Mechanics do not Maketh the Game

The game Dragon Master Spell Caster was described by IGN as “one of the worst new WiiWare games to come to the Wii Shop in the entirety of 2009”. About a year before the game was released I met some of the game's developers from Stickmen Studios. We played some pool, had a few drinks, and they told me about a project they were working on for the Nintendo DS (at the time this was the platform they were aiming for). What they told me was that in this game you would be a wizard on a dragon and when your spells collided with another wizards spell something random would happen. I aked a few more questions but ultimately they kept coming back to ask what I thought about the magic mechanic?

It seemed odd to me that you would pitch a game by its mechanic, I mean would you describe Starcraft as a game where you click your men and then click other peoples men to make them fight? I think the problem here is someone had the good idea of 'why don't we redo the way magic is handled in video games' and then tried to work a game around it. The problem is that just like in movies where “no scene is worth a line; no movie is worth a scene”, no game is worth a mechanic.

I believe that when such ideas are hatched you should explore them, balance/tweak them a little, and then put them in your folder of things that might be useful in the future. An example of this came up when I was discussing board game design with a friend of mine, he had devised an exchange system where the best exchange rate was only achieved through helping other players, but too much cooperation would make it difficult for someone to establish a lead. A basic rules set had been devised for testing purposes, and after a couple of hours playtesting it was agreed that it was a good mechanic and it was shelved to wait for the right setting to come along.

I feel sorry for Stickmen Studios as in the right setting their combining magic mechanic could have been quite praise worthy, but the IGN reviewer didn't even so much as mention it, instead focusing on criticism of the graphics and gameplay and then the gameplay again. IGN's final summary was that “Dragon Master Spell Caster is another of the many 'learning the ropes' releases for a small studio testing the waters of Wii development - the kind of game where lots of mistakes are made, and, hopefully, lots of lessons are learned. This one had an ambitious concept, but the execution just failed miserably. And I wonder if Stickmen Studios knew that, in the end, and just allowed it to go out the door and die.” And it would seem that lessons were indeed learnt as Stickmen Studios next game, Doc Clock, has received a much warmer critical reception.

Going Rogue

I have been travelling quite a bit lately, which has meant that I've being making do with a netbook computer. So in order to still get my gaming fix, I've been playing quite a bit of the roguelike games Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM) and Dungeons of Dredmor. Roguelike games are a subset of the roleplaying genre that usually use ASCII art, random dungeons, and permadeath (when a player's character dies they have to start the game again from the beginning with a new character).

Most roguelike games are quite simple and often feature only one dungeon and a randomly generated character. However, ADOM is much more complex; incorporating ten races, twenty classes, skills, talents, an overworld map linking multiple dungeons, towns, quests and an overarching story. Another interesting feature of ADOM is that it keeps track of the in game date and certain quests and the main plot depend on you achieving various feats by a certain time. The high level of complexity and the way that the different races and classes have a distinct feel, are what I consider to be ADOM's greatest strengths, since when you die and have to start over again it really doesn't feel like you are just replaying the same first hour each time.

Dungeons of Dredmor on the other hand is much simpler, with only one dungeon, one race, and thirty four skills (from which you pick seven at the start). There are also side quests but these are randomly generated and are very simple. Unlike ADOM and most other roguelikes, Dungeons of Dredmor uses real graphics instead of ASCII, although the art is limited in that your charcter looks the same regardless of what they are actually wearing. Another thing that sets Dungeons of Dredmor apart is its sense of humour, which is very European and involves movie references, eyebrow jokes, and lutefisk.

What appeals to me about roguelike games is that they take a very simple and basic concept and craft a challenging and sometimes deep experience from it. The permadeath feature adds tension to the game, since if you are not prepared and careful you will die; actually even if you are prepared and careful you will also sometimes die although cheap deaths are rare. Of the two games discussed here ADOM is my favourite, as the ASCII interface has allowed the game's designer, Thomas Biskup, to focus on plot and character advancement the complexity of which rivals and sometimes exceeds what is seen in AAA title RPG's. Dungeons of Dreadmor is still a good game that's worth a look, and it's point and click controls make it better suited for novice dungeoneers.

