SCA | IMD Class of 2007

KINGPIN: A Character-Driven Criminal Underworld With Consequence
Herb Yang herbyang at gmail dot com USC School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Division MFA Thesis (In Progress) February 2007
Abstract KINGPIN, an original persistent world MMO (“massively multiplayer online”) game design, presents a different experience than the traditional MMOG. The player takes the role of an ambitious crew leader, trying to make his mark in the criminal underworld and rise to the level of Kingpin. Rather than providing the action-fantasy of being a gangster (a la Grand Theft Auto), KINGPIN presents the experience of managing a crew and making difficult choices between personal relationships versus what's good for business (a la being a Tony Soprano or a Michael Corleone). Through a combination of strategy elements and emergent story-telling techniques, KINGPIN creates a world where a player's choices have consequence, determining the player’s unique story and subsequent rise or fall in Angeltown's criminal underworld. Keywords Persistent world, Player-versus-Player (PvP), massively multiplayer online (MMO), web-based, browser-based, strategy, gangster, criminal underworld, organized crime, crew management, persistent character, game, simulation, SimThug(TM) 1. Introduction – What’s it Like to Be Tony Soprano? Good games provide players with interesting and challenging choices. Whereas a movie an only shows us a specific choice made by a protagonist and its consequence, a game can actually attempt to answer: what would I, as the audience/player, do differently in that same situation, and additionally, what would be the consequences of my decision? One of the most commercially successful and influential games in recent years has been the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series created by Rockstar Games. Organized crime and crime in general have long fascinated us (note the steady popularity of TV shows such as CSI and Law & Order); while an oft-used setting in film and television, gangster games have not been as prevalent, despite being seemingly fertile ground for interesting choices. While a tremendous success from both a commercial and game design perspective, Grand Theft Auto 3 (and its sequels Vice City and San Andreas) was extremely controversial. Many opponents criticized how the game allowed players to perpetrate acts of random violence. While proponents defended GTA with the claim that it and other violent video games were unfairly singled out since movies have long depicted worse, the truth is that any media that displays violence without consequence (gratuitous violence) is found to be objectionable by many, and especially by those in the non-gameplaying populace. Violence shown with consequence, however, can be used to convey meaningful messages and provide educational commentary on the nature of violence (as illustrated in the critically acclaimed The Godfather film trilogy and The Sopranos HBO cable series). While GTA did a fantastic job capturing the action fantasy of being a criminal (hijacking cars, shooting guns, behaving like a scofflaw) , it didn’t capture any of the internal conflicts of being involved in crime, the reasons why we’re fascinated with characters like Tony Soprano and Michael Corleone. Without the internal conflicts, the underlying motivations for the decisions made, the world of organized crime is just a series of acts of random violence… which frankly holds limited or no appeal to most. However, the real-life consequences of the fantasies presented in otherwise attractive game premises are not fun. We may want to play the role of a super agent spy, but none of us wants to really experience being shot or tortured if we fail. We may want to run a crime family, but none of us want to do real jail time. Designers may be tempted to directly translate this into the game experience, but this usually leads to player frustration (e.g., player experience/death penalties in EverQuest). We want all the benefits of being a hero, but are not willing to put up with any of the drawbacks. Or do we? It’s an interesting dilemma. A game must make a player feel like the player’s decisions and performance in the game has an impact on the game world or an effect on the outcome; in other words, consequence. Taken a step further, a good game must make the player feel like he’s constantly learning. Once a player stops learning, the game ceases to be interesting, and the player stops playing. Without consequence, it’s hard to make the player learn anything, especially something as complex as the lessons imparted by good crime fiction. Game complexity is usually a bad thing. But emotional complexity is a good thing, adding drama and motivation, and giving us context for our actions. How do we capture emotional complexity, ideally without making an overly complex game? For one, you can’t capture emotional complexity without dealing with consequence. KINGPIN, a proposed game design, attempts to address this design challenge. 2. Prior Art (Some Major Examples…) In the nature of game design, KINGPIN builds upon the conventions established in previous game genres and game titles. Here, I’ll touch upon a few of the many game titles that have influenced my design. 2.1 World of Warcraft (and other MMOGs) World of Warcraft (“WoW”), created by Blizzard Entertainment and released in November 2004, is one of the most successful MMORPGs (“massively multiplayer online role-playing games”) of all time, with 8 million subscribers world-wide (as of January 2007). Built upon the conventions of single player and tabletop RPGs, as well as other predecessor MMORPGs such as EverQuest, WoW falls into the design trap of character levels, a traditional game mechanic for the RPG genre. Through time spent in play (killing monsters, completing quests), players gain “experience points” allowing their characters to advance in “levels,” a proxy for character power. In this convention, a level 60 character is, without a doubt, always more powerful that a level 10 character. This means that regardless of any difference in player skill, a player with a level 10 character will always lose to a player with a level 60 character in direct combat. New players must build their characters from scratch; and because leveling a character to level 60 literally takes several hundred hours of playtime, entry into an MMOG can be extremely daunting and less appealing for more casual game players. In other words, the system overwhelming rewards time spent playing rather than player skill [Sirlin, 2006]. While not an issue in a single player game setting, the character level mechanic brings up several design problems when taken to both a persistent world and multiplayer setting. Unlike other multiplayer game genres such as fighters or shooters, new players to MMORPGs do not begin with access to all characters abilities, and accordingly, don't begin on a level playing field. “Fair” PvP play can't occur until players reach the level cap (the maximum level allowed in the game). Not only do new players start at a severe disadvantage, they often cannot “catch up to” and play with friends who have been playing the game for a longer time. Higher-level characters in MMORPGs only gain experience through fighting monsters of equal level and difficulty; therefore, the world in an MMORPG naturally divides into different zones based on player levels. Low level characters find it extremely difficult if not impossible to survive in higher level zones and high level characters have no real incentive to stay in low level zones (no experience gained, and treasure found is too low level and accordingly useless). While WoW is undoubtedly a huge success and attracts a large part of the hardcore audience, there is a substantial set of the game playing population that have remain turned off to MMOGs for these reasons. 