Folderoltasticness

FIRST: before I natter further, I want to turn your attention to this excellent, illuminating article: a review (and evaluation) of the collected brainstorming notes for the story of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  A fascinating read for anyone (especially fans of Indiana Jones, and let’s just act like the fourth film never happened, shall we?), and I think there’s a lot in there game developers should absolutely take to heart.

Now, I know, I know - there are far too many examples where games are trying to act too much like films and turn out something uninspired and unfun, clunky and unpolished.  And certainly I’m sick of games being treated like cinema’s bastard child or unwanted stepkid - certainly anyone familiar with the unique demands of the medium should realize that games need their own schema for creation and evaluation (shame, shame, Roger Ebert, for attempting to parlay your cinematic evaluations to games - as anyone who’s studied film should know, it had its own growing pains to free itself from the same old restrictions of the stage and theater, and the need to develop a new method of study!).

That being said - there’s a lot in this for those in games to pay attention to… good ideas aside (and there are many there), the plain fact of the matter is that for as different as games are from the cinematic medium, the closest relation gamers have (well, at least the generation that’s 20+, who recall when games weren’t photorealistic, and we still described graphics as something with “bit” in the description) to actually relating to the action on screen.  I think in many ways games surpass that, but when you make a movie-based game, what will the player instinctively want?  Why do they buy it? To do what they saw on screen.  Anyhow.  Moving on!

One thing that caught my eye the most was this phrase: What happens in the past, off screen, good or bad, does not affect sympathy. It’s what we see the character do in the present that determines how much we will or will not care about that character.
That says so damn much! It explains why I can’t stand Kratos, why (despite my boyfriend’s hope that I get into the manga series Berserk) I so heartily dislike Guts, and why I don’t give two craps in a hat about Conan.  Whoop de doo, tragic past, blah.  Right now what I’m seeing is them being a jerk to everyone and everything.  I hear tons about Kratos’s tragic past from other gamers, but when I was playing God of War, I couldn’t even GET to that point.  Too many cut-scenes of him just being a completely rampant jerk for no reason, blood splashed upon his uncaring face, jeeeeeeez I get it already, the man is a soulless douche.  In my defense, yes I know God of War is a remarkably well-done title that basically pioneered the Quick-Time Action Sequence (of which I think now the game market has been intensely inundated), and had well-done gameplay, but honestly speaking - I couldn’t stand playing Kratos.  I don’t have to be a flower-loving puppy dog, but as a gamer I feel like I really should care whether the guy I’m playing lives or dies.

…okay, also it was the fixed camera in a dippy jumping puzzle, and the fact that while I can feel pretty rad one moment yanking the wings off a harpy, if I die because I fell off of a log the next moment will kind of erase the savage glee of the former, at least in my humble opinion.  Hells, I think the fact that I as a game designer said “I didn’t like God of War” will write me off in many devs’ minds, but all the same I hope I’m heard out.  I just think it was overdone.  He doesn’t need to be an aggressive douche so constantly - you got a great hook in him attempting to kill himself in the beginning - follow that up with something here and there, maybe?  I once griped about the sex scene with the two women to a fellow co-worker, who hesitantly offered “well, every woman sort of… reminds him of his wife now?”  I sneered “Apparently those two did at the same time.”  So, yeah.  Not won over.

But back to my point.  It’s the moment that matters the most.  If you want to make your character a good but flawed person or a complete jerk, it’s what they do right then, the options presented to them while the player can see and interact with it (or, well - not).  If you want the player to be aware of a backstory, thread it in somewhere, consistently, and early on.  The exchange with Marion and Indy is a great point where the past is brought up (without the need for a possibly clunky flashback) and enough is said that the viewer gets the picture, and hears both sides of the story:

INDY: I never meant to hurt you.
MARION: I was a child! I was in love.
INDY: You knew what you were doing.
MARION: It was wrong. You knew it.
INDY: Look, I did what I did. I don’t expect you to be happy about it. But maybe we can do each other some good.
MARION: Why start now?
INDY: Shut up and listen for a second. I want that piece your father had. I’ve got money.
MARION: How much?