Close Encounters of the Cosmic Kind

Cosmic Encounter was first released in 1977 and has been republished several times since, each time by a different company. I have now played the three most recent versions of the game (Mayfair Games, 1991; Avalon Hill, 2000; and Fantasy Flight Games, 2008) and would like to reflect on my experiences of playing the various versions of the game.

When I first played Cosmic Encounter, I had no idea what it was about; it was just in a pile of games available for play. Inside the box were a reasonable number of cards and tokens, as well as several cardboard hexes that made up the game board. In the game each player controls 5 planets and up to 20 ships, players take turns sending their ships to try and establish colonies on the other players’ planets by attacking them, with the first player to have five colonies outside their own system the winner (as each player's system and ships are colour coded it often reminds me of Chinese Checkers). The system which is attacked is determined by turning over a card from the destiny deck and the attacking player then decides which planet in the system to attack and commits between one and four ships to the battle, each player then gets to appeal for help and their allies then also commit between one and four ships to the combat. Each of the two main players then place an encounter card face down in front of them, these normally have a number on them although they might say negotiate, then the cards are turned over and each side's battle score is equal to the number of ships on their side plus the value of the encounter card played with the loosing side's ships being destroyed and sent to the warp; if the card played says negotiate that side immediately loses but gets to claim compensation from the winner, if both players play a negotiate card then they have one minute to strike a deal or have three ships set to the warp each.

What really makes Cosmic Encounter fun is that in addition to having to make deals and alliances each player has an alien power, which enables then to break the rules in some way. Some of these powers are rather simple, such as each one of your ships counts as four instead of one, but you can only send one ship to a battle. While others are much more strange, such as you may complain about the cards in your hand, for example ‘I don’t have an encounter card with a value of over 30’, and another player must either give you what it is you are complaining about or else all players must discard any card they have that matches your complaint. Initially I was concerned that the powers were not balanced but I needn’t have worried as any player whose power is ‘too good’ will simply find it hard to get allies in battle and the game will once again be balanced.

The first version of the game I played was the Mayfair games edition and I thoroughly enjoyed it, there were a large number of alien powers and they made for an interesting and amusing game. When I saw that a new version had been made by Avalon Hill I immediately went out, bought a copy, and was thoroughly disappointed. The Avalon Hill version was more visually striking than the old game, but they had greatly reduced the number of alien powers and the ones that were included were all simple. So after spending several years warning people not to buy this once great game I got to play the newest edition by Fantasy Flight Games. I was immediately hopeful as there were a large number of alien power cards in the box and yes the weird and wonderful ones were back. I was thrilled; the game was restored to what I liked best about it and had been visually updated to a high standard.

One final thing about this 'game that breaks its own rules' is that it relies heavily on players being honest, as quite a number of the powers and cards in the game involve players having to discard certain types of cards from their hand with no immediate way for other players to see if this was done correctly. I've never experienced anyone cheating, but I just find it amusing that a game about 'rule breaking' relies so heavily on player honesty.

The Difficulty Slide

In most video games as the player progresses the difficulty of the game increases, this change in difficulty is known as the difficulty curve. Some of the reasons for changing a game’s difficulty are that as players gets more experienced and skilled at playing the game they require a larger challenge to keep them interested, it lets you ‘upgrade’ the player's character enabling changes and new challenges that fit the game's narrative, and by having a mixture of easy and difficult sections you can create feelings of tension and relief for the player.

The first of these reasons is the simplest to illustrate. Consider Tetris, as the player clears more lines the speed with which the new blocks drop increases, meaning that a player must develop better and faster reflexes to progress further through the game; if however the speed didn’t change, a competent player could keep playing indefinitely, or at least until they got bored. The other two reasons are tailored to the game world and usually involve equipment and skill upgrades coupled with the introduction of new more challenging situations. It is also possible and fun to have the threat introduced before the solution, meaning that a player will have to run and hide during the early sections of the game, but later on after receiving the appropriate upgrade will be able to stand and fight; of cause after letting the player feel comfortable and in control for a while a new bigger threat should be introduced.

