CTIN 482 Designing Online Multiplayer Game Environments

I really enjoyed Raph's lecture last week. As a production student, I wanted to take this class to see what opportunities existed for me as a STORYTELLER in the world of videogames, but after listening to Raph's lecture, I came away with a whole new understanding of what games really are. I never realized that all games were essentially mathematical simulations of real-life situations. When you strip away all of the graphics, the storylines, and the sounds, what you are left with is the most basic element of any game: the puzzle. The question for me, then, was at what point does the story come into play? Does one think of an interesting story first, then try to graft a puzzle onto that story? Or do we first start with some mathematical puzzle or pattern to solve, then try to write a story around it? I guess it's like writing a screenplay: you don't (at least I personally do not) sit down, decide you want to write a comedy, then try to figure out a story; instead, you usually start with an idea you find interesting, then work on developing it into a story by introducing conflict, characters, a genre, etc. You don't tackle the problem directly; you kind of have to come at it from the side.

I also found Raph's list of "Game Atoms" interesting. Listening to him breakdown the various elements of a "fun" game mechanic reminded me of my screenwriting classes. Like games, in order to really understand what makes a good screenplay, you have to break it down into its most basic elements: the genre, the conflict, the characters, the resolution, etc. Screenplays have certain elements that need to be in place in order for the story to be dramatic or engaging. It was really helpful to get that same kind of breakdown for videogames.

Like Jerry, I also enjoyed Raph’s lecture – it’s always a great experience to have someone from the industry come and talk about what they do, what went right in their projects, and what went wrong. I especially enjoyed learning about a new concept: game atoms. What makes a game “fun” has always been a fuzzy area for me. I usually rely on my gaming “instincts” to come to conclusions about what works and doesn’t work in a game – definitely not a good thing when it comes to explaining my ideas to other people. With that being said, dissecting game play down to its core elements is no small task, and Raph has done an excellent job. Raph’s insight into the core mechanics of games has been very helpful to me as a fledgling game designer. I am looking foreword to using the game atom concepts to analyze and improve my game ideas.

I also appreciated Raph sharing his views on the controversy over the content of games such as Grand Theft Auto. While I don’t completely agree with his opinion on all accounts, his mentioning of the “artist’s responsibility” did give me a lot to think about.
It’s never a bad thing to analyze a subject of controversy from a new angle and I appreciate the opportunity that the discussion has given me.

WoW – The World of Warcraft. When someone claims he can play WoW for eight hours and “get it”, I congratulate him on displaying a level of smugness only achievable by elite gaming gods. I have never played WoW, yet I certainly understand the individuals who invest countless hours to build a high-level character. Whether the objective is either to find the rarest items or to reach the top of the ladder, certainly this experience cannot be understood unless a player invests the time necessary to reach the top. Playing WoW on battle.net can be a single player experience, a pvp experience, or a unilateral experience. But trying to reach the top of the ladder produces multilateral competitiveness, something that only hardcore players have the luxury of enjoying.

I recently played through Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando. I measured Ratchet’s airtime. The time Ratchet takes to complete one normal jump is just about 0.7 sec. I analyzed the game in term of Raph’s checklist for fun. The game contains all nine fun elements and excelled in most of them. Developer Insomniac accomplishes the aspect of “sense of place” and “skill in using ability” by placing the player in environments that produce different challenges. The developers allow the player to use their knowledge and skills obtained by playing previous stages to help overcome the more difficult challenges presented in new levels. Once I learned how to effectively time my jump-attacks, I could fight hard challenges in the battle arena.

In the readings and in his talk, Raph discussed the idea of cognizance. The idea that a person can learn at accelerated levels when immersed in a game environment compared to reading or looking at something is a fascinating concept. However, I need a bit more proof than “Raph said so”. I have only read the online posts, as I do not have the book. No reference is made to outside sources cognizance chapters. Hopefully the book references the source post-script and maybe someone can post the source info if they have the book and the time. I would be very interested in hearing where the information comes from and who is performing these studies. Just knowing that people out there are studying games and exploring how they can benefit the human mind gives me solace in the encroaching world of censorship and game-haters.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Raph’s guest lecture. The gaming concepts discussed were extremely engaging and thoughtful. If Raph were to speak again, I’d be there.

I also enjoyed Raph's lecture. I felt it was refreshing to see someone so honest about his own work. As one of those people highly looking forward to Star Wars: Galaxies...and then watching it crumble, it was definitely fascinating to hear his side of it. I think we as gamers don't quite understand how much management can play into how a game turns out: short time to complete and not enough money can definitely effect a game.