Yay good dialogue!  Indy’s not even really apologetic, and yet he doesn’t come off as a stupendous jerk.  And it’s the fact that although she has the pendant he wants and she’s not really willing to part with it - as you can read in the article (which you should have read by now!) - he doesn’t do something really jerky like steal it.  If that was a gameplay option, you could allow the player to steal it, to try and bargain with her some more, apologize, etc.  Put the option (to be a jerk, or not?) into their hands.  But knowing that although what’s gone before gives motivation (the character-centered player will say “well, I was a jerk before, maybe I can talk to her,” but the action-centered player will be like “gah, screw this - I’ll just steal it”) but it’s up to the designer to either build the character themselves with telling moments like these, or provide them for the player do to the building.  Background is very imporant - if Marion was, to pull an industry phrase, a bog-standard NPC with no connection to the main character - she becomes a simple roadblock, and stealing the item from her becomes the far more desirable path.  A penalty here for being a jerk seems overly severe, and carries no weight (becuase the relationship of the characters to one another carries nothing as well) - but if they know each other, it’s far more significant.  Making the player give a crap about the people they interact with should be a prime goal for nearly any designer… especially, as a side note, if they want to allow the player to do truly evil things.  Which is another discusison entirely, but I just wish to note it here.

Another delicious point: start big and end BIGGEST.  Lots of games, because of the nature of introducing the player to the action and controls, pretty much necessitate a non-critical tutorial level.  Folding this into the game itself is tricky in the extreme… how do you balance a low-pressure learning section with an exciting, action-packed beginning?  Games that include a tutorial as an optional section and opt for a challenging beginning are often scolded for starting off too hard - but games that necessitate a slower tutorial opening are then trashed for being “too slow.”

Furthermore, another section of concern is the construction of games.  Unlike movies, which often film scenes out of order and edit them together later, much of game creation is done beginning-to-end (mostly because the risk of putting things together out-of-order for games can lead to unbalanced, inconsistent, and differing gameplay).  Not only can this lead to games with elaborate beginnings and afterthought endings, but the other way around - a spectacular end boss battle that nobody will get to because the beginning is such a bore.  Also - notice in that article that action pieces fill the whole middle, and at no point does it appear to sag (it’s like Wii Fit keeps telling me - core muscle strength is important!).

To me, the key is the fact that this conversation exists: that there’s planning of the whole thing, instead of a “wow this beginning!” or “yay this end!” and then nothing in the middle.  I’m not saying that the leads should iron out the whole process and prevent any other design input, but that you should have a basic skeleton in mind, with “setpiece” moments throughout - once that’s in place (and art and programming leads confirm those can be done!), bring in the whole design team and hack through the whole mess together.

And that’s the crux of the issue for me - and why just reading the quotes in that article is so fascinating.  If you’re over eight years old and you’ve watched the original Star Wars trilogy and suffered through the prequels, it’s very likely that the penultimate thought in your mind was: “What the HELL was George Lucas THINKING?!”  And when you start to read that he basically locked himself away to write the prequels and allowed no other input that it starts to make sense.  The same with Steven Spielberg -  how many people in Hollywood now have the balls to suggest that one of his ideas wouldn’t work so well, or that they have something better in mind?  If you imagine that doesn’t happen in the game industry - that a big name or a “I can kill your job in half a second if I want” doesn’t exist - you’re so wrong that I want to cry and pat you gently on the head for your sweet naiveté.

Civilization as we know it didn’t come about as the result of any one culture, but the interactions of many: Rome, long held in such high regard, rested on a base of Greek learning, with input from not only all over the Mediterranian, but through trade routes and territories throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East - not to mention a system of government that allowed the continuation of life and customs in conquered areas.  China, which to many seems just a massive ubiquitous power, has an amazing history of the collaborations of many cultures - Mongolia, the Han and Wu cultures and their interaction, Korea, and the many other tribes and cultural identities and inventions in the area.  Nothing is one giant, created-from-whole-cloth mass.

