Fanboy Rant

I admit it, I'm a Nintendo fanboy. When I was young my gaming time was split between an Amiga 500 and a Famicom (Japanese NES), so Mario and friends have been part of my gaming experience right from the start. Still I would like to think that I can remain somewhat objective and criticise when appropriate. At E3 last year Nintendo unveiled the Wii U, which despite having a stupid name has me excited and looking forward to the final release later this year. However, this enthusiasm isn't shared by all, Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush securities who specialises in the video game industry, recently stated on NeoGAF that the potential market for the Wii U is going to be about half that of the Wii and that it should have been released back in 2009 as the Wii HD.

Pachter is not alone in his lack of excitement for the Wii U, many web analysts have come down against the console, seeing it as an HD remake of the Wii with a funny controller to try and trick you into thinking different. Personally I disagree, Nintendo has time and again released new systems with new controllers and control schemes that have resulted in new innovations of gameplay. The d-pad, now a gaming standard, was popularised by Nintendo, as was the analog stick, diamond button layout, touch screen gaming, and motion controls. Since the announcement of the Wii U rumours have surfaced that the next XBox is also going to feature a touch screen interface, which suggests that once again Nintendo is setting the new industry standard.

I think the problem people have is that they consider the Wii U to not be 'next generation', because the Wii didn't have the same graphical capabilities as the other consoles they just assume that this console will only be equal in power to the XBox 360 and PS3. Even if this were the case, which I doubt it will be, graphics are not what make a game good! For me what matters most is the gameplay. If a game controls well and you can tell what you are doing then that's 90% of the battle. And the Wii U's touch screen provides developers with another option when designing controls. I'm sure a large number of the early titles will feel like they have to use the touch screen and suffer because of it but as the platform matures we will be treated with real innovation. It's important to remember that in addition to the touch screen the console still supports the Wii remote so developers can still design motion games.

The one thing I am concerned about is the Nintendo Network. The Wii has poor online gaming support and the Nintendo Network is supposed to fix this. However, Nintendo often do things their own way which makes me nervous, ideally I would like something similar to the Steam community, with cross game chat, achievements, leaderboards, and if privacy is a concern let players set the level of their connection as either invisible, friends only, or public.

At E3 this year we will get to see the final build of the Wii U, which might make this discussion premature but still I am excited about the Wii U!

Rule the Waves

Last night I played The Kaiser's Pirates for the first time. The game is set in WWI and involves each player having control of three German 'pirate' vessels and three merchant vessels. Each turn players use can cards to active their pirate vessels, to try and sink merchant vessels, or play cards representing the British navy to try and sink opposing pirate vessels. After a few turn you get the hang of how things work and the game is relatively simple, except the way that the rules and card text are written is often counter-intuitive and confusing. Also the colour palette used is quite pale and as such, although you can tell that your cards have different coloured backgrounds, you're not sure which is which.

An example of a poorly worded card is QQQ the text on which reads 'Automatically recognizes a Raider after it intercepts a Merchantman.' This seems simple enough, however, when I tried to play it I was informed that I couldn't because it wasn't my Merchantman being attacked and a Reaction Card can only be played in response to your ships being attacked. To make matter worse if you look in the rule book it says:
REACTION AND ASSIST CARDS: Some cards are “Reaction” cards, which are played in response to another player’s Action card, or are “Assist” cards, which are only played in combination with an Intercept!, Raider Mine attack, or submarine torpedo or mine attack. See section 3.3 for a summary explanation of all Action cards.
And if you go to section 3.3 it makes no mention of the only when you are attacked rule, but rather just has the card text for every card printed out. The relevant rule is 3.2.2 which states 'Reaction cards are played directly from the defending player’s hand in response to an Action card.'

This issue could easy be avoided by better wording on the cards. Changing QQQ to read 'Automatically recognizes a Raider after it intercepts a Merchantman under your control', although rules wise redundant, prevents confusion. There were several other cards that had similar issues, often caused by the choice of language used, such as 'immediately' being used to mean 'immediately after what is happening has finished'. This experience just reminded me of how common it is for game developers to write the rules and then shortly after publication having to write an FAQ, because the instructions were not unambiguous.

The 3rd of December 2011 edition of New Scientist has an article entitled 'Time to think like a computer'. This article discusses the way that people think and communicate to each other and makes the observation that if you want to communicate with people in a clear and obvious way then you should talk like a computer, that is use conditional logic. For example rather than writing a rule which says "player's may not have more than seven cards in hand" you should write something like "if a player with seven cards in hand is instructed to draw more cards then that player draws no card". While this is more  long winded it does explain how to cope with conflicting game instructions.