I felt like he gave a very interesting view of the game industry to us. When I read the chapters from his book, I was not that impressed by what he has to say. Having him in person explain these concepts made much more sense and was ultimately more interesting.

His breakdown of Game Atoms I could see definitely coming in handy for my final project. He was able to carefully explain these extremely difficult game concepts to us in a simple matter. I think he has a pretty good grasp of what makes games fun on the human brain response level. I find it interesting that he attacks his ideas from what stimulates the brain, not what necessarily currently sells well.

All and all I really enjoyed his lecture and hope to hear from him again in the future. I must admit I was a little sad though...I was waiting for the karaoke duet...

I was very pleased to hear Raph speak on his own terms about game design. Having seen him at GDC 04 during a true test of his abilities in the game design challenge "A Love Story", it was a circle made complete so to speak on his theories and practices. I encourage anyone who didn't get the chance to see last years "Game Design Challenge" forum to grab the audio recordings and peruse. I believe someone has a copy of it somewhere...

Raph's talk was very to the point. I like a guest speaker to really lay it on the line, allowing others to analyze the approach and dig into the material. With the core of any game, as Raph explained with his Game Atoms approach, lies a nugget of math/puzzle that intrigues and delights. 9/10's of the time I am in total agreeance. I find myself doing this quite often with games that I play, hashing through them and really learning the core of the "play" mechanic and sort of twisting and bending it to my will. This is fun, this is good and this is what I will spend my career doing...most likely. However, there was a good 1/10th of me that wanted to stand up and shout, "There's more too it than just that!" What exactly is that other piece, that one piece I so desperately seek in my acadamic career as of late? I think that's the element of fun that doesn't require me to be in a "game" world, but which requires me to lose track of the intricacies and details of the "puzzle" or "formal rules" and really be in a state of zen. Raph compairs this to being, "in the zone" of the game and not worrying about the rules because they are so familiar. I am talking about something far from the rules, a state of play that isn't bounded by and invisible 3 foot hedge or an item that is just out of reach, or the 5th pentamino that just doesn't fit anywhere else. I guess what I seek lies in the idea of narrative, or that familiar rail that I ride when I enter a movie theater and sit down to watch, forgetting myself and everything around me. Is narrative such a different path to pursue that it doesn't belong nor fit in games in an interesting and intrigueing way? Maybe this is where my 1/10th's apprehension lies, in the idea that maybe I don't have fun just because the rules are so burned into my skull that I forget about them. Maybe I don't want to play by the rules.

Something I didn't get to ask Raph much about, especially with his MMO work, is the fact that playing dress up and talking with people in a virtual environment doesn't necessarily involve fun in the game sense of the word. Isn't it a social factor? Isn't socializing, greeting, make believe and play acting fun? How and what rules govern this activity? Certainly there is social etiquette that bounds this, but not all people abide by those rules. They are certainly not "rigid" in the fact that they are right or wrong/black or white. Does this form of play follow the standard game design atom? How much can cultural and social elements be governed by rules and boundaries, and how can we further this idea in our games besides just another MMO title?

On the subject of video game violence: I was impressed by Raphs stance. It was a message that I haven't heard yet in the gaming world, and that was the one of "responsibility". I find that to be a very overlooked subject. The question of "why" and "why not" are often best asked as, "should". Everyone has a moral responsibility, to their craft and their personage. If this isn't more frequently addressed in games, then we are fools for not looking at history. Violence does not always equal a "good gameplay experience", and violence for the sake of violence is obviously not in the moral fiber of our being(hopefully).

So now I'm going to do a 180 and say that I think Grand Theft Auto III was a revolutionary title for what it was and a very FUN game when played to those "game atom" specs. I have spent MANY an hour with the series and can tell you that it is a unique blend of action/adventure that satirizes a lot of what we find wrong with the world at large. This is what makes it fun, this is what makes it interesting, this is what makes it ADULT. Being able to kill a hooker for her money after services rendered is not a childish topic, and definitely raises moral questions. Aren't these questions worth addressing, even in a videogame? I think they are, as long as they raise questions that are worth answering. Games that do not raise questions in the light of moral controversey are a disservice to our craft, and don't further any sort of "good" experience. I can name quite a few titles that are gory and ruthless for the sake of just being that way. Those games are not worth even playing, mostly because they just aren't any fun. Games have grown up...have we?

