I Love Dragon Quest game + game mechanics analysis

This game is really hilarious.

The premise is that there is this guy who wants to set a record for the longest ever Dragon Quest play and you are supposed to irritate the hell outta him so that he will stop play.

Takes a while to load though... but its worth it =P

I never could get him more than mildly irritated tho but it was fun. Clicking on the same things when you replay can yield different results. And its funny how he has this hot ang mo girlfriend. Haha.

[Edited: I got him to rampage in his green hat! Hurrah! but that's not the most yet...]

[Edited again: Yatta! I got him to give up! (Winning combi: Call his mum, make him dance, pull him off to bed) I think the rampaging in green hat ending was funnier tho =P]

[Geek part: I think I've figured out some of the mechanics of the game. Each action is given a certain number of points. You get assigned either the failure, green hat rampage or win ending depending on the number of points you accumulate throughout the three stages.

Now while the actions seem random, they aren't really. You see since the game was made in Flash, there are 2 ways to "randomize" the actions. One way is by using a random number and the second is to use keyframes to determine which action to use depending on the timing of the click. It turns out the makers used the easier keyframe method.

This hypothesis can be tested by using the appearance of the star as a time reference. If you click on a spot whenever the star appears, the same action will always occur. Eg: Clicking on the phone in Stage 1 when the star appears will ALWAYS make his mother call. Clicking on the action figures in Stage 3 when the star appears will ALWAYS make him so angry that he will stomp on his action figures...

Hence, we can use this timing method to predict what actions will occur depending on when we click the spots. In conclusion, if I were to do a similar game, I would use the random number method instead, since the effects would be less predictable. In addition, I would only assign one sequence of actions as the winning condition. This would make the game much more challenging but this method would make it a more viable situation to offer the winner of the game a prize.]

Tomb of Doom - A Plasticine Adventure

A few days ago, I released by latest game online.

Tomb of Doom

It's billed as the first plastercine point n click online Flash game ever. I know Neverhood used the same concept, but it wasn't put online =P Special measures have to be done to make a game playable online, like to optimize the filesize so that it wil be small enough to download quickly. This is a huge problem with plastercine games due the huge amt of images used. Hurray me for working around that limitation =D

I actually made it as a project for another module but got offered a sponsorship deal for it. They offered to sponsor my future games as well =D

Didn't really get to consciously apply much of the concepts learnt in NM3216, but I did try to apply the concept of flow though. I conceptually separated the game into 3 big puzzles. Each big puzzle is made up of small puzzles. But I made it in the way that the first puzzle is pretty easy and requires less exploring while the final puzzle requires more walking around and is more complex. So through solving the first simple puzzle, the player will be able to familiarize with the interface and with how things work and from then on be ready to tackle more difficult challenges.

I know academics look down on point and click adventure games but I keep making them bcos there's a huge online market for them. As long as I keep making them, sponsors will keep paying me. It's the whole consumer culture scene that's to blame. Haha.

Maybe the point is that it all comes down to meaningful play. Bcos these people online can't get enough of point and click adventure games (for some reason), they find their own meaningful play in these games even though others may not.

Quoting political economists of media:
"Does consumer culture serve the interests of capitalists only or was it also what the 'masses' wanted?"

*shrugz* As long as the moola comes in, I'm happy.

With this, I think I've discovered a viable business venture.

There is zero start up cost, no risk for me and no opportunity cost since I enjoy making the games. Normally online content makers need to worry about server costs and where to host their work. I've found it much easier to just tell people, "I'll let you host my game on your server if you pay me." I also don't need to worry with marketing my games to the public because these will all be settled by the sponsor. This marketing will in turn attract more sponsors... and round and round it goes =)

This is actually a win-win situation in that the sponsor will be able to generate traffic to his site via my games and will get revenue through ads. It is likely that he will earn twice the amount he pays me, or even more... and the best thing is that the consumers do not even have to pay a cent!

Around 1 week's work bags me around $1000. So if I churn out a game each week, I'll earn like $4000 a month. Sounds not bad, eh?

Of course there are other factors to consider like schoolwork and stuff... so it's unlikely I'll be doing 4 games a month... but it's an idea that sounds great on paper.

Of course, I expect this bubble to burst eventually like the DotCom thingie. But by then, I'll probably move on to other things...

Videogames and violence

I was rereading Kurt Squire's Cultural Framing of Computer/Video Games when I came across the part regarding the experiments conducted on players to test the relationship between videogames and violence. I shaln't go into detail but he says that these experiments are not very effective in that the experiments do not accurately portray the transferance of the effects of the violence in games in real life.

Anyway, I thought of a good experiment that would test the direct tranfer of violence in videogames to real life.