The power that I’m trying to say moves the gears of civilization is collaboration - one greater, gestalt thing from many parts.  Leave a thing alone and it doesn’t advance, or does only in degrees.  Add something new to the mix and everything changes.  That’s why I love game development so much (and also why it frustrates me to no end) - that same collaboration.  It’s never easy, in fact it’s hard as hell, but the second you can’t give feedback or opinion or take one party’s word as complete gospel - it begins to deteriorate.  Mind, there are points where a design needs to be finalized and locked-down and not dithered about in blue-sky mode: but what I’m trying to elaborate upon here is that when ideas are thrown about, nobody should consider themselves above criticism.  Even ideas that don’t fit can be used somewhere (as evidenced with the unused ideas for Raiders appearing elsewhere in the Indiana Jones series), and stuff that doesn’t fit at all can be used - via its contrast - to help define the borders of the desired game and its ideas.  Half of what helps define a thing is not what it is but what it isn’t, and suggesting something to that nature shouldn’t be hissed and booed at but used as an example to clearly dictate 1) what’s being aimed at and 2) why it doesn’t work.  Heck, look at this pendant discussion:

G — It would be nice if they left in a huff, they fought or something. He left rather pissed. I don’t think he would leave without the pendant. That’s the only thing that bothers me about that.

S — So he goes upstairs and stays up, plotting how he’s going to take it off her.

G — That makes him into a real rat.

L — That’s all right. He never does it. What he does is just the opposite, save her life.

G — No matter how you do it, the fact that he thought about it is the rat part.

S — Rhett Butler was a rat.

G — He wasn’t a real rat –

S — He proved himself by raising her family. Before that he was a gambler, dealt with cheap ladies.

G — There’s a difference between being a rat and somebody who’s having fun. He never hurt anybody.

L — I’m a little confused about Indiana at this point. I thought he’d do anything for this pendant.

G — But he still has to have some moral scruples. He has to be a person we can look up to. We’re doing a role model for little kids, so we have to be careful. We need someone who’s honest, trusting and true. But at the same time he’s confronted with this difficult problem. We have a great thing when she won’t give it to him. She doesn’t like him.

Excellent distinction there (emphasis mine).  Jones is driven, maybe not the best of guys, but he’s not a rat, not a jerk - it’s a point of disctinction that he’s a role model.  Maybe we don’t want this character to sneak up and snap the guy’s neck because he still has some qualms about killing… even though the enemy is a bad man, and he knows this, he doesn’t want to kill him when he can just knock him out… he’s not that cold, not that blasé about killing.  He’s new at this - it bothers him.  And maybe just the actual physical act of the neck-snap is more cold-blooded to him, far more intense than just pulling a trigger.  (plus it’s actually really really hard to snap someone’s neck in real-life, but that’s another story).

Anyhow.  I could, quite obviously, go on for days about this, but the best points are in the article, which I again ask you to read if you haven’t already.  Or RE-read it.  I’m going to right now.  In the meantime, discuss!

Back in 6th grade, I had a tae-kwon-do teacher who was from somewhere in far east Europe (I don’t remember which because 1) I didn’t ask him, and 2) I was 12, cut me some slack). His location of birth is relevant because it gave him a cool accent, which unfortunately was turned into a droning whine while I was doing training exercises. There is only so many times you can do back kicks (which I hated then and still do today because I am seriously not convinced they could every do anything more than awkwardly foot-paw someone’s thighs and not actually hurt them), especially when you are 12, shorter than everybody, and don’t relish the idea of being really tired when they put you in padding way too big for you and make you “spar” with someone, which you know is upcoming after this eternally-long exercise.
Ahem. Anyhow.
Instead of saying how many of whatever kick we’d be doing, the master would bark out “ONE MORE TIME!” in his unique accent, and my level of preadolescent irritation would rise precipitously. I wondered more than once why he couldn’t just count like the other masters, and also, why that phrase got under my skin so much more than the plain fact of having to do X number of kicks. He wasn’t any harsher than any other masters, that I can recall - just yelled “ONE MORE TIME!” instead of normal counting.
Why do I remember that as being so obnoxious? It’s not just his accent - that just made it etch into my mind more easily. It’s the plain fact of being told to do the repetition. So here’s my question - to myself, and to everyone -

When does something go from being fun to being repetitive?