2.2 Grand Theft Auto In 2001, Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto III (“GTA”), the first in a series of single-player games which ushered in a new era of “open-world” and “sandbox” game design. In addition to an ever popular fiction and setting (gangsters of different eras) as well as smart writing laden with witty pop-culture references, GTA's huge popularity and success stemmed from creating a vast environment that placed fewer limits on player exploration and objectives. Accordingly, players could experience a level of freedom never found before in traditional level-based games where players had to complete a specific objective in a game level before being allowed to proceed to the next level. Players could choose to follow the game's “plot” by completing missions assigned by various NPCs (“non-player characters”)... or they could simply drive around and explore the city, and complete non-essential mini-games strewn throughout the game world. However, while GTA is technically non-linear in many aspects, the overarching story that the player experiences remains the same: in GTA3, you play an unnamed gangster who is betrayed by a girlfriend, whom you subsequently track down and exact revenge upon. Ultimately, while the player has tremendous freedom in terms of physicality, self-pacing, and objective prioritization, he/she is still locked to a pre-determined plotline. 2.3 The Sims The Sims, released by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts in 2000, went on to surpass Myst as the best selling computer game of all time, spawning a series of sequels and expansions. Essentially a doll-house simulator (albeit one that appealed equally to both genders), The Sims was the latest in a series of simulation games (SimCity, SimEarth, etc.) that have cemented creator Will Wright’s reputation as a “designer of ‘software toys’ – games that cannot be won or lost” [Wikipedia, 2/2007]. However, a more accurate description would be that Wright’s “games” do not explicitly define win-or-loss conditions for the player. But that is not to say that there are none: every player internally creates his or her own objectives for his/her Sims during play – e.g., become more popular, get a better job, etc. – thereby defining these win/loss conditions for him/herself. The success of Wright’s sim-games has often been attributed to this open-ended nature. Figure 1. Screenshot of The Sims 2 Strategy games (a broader genre under which The Sims and other simulation games fall), due to both (1) the more macro level of game premises and (2) the level of granular control given to the player, tend to do exceedingly well in providing the player the feeling that his/her decisions directly influence the outcome of the game. Part of the brilliance of The Sims is bringing “strategic” level choices down to the level of individual characters (rather than the level of armies or cities), dramatically increasing the elements of emotional attachment the player feels to what is happening in front of him, while retaining the player’s sense of consequential action. Whereas many critically and commercially successful RPGs use branching story trees to illustrate consequences of player decisions, The Sims used character wants, likes/dislikes, as well as other personality trait pairs (such as Sloppiness/Cleanliness, Introversion/Extroversion, etc.) to drive character behavior. Though Sims never explicitly said anything to each other (speaking a gibberish but emotive language), their interactions were able to convey a surprising amount of character, and subsequently create an emergent soap-opera style story for each player. 3. KINGPIN 3.1 Description At its most basic level, KINGPIN is a multiplayer online game of urban mafia strategy. KINGPIN is a PvP (“Player versus Player”) game, meaning that players contend primarily with other players and the crews they control, rather than competing simply against the environment and AI. Players issue orders in real-time and react to the current state of the ever-changing game world; players who log off, and their game assets such as territory and crew members, are still subject to the actions of other players who remain logged on and are playing. Figure 2. Current Iteration of Prototype Interface Organized crime is built around the concept of making money. While the most obvious goal and motivation of the player is to become more powerful, each player chooses his/her own path to achieving that power. One player may choose to have the most fearsome crew (the best weapons, the most dangerous thugs), while another may choose to create a drug empire, and yet another may choose to become a power broker through cementing interplayer relationships. KINGPIN’s open-ended system allows players to define their own role within the game. To explore the mechanics design of KINGPIN, I've developed a web-based prototype for this game (see Figure 2), built using PHP/MySQL, which attempts to capture the core essence of the game design. Accordingly, once the prototype is complete in May 2007, players can simply browse to the website, create an account, and immediately begin play. 3.2 Crew Management The game of KINGPIN takes place in a persistent state world shared by all players (much like in an MMOG like WoW) in the fictional city of “Angeltown”. In the prototype, Angeltown is represented by a grid-based map of city locations. Each city grid represents a specific city location: a liquor store, a bank, a back alley, a warehouse, or so forth. Each location is unique (has its own name, X and Y grid coordinates, income stream, etc.) and can be under the control of a player's crew and NPC gang members. The number of grids and subsequent size of Angeltown expands depending on the number of players signed up to the server. A player begins the game by creating his player character, the leader of a small crew seeking to carve out his/her piece of Angeltown's criminal underworld, and begins with a small crew of Thugs, the most basic type of recruitable NPC gangster, and a few grids of friendly turf. Turf is defined as territory under player