Say you have 2 subjects. Let one play Doom for one hour and the other play Myst. Now instead of using noise blasts, we give them both a gun each and tell them that only one can leave the room alive. We have to pressure them until one subject fires the gun at the other subject.

My hypothesis is that the subject who played Doom will more likely fire the gun first under extreme pressure due to the desensitizing of violence, and also the familiarity of the kill or be killed scenario.

Of course, this experiment would be unethical to conduct. One alternative would be to load both guns with blanks but tell the subjects that they are using real bullets. However, both subjects would likely come out of the experiment with a mental breakdown.

How unfortunate =P

Discussion Questions 9

Think back to the very start of the semester, when we talked about the concept of meaningful play, which occurs when "the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game" (from Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play). When the game is an alternate reality game such as The Beast, where the game does not have any explicitly declared actions and outcomes, and in some cases does not even acknowledge its own existence, is it possible for there to be meaningful play?

Meaningful play is dependent on the player. The player creates meaning in the play. If there can meaningful play in Calvinball, then yes, there can meaningful play in alternate reality games.

Take The Beast for example, even though its tells people that it is not a game, the self-proclaimed players still felt that it was a game and found their own meaning in it. They formed their own actions, deducted their own outcomes and created their own goals.

Just side tracking, but I think that even if a game does has explicitly declared actions and outcomes, there might not necessarily be meaningful play.
Eg: Monopoly + I-don't-want-to-play-stupid-board-games-I-want-to-play-computer-games kid = no meaningful play

Reiterating my previous point, it is the player that creates meaning in the play.


Does this type of "game" require us to rethink our definition of games?

What's our definition of a game?

Ah yes... "a voluntary interactive activity, in which one or more players follow rules that constrain their behavior, enacting an artificial conflict that ends in a quantifiable outcome." (I had to peek at my old blog entry.. how do u expect someone to memorize that whole chunk! Luckily its an open book exam yar? Haha.)

-voluntary
-artificial
-interactive
-players, experiential
-rules
-goals
-conflict
-quantifiable outcome

Just like I did with Calvinball, let me put an alternate reality game like The Beast against these criteria...

-Voluntary: Check. The players are self-proclaimed. No one forced them to become players.

-Artificial: Check. The lines are blurred but the conflicts are made up so it is artificial. (The killing wasn't real.) 9/11 isn't a game because it is not artificial... but that doesn't stop people from finding meaningful play in it, does it? Some people might think of tracking and killing "terrorists" as a game, don't u think? Find-Osama Game was quite popular... but got forgotten amist the excitement caused by the Find-the-WMD Game and Blame-Saddam Game.

-Interactive: Check. The creators of the Beast had to come up with more puzzles because the "players" solved them too fast right? Isn't that a reaction based on player input? There is also the direct outcome of user action. Player solves puzzle = progress to next puzzle. So I think there is interaction albiet in a different/ more subtle way.

-Players, experiential: Check. There are players. Self-professed players... so if being self-professed players is good enough for them, it is good enough for me =) They experience solving the puzzles so yes, it is experiential.

-Rules: Check. There weren't any explicit rules but there were cultural and social rules that the players followed. Eg: The Don't Point-your-gun-at-people-and-threaten-to-blow-their-heads-of-if-one-more-person-tells-you-that-this-is-not-a-game rule.

-Goals: Check. The players came up with their own goals. Short term goal- to solve the puzzles. Long term goal - to find out what this is all about.

-Conflict: Check. Conflict between the creators of the game and the players. Speed of creating puzzles vs speed of solving puzzles.

-Quantifiable outcome: Fuzzy. There wasn't an explicit end so the players didn't know when the game ended. But maybe some took the "This is not a game" from the trailer as a confirmation that it was indeed a game. And thus got their quantifiable outcome from there.

In conclusion, while alternate reality games are very different from our conventional games, they can actually still fit into our original definition of games if we look at them from different points of views.

Discussion Questions 8

1) Creating mods (modifications) to existing games is a common practice, not just for computer games, but for any form of games. Does this imply that any game can be considered a game system? Why/why not?

Any game can be considered a game system because any game can be modified to make it different. However how different you can make it depends on the flexibilty of the game system... and this relates to the specificity of the game.

For example, in Halflife, you can enable the noclip mode and you can have a totally different game where you can fly around. But there are still many rules that you are still contrained with.

If you go to a deeper level (less specificity) and modify the game engine, you can come up with something quite different in terms of gameplay like Counterstrike. You can do this because at a deep level with less specificity, there is more flexibility.

If Halflife is to Blackjack, the Halflife game engine is to a deck of cards. (Am I sidetracking again?)

For a non-digital example, you can just remove the rule of "no-beating-up-the-other-players" and you can see a whole new ball game (the difference can be witnessed by comparing NBA games with the unofficial basketball games that are being played in certain districts)

Anyway, the point is this: Any game can be considered a game system because any game can be modified provided you can find something to modify that has not been tied down by its specificity.