I think that the reasons most developers write rules in the more trimmed down manner is because they know the rules perfectly and they think that the rule book should be engaging and fun to read. In reality the rule book is usually only read by one of the players, who then explains it to the rest and then, with the exception of checking the occasional thing, is never read again. Personally I believe that the answer is to write each rule in the short hand way but with the long winded 'logical conditional' form immediately below it.

Looks Good for a Wii Game

It's become quite common for reviewers, when discussing Wii games, to make the comment 'the graphics are good for a Wii game.' And to be perfectly honest this statement and the sentiment behind it really annoys me. In my opinion it puts an undue emphasis on graphics and also belittles the games artistic direction.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword using a large colourful cell shaded art style not because the Wii can't handle a more realistic tone, after all The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess used a more realistic style, but rather because the motion based gameplay requires the player to be clearly shown what they need to attack and the direction they need to do it from. This is similar to the way that cell shading in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker enabled the use of a much larger draw distance, so that players could spot distant islands while sailing.

The PlayStation 1 and 2 era Final Fantasys received critical acclaim for their jaw dropping cut scenes, but these were all pre-rendered, hence their ability to look substantially better than the in game graphics. Nintendo generally doesn't pre-render their cut scenes, Miyamoto has said a key reason for this is that if you change something late in development then pre-rendered cut scenes need to be remade. Another consideration is customisation. In the Gamecube version of Resident Evil 4 the cut scenes were rendered in-game and as such if you unlocked and equiped a new costume your characters would be rendered wearing that costume during cut scenes. However the PlayStation 2, having a weaker graphics chip, couldn't render the cut scenes and they had to be pre-recorded which meant that your character was always shown wearing the standard costume during cut scenes.

Xenoblade Chronicles deliberately uses low resolution textures to enable the use of a massive draw distance and playing area, generally if you can see it you can walk to it. It also renders the cut scenes in-game which means that changes to your characters equipment are always accurately represented. I have come across people asking why wasn't this game released on other platforms, with better graphical capabilities, the short answer to which is that it is a second party Nintendo game. I would also like to ask the question back of why should it matter? The graphics clearly represent and communicate what is going on, and the game runs smoothly.

Ultimately I think that people have become too obsessed with having realistic graphics and have forgotten how important graphical direction is. Given the choice of high resolution textures, 'pop-up', and slow down vs low resolution textures, large draw distances, and a smooth frame rate I'm going to side with the latter. Maybe it's because I started gaming in the 8-bit era that I don't mind unrealistic graphics, but I honestly don't think people should be making their purchasing decisions purely on what looks prettiest.

The Confines of Infinite Design Space

It has now become the norm for board and card games to have expansions. Now the question is how do you leave space for an expansion in the original game design, and can you run out of design space? Living and collectable card games are the easiest to see the expansion mindset in as they are designed from the beginning to have many expansions, and often it is quite easy to see the direction such expansions might take. Board games on the other hand are not always so obvious as the base set is confined and balanced and the additional sets need to fit in with this, which is why they often introduce extra board sections as these enable new rules to exist in a relative vacuum away from the original game. However, I believe that the biggest constraint on any expansion is not having to fit in with the rules of the original, but rather is maintaining the flavour of the game.

To illustrate this I'm going to use Magic the Gathering as even after almost twenty years new rules, expansions, and card are still being produced. Most Magic players have a rough idea of what mana cost a card should have and what standard abilities belong in each colour, meaning that they have a pretty good idea of the basic magic design space. This is useful because as long as the new expansion is based on these ideas, with a few new rules thrown in, it will feel familiar to most players. What makes design interesting is having to fit a story to each expansion. If I were to make a green common card that cost 2 mana for a 2/2 with a basic ability as far as power level goes there would be no problem. However, if I called that card Unstoppable Swamp Monster it wouldn't make sense, because something like that should be bigger.

The above two cards in my opinion are fine as far as mana cost to card power, but wrong in terms of card flavour. The Segovian Leviathan has been 'fixed' by making Segovia a very small plane, and explaining that those whales are actually the size of goldfish, as for the cat I guess that it is the green glowing eyes that make it tougher than a normal human.

Another consideration is that your new abilities mustn't end up being silly. If we consider First Strike (This creature deals combat damage before creatures without first strike) we can immediately see space for a new rule called Last Strike (This creature deals combat damage after creatures without last strike). It could even fit as far as game flavour goes, with last strike being on a wall or a slow moving creature like a golem or corpse.