The most interesting item in Raph's lecture was, I thought, his comments about Grand Theft Auto III. He might have a point about how the actions of some people in the industry putting edgy or controvertial content just for the sake of doing it can potentially have an effect that reaches all game developers, but I feel that self-censorship is the wrong way to turn. I feel that game developers should be able to decide what the content of their own games is. Designers ought to be able to make games with controvertial content, even if that depiction is of something considered either immoral or amoral. When we read a novel or go to a movie, we as an audience do not expect happy endings or morals or reassurances about the stability of the world. Protagonists in these media are not always heroic or nice people. Literature and film are mature enough media so that it is not out of the question for our values and beliefs or perspectives on the world to be re-examined in a book or in a movie. Certainly I am not pretending that killing a hooker is a grand artistic statement about the state of the world, but what this is an example of is the unusual choice in interactive media of rewarding doing bad things. It reverses the usual award system in video games of doing ostensibely good things, even if it is doing bad things to bad people.

Not to mention that the hooker thing is a really great example of emergent gameplay, combining two separate aspects in the game to create something interesting and new. Seperately, you can get the services of a hooker and restore health, and you can kill people to take their money. A player can recoup his losses on visiting a hooker by killing NPCs other than the hooker, but the opportunity to just kill the hooker in light of the game mechanic makes plain logical sense with an endless supply of hookers in the game.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Raph. At first I was a bit overwhelmed by the notion of having one of the industry's foremost creative minds sitting in front of me, talking to me. I mean, when Bing comes in and sits in the, ironically named, Bing Theater and tells us what he thinks about games, that's one thing; but when Raph sat with us talking face to face, encouraging us to participate throughout the lecture, it was a completely different experience.

The ideas that he shared with us were very interesting. The idea of breaking a game down into those very specific Atoms had never occured to me before, but as I listened, it made perfect sense. Now I find myself looking at games and thinking about how the game satisfies those atoms, and how that influences the way I think about the game.
Hearing Raph talk about fixing the crafting system in EQ2 was enlightening to say the least. I had never thought of applying a combat style challenge to such a previously mundane task in MMORPGs. Using something as simple as having the item fight back when you are trying to bend it to your will and assume a given form, it's so simple, and yet so effective. I love to hear about what goes into the creation of the individual elements of a game. Hearing about the details of the process is where I pull the most from a lecture. Listening to EA speakers talk about generalizations, summaries and hypothetical situations can only take you so far in learning what it really takes to work in this field. Hearing about the actual project, the actual challenges, and the way that those challenges were overcome... that is where the learning can really begin. I only hope that I can do this more often!

Alright, before I misrepresent myself, I would like to say that I did enjoy Raph's lecture and I appreciated him sharing his ideas with us. I even thought some of his theories were very interesting, and all of his specific examples from games (EQ2, Galaxies, etc.) were informative and helped teach me a little something about the process of game development.

That being said, I wasn't all that impressed by his distillation of "fun" into hard-and-fast rules. I guess I'm just rebelling against the oncept that everything that we find enjoyable can be hammered into easily-digestible guidelines or rules that, if followed correctly, can result in a guaranteed "fun" game. This sounds like the type of attitude that out-of-touch executive producers would have - "put more sex in the game. Sex is guaranteed to ship copies." As such, I'm wary of any kind of rules.

Raph has clearly done his homework with regards to the intricacies of the human brain, and his insights on how we learn and how we process information was really valuable. But I have to believe there's something more in that complex organ that defies simplistic rules of fun. I can think of a number of games that meet most or all of Raph's "atoms" but which still turned out to be a not-so-great game. "Enter The Matrix" springs to mind... a game critically panned, but one which certainly had a sense of place, a core mechanic, a range of challenges, skill, choice, fairness, among other things. And yet... not a spectacular game. For some other reason, it just wasn't that fun.

Again, though I have been harping on some of Raph's core theories, I did enjoy his appearance here. Even though I disagreed with him on a number of points, I still found it thought-provoking and it forced me to think about the issue of fun being a mathematical one.

I really enjoyed Raph's lecture. Embarrassing but I had always played games (physical, board, puzzles, videos) and always had specific favorites that I considered 'fun' but never really knew why they were fun for me. I never had an explanation to the feeling I get after finishing all the stages and even to the feeling of the struggles and the new things I would learn through playing a game repeatedly. "Fun is the act of mastering a problem mentally." Even if it means you are not conscious that that is what you are doing. Mental stimulations of the game make you stay at it and motivate you to succeed at it.

Although the metaphors of the game are usually the initial attraction, it is not the purpose of the game. These stories are usually forgotten especially after breaking down the concepts (mathematical problems) of the game. Raph's concept of Game Atoms describes this well. (He mentioned a pretty "racist" version of tetris-- this metaphor may not initially attract people to play and they may not ever know that it is just tetris.)

Overall, Raph's lecture is very informative both in the basics of games and the complexities in the industry-- metaphors may help you attract certain target consumers but the mental stimulations, mathematical problems, and underlying patterns make consumers stay and have 'fun'.

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