Random number gameplay

All praise the random number gods...right?

Games like Hearthstone are very much dependent on random factors. While some passionately argue that skill at such games trumps the effects of luck, and that players should specifically tailor their play around the randomness of card draw. The question then becomes "how do you do that?"

The key is that there are three answers that players have come up with for this question. The first is to fill your card deck with cheap aggressive cards to take control of the game and punish your opponent for not playing fast enough - the aggro decks. Insert your curses about face hunter here, since this also has the side effect of making the randomness work against your opponent by limiting the turns he has to draw answers.

The second approach is fill your deck with strong card draw tools that allow you to get whatever cards you need, regardless of what cards you start with. This kind of thing has been met by heavy nerfs (hi there, miracle rogue), so clearly it's frowned on. The third is to basically use removal and control cards to extend the game as long as possible, so that card draw will eventually even out over the course of a whole game. Control decks are here for you.

So, to take a step back from Hearthstone, this is actually a sign of player behavior when faced with random factors. Given everything else, the logical conclusion is that players gravitate towards whatever playstyle mitigates the randomness of RNG-based obstacles.

I'm no less guilty of this myself. It's why I play Amber so much in Armello - my entire strategy is about mitigating the randomness of perils in order to move around the board that much more easily. Other people I see run the Dig amulet when they want Spirit Stones. And there are fewer and fewer players trying for kingslayer victories...because it's too random for them.

The fact is that random factors in gameplay exist, at least in the minds of many players, just so they can figure out ways around them. And when they can't, outrage erupts, leading to arguments over what is the "right" amount of randomness.

I think that game designers need to account for this in the future. People don't mind randomness; what they dislike is randomness controlling the outcome, invalidating the player's own skill and choice. If faced with a random factor, they'll take whatever option weighs the odds in their favor. And me, I can't blame them. Video games are about empowering audience participation, and gamers are the audience.

So roll the dice if you want, but you may want to pick a game where you can add a bonus to your dice roll. Because when all's said and done, you may not find the dependency on luck to be all that enjoyable.

The great framerate debate

Thirty? Or sixty?

There is a huge debate over this, with many people defending games that are being locked to thirty frames per second as not a bad thing. Some call it cinematic, some call it a stylistic choice...and some call it a really dumb idea. So...what do we do?

The answer, of course, is that we turn to SCIENCE.

Each human eye is different, and every person sees reality at a different frame rate. Older people tend to see things at a lower framerate, but that's not a hard-coded rule, just a strong tendency. On average, a human being can distinguish around 45 to 50 frames per second, with people who have gotten specialty training going up to insane numbers like in excess of 200 frames recognizable.

So, it does seem that sixty frames per second would be beyond the average human's ability to perceive, but thirty frames would be too little. Not exactly; a person who has plenty of experience with FPS games and the like probably has greater twitch reflexes than the average Joe - and twitch reflexes are dependent on seeing precise fractions of a second in which to press a button.

In that sense, increased framerate is beneficial for games dependent on quick reactions to sudden events. The FPS genre is one of them, and quite a few other genres reach that level in top competitive play (RTS games like Starcraft II come to mind). Sixty might not even be enough in that case.

For the rest, 30 FPS is a little slow. It's not required for us to see units move in a turn-based game at a higher framerate, but it sure would look better and less jerky. I'd prefer it if games aimed for a 48 FPS number, which would fit nicely in with average human vision. And games like that are still necessary; there are always going to be people who have motion sickness, and we don't want to leave them completely out of the fun, do we?

So there you have it; neither is a precise magic number, but instead it's more about catering to broad groups. Sixty ain't bad, but we can do better. And thirty isn't good, but it's tolerable, I suppose. (And anything is better than games that dip into single digit FPS numbers, let me tell you. Ugh...)