Once this ability is introduced another one immediately becomes obvious, Triple Strike (This creature deals first strike, regular and last strike combat damage). The ability to deal regular and last strike damage can also be introduced as can the ability to deal first and last strike combat damage. From this we see that with very little effort we have created up to four new abilities and without much more we can create another, Super Strike (This creature deals combat damage before creatures with First Strike) but why stop there why not have Super Duper Strike or Uber Strike? The answer is that all of these abilities are very similar and while Last Strike could fit flavour wise all the extra first to deal combat damage abilities are much more difficult to justify. However, a similar effect can be achieved without the need to design new abilities.

The above cards provide mechanics which are close to First and Last Strike without the need to introduce new keywords or rules.

What I hope I have illustrated is that the challenge with making a good expansion is not finding new rules and ways for people to play but rather in keeping the themes and flavour of the game intact. Designers also need to be wary that the story and source material don't cause the rules to bloat and become over complicated. The first edition of the Star Trek CCG suffered from this problem and by the end it was so complicated that only people who had been playing since the start could have any hope of understanding it.

Rage Against the Machine Part 2: Son of Rage

I've recently started playing Star Trek Online (STO) which might sound a little odd as only three weeks ago I was saying how as a general rule I dislike online multiplayer and MMO style games. But this game has two things going for it, the first being I'm a huge Star Trek fan and the second is that this is a very non-multiplayer MMO.

The main quest line of STO seems tailored for a single player, at least as far as I've gotten (I'm only in season 2), and my attempt at playing with a second player complicated the session as we were different levels and the auto scaling can only do so much to fix this. Things got worse when they had to go and the game didn't immediately drop the enemy levels back down.

I have played in some PvE and PvP arenas with mixed results. The PvE arena I played today, just kept on going, and quite a few players dropped early. There is also a balance issue in that a single player, seperated from the group, can not stay alive for very long and the enemies respawn behind the party, so if you die and get sent back to the original respawn point then you can't just run to reach the main group as the way is now lined with enemies and you can't kill them on your own.

One thing that I really like about STO is the free-to-play model they have adopted. Unlike Everquest II, which I could only bring myself to play for a week, where the free-to-play model involved giving you a devalued game experience and then telling you how much you were missing out on through regular pop-up windows a player in STO can do everything and obtain every item without ever spending a dollar. This is achieved through the implementation of four currency systems: energy points, the most basic currency and used in the exchange (auction house); dilithium, currency used with special vendors which is gained by doing daily quests; gold pressed latinum, again used with special vendors and is obtained by spending energy credits to play dabo; and finally C-points, these are the premium currency and are used to unlock extra features. What makes things work is that dilithium can be exchanged for C-points in the dilithium exchange with players able to obtain about 40 C-points worth each day (equivalent to $0.40). This means that players who are willing to put in the time and effort can get access to the same game as players who are wiling to simply pay-to-play.

Would I recommend STO? Well the answer is yes, but only if you are a Star Trek fan, the game isn't good enough to provide a satisfying play experience to a non-fan. If you are a fan and do want to play I recommend checking out the player authored quests as some of them are better than the actual main plot line.

Lies and Cheats

At board gaming last night, after a quick game of Betrayal at House on the Hill, we proceeded to play the games Ca$h 'n Gun$ and The Resistance for the rest of the evening. Both of these games involve a large amount of social interaction as well as bluffing, with the former involving gangsters dividing up the loot by pointing guns at each other, while the latter is similar to Werewolf (also often called Mafia) but without the problem of players being eliminated.

In Ca$h and Gun$ a group of gangsters are dividing up their ill gotten gains and in order to decide who gets what they pull out their guns and start pointing them at each other, creating a bit of a Mexican stand-off. The twist is that each gangster can only fire their gun in three of the eight round, so most of the time it is a bluff, but guess wrong and you end up getting shot. Players who lose their nerve can dive under a table, in which case they neither shoot nor get shot, but are fined $5000 for being a coward. The game is all about bluffing, also when a player dives under a table the bullets in the guns that were pointing at them (live or blank) are discarded without the other player learning what type they were, so you can not just card count.

The Resistance has two teams, the resistance and the spies, who are each trying to pass or fail missions respectively. Each round the 'team leader' will suggest a team to send on the mission, with the other players getting to vote for or against the selected team. If failed the team leader is replaced and a new squad is put forward. If the vote passes the players that are sent on the mission are given two cards, one representing a pass and the other a fail, they then secretly put the mission cards in the middle, they are shuffled, and then revealed. The mission then succeeds or fails based on the types and numbers of cards played. The game is for the resistance members to work out who the spies are so that they can stop them from going on and sabotaging missions. In addition if the team suggested by the team leader is voted down five times in a row then the spies win. This game feels a lot like Werewolf but without players being eliminated it gets around the problem of some people having to sit out and watch for an hour or so.

