and so on. None of those things can pin down whether the gameplay is fun, though. You can look at a storyboard image and tell whether the conceptual design of the costumes is cool, whether the camera angle will work, and so on. But a description of a combat system, or even how it plays, is a far cry from actually playing it.

I think this is because gameplay is driven from the interactive systems. A model of them that isn't interactive will generally fail to convey what's going on. It doesn't need to be really THAT similar, but it still needs to be a model. For example, you can prototype Tetris on a board with wooden blocks, and set up some rules (blocks always move every turn, you have a timer, etc) and it won't PLAY like Tetris, but it'll be close enough that you can gauge whether it's worth coding Tetris up. That counts as a prototype...

You seem to answer this by stating that the only ways to get better at the first draft, without actual play-testing, are to 1) be derivative, 2) innovate by smaller degrees by being experienced in the craft of game design, or 3) be a genius.

Well, if we're seriously talking about the first draft, the very first take at something, then yeah, I stand by that. Well, I think we can add in sheer luck, too. :)

These are really good game design tools (sans the snarkiness). In fact, I think that player experience (or their player response/gameplay) should be the entire focus of designing a game. Psychology can only help with this, and better documentation during design that is very interested in gameplay is what needs to evolve. We need to start "moving the camera" and creating our own film language (don't follow that analogy beyond it's immediate intent as it does stumble on fallacies fairly quickly).

That's why I have been exploring things like game grammar, theories of fun, and whatnot.

What might have gotten lost in the message, and what is the overwhelming point in most of the EA posts, is that even sandbox elements in games should be designed around a player focus. I've already given examples of how The Sims obviously had implied directed content. . . meta-challenges that were fun and interesting for the player that were formalized in the game's sequel as aspirations.

Of course they should. It's a misconception to think that sandbox elements make it in for other reasons... I can't really think of another reason that gets advanced. What other reason could there be?

Mind you, directed content and meta-challenges can be framed in a heck of a lot of ways. What one person sees as directed, another sees as hopelessly free-form; and what one person sees as directed, another sees as being trapped on rails. No one game is gonna fit all.

[Raph]

Also, Mr. Koster - you were the lead designer of SWG. There is a price in reputation for that "sin" and you'll probably not live it down until you design something less vehemently detested by so many gamers. . . or never. . . you know, even after you are dead. That is because you are enough of an innovater that I expect you will be studied as one of the early artists in this medium by future generations.

I wish you success in improving your name in gaming history (and making something fun to play), and/or improving the way games are created.

Heh, I think all I can say to that is "thank you, I think." :)