Movies and video games, oh my

Why do video game movies keep failing? Okay, maybe some of them don't fail as such, but there hasn't been one yet that has been an all-out blockbuster? It's a question that many many many people have asked, and so, since it's something I wonder as well, I'd like to take a stab at answering it.

First, I'd like to point out that by video game movies, I mean movies ostensibly based off the plot of video games. (Whether or not they actually stick to this plot is not a factor). So no, I am not going to include Wreck-It Ralph in this blog post. (Which is unfortunate, because I liked Wreck-It Ralph it.) I'm also going to focus on Western films - I know Japan has its own adaptation, but I'm not familiar with them enough to cover them.

To travel back to the early ones like Street Fighter and Super Mario Bros., back then video games didn't really have much in the way of plot, so the writers were having to invent it wholesale or the game companies were trying to dictate what had to be done without understanding the different nature of film. The results were cheesy at best and dreadful at worst; but those early movies were just that, early, and probably couldn't be taken too seriously.

It's a shame that critics did. During the 90s, video games were still very much a niche hobby, and not quite in mainstream culture they were now. So film critics back then had no good ground for evaluating these movies, leading to them panning them. Mortal Kombat is a good example; these days, most people recognize it as a solid film that embraced the cheesiness of its premise. A shame that the CGI was so crude back then.

The first major breakthrough was the less-than-stellar Resident Evil film (2002). While not good by any stretch, it rode its action flick status to box office profits and several sequels, which got progressively worse while still continuing to make money. And maybe this was the path forward; aim for the summer action movie crowd, and ignore the rating. Except, of course, the actual people who played the games, who were not too happy.

You see, a video game movie has to walk the fine line of being both a good movie and pleasing the fans of whatever video game its based on. And since a good number of the things that make a video game good are not elements that can really be recreated in film...well, there's part of your problem. Even if it was appealing to game fans, a lot of film critics would bash it for trying to do so. And so, for that matter, would a number of gamers, since some of them (surprise) would understand what makes a film good.

Meanwhile, in Germany, an aspiring film director decided to take advantage of a tax loophole and produce several movies very loosely based on video games. You guessed it...Uwe Boll. Most of his work is low budget flicks designed to exploit popular trends (this also applies to his films covering things other than video games). It was his work that really cemented the idea that video game movies were inherent failures. And that's all I'm going to say about him, because there's nothing else left to say about Boll that's polite.

Between all this, several other companies attempted movies. Some went to theaters, while others opted for the direct-to-video approach. None met with any major commercial or critical success, further driving home the message that video game movies fail.

This brings us to 2016, with a couple of films looking to shake up the status quo. Warcraft comes out in a month, and in December we're getting the Assassin's Creed movie. Can they break through the obstacles I've noted above and appeal to critics, movie fans, and gamers? Well, we'll just have to wait and see. At least if the Angry Birds early reviews (it comes out next week) are any indication, critics are going to be much more favorable...

The end of happiness

Alternate title: why I decided I'm not actually interested in Fallout 4. (Warning: spoilers ahead!)

I liked Fallout 3 (or at least, the vanilla game; Broken Steel I could devote an entire rant to the problems with it). I wanted to love it, but the game did have flaws with its writing as well as a few too many glitches to count it as one of the all-time greats.

With that said, I don't want to play Fallout 4. At all. Why? You would think that I would want to see what improvements had been made, and how the game had done things differently. You see, Bethesda committed what I consider to be one of the worst storytelling gaffes you can make when it comes to video games.

To take a step back, one of the things that differentiates video games from other forms of narrative fiction (except tabletop RPGs)  is that the player gets to take an active role in moving the story forward. The hours aren't just spend reading or watching, but participating in the world the game's creators put in front of you. That kind of engagement is why I love video games, and a key reason why they have become as big and influential as they have.

Not all games are self contained stories, but are part of a larger series. Since this requires multiple purchases, guaranteeing the next game is bought demands more than just the last game being good. It means rewarding the involvement of the players...by having the choices and actions matter. If I want to earn a happy ending, then I can get that happy ending.