Personally I enjoy these kinds of games as they give you chance to lie, cheat, and bluff your way to victory, while trying to spot others who are doing the same. The comment was made by someone that they prefer 'deeper games' but I think the games are what you make of them, and you can choose to play them as light hearted or seriously as you want, and getting to make or imagine you own narrative is always good value!

Value Gaming

When Heavenly Sword was released in 2007 it received a lot of criticism for its short campaign length, clocking in at around six hours, as it had broken the unwritten rule that a full price game had to contain at least ten hours of gameplay to make the expenditure worth while.

If you look into my playtime for Wii games the top two games are Monster Hunter Tri and Super Smash Brothers Brawl, both with over 100 hours of playtime. However, if you were to ask me what game gave me the best 'value for money' the answer would be Marvel Ultimate Alliance. I picked up a copy cheap (about 1/5th recommended retail) from a department store that was clearing out their video game stock and then after playing single player for about an hour decided it was the kind of game that you needed friends around to play. So I invited half a dozen friends over and over the course of a weekend we played through the regular game, and about half of the 'hard mode' campaign, with people subbing in as others had to go to work or sport.

Does this make Marvel Ultimate Alliance the best game on Wii? Well no, not by a long shot. While the weekend was fun I haven't played the game since and there were plenty of design flaws, it was the social aspect that made the weekend enjoyable. As a general rule I think the 'games must be X long to justify price' thinking is wrong. If the game has a good story and is fun it doesn't matter if it is only half a dozen hours long because I am likely to replay it. Also, playing through filler and fluff feels like you are playing through filler and fluff.

Games like Call of Duty and Battlefield now have short campaigns as standard with the 'value' coming from online play. Although complaints are starting to be levelled at these games, not for being to short but rather for not having enough new content. Zack and Wiki, in my opinion, is one of the best games on Wii, even if no one else bought a copy, and it takes less than ten hours to finish, although you can extend your playtime by replaying levels to get a better score. I do understand the feeling of 'if I can only afford a few games then they had better last me', but ultimately there are enough ways to get a game for less than full retail (sales, rentals, second hand, or borrow from a friend) that for me I would rather have a quality experience than a long one; after all it take eight hours of uninterrupted play to get just a single point in Desert Bus.

Please Think of the Children

I've recently started teaching KS3 maths (pupils aged 11 - 14) and I must say I'm not a fan of the way probability is taught. For example one practice question is "Alice flips a coin 100 times. How many times would you expect her to get a head?" with the possible answers being 50, 25, or 100. My objection to this is that without the words 'on average' in the question I have no expectation for the result of her trial. The problem can be illustrated without even doing much maths because in order for exactly 50 heads and 50 tails the after the second to last flip their must either be 49 heads or 49 tails and the probability that the next coin flip brings us up to exactly 50 is a half. Doing the maths we find that there is only a 7.96% chance that Alice will actually record 50 heads.

Another question "John and Julie are both strong badminton players. Is it more probable that Julie will beat John in four games out of seven or five games out of nine?" First we must assume that by saying both are strong players that there is a 50:50 chance each will win. When I first saw this question my gut reaction was to say 5 out of 9 because it is closer to the 50:50 average. However, when we do the maths we find that Julie will win 4 out of 7 games 27.3% of the time and 5 out of 9 games only 24.6% of the time.

The question I had the biggest dislike for was "Helen and Christine play noughts and crosses 20 times. Helen wins 12 of the games. Estimate the probability that Christine will win the next game." My objection is not that the sample size isn't large enough to make the estimate from, but rather that they chose the game noughts and crosses, which as I have explained in an earlier entry should always result in a draw, and I would hope that after 20 games the players would have worked this out, so my estimate for winning the next game is 0. This assuming that the dataset is large enough shows up again in the following question "2 netball teams played 10 games. Team A won 2, B won 5 and 3 were draws. If they played 20 games, how many might A win?" With the options being 2, 4, or 10. Ignoring the fact that draws in netball are very rare, and also the lack of information about the victory margins, it is possible for all three of those options to occur, team A might win 2, or 4, or 10 of the next 20 games but answer that gets you the tick is 4 because if they won 2 out of 10 they might win 4 out of 20.

I realise that this post has been a bit different to usual but teaching this maths course has helped me to gain a better understanding of why some people struggle so much with playing risk/reward style games. So please think of the children and teach maths better, otherwise they won't grow up to be world class game players!