control. The player will need to fill out his crew (recruiting them from friendly locations) in order to expand his turf, especially if neighboring turf is controlled by enemy crews. For the most part, the player acts through his NPC crew members by giving them orders to carry out. Each NPC has a range of attributes (Muscle, Brains, Guts, Balls, etc.) and skills (Gunfight, Evasion, Breaking & Entering, etc.) that determine how effective he/she is at various criminal activities, and how he/she handles unexpected situations that will arise. Different criminal types have different capabilities. Players will need to develop a balance of different criminal types in their crew to suit both their play style and their particular game situation. The organized crime world setting gives KINGPIN popular archetypal characters that are easily graspable to the player (especially important in strategy games, which typically already have a steep learning curve). - Thugs – Thugs are the backbone of your crew, providing the muscle to expand and defend your turf. Thugs extort protection money from local businesses (city grids), bringing them under your control and making them part of your physical territory (Note: Crew members can only move to, be stationed on and operate from friendly turf). Thugs can take turf from rival gangs by ridding the location of enemy gang members (via fights) and then “convincing” business owners to switch protection payments to your crew. - Thieves – Thieves are exceptional at casing (scouting) locations, determining what valuables a location possesses, and how well defended or not defended a particular location is. While they aren't good at fighting, they can proceed to steal money and items from different locations. - Pushers – Pushers are your link to the drug trade, which is a more lucrative source of income than protection money. Pushers can set up drug buys for you, and in turn, sell the product out onto the streets for a hefty profit. Watch out though, making money in the drug trade is about supply and demand: nearby enemy Pushers will cut into your profits. - Hitmen – While Thugs target businesses, Hitmen target NPCs. Use them to take out that pesky enemy Pusher who's competing with yours, or use them to complete lucrative contract killings posted by other players. - Bodyguards – Bodyguards automatically protect other weaker NPCs stationed at their location from being attacked by Hitmen and Thugs, biting the proverbial bullet. Yeah, it's a crappy job. - Hackers – Hackers help you dig up information on other enemy crews (other players). Want to know how much money or how many crew members another player has? Or, what other crews are feuding with a neighboring enemy crew? Or what about the whereabouts of an enemy's Hitman whom you just can't seem to find? Where there's a data trail, the Hacker can follow it to the end and find out what you need to know. - Other gangster types include Crooked Cops, Lawyers, Pimps, and so forth. However, these additional types will not be included for the May prototype. This wide range of criminal types gives the player a wide range of strategic choices for his/her business strategy. The different types of characters lead to a “rock-paper-scissor” mechanic interaction where there is no singular winning strategy. Coming out ahead depends on the player’s ability to evolve his strategy and adapt to changing conditions, making player success reliant upon skill. A player’s crew composition also allows him to personalize his/her criminal enterprise. Crew members can be recruited or fired at any time. When NPCs are dismissed, they return to the general NPC pool, where they can be recruited by other players. Players can only have a given number of crew members at any one time (the current limit is eight members) and must weigh his or her choices accordingly. Additionally. players have a number of other management options, such as . While KINGPIN is a deep game, the actual interaction with the game interface is simple: the player selects a target city location on the city map, and then selects a crew member from his crew roster. This brings up a list of all available actions for the active NPC for that particular target city location. The player decides what action he wants that gangster to take, clicks on the appropriate button for that action. At that point, the player's gangster attempts the action you’ve given him and the player immediately gets a report on the outcome (via a text window), and a more detailed description of what happened during the event (which is additionally logged and can be view at any time). If one player’s action has affected another player’s crew or controlled NPCs, the second player also receives a game message stating his version of the action. For example: Player A sends a Thief to scout an electronics store as a potential target, discovering that the turf belongs to a crew run by Player B. In the action, he is spotted by one of Player B’s crew members stationed at that store; subsequently, Player B receives a message that a shady character was checking out one of his turf locations. 3.3 Event Resolution & Emergent Story The outcome of each order you give to an NPC is dependent on a number of under-the-hood factors, including the NPC’s attributes and abilities, character traits, and personal histories. Each NPC gang member is a unique individual with their own combination of traits and attributes. As a result, different NPCs will behave differently in otherwise similar in-game situations. Each time the player orders an NPC crew member to take an action, a mini-story is in essence created. Take a Thug’s Extortion attempt for example. Let’s say the player orders a Thug on his crew named Lonnie to extort protection money from a local liquor store. Here, a number of things can happen: - Success/Failure: The shopkeeper of the liquor store manages to trigger the alarm. Lonnie’s lack of Balls causes him to high-tail it, but his low Evasion skill causes him to trip and fall while fleeing the cops, leading to his subsequent arrest. - Trait-Related Event: Lonnie’s high Aggression causes him to choose to use physical violence as his intimidation technique rather than verbal intimidation, resulting in the accidental death of the shopkeeper. Lonnie’s Qualms causes his Guilt to go up, which increases the chance that he attempts to leave the business for good. - Random Event: Lonnie’s sick mother calls, asking him to bring her over to the hospital, which he does, causing him to forget to undertake the extortion mission you’ve given him. - A Combination of these Prior Event Types Over time, as the game logs these action events (essentially story beats), each NPC develops a personal history, and a story for that NPC emerges. Here’s an example of a possible emergent story for a prototypical character: You find and recruit a Pusher named Benny B. After using him for awhile, you realize that Benny consistently sets up good drug buys and then does a great job selling the product