2) Consider a game which you feel could be successfully modified. How could this game be generalized into a game system?

Warcraft 3 can be successfully modified. By changing the objectives and certain variables, new gametypes have emerged from the basic Warcraft 3 free-for-fall base fights. There are currently countless successful Warcraft 3 mods that play very differently from the original game.

How much of the unique character/flavour of the game can be retained?

The deepest the modders could go would be the game engine level so most of the visual feel of the game has to be retained.

How generic can you make the game system? How easy will it be to create new, unique games from the game system?

How generic a game system is or how many possibilities a game system has really depends on the modder himself. If you understand the game system well enough, you can use it to make just about anything you wish... (even though sometimes these things could be done much easier elsewhere. eg: you could use the Warcraft 3 game engine to do a cardgame by using different characters represent different cards. We can use the fog of war to simulate turned down cards. Cards that are not supposed to be revealed can be hidden in the fog of war. Of course not all cardgames can be played using this system but simple ones can...

This is possible but it is terribly stupid and a complete waste of time to make.)


3) Describe one new game designed on top of the game system you proposed in question 2.

I peeked at some other people's blogs and some wrote about how RTS games can never become FPS games. That isn't exactly true. For Warcraft 3, the game engine uses 3D objects. If you can view the game system from that level, you can see that this means the game engine can create anything 3D. Therefore a FPS could actually be possibly using the Warcraft 3 game engine. How?

You give the player only one Dwarfen Gunman (forgot his real name) unit. We mod the engine so that the camera goes so low that it is at the level of the gunman's height, then we point the camera almost parallel to the horizon. What we have here is a camera view of what the unit will see.

Now we fix the camera so that it always points in the direction that the unit is facing and that the origin of the camera is always positioned at the head of the unit. We've got ourself a first person thingie!

That's all the changes we need to be made to the game. The other parts of this mod can be implemented using the existing interface within Warcraft 3 itself!

By rightclicking on the minimap, we can move the unit around. First person walker!

By using the icons to switch between attack move, normal move, guard mode or stop mode, we can control when the unit will shoot. It's not exactly like Doom but at least we can use this method to control his shooting to a certain extent =P

Hurrah! First Person Shooter in Warcraft 3 engine! Is this possible? I haven't tried it but it sounds theoratically viable =D

Discussion Questions 7

1) Try to find an example of a digital game which truly takes advantage of the traits of the medium, and could not be successfully implemented in a non-digital form. In particular, think about the traits of digital/computer games as listed by Crawford. Describe the game, and identify the core gameplay mechanic. What is it about the core mechanic that makes the game truly a digital game?

I think most RTS games are examples of games that can only be done effectively in the digital medium. I shall just take an arbitary RTS title like the C&C series.

Firstly, RTS games allow you to control tens or hundreds of units with a click of a mouse button. This rides on the ability of the computer to keep track and process of large amounts of data very quickly. Compared to a tabletop strategy game, the digital version will be able to run faster. One round in Warhammer might take hours while a similar round of the same complexity can be done in mere seconds digitally. Furthermore, tabletop versions have to use dumb-downed rules compared to digital strategy games as it will take a lot of brain power if you want to calculate complex maths formulas for each tabletop strategy game unit.

The processing speed of the computer also allows RTS games to run in realtime while tabletop games are forced to be turn-based.

Secondly, say for example that you are a general of a real army. In order to command hundreds of troops, you will be required to go through a chain of command and it might take a matter of days to move an army from a location to another. Even in tabletop gaming, moving hundreds of units might take hours! In the digital version, the sending of commands and movement of troops is almost instantaneous. Time can compressed in digital games.

Thirdly, the networking aspect of digital games allows you to play matches against poeple in other countries. You can't do this offline... unless it's play by mail chess... but that'll take so long that the game will become draggy.

The plasticity of RTS games also allow games and scenario to be setup very quickly. The game is able to change scenarios or locales very quickly. In tabletop Warhammer, the setting up of the scenario terrain takes a long time. In real world games, setting up and taking down of props and terrain features require time.

I guess the main advantage of digital games is that they are able to perform operations much faster and more efficiently than their real world counterparts due to the ability to perform complex calculations faster than any human can.


2) The third and final assignment is to design a digital game. Blog about your initial ideas for the assignment, ready for discussion in the workshop this week.

-a game that connects people -> networking aspect of digital games
-a game that makes use of complex calculations -> processing speed of digital games
-a game that requires the processor to keep track of a lot of stats -> ability of digital games to process large amounts of data
-a game that can map realworld locations to a virtual world
-including some of the ideas from my previous entries...