However, there are quite a few games, primarily in the casual/mobile gaming market, that feel the need to have large amounts of game content locked at the start. This content is unlocked not by progressing the story, but by rather by collecting specific game world items that can then be exchanged for the new features or by paying some additional amount of real world money. What really makes these games different is that the upgrades are bought after you lose your current game and apply to your future games, making them easier. For example in the iOS game Mega Jump, your progression through the game depends on collecting enough coins to not fall, after the eventual falling to your doom you can then use the coins gathered to by new upgrades such as a magnet which will pull the coins towards you making it easier to collect them, easier to progress further, and easier to buy new upgrades which will again make the game easier.

There are two main reasons for this difficulty slide. Firstly, it is a way for the developers to make some extra money off the game, as some people will want all the upgrades and features available from the start. Secondly, it can increase the replay value of the game as players try to unlock all the content. While these reasons are understandable in the casual and free games market there are plenty of full price games which also use this model. For example, in the on-rails shooter House of the Dead: Overkill as you progress you can buy access to better guns, which is fine as the levels also get harder except that these better guns can also be used in any earlier level and the high score table doesn’t make a note of what weapons were used, making them rather pointless early on. Personally I think that a better way to add replay value to such a game is by simply putting the high score table online. Sin and Punishment: Star Successor is also an on-rails shooter, but the weapons you start with are the same as the weapons you finish with and the replay value comes from the games high difficulty and online leader boards.

I will finish by clarifying that I do not consider the ‘New Game +’ feature (starting the game again with all the upgrades, equipment, and abilities you had when you won it) found in some games to be the same as the difficulty slide. This feature is to enable players who have already won the game to go back and look for secrets and bonuses they may have missed the first time through.

The Game Just Hates You!

Yesterday I attended a board gaming meetup, where I played Battlestar Galactica, and Mansions of Madness. While I enjoyed playing both of these games, the most ‘epic’ game being played at the event was a seven player game of Arkham Horror with all the expansion packs; this took up a sizable amount of space and time just to set-up.

Once the game was over I talked with some of the players about what they liked and didn’t like about the game. Interestingly one comment appeared as both a like and dislike, the game's high difficulty. Some players found it frustrating that their lack of knowledge about what exactly they would be facing meant that they would sometimes be given a skill test with no way to pass, while others found that it added to the flavour and suspenseful horror feel of the game.

This discussion reminded me of Talisman, where again the game is at times just unfair. Personally this is what I love about this game and I always play with The Reaper expansion to maximise the chance of an unfair death! Talisman also has the added fun of both PvP combat and griefing being a serious strategy. I believe that where these games get into trouble is when a player doesn't know what they're getting into. Also sometimes players develop an attachment to their character or equipment making them disappointed when they die, even though plenty of Talisman games are won by replacement characters.

As a final note, while I often hear people telling stories about the time they just managed to win one of these against all odds type games, I almost never hear stories about the ‘fairer’ games.

You Sir, Play Like a Child!

Earlier this year I was visiting a friend, who had recently started playing the Call of Cthulhu living card game (a living card game is similar to a collectable card game in that there are expansions and you create your own decks but when you buy an expansion pack you get all the cards instead of a random subset). I hadn’t played the game before but am always up for playing something new, so when they offered to teach it to me I accepted. A quick summary of the rules/purpose of the game is that players place cards under their ‘domains’, which are later drained to put other cards into play, the more powerful a card the larger the domain that needs to be drained to play it; the played cards are then used to both complete stories and prevent your opponent from completing stories, with the first player to win three stories winning the game.

After we had played a few games I felt like I had a good enough grasp of the rules, timings, and card interactions to ask a few of the questions that had been nagging me. The first was why are our two decks not the same size? I had noticed this straight away and as a semi-serious Magic the Gathering player the idea of a deck being larger than the minimum size without a very good reason was irksome. The answer I was given was that when deck building my friend liked to pull out any cards that looked good or fun and put them in the deck and refine later based on deck performance. This also answered my next question, which was going to be why are there so many big monsters in the decks, so rather than asking that I instead asked if I could make a deck? I was then given a box of cards and told to go for it.

Having no real idea of what was the best strategy for this game I decided to build the deck based on three simple ideas. First removal is good, that is cards that get rid of your opponent’s creatures. No card in the deck should require a ‘domain’ with more than three cards under it to play, my friend’s decks contained cards that required domains with six cards under them to play, the logic being that I could stop putting cards under the domains after only a few turns and also lets me play my threats early. The final idea was that ‘card advantage is king’, card advantage is the concept that if one card can produce or remove two or more cards then this helps you win as you have more cards/resources to call upon than your opponent. I should also mention that my deck was the minimum size. So we played a few more games of my new deck against the old decks and each time the result was a solid victory to my deck.