for great profit on the street. With the money, you’re able to buy and equip your guys with better weapons, making your crew more formidable. You’re liking your new star Pusher. Because Benny does such good business, he soon draws the attention of rival crews, forcing you to protect Benny with Thugs and Bodyguards. You lose a few Thugs to enemy crews who try to move in on Benny’s spot, a deserted warehouse on your turf. No biggie, since most of these Thugs are recent hires to your crew. However, one day, a favored Thug named Lucky Luciano, one of the first members of your crew, is killed defending Benny from an enemy Hitman named Boneyard. Though Lucky Luciano’s death is a great loss, Benny’s income stream makes it a worthy sacrifice, at least on a business level. In fact, Boneyard begins picking off quite a few of your Thugs and Bodyguards, all while trying to get to Benny (which leads to another story thread building your enmity for the NPC Boneyard and his human player boss). However, over time, your boy Benny B develops an addiction to his own product. Although he still has connections that allow you to buy product at great prices, his salesmanship become more and more unreliable as he’s often doped up when he should actually be out on the street selling (per your orders). In fact, more and more often, Benny’s drug-induced carelessness causes him to get busted when he’s actually out selling, which in turn costs you money, both in legal fees to keep Benny from jail, as well as lost income. Plus, Benny is a two-time loser so if he goes down once more, your crew going to draw the attention of the cops, making it harder for you to operate. However, during Benny’s time with your crew, you’ve discovered he’s actually a very loyal guy. In fact, he’s turned down a few bribery attempts from Boneyard’s boss to defect to his gang, which Benny rejected, leading to Boneyard’s boss’ change in strategy, attempting to get rid of Benny through violence. What do you do as a player? Do you work around Benny’s habit and try to hire another Pusher to handle sales while Benny handles the buys? Or is it time to cut Benny loose since he’s now more trouble than he’s worth? Maybe you can make a deal with Boneyard’s boss? Note that this is a sequence occurs over 30 or so orders you give directly to Benny B (in addition to orders given to other crew members such as Lucky Luciano.) This sequence likely occurs over a game play period of two weeks or so. Over time, each individual NPCs develops his/her own personal history, and rapsheet, both of which are logged by the game. Because each player initiated action contributes to the characterization of NPCs (for both those that are player controlled and those, players are in essence generating content for other players. Each NPCs “story” is interwoven with your other crew members and the NPCs of surrounding gangs. The combined stories of your crew members and the results of their actions tell the unique tale of each player’s rise or fall in Angeltown. 4. Conclusions (Thus Far) and Anticipated Issues 4.1 Scope & Content Generation The scope of the proposed game design is large (with the danger of inadvertently growing even larger). More gear and character items, additional behaviors and events, and more gangster classes all lend to and feed the personalization and customization compulsion that drives most players in MMO games. While KINGPIN will contain MMO elements (and could certainly eventually be expanded into a fully-fledged MMOG), creating a fully-fleshed out universe is not the focus and beyond the scope of the prototype. The focus is to create a gameplay experience where characterization influences objective decisions. However, in order to illustrate the effects of NPC characterization on the player’s game strategy decision-making, some elements of increased scope and multiple components are inescapable. But rather than becoming bogged down in details and content variety, the prototype will attempt to achieve the minimum level of depth for each of the required components necessary to achieve the overall desired combined effect. 4.2 Core Game Dependency That being said, building an engaging underlying game is vital. If the underlying crew management mechanics are not fun or compelling, players will quit the game before allowing the characterization and emergent story aspect of the game to develop. Character-driven emergent stories can add a new level of complexity and emotional depth to a traditionally objective game; they have the potential to draw an audience that would not have otherwise been interested in a pure system experience. However, a multitude of more traditional games have proven that games with good mechanics and bad stories can still be good games, but games with bad mechanics and good stories are still bad games. 4.3 Conveying Game Information A simple web-based platform was chosen for the prototype in order to quickly provide multiplayer capabilities and an easily accessible back-end database to track the persistent world state. However, a key limitation of this platform is presentation. Without the more sophisticated display capabilities common to most client-based games, conveying the appropriate information becomes more difficult. User interface issues – issues that would be prevalent or not otherwise present if KINGPIN had a more robust graphical representation, like that of The Sims – are anticipated in this prototype. 5. Future Direction While this iteration of KINGPIN focuses primarily on making player-NPC relationships more interesting, a large part of the competitive and dramatic motivation still stems from other players. Formalized player hierarchies, where players could form crime families with boss-underboss-captain relationships and institute player-determined rules (promotions, “kicking up” a percentage of profits, etc.), would add another layer for drama and further player motivation possibilities (jealousy, betrayal, etc.). Intra-family dynamics could further build up into rivalries and feuds (like sports teams and game guilds), all of which contribute to a deeper atmosphere of a world of organized crime. 6. Acknowledgements I'd like to acknowledge Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain, and Michael Naimark (members of the Interactive Media Division faculty), as well as Jim Tso (Senior Producer, Pandemic Studios) and Dellekamp Siefert (Director, Pandemic Studios) for their help in their advisory capacities.
7. References Bartle, Richard (2004). Designing Virtual Worlds, New Riders Publishing. Grand Theft Auto 3 (2000). PS2, United States: Rockstar Games. Koster, Raph (2005). A Theory of Fun, Paraglyph Press. The Sims 2 (2004). PC DVD-ROM, United States: Electronic Arts / Maxis. Sirlin, David (February 2006). “Soapbox: World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things”, Gamasutra.com article. Retrieved February 19, 2007 from . World of Warcraft (2004). PC CD-ROM, United States: Vivendi Universal Games / Blizzard Entertainment.