A lot of criticism I hear about this or that game is that it’s “too repetitive” - which makes me wonder what the boundaries are. Certainly a game needs to have some repetition - core gameplay - or it’s a damn mess. But at what point do you expand, at what point do you constrain yourself? Certain games work okay with a single - or set - of systems, which can indeed be repetitive. Diablo II jumps to mind, but hell - what about Pac Man? World of Warcraft? What is Halo but shooting guys, and then shooting other guys? With this blurry definition… where do we draw the line?
Sure, we can say stuff crosses over when it stops being fun. But I don’t trust any eye-ball impression when someone looks at a game and says “looks repetitive.” I think you’d be bored watching me kill stuff in Diablo II, but hell, I’m having a good time. And even with open-world games like Saint’s Row, yeah you’re doing a million different things, but it’s more about the experience of being involved in it… I sometimes actually find those harder to get invested in as a viewer, because I can’t grab a narrative thread or sense of linearity… unless the player states a clear objective, I don’t know where they plan on taking things. Which is fine, but in terms of - as I said - simply eyeballing something for a sense of “that looks repetitive” (and by extension, boring) - leads me to distrust the sentiment.
Sure, I’ve played repetitive games and disliked them greatly. Halo bored me.  Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter was a colossal disappointment. And even my much-loved Civilization 2 becomes a bit of a shore near the more technological ages (but then I just start over again). But where’s the distinction? Is there a definition - a line in the sand - that we can draw that separates good from bad as a rule, not just on a case-by-case basis?

I aim to give this more thought - but for now, I’m putting it out there. Whatchu think, world?

I’ve been reading a lot of it lately, so documentation is on my mind.

I don’t think anyone would argue it’s worthless in a project, but it begs the question - as I’ve worked on projects that both hardly have any and others that are immersed in it - how MUCH documentation is appropriate?  How do we even determine this?

Of course, there’s the “no duh” things like scale and type of game. You nail down the obvious ones - Characters for an RPG, Weapons for an FPS, things like that.  But at what point do you cross the line from Too Little to Too Much, when even just maintaining the things becomes a chore?  In the beginning, they’re everyone’s friend - but near the end of the project, they seem to most often get discarded.  How do you most decide what you need, what works for updating it, WHO updates it, and how to keep the evolution of the doc up to date so it’s consistently helpful?

I know this is case-by-case to the point where some might even think the discussion of such is kind of moot - but things don’t seem to improve on a case-by-case unless at least SOME attempt is made to look at them in a larger scale (at least in my view).  So.

I’m going to make the key assumption here that there is an easily-accessible location for all the documentation that extends BEYOND a simple shared drive, or perhaps even a source-control solution like Perforce, AlienBrain, SourceSafe, etc.  I’ve had personal experience with SharePoint, and although it is not my favorite tool ever, I can understand its utility, and have to admit it’s helpful to see it marked when a new document has been added, and when an existing one has been changed (and by whom).  I believe SharePoint even allows you to tag certain documents to have an email auto-sent to you when they’ve been updated, which is helpful (in certain situations - I’d say when it’s an important doc that either everyone has access to but only a few can edit, or something only a few people can access and their changes are super-important).  Obviously if a team is not communicating in person, there’s not all that much documenation can do.

So - what CAN it do, beyond a preproduction standpoint?  Obviously it can help newcomers to the team get oriented and management see where things are going, but I’d argue as well that documentation - stuff outside the specifics of department, “translated” for everyone to read - is beneficial.  I can’t understand the specifics of programmerspeak (although I should always strive to try), but having documentation that combines intent with a projected direction is valuable, and should always be valuable.

That said, as much as I like to document things “just in case,” I’ve also run into situations where files can pile up into a mess.  I’ve been in attempts to collate disparate docs into a single file (which has led to its own share of complications, I tell you what)… and though I suppose perhaps doing something like collecting major elements together into a Master “Story Doc” (for example) might not be a bad idea, it also comes with its share of issues.  If you’re on a Source Control System (and YOU SHOULD BE) only one person can tackle changes at a time - and if it includes a lot of systems that are still in flux, that could be problematic.  Second, there’s the basic fact of human nature that most of us don’t like reading long documents.  If I just want a basic character overview (that’s say, 5 pages), but it’s in a 40+ page Story doc, I might balk at such.  Clear formatting and Ctrl-Click to Follow options in a Table of Contents should be involved, but those seem more like a stopgap and should be secondary to collating things at an appropriate time.

[Crap.  I think my brain ran out of juice.  Going to get some more caffiene, pick up rant again later. In the meantime, you gab about what docs you feel are the most important for different genres, what you’d imagine should stand alone always vs. get folded together, when and why.  Probably only interesting to me, but what the hell :)]