This week, we discuss video game writing and the importance of narrative.
This week we explore why most modern MMOs fail and what the future of MMOs might be...
This week, we discuss the Indie and AAA branches of the game industry, and how joining forces might help them to drive innovation.
Today we ask the question 'Where did the Survival Horror genre go?'
This week, we discuss the God of War trilogy's triumphs and failings as a narrative.
This week, we discuss an upcoming Supreme Court case and what it could mean for the future of video games.
This week, we discuss a moral choice sequence in Mass Effect 2, and the power video games have to teach us about ourselves.
This week, we discuss the problems surrounding the term: "Gamer."
This week, we examine the evolution of game music (and what our 8-bit roots can teach us).
This week, we look at EA's "Project Ten Dollar" and suggest some alternatives.
This week, we look at Microsoft and Sony's new accessories and speculate on their chances for success.
This week, we look at the lack of diversity in video games (and hint at numerous episode topics to come).
This week, we answer some of the most popular questions in our inbox.
For Halloween, we explore the use of symbols and psychology in horror games.
This week we talk about standing up for our medium.
This week, we talk about what it takes to be a great game designer.
This week, we talk about why games have been getting less challenging lately.
This week, we talk about Operant Conditioning, and its unfortunate overuse in modern game design.
This week, we talk about the troubled relationship between Sex and Video Games.
This week, we study a character from Persona 4 to demonstrate the benefits of sexual diversity in games.
This week, we look at a classic arcade game to show how games can express an idea using only their mechanics.
This week, we take a break from all the "art and design" talk to appreciate the Child's Play Charity Dinner Auction.
This week, we look at the many different ways choice exists in games.
This week, we answer some more of the popular questions from our inbox.
This week, we consider the neglected potential for game experiences that aren't combat based.
This week, we dive headfirst into the controversies of video game piracy.
This week, we talk a bit about Three Act Structure, In Medias Res and amnesia as a plot device.
This week, we talk about how to play games like a game designer. At least, we start to.
This week, we finish talking about how to play games like a game designer, from which games to play to what you should watch for.
This week, by special request, we finally get around to talking about achievements.
This week, we turn a critical eye to some of EA's worst recent marketing campaigns.
This week, we try our best to describe a big upcoming change in the world of video games, as well as what's causing it.
This week, we look at what it takes to write a great female game character.
This week, as promised, we take a closer look at how to build a good tutorial.
This week, we talk about one of the ways games can teach us new things (without being boring about it).
This week, we talk about the ways game systems are starting to be applied to real life, and what this means for the future. Also, we are joined by our first guest artist!
This week, we talk about the increasing focus on Metrics in the game industry, and the possible results this trend might have (both good and bad).
This week, we speculate that game consoles might soon be going the way of the arcade (and why that doesn't have to be a scary thing).
This week, we list a bunch of our favorite "under-the-radar" games.
This week, we discuss some of Metroid: Other M's failings, and how similar games might avoid them in the future.
This week, we offer some general examples for ways to improve education using game design techniques.
This week, we define the difference between a games "graphics" and a game's "aesthetic", and why that distinction matters.
This week, we try to figure out why the U.S. has always produced more First Person Shooters than Japan.
Now that the whole PSN mess is (mostly) wrapped up, we discuss the changing relationship between corporation and consumer, and the trust that relationship is going to require.
This week, we take a quick break from all the games talk to discuss Anonymous, and whether or not they were actually behind the PSN outage.
This week, we talk about the need for video games to have their own "Oscars", and what that show might look like.
This week, we get into a little bit of video game theory, discussing the creative contribution of the player to a game.
This week, we talk about reviewing games, how to pursue a game reviewing career, and how game reviewing might be improved overall.
This week, we finally get around to talking about race in games, thanks mostly to the release of L.A. Noire.
Video games can actually be pretty intimidating to newcomers. This week, we offer some tips for how to introduce others to our medium.
This week, we talk about microtransactions, and how they COULD be a pretty great thing if we'd just start doing them right.
This week, we share some of our thoughts on two current(ish) events: the dreaded S.978 bill and Operation Rainfall.
This week, we kick off the Guest Art Marathon with a discussion on why games really need to start making time for pre-production.
This week, we address the common claim that advancing games as an art means making them less fun.
This week, we address the potential for the MMORTS genre, as well as the reasons why making one seems to be such a difficult challenge.
This week, we begin a two-part series on the much-debated topic of "Game Addiction."
This week, we conclude our two-part series on the much-debated topic of "Game Addiction" (in a very, VERY unusual way).
This week, we get everyone up to speed on the Rockethub details. After that, we share our plans for the EC Indie Fund! Link to the EC Indie Fund rockethub page!
This week, we discuss proper pacing and it's influence on game design.
This week, we discuss the role (and frequent misuse) of cutscenes in video games.
This week, we consider the reasons why professional gaming hasn't really caught on in the West (yet).
This week, we list off some more interesting games you might never have heard of (or gotten around to trying).
This week, we take a close look at one of the game industry's less-appreciated roles: the Producer. This week's guest art by LeeLee Scaldaferri! Check out her weekly webcomic, Name Game!
This week, we consider the unfortunate potential games have as tools for propaganda.