KINGPIN:
A Character-Driven Criminal Underworld With Consequence

Herb Yang
herbyang at gmail dot com
USC School of Cinematic Arts
Interactive Media Division
MFA Thesis (In Progress)
February 2007

Abstract

KINGPIN, an original persistent world MMO (“massively multiplayer online”) game design, presents a different experience than the traditional MMOG. The player takes the role of an ambitious crew leader, trying to make his mark in the criminal underworld and rise to the level of Kingpin. Rather than providing the action-fantasy of being a gangster (a la Grand Theft Auto), KINGPIN presents the experience of managing a crew and making difficult choices between personal relationships versus what's good for business (a la being a Tony Soprano or a Michael Corleone). Through a combination of strategy elements and emergent story-telling techniques, KINGPIN creates a world where a player's choices have consequence, determining the player’s unique story and subsequent rise or fall in Angeltown's criminal underworld.

Keywords

Persistent world, Player-versus-Player (PvP), massively multiplayer online (MMO), web-based, browser-based, strategy, gangster, criminal underworld, organized crime, crew management, persistent character, game, simulation, SimThug(TM)

1. Introduction – What’s it Like to Be Tony Soprano?

Good games provide players with interesting and challenging choices. Whereas a movie an only shows us a specific choice made by a protagonist and its consequence, a game can actually attempt to answer: what would I, as the audience/player, do differently in that same situation, and additionally, what would be the consequences of my decision?

One of the most commercially successful and influential games in recent years has been the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series created by Rockstar Games. Organized crime and crime in general have long fascinated us (note the steady popularity of TV shows such as CSI and Law & Order); while an oft-used setting in film and television, gangster games have not been as prevalent, despite being seemingly fertile ground for interesting choices.

While a tremendous success from both a commercial and game design perspective, Grand Theft Auto 3 (and its sequels Vice City and San Andreas) was extremely controversial. Many opponents criticized how the game allowed players to perpetrate acts of random violence. While proponents defended GTA with the claim that it and other violent video games were unfairly singled out since movies have long depicted worse, the truth is that any media that displays violence without consequence (gratuitous violence) is found to be objectionable by many, and especially by those in the non-gameplaying populace. Violence shown with consequence, however, can be used to convey meaningful messages and provide educational commentary on the nature of violence (as illustrated in the critically acclaimed The Godfather film trilogy and The Sopranos HBO cable series).

While GTA did a fantastic job capturing the action fantasy of being a criminal (hijacking cars, shooting guns, behaving like a scofflaw) , it didn’t capture any of the internal conflicts of being involved in crime, the reasons why we’re fascinated with characters like Tony Soprano and Michael Corleone. Without the internal conflicts, the underlying motivations for the decisions made, the world of organized crime is just a series of acts of random violence… which frankly holds limited or no appeal to most.

However, the real-life consequences of the fantasies presented in otherwise attractive game premises are not fun. We may want to play the role of a super agent spy, but none of us wants to really experience being shot or tortured if we fail. We may want to run a crime family, but none of us want to do real jail time. Designers may be tempted to directly translate this into the game experience, but this usually leads to player frustration (e.g., player experience/death penalties in EverQuest). We want all the benefits of being a hero, but are not willing to put up with any of the drawbacks.

Or do we?

It’s an interesting dilemma. A game must make a player feel like the player’s decisions and performance in the game has an impact on the game world or an effect on the outcome; in other words, consequence. Taken a step further, a good game must make the player feel like he’s constantly learning. Once a player stops learning, the game ceases to be interesting, and the player stops playing. Without consequence, it’s hard to make the player learn anything, especially something as complex as the lessons imparted by good crime fiction.

Game complexity is usually a bad thing. But emotional complexity is a good thing, adding drama and motivation, and giving us context for our actions. How do we capture emotional complexity, ideally without making an overly complex game? For one, you can’t capture emotional complexity without dealing with consequence. KINGPIN, a proposed game design, attempts to address this design challenge.

2. Prior Art (Some Major Examples…)

In the nature of game design, KINGPIN builds upon the conventions established in previous game genres and game titles. Here, I’ll touch upon a few of the many game titles that have influenced my design.

2.1 World of Warcraft (and other MMOGs)

World of Warcraft (“WoW”), created by Blizzard Entertainment and released in November 2004, is one of the most successful MMORPGs (“massively multiplayer online role-playing games”) of all time, with 8 million subscribers world-wide (as of January 2007).

Built upon the conventions of single player and tabletop RPGs, as well as other predecessor MMORPGs such as EverQuest, WoW falls into the design trap of character levels, a traditional game mechanic for the RPG genre. Through time spent in play (killing monsters, completing quests), players gain “experience points” allowing their characters to advance in “levels,” a proxy for character power. In this convention, a level 60 character is, without a doubt, always more powerful that a level 10 character. This means that regardless of any difference in player skill, a player with a level 10 character will always lose to a player with a level 60 character in direct combat. New players must build their characters from scratch; and because leveling a character to level 60 literally takes several hundred hours of playtime, entry into an MMOG can be extremely daunting and less appealing for more casual game players. In other words, the system overwhelming rewards time spent playing rather than player skill [Sirlin, 2006].