The problem with Fallout 4 is that a fair amount of the good work the player did and saw was undone, particularly the nature of the Brotherhood of Steel. It's not as bad as some examples (I'm looking at you, Chrono Cross), but it does mean that the hours I spent on Fallout 3 feel less meaningful, knowing that my character's accomplishments did not amount to much.

Before I get accused of being a blind idealist, there is nothing wrong with a person's efforts amounting to nothing after the fact. It's common enough in real life, as depressing as it sounds. But a video game isn't just a story about the character. On some level, the player character and the player are one and the same. The achievements of one are the achievements of the other, and taking them away from one means taking them away from both.

 Beating a story-driven game isn't just a reward for its own sake; it's about seeing the story through to a satisfactory conclusion. If you take that away from the player, what's left? Why would anyone play it for the story, when their efforts to resolve the story in the way they want it amount to nothing? This is an attitude that does not further the medium, instead limiting what can be done.

If people want me to follow their series of games, it has to mean something to actually play them. And since Bethesda decided my playthrough of Fallout 3 wasn't worth that much in terms of changing the setting for the better, I won't be going back to that setting. Not that it will stop other gamers, but I do want people to consider the value of the stories they're experiencing...and the choices they make while playing through them. So go on, think about it.

Session by session

Let's talk game design.

A lot of developers talk about their games as providing hours of entertainment. While I've already covered the idea of money value, a lot of this seems to be based on an overarching evaluation of the game. (It's marketing, so no surprise there.)

The thing is, most video games aren't played all at once. It can take days, if not weeks, of a player sitting down for a couple of hours after work to get through the newest game. (Obviously, there are anomalies like players who have more free time, or sandbox games that can consume entire months.)

As such, games that logically break themselves down into manageable chunks are logically better. And I don't just mean in the sense of letting the player save whenever. This has to also apply to things like the main story or sidequests. In other words, instilling a feeling of progress for the player for each session of playing the game.

This lends itself to a very episodic structure; any quest or storyline either is a "one-shot" that is easily completed, or is subdivided into multiple parts. Some games have even hard built episodes into their core design (I'm looking at you, Telltale).

On the other hand, this puts certain limits on what stories you can tell, so you're left with a tradeoff of allowing people to have shorter sessions (and make it easier for them to follow along with losing them) versus losing design space to tell a more expansive story. There's no right answer here, as every gamer will have a different schedule and be forced to approach their games differently.

I suppose that variety is the best answer, but this is an industry where the AAA studios tend to be more and more formulaic. I suspect that in terms of games that don't match the "average" playtime of the "average" gamer (even though I find such a thing suspect), you'd have to look towards more indie titles.

This is also the kind of thing that has spurred mobile gaming; you can finish your daily tasks in one game in under ten minutes, and if you have time for more, there's a dozen other games just like it for you to pick. With so many people on the go, games like that were bound to thrive and fill the niche of that bus ride to work.

At the end of the day, the amount of time you can devote to a game is yours, but I would encourage developers to keep that kind of thing in mind. Just who are they making their games for? I suspect there would be a lot more games of higher quality if developers were more precise about pinning down how long a session of their game ought to last, and developing it from there.

All I know is that there is so much gameplay, and not nearly enough time. Even for me.

Looking back: Doom

I'm going to sing the doom song!

Doom is one of the pioneers of the FPS (first person shooter, not frames per second) genre, establishing a lot of the classic conventions. Everything from rocket jumps to the point-blank shotgun (not at all realistic) to multiplayer deathmatches, come from this game or its direct sequel, Doom II.

Created by id Software, Doom was their followup to Wolfenstein 3D, one of the earliest FPS games around. While credited as pushing the envelope of building large three-dimensional environments, Doom actually was less advanced than Ultima Underworld, a first-person RPG which featured full 3D movement - something that id would not introduce until Quake.