After this second round of playing I rather uncharitably informed my friend that he ‘plays like a child’, by which I meant that he focused too much on the big monsters and not enough on fast efficient cards. His retort to this was that my deck wasn’t fun and completely failed to capture the flavour of game, how could I play Call of Cthulhu and not included even one Great Old One in my deck? In Magic the terms ‘Timmy, Johnny, and Spike’ are used to describe the three main types of players. Timmy likes to win with big creatures, Johnny likes to win in funny ways, and Spike just likes to win. I guess I’m a Spike while my friend is a Timmy.

We then went online to look at the decks used in tournaments and noticed that almost all of them only played cards that required a domain of three of fewer. No wanting to give in to this ‘unfun way of playing’, my friend made a new deck which I’m pleased to say was both competitive and played the Outer God, Shub-Niggurath to win, although it was snuck into play by a card requiring a domain of only three.

Sorry to Rain on the Parade

Operation Rainfall is a fan lead campaign trying to convince Nintendo of America (NOA) to release the Japanese roleplaying games Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower in North America. Despite their best efforts NOA has stated that “there are no plans to bring these three games to the Americas at this time.” Now is this good business sense or a missed opportunity?

Xenoblade Chronicles has already been localised and released in the PAL regions. Having played it I can honestly say that it is a fantastic game and deserves to sell well and have a North American release. But simply being a good game isn’t always enough to make a profit and that is what matters to NOA. Since being released Xenoblade Chronicles has sold almost 160,000 units in Japan and looks to reach the 100,000 units mark after ten weeks of sales in the PAL regions. These are not great figures and to be honest I don’t see the game selling much more than 250,000 units in North America, even though it certainly deserves to sell more! Contrast this with Final Fantasy XIII, a game in the same genre and generally considered to be inferior, which managed to sell 6.5 million units worldwide. So why is FFXIII selling but Xenobalde Chronicles not? It comes down to the power of the Final Fantasy name, which makes the decision to not release The Last Story even more bizarre.

The Last Story was directed and co-designed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy. It has sold slightly better in Japan than Xenoblade Chronicles (~180,000 units) and received a higher review score in Famitsu, with two of the four reviewers giving it a perfect score. The Last Story has been announced for release in the PAL regions in 2012; with NOA saying that they will look at the sales figures there and then make a decision. Personally I believe that this game would sell around 200,000 and 350,000 units during its first ten weeks in Europe and North America respectively, with global lifetime sales of around 1 million units. These are reasonable figures and would have to make the game profitable. In my personal opinion both Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story will eventually see release in North America, but NOA is going to wait for a release date that will not distract attention and resources away from a guaranteed more profitable venture (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword), I also expect what is eventually released to be identical to the PAL version as I don’t believe it is a financially sound decision to change the voice actors from British to American.

The final game in Operation Rainfall is Pandora’s Tower and to be honest I have no idea why it’s included. The game only received average reviews and hasn’t even managed to sell 100,000 units in Japan. To me the inclusion of Pandora’s Tower seems like a random tacked on third game because people like things that come in threes and it happens to be in the same genre as the other two titles. I really wouldn’t hold my breath for this game to be released outside of Japan.

All sale figures taken from www.vgchartz.com

What do you think you’re playing at!

Like most people I played Snakes and Ladders as a child. I had fun rolling the die, moving my counter, and hoping to land on that extra-long ladder that would send me well into the lead; another thing which made it fun was that my father would grizzle and complain whenever he lost. People often talk about Snakes and Ladders as being a good game for children as it is simple and helps to teach them numeracy skills. It also taught me how to argue about rules, with variations such as having to roll a six or a one to start and having to land exactly on the final square to win. And so, many evenings and weekends of my youth were spent playing this game. It was only later in life that I realised that I hadn’t been playing a game at all and none of the rules that we argued over changed this in the slightest.