While not an issue in a single player game setting, the character level mechanic brings up several design problems when taken to both a persistent world and multiplayer setting. Unlike other multiplayer game genres such as fighters or shooters, new players to MMORPGs do not begin with access to all characters abilities, and accordingly, don't begin on a level playing field. “Fair” PvP play can't occur until players reach the level cap (the maximum level allowed in the game). Not only do new players start at a severe disadvantage, they often cannot “catch up to” and play with friends who have been playing the game for a longer time. Higher-level characters in MMORPGs only gain experience through fighting monsters of equal level and difficulty; therefore, the world in an MMORPG naturally divides into different zones based on player levels. Low level characters find it extremely difficult if not impossible to survive in higher level zones and high level characters have no real incentive to stay in low level zones (no experience gained, and treasure found is too low level and accordingly useless).

While WoW is undoubtedly a huge success and attracts a large part of the hardcore audience, there is a substantial set of the game playing population that have remain turned off to MMOGs for these reasons.

2.2 Grand Theft Auto

In 2001, Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto III (“GTA”), the first in a series of single-player games which ushered in a new era of “open-world” and “sandbox” game design. In addition to an ever popular fiction and setting (gangsters of different eras) as well as smart writing laden with witty pop-culture references, GTA's huge popularity and success stemmed from creating a vast environment that placed fewer limits on player exploration and objectives. Accordingly, players could experience a level of freedom never found before in traditional level-based games where players had to complete a specific objective in a game level before being allowed to proceed to the next level. Players could choose to follow the game's “plot” by completing missions assigned by various NPCs (“non-player characters”)... or they could simply drive around and explore the city, and complete non-essential mini-games strewn throughout the game world.

However, while GTA is technically non-linear in many aspects, the overarching story that the player experiences remains the same: in GTA3, you play an unnamed gangster who is betrayed by a girlfriend, whom you subsequently track down and exact revenge upon. Ultimately, while the player has tremendous freedom in terms of physicality, self-pacing, and objective prioritization, he/she is still locked to a pre-determined plotline.

2.3 The Sims

The Sims, released by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts in 2000, went on to surpass Myst as the best selling computer game of all time, spawning a series of sequels and expansions. Essentially a doll-house simulator (albeit one that appealed equally to both genders), The Sims was the latest in a series of simulation games (SimCity, SimEarth, etc.) that have cemented creator Will Wright’s reputation as a “designer of ‘software toys’ – games that cannot be won or lost” [Wikipedia, 2/2007]. However, a more accurate description would be that Wright’s “games” do not explicitly define win-or-loss conditions for the player. But that is not to say that there are none: every player internally creates his or her own objectives for his/her Sims during play – e.g., become more popular, get a better job, etc. – thereby defining these win/loss conditions for him/herself. The success of Wright’s sim-games has often been attributed to this open-ended nature.

Figure 1. Screenshot of The Sims 2

Strategy games (a broader genre under which The Sims and other simulation games fall), due to both (1) the more macro level of game premises and (2) the level of granular control given to the player, tend to do exceedingly well in providing the player the feeling that his/her decisions directly influence the outcome of the game. Part of the brilliance of The Sims is bringing “strategic” level choices down to the level of individual characters (rather than the level of armies or cities), dramatically increasing the elements of emotional attachment the player feels to what is happening in front of him, while retaining the player’s sense of consequential action.

Whereas many critically and commercially successful RPGs use branching story trees to illustrate consequences of player decisions, The Sims used character wants, likes/dislikes, as well as other personality trait pairs (such as Sloppiness/Cleanliness, Introversion/Extroversion, etc.) to drive character behavior. Though Sims never explicitly said anything to each other (speaking a gibberish but emotive language), their interactions were able to convey a surprising amount of character, and subsequently create an emergent soap-opera style story for each player.

3. KINGPIN

3.1 Description

At its most basic level, KINGPIN is a multiplayer online game of urban mafia strategy. KINGPIN is a PvP (“Player versus Player”) game, meaning that players contend primarily with other players and the crews they control, rather than competing simply against the environment and AI. Players issue orders in real-time and react to the current state of the ever-changing game world; players who log off, and their game assets such as territory and crew members, are still subject to the actions of other players who remain logged on and are playing.

Figure 2. Current Iteration of Prototype Interface

Organized crime is built around the concept of making money. While the most obvious goal and motivation of the player is to become more powerful, each player chooses his/her own path to achieving that power. One player may choose to have the most fearsome crew (the best weapons, the most dangerous thugs), while another may choose to create a drug empire, and yet another may choose to become a power broker through cementing interplayer relationships. KINGPIN’s open-ended system allows players to define their own role within the game.

To explore the mechanics design of KINGPIN, I've developed a web-based prototype for this game (see Figure 2), built using PHP/MySQL, which attempts to capture the core essence of the game design. Accordingly, once the prototype is complete in May 2007, players can simply browse to the website, create an account, and immediately begin play.

3.2 Crew Management

The game of KINGPIN takes place in a persistent state world shared by all players (much like in an MMOG like WoW) in the fictional city of “Angeltown”. In the prototype, Angeltown is represented by a grid-based map of city locations. Each city grid represents a specific city location: a liquor store, a bank, a back alley, a warehouse, or so forth. Each location is unique (has its own name, X and Y grid coordinates, income stream, etc.) and can be under the control of a player's crew and NPC gang members. The number of grids and subsequent size of Angeltown expands depending on the number of players signed up to the server.

A player begins the game by creating his player character, the leader of a small crew seeking to carve out his/her piece of Angeltown's criminal underworld, and begins with a small crew of Thugs, the most basic type of recruitable NPC gangster, and a few grids of friendly turf. Turf is defined as territory under player control. The player will need to fill out his crew (recruiting them from friendly locations) in order to expand his turf, especially if neighboring turf is controlled by enemy crews.

