Patreon Newsletter - April 2016 (Patreon)

Hello! I'm a bit early, but I wanted to stagger these updates a bit so I don't destroy your inbox at the end of every month. I'm also going to split the reading list off into its own post, on its own day, so this stops being so long.

Anyway, I hit loads of milestones this month - 400 patrons, $1,000 in pledges, 50,000 YouTube subscribers. It's nutso - thank you for all the support. Here's what I've been up to this month…

Post Script

How (and why) Spelunky makes its own levels

I loved everything about Derek Yu's book (I quoted it in two videos this month!), but the thing I found most fascinating was the description of his super smart level generation script.

I wanted to find a way to explain it in video form, and settled on using pixel art to match Spelunky Classic. I also found an awesome mod that let me zoom the camera out take screenshots of the entire stage.

That whole section was a pain in the butt to make, btw. I really need to figure out a smarter way to produce illustrative graphics because the whole thing took like 10 hours.

Anyway - it was important that the video wasn't just about the algorithm (I get the feeling that some people reckon GMT is specifically for game designers, when that's really not my aim) so I made sure to add plenty of my own thoughts on why the random levels add to the game's core appeal.

Should Dark Souls Have an Easy Mode?

You know, this was a weird one for me. My natural instinct is for games to provide accessibility and assistance whenever the player wants it - but the more I thought about it, the harder I found it to envision an easy mode in Dark Souls.

But really, while the title might sound like its answering one specific question, the video is more about using mechanics to encourage specific experiences, and letting the player set their own difficulty in the game itself. Dark Souls is just there to get the conversation going.

A point I wish I made in the video is that there are other games I really want to play but I just can't: horror games. Can't play Soma or Alien Isolation or Amnesia, and no amount of Git Less Scared is going to help me approach them. But I'm not going to ask Frictional or Creative Assembly to add in a “No Scares Mode”.

Anyway, the biggest issue with this video was that I'm so bad at these games, I only have footage of the first few hours of Bloodborne, Dark Souls, and Dark Souls 3. But no worries - that just helps me avoid spoilers. I've actually kept playing DS3 since finishing the video though and, man, what a game.

I might follow this up at some point to highlight the comments I've received. There are interesting counter arguments and the stuff about disability is very insightful. So, I dunno, watch this space.

Sneak Peek

I've been thinking a lot about the way video game controllers limit design. Early games, in the arcades, had bespoke controls for each game (think Marble Madness' trackball or Robotron's twin sticks) - but consoles needed universal controllers for every single game (outside of weird peripherals).

So we ended up with stuff like the NES pad which is perfect for games like Mario, but made stuff like Robotron impossible and Marble Madness kinda clunky. Straightaway we see how controllers limit design - and it's still going on today, no matter how many buttons and shoulders and sticks the DualShock 4 has.

Part of it is that every control system must be taught - the controller is an oblique and abstract interface where you press random digital buttons to unleash organic moves on screen, so each game has to start by telling you what the B button does and what the shoulder button does.

This leads to two things: games that fit the status quo (shooters, mainly) are easier to make and explain. And also that video games must focus on only one or two interactions in the game or you'd have to flash up a tutorial every time the player wants to do something new. That's why we get incredibly granular mechanical control over shooting in Call of Duty, and then settle for “press X to pay respects”.

There are games that do cool stuff with the controller - Skate's stick-twisting tricks, Katamari Damacy's ball-rolling hi jinx, Brothers' twin-stick drama, and Grow Home's shoulder button grabs - but it's clear that certain games just wouldn't really work on a traditional pad (imagine playing Trauma Center or Cooking Mama with an analogue stick - it would be impossibly clunky or a series of QTEs).

Controllers that offer less abstract input - touch screens on the DS and iPhone, motion controls on the Wii and, even better, in VR - can offer more diverse experiences because the player just taps or swipes or swings or grabs what they want, leading to games like Trauma Center, The Room, Wii Sports, and Giant Cop (a VR game I played this month about plucking tiny criminals off the street and throwing them in the police station's bin-like roof).

Uh, yeah. So any thoughts or ideas on that subject would be most welcome! I'm still rolling it around my brain like a Katamari ball.

Also, I'm still thinking about this game design club thing. I'll do a post on that soon. 

Mark's Month

I helped out at a game jam! A university in London invited me to come offer advice and support to game design students during a two day game jam, and it was a blast.

I spent most of my time with one group that made a tabletop game (I didn't have much to offer those churning through Unity code) where everyone is supposed to be donating their resource cards (like bricks, wheat, and sheep), so the whole group can work together to achieve some wider goal (build a bridge or repair the town hall, say).

But, you also have personal goals and so if the current group project needs the same resource as your personal project, you might want to lie about what resource you're giving.

In each round you take a few cards from your hand and say you're giving the current needed resource to the pot (an empty box of tea bags with a hole cut in the side), like “I give 2 wood”, and all other players must say “Agreed” before you put the cards in. Or, they can call bullshit - at which point, if you were caught lying you must give that player one of your cards at random.

Very quickly, the game had a great dynamic. You might want to sacrifice a card you really need to help build the project (there are rewards and penalties for the whole group if the goal is met or failed), or to throw off someone who thinks you might be lying. You start to read the players, and figure out what resources they're secretly stashing. And there's a great moment of tension and hilarity when you hover the card near the box, and put on your best poker face as you wait for everyone to say “agreed”.

(The name of the game, by the way, is aGreed. Get it?).

Anyway! It was fascinating to see the game come together, and how constant play testing revealed new and interesting things. If every time we played, the group goal was never being hit, how could we encourage players to work against their own interest and in favour of the town? And how simple changes, like how many cards you draw or how many cards you have in your hand, would dramatically change things.

It was so awesome to then see other students from the university come play the game, and watch them laugh and scheme and bluff - it was a brilliant moment for the group who made the game. I definitely want to get involved in game jams again, in some fashion.

I also went to Rezzed. I got to the PlayStation VR game London Heist Getaway, where you're the passenger in a white van, bombing down the motorway, as you shoot pursuers on motorbikes. I dropped my uzi at one point, opened the door and leaned out to shoot a biker behind us, twisted the radio dials, opened the glove box, and threw milkshake cups put the window. It was terrific.

Black and White Bushido is a single-screen multiplayer game ala Towerfall, but the screen is split into areas of black and white where the black and white samurai can hide by standing still. This leads to great moments of ambush and surprise, especially as the colours shift around every few moments so you can't stay still for long. I really enjoyed playing this with the devs and some gamers.

I also loved The World is Flat, which is a game about pinpointing countries on a map. Which doesn't sound so special until you see that it was played with a giant yoga ball that you spin around like mad to move the on-screen globe. Manic fun.

Back at home I played a crap-ton of Dark Souls 3, I got immersed in Hyper Light Drifter, and I never want to play Disney Crossy Road again.

I've also been playing the Mirror's a Edge 2 beta. Man, what a shame that a taut, linear, sharply made game must be turned into yet another open world with collectables, and upgrade free, and loads and loads of side missions. That being said I did see the potential for an open world parkour game in one mission where I had to escape a helicopter by running and hiding in any direction I liked. That felt really good and gave me complete control over where I want to go.

But in missions where you have a specific place you need to go, the weird level design - which features preset routes, big obstacles, lots of white space, and far-apart buildings that are connected by a handful of walkways - seems to usher you into these specific paths and it doesn't feel as open as, say, Dying Light or Crackdown.

I'll come back to it when the final game is out, though.

Cheers!

Mark