Now you might find it weird for me to just declare that Snakes and Ladders isn’t a game but let me show you what I mean by using Candy Land as an example. Candy Land plays very similarly to Snakes and Ladders, the difference is that instead of rolling a die you turn over the top card of a colour coded deck to determine where you move to. Since the order of the cards in the deck it set by the initial shuffle and the order of the players’ turns are also fixed, the ‘game’ plays out automatically and the winner is determined entirely by that initial shuffle. So how does this apply to Snakes and Ladders? Since the player has no control over the number rolled by the die (unless they are a very skilled cheat) what they are doing when they roll is generating a list of random numbers. Now if I came to you and said let’s play Snakes and Ladders, but instead of rolling a die let’s use this pregenerated list of random numbers, very few people would say yes as using it takes away that feeling of the unknown and getting lucky as you roll the die, even though it is in effect the exact same thing.

So what makes this not count as a game then? My reasoning is that because at no point does any player make a decision and no one can do anything to effect the outcome (without cheating), you are not so much playing a game as you are watching some counters move along a predetermined path. However, it takes only a very small addition to the rules to change it back into a game. If you permit the player to choose if they would like to move their piece forwards of backwards before they roll the die we have now introduced decisions, which in turn enables players to change the result of the game.

I find it interesting to apply this kind of logic to casino games. For example in roulette, craps, and Two-up although you are able to choose what you want to bet on, you in no way can alter the outcome of the game, which is how the house manages to make a set margin on these games. However, in a game like blackjack or poker your decisions can affect who wins and who loses, which is why these games are far more commonly played by professional gamblers. The popularity of these games of pure chance just illustrates how much enjoyment people are able to get out of a feeling of ‘beating the odds’ and getting lucky.

I will finish off by saying that although having players make decisions that can affect the outcome of a game is a good thing, if the outcome of those decisions is so obvious that it in effect makes only one option viable (as for example in tic-tac-toe) then the game is just as bad as one with no decisions. 

Angry at the Birds

Angry Birds is one of the big success stories of the mobile gaming market, over 12 million copies have been sold through Apple’s App Store and a further 30 million free copies of the game have been downloaded for Android based systems. This means the iOS version alone has outsold World of Warcraft and has put up similar sales figures to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on the Xbox 360.

In case you are unfamiliar with Angry Birds, the idea of the game is this: some pigs stole the bird’s eggs and now they are going to get revenge by using a slingshot to fling themselves at the pigs and their shelters, killing the pigs. As the player you are responsible for aiming the slingshot and activating any special powers the birds might have.

The game has an 80% rating on metacritic which means generally favourable reviews. Games with this metascore do not usually sell 12 million copies. Personally I just don’t like the game, I have tried to play it several times, I’ve played the full iOS version, the lite iOS version and the free Google Chrome version, which I noticed had 7,887,822 Facebook likes, and every time I found myself getting bored and wanting to play or do something else. However, let’s break down the different facets of the game and consider them.

Story: The story is simple silly fun and only serves to give a context for the gameplay. However, for a puzzle game the story really isn’t important, Tetris has no plot and I’m quite happy to play that for hours on end.

Gameplay: I find the way that you can’t see the targets when aiming with the birds frustrating and contributes to a lack of precision. Having to retry a level because you narrowly missed the last pig that was just standing out in the open does not make the game challenging but rather more annoying. While it is fun to knock down virtual blocks and buildings I find that other games, such as Boom Blox, better cater to this urge. One thing that the game does get right is the short amount of time it takes to play through a level (win or lose) which is useful when gaming on the go.

Graphics: The large cartoony graphics are easy to follow and give a reasonable aesthetic to the game, also the unique look of the birds and the pigs helps to create a recognisable franchise.

Lasting appeal: The game introduces new types of birds and more difficult levels as it progresses which does provide an incentive to keep playing. However, I’ve never found myself wanting to repeat a level.

Value for money: Obviously I can’t fault anyone for downloading a free game, but for all those 12 million people who actually paid for Angry Birds I just find myself asking why? The App Store has many, many games of similar or better entertainment value available for free or at budget prices. Furthermore, the free app of the day scheme enables you to get titles that previously retailed for a couple of dollars for free!

From this I must conclude that my dislike for the game comes down to two things. First, the gameplay and second, from a sense of injustice; why is this game a multimillion unit seller when there are much better games that struggle to make it past even 100,000 units?