For the most part, the player acts through his NPC crew members by giving them orders to carry out. Each NPC has a range of attributes (Muscle, Brains, Guts, Balls, etc.) and skills (Gunfight, Evasion, Breaking & Entering, etc.) that determine how effective he/she is at various criminal activities, and how he/she handles unexpected situations that will arise. Different criminal types have different capabilities. Players will need to develop a balance of different criminal types in their crew to suit both their play style and their particular game situation.

The organized crime world setting gives KINGPIN popular archetypal characters that are easily graspable to the player (especially important in strategy games, which typically already have a steep learning curve).

- Thugs – Thugs are the backbone of your crew, providing the muscle to expand and defend your turf. Thugs extort protection money from local businesses (city grids), bringing them under your control and making them part of your physical territory (Note: Crew members can only move to, be stationed on and operate from friendly turf). Thugs can take turf from rival gangs by ridding the location of enemy gang members (via fights) and then “convincing” business owners to switch protection payments to your crew.

- Thieves – Thieves are exceptional at casing (scouting) locations, determining what valuables a location possesses, and how well defended or not defended a particular location is. While they aren't good at fighting, they can proceed to steal money and items from different locations.

- Pushers – Pushers are your link to the drug trade, which is a more lucrative source of income than protection money. Pushers can set up drug buys for you, and in turn, sell the product out onto the streets for a hefty profit. Watch out though, making money in the drug trade is about supply and demand: nearby enemy Pushers will cut into your profits.

- Hitmen – While Thugs target businesses, Hitmen target NPCs. Use them to take out that pesky enemy Pusher who's competing with yours, or use them to complete lucrative contract killings posted by other players.

- Bodyguards – Bodyguards automatically protect other weaker NPCs stationed at their location from being attacked by Hitmen and Thugs, biting the proverbial bullet. Yeah, it's a crappy job.

- Hackers – Hackers help you dig up information on other enemy crews (other players). Want to know how much money or how many crew members another player has? Or, what other crews are feuding with a neighboring enemy crew? Or what about the whereabouts of an enemy's Hitman whom you just can't seem to find? Where there's a data trail, the Hacker can follow it to the end and find out what you need to know.

- Other gangster types include Crooked Cops, Lawyers, Pimps, and so forth. However, these additional types will not be included for the May prototype.

This wide range of criminal types gives the player a wide range of strategic choices for his/her business strategy. The different types of characters lead to a “rock-paper-scissor” mechanic interaction where there is no singular winning strategy. Coming out ahead depends on the player’s ability to evolve his strategy and adapt to changing conditions, making player success reliant upon skill. A player’s crew composition also allows him to personalize his/her criminal enterprise.

Crew members can be recruited or fired at any time. When NPCs are dismissed, they return to the general NPC pool, where they can be recruited by other players. Players can only have a given number of crew members at any one time (the current limit is eight members) and must weigh his or her choices accordingly. Additionally. players have a number of other management options, such as .

While KINGPIN is a deep game, the actual interaction with the game interface is simple: the player selects a target city location on the city map, and then selects a crew member from his crew roster. This brings up a list of all available actions for the active NPC for that particular target city location. The player decides what action he wants that gangster to take, clicks on the appropriate button for that action. At that point, the player's gangster attempts the action you’ve given him and the player immediately gets a report on the outcome (via a text window), and a more detailed description of what happened during the event (which is additionally logged and can be view at any time).

If one player’s action has affected another player’s crew or controlled NPCs, the second player also receives a game message stating his version of the action. For example: Player A sends a Thief to scout an electronics store as a potential target, discovering that the turf belongs to a crew run by Player B. In the action, he is spotted by one of Player B’s crew members stationed at that store; subsequently, Player B receives a message that a shady character was checking out one of his turf locations.

3.3 Event Resolution & Emergent Story

The outcome of each order you give to an NPC is dependent on a number of under-the-hood factors, including the NPC’s attributes and abilities, character traits, and personal histories. Each NPC gang member is a unique individual with their own combination of traits and attributes. As a result, different NPCs will behave differently in otherwise similar in-game situations.

Each time the player orders an NPC crew member to take an action, a mini-story is in essence created. Take a Thug’s Extortion attempt for example. Let’s say the player orders a Thug on his crew named Lonnie to extort protection money from a local liquor store. Here, a number of things can happen:

- Success/Failure: The shopkeeper of the liquor store manages to trigger the alarm. Lonnie’s lack of Balls causes him to high-tail it, but his low Evasion skill causes him to trip and fall while fleeing the cops, leading to his subsequent arrest.

- Trait-Related Event: Lonnie’s high Aggression causes him to choose to use physical violence as his intimidation technique rather than verbal intimidation, resulting in the accidental death of the shopkeeper. Lonnie’s Qualms causes his Guilt to go up, which increases the chance that he attempts to leave the business for good.

- Random Event: Lonnie’s sick mother calls, asking him to bring her over to the hospital, which he does, causing him to forget to undertake the extortion mission you’ve given him.

- A Combination of these Prior Event Types

Over time, as the game logs these action events (essentially story beats), each NPC develops a personal history, and a story for that NPC emerges.

Here’s an example of a possible emergent story for a prototypical character:

You find and recruit a Pusher named Benny B. After using him for awhile, you realize that Benny consistently sets up good drug buys and then does a great job selling the product for great profit on the street. With the money, you’re able to buy and equip your guys with better weapons, making your crew more formidable. You’re liking your new star Pusher.