 Another factor that distinguished Doom was the graphic violence, at least by 1990s standards. Today, obviously, Doom comes off as quite cartoonish in how it looks, but back then there was basically nothing like it except Mortal Kombat - also quite cartoonish by modern standards. This naturally enraged quite a few groups, who complained about the violence, especially in the wake of the Columbine school shooting. This is nothing new, however, as similar complaints were made about television, film, and rock music in their respective time periods. It was these complaints that eventually led to the formation of the ESRB.

Of course, the decision to make the enemies demonic probably didn't help matters on that front. Again, it wasn't the first thing to come under fire from Christian groups - see Dungeons & Dragons back in the 80s - and it would not be the last. (One wonders why said Christian groups didn't rail against the D&D video games that were being frequently released during the 90s.)

Doom also followed Wolfenstein 3D in popularizing the shareware business model, in which a portion of the game was available free while the rest required paying for it. A toned-down version of the model evolved into the concept of free game demos, which would be included with game magazines (which were much more relevant before the Internet took over), copies of other games, or just given out at events.

The exploratory formula of Doom was copied and expanded on by many of the follow-up games, including Quake and the pioneering Duke Nukem 3D. This period lasted until Half-Life introduced the concept of scripted set pieces, and then the coming of Halo basically took those set pieces and made an entire game around them. With the success of those two titles, the FPS genre moved in a different direction, and the influence of Doom waned.

However, a small but devoted mod community continued to make new maps for Doom and Doom II. A lot of these maps moved the gameplay in a different direction: towards the idea of difficulty through waves of multiple monsters and high difficulty, instead of the more methodical pacing the original games used. As a result, a lot of people misremember what Doom actually was.

It's a shame, really, that so many people lost sight of what one of the truly legendary pioneers of the genre is. And while I'm not the hugest fan of FPS games, Doom will always have a place in my heart for what it...wait, you're leaving already? Please don't leave, there's more demons to toast!

The art of the matter

I considered calling this blog post "Putting the art in heart", but that's was a little too pretentious for my taste. And it doesn't precisely fit the topic

Anyway...there has been a lot of debate over whether video games are art or not. A lot of people have come out insisting that yes, they are art, while others (such as the late Roger Ebert, may he rest in peace) did not view the medium as having artistic merit. So...who is right, and who is wrong?

The answer is a lot more complicated than just "they are art" or "they aren't art".

Art, at the core, is about resonance; it evokes emotions and thought in the person who experiences the art. The best art causes those thoughts and feelings to persist long after the experience has ended. The overall artistic merit of a work can be roughly judged by how many people derived emotions and thought from it. (It's never going to be an exact science, for obvious reasons.)

Any work of fiction, in any medium, can be art, but not every work of fiction in a given medium is art. The main complexity comes from the fact that every video game can invoke one basic emotion; the sense of satisfaction upon completing part or all of it. After all, the challenge of completing a game is much more difficult than reading a book or watching a movie (not that that takes much).

The problem there is that art starts to lose value as a term if it can be applied to an entire medium. As weird as it sounds, something like art is defined as much by what doesn't fall under it as much as what does. We can't just call all video games art and call it a day; the requirements have to stretch much farther.

Which brings us back to the original statement that not all video games are art. So which ones are? There's no easy criterion here. Obviously, every game is artistic to someone, but for that art to reach wide appeal...that's a tricky thing. I do have some answers of my own.

For me, the kinds of emotions and thought are reinforced by the very nature of the medium, the interactivity that video games offer. If a game has limited interactivity - limited gameplay - then it's not doing a very good job as an artistic video game. I could easily get that from a book, song, movie, or comic...but that's not why I play video games. I play them because they are interactive, so using that is part of being the best among the best. It's part of being artistic.

I don't doubt a lot of you will disagree with me. That's fine. But video games are reaching a point where answering these questions is necessary for the medium to grow and develop. And I think we all want that, right?