Because Benny does such good business, he soon draws the attention of rival crews, forcing you to protect Benny with Thugs and Bodyguards. You lose a few Thugs to enemy crews who try to move in on Benny’s spot, a deserted warehouse on your turf. No biggie, since most of these Thugs are recent hires to your crew. However, one day, a favored Thug named Lucky Luciano, one of the first members of your crew, is killed defending Benny from an enemy Hitman named Boneyard. Though Lucky Luciano’s death is a great loss, Benny’s income stream makes it a worthy sacrifice, at least on a business level. In fact, Boneyard begins picking off quite a few of your Thugs and Bodyguards, all while trying to get to Benny (which leads to another story thread building your enmity for the NPC Boneyard and his human player boss).

However, over time, your boy Benny B develops an addiction to his own product. Although he still has connections that allow you to buy product at great prices, his salesmanship become more and more unreliable as he’s often doped up when he should actually be out on the street selling (per your orders).

In fact, more and more often, Benny’s drug-induced carelessness causes him to get busted when he’s actually out selling, which in turn costs you money, both in legal fees to keep Benny from jail, as well as lost income. Plus, Benny is a two-time loser so if he goes down once more, your crew going to draw the attention of the cops, making it harder for you to operate.

However, during Benny’s time with your crew, you’ve discovered he’s actually a very loyal guy. In fact, he’s turned down a few bribery attempts from Boneyard’s boss to defect to his gang, which Benny rejected, leading to Boneyard’s boss’ change in strategy, attempting to get rid of Benny through violence.

What do you do as a player? Do you work around Benny’s habit and try to hire another Pusher to handle sales while Benny handles the buys? Or is it time to cut Benny loose since he’s now more trouble than he’s worth? Maybe you can make a deal with Boneyard’s boss?

Note that this is a sequence occurs over 30 or so orders you give directly to Benny B (in addition to orders given to other crew members such as Lucky Luciano.) This sequence likely occurs over a game play period of two weeks or so.

Over time, each individual NPCs develops his/her own personal history, and rapsheet, both of which are logged by the game. Because each player initiated action contributes to the characterization of NPCs (for both those that are player controlled and those, players are in essence generating content for other players.

Each NPCs “story” is interwoven with your other crew members and the NPCs of surrounding gangs. The combined stories of your crew members and the results of their actions tell the unique tale of each player’s rise or fall in Angeltown.

4. Conclusions (Thus Far) and Anticipated Issues

4.1 Scope & Content Generation

The scope of the proposed game design is large (with the danger of inadvertently growing even larger). More gear and character items, additional behaviors and events, and more gangster classes all lend to and feed the personalization and customization compulsion that drives most players in MMO games. While KINGPIN will contain MMO elements (and could certainly eventually be expanded into a fully-fledged MMOG), creating a fully-fleshed out universe is not the focus and beyond the scope of the prototype.

The focus is to create a gameplay experience where characterization influences objective decisions. However, in order to illustrate the effects of NPC characterization on the player’s game strategy decision-making, some elements of increased scope and multiple components are inescapable. But rather than becoming bogged down in details and content variety, the prototype will attempt to achieve the minimum level of depth for each of the required components necessary to achieve the overall desired combined effect.

4.2 Core Game Dependency

That being said, building an engaging underlying game is vital. If the underlying crew management mechanics are not fun or compelling, players will quit the game before allowing the characterization and emergent story aspect of the game to develop. Character-driven emergent stories can add a new level of complexity and emotional depth to a traditionally objective game; they have the potential to draw an audience that would not have otherwise been interested in a pure system experience. However, a multitude of more traditional games have proven that games with good mechanics and bad stories can still be good games, but games with bad mechanics and good stories are still bad games.

4.3 Conveying Game Information

A simple web-based platform was chosen for the prototype in order to quickly provide multiplayer capabilities and an easily accessible back-end database to track the persistent world state. However, a key limitation of this platform is presentation. Without the more sophisticated display capabilities common to most client-based games, conveying the appropriate information becomes more difficult. User interface issues – issues that would be prevalent or not otherwise present if KINGPIN had a more robust graphical representation, like that of The Sims – are anticipated in this prototype.

5. Future Direction

While this iteration of KINGPIN focuses primarily on making player-NPC relationships more interesting, a large part of the competitive and dramatic motivation still stems from other players. Formalized player hierarchies, where players could form crime families with boss-underboss-captain relationships and institute player-determined rules (promotions, “kicking up” a percentage of profits, etc.), would add another layer for drama and further player motivation possibilities (jealousy, betrayal, etc.). Intra-family dynamics could further build up into rivalries and feuds (like sports teams and game guilds), all of which contribute to a deeper atmosphere of a world of organized crime.

6. Acknowledgements

I'd like to acknowledge Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain, and Michael Naimark (members of the Interactive Media Division faculty), as well as Jim Tso (Senior Producer, Pandemic Studios) and Dellekamp Siefert (Director, Pandemic Studios) for their help in their advisory capacities.

7. References

Bartle, Richard (2004). Designing Virtual Worlds, New Riders Publishing.

Grand Theft Auto 3 (2000). PS2, United States: Rockstar Games.

Koster, Raph (2005). A Theory of Fun, Paraglyph Press.

The Sims 2 (2004). PC DVD-ROM, United States: Electronic Arts / Maxis.

Sirlin, David (February 2006). “Soapbox: World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things”, Gamasutra.com article. Retrieved February 19, 2007 from .

World of Warcraft (2004). PC CD-ROM, United States: Vivendi Universal Games / Blizzard Entertainment.