This week, we further examine the "lazy design" we discussed last week by picking apart a specific title: Call of Juarez: The Cartel.
This week (for some Halloween fun), we decided to talk about zombies.
This week, we take a hard look at just how miserable it can be to work in the game industry, and the causes behind these terrible conditions.
This week, we explain the theory behind the Uncanny Valley, and how best to avoid tumbling into it.
This week, we consider the intended goal (and possible results) of Blizzard's plan for a "real money" marketplace in Diablo III.
This week, we try to figure out exactly what it was about the new Deus Ex game we liked so much.
This week, we begin our two weeks of "science distraction" by looking at what role games might play in man achieving technology singularity.
This week, we examine that classic staple of mediocre science fiction: technobabble.
This week, we explain the value of playtesting your game, and offer some tips on how to get the best data possible.
This week, we dissect a popular puzzle game to show just how complex and elegantly-designed even a simple game can be.
This week, we carefully examine and critique the first fifteen minutes of Skyrim's play experience.
This week, we give a (somewhat belated) criticism of SOPA and PIPA.
This week, we suddenly realize that we haven't done a mailbag episode is AGES.
This week, we return to the mailbag and answer a few more popular questions.
This week, we discuss the skills it takes to be a great developer (with lots of help from the folks at Stack Exchange).
This week, we finish discussing the skills it takes to be a great developer (with lots of help from the folks at Stack Exchange).
This week, we begin a three-part series discussing (and defining) Western RPGs and JRPGs.
This week, we continue discussing (and defining) Western RPGs and JRPGs, this time with a special guest!
This week, we conclude our series on Western RPGs and JRPGs.
This week, Mass Effect 3 gives us a chance to talk some more about DLC.
This week, we try (and fail) to contain our excitement about connected gaming experiences.
This week, we rattle off yet another list of games worth checking out.
This week, we look back on the last year and a half of Kinect and offer some new observations about the device.
This week, we discuss the exciting possibilities of crowd-funded games.
This week, we tackle the rampant bullying, misogyny and hate speech that occurs within the gaming community.
This week, we begin a two-part discussion on ARGs, starting with Alternate Reality Games.
This week, we conclude our discussion on ARGs, this time with Augmented Reality Games.
This week, we give a progress update on the EC Indie Fund.
This week, we discuss a major bandwidth problem we're about to run into.
This week, we discuss the AAA industry's trend toward hard-boiling its franchises, and what it means to be "mature".
This week, we offer a handy guide to making your voice heard in U.S. politics (with special guest)!
This week, we recommend some more interesting, "under the radar" games.
This week, we finally get around to talking about the trouble with power creep (with special guest)!
This week, we begin a two-part series on the Hero's Journey as applied to games.
This week, we conclude our two-part series on the Hero's Journey as applied to games (like Journey).
This week, we discuss the benefits of subtle imbalances in games (and welcome our newest team member)!
This week, we list some under-appreciated titles from the beloved 16-bit era.
This week, we speculate on the future possibilities of reselling digital copies of games.
This week, we discuss how games can convey meaning through mechanics alone.
This week, we finish discussing how games can convey meaning through mechanics alone.
This week, we talk about what makes Spec Ops: The Line so great (without spoilers).
This week, we continue our dissection of Spec Ops: The Line (SPOILERS AHOY).
This week, we give a step-by-step guide on how to choose a good game school.
This week, we talk about those playtime-limiting systems often found in social games.
This week, we talk about the crucial "first five minutes" of a game.
This week, we discuss two alternate monetization methods that could work for certain games.
This week, we are reminded once again that Mailbags are a thing we do.
This week, we explain why games shouldn't be constrained exclusively to "Fun".
This week, we talk genres and some game design theory.
This week, we explain why you don't see more game demos being released.
This week, we talk about the importance of protagonists in the horror genre (and wear costumes).
This week, we discuss the unfortunate lack of preservation for gaming's history.
This week, we discuss the design concept of Counter Play (with thanks to Tom Cadwell).
This week, we discuss the best way to approach genre blending.
This week, we talk about the factor of player skill when balancing multiplayer games.
This week, we start discussing religion in games. Finally.
This week, we talk a bit about Faith in games.
This week, we address the rather large reaction to our previous episode.
This week, we talk about the importance of balancing a game's Depth and Complexity.
This week, we explain why settling on a story before you've started your game may be a bad idea.
This week, we do a (somewhat premature) Horror Monsters episode.
This week, we begin a series on the potential for game industry growth in new regions around the world. First up: Brazil!
This week, we entertain ourselves by pondering the question: "Should we fund a real-life Xcom?"
This week, we conclude our musing on the need for a real XCOM program.
This week, we discuss some basic story principles as they apply to games.
This week, we continue talking about effectively handling exposition in games.
This week, we explain the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.
This week, we enjoy some speculation on Sony's Playstation 4.
This week, we discuss two fundamental game design principles (the ones in the title).
This week, we begin a three week series on various topics relating to Telltalle's The Walking Dead.
This week, we talk about one of The Walking Dead's major themes.
This week, we conclude our little series about The Walking Dead's numerous strengths.
This week, we list off a few more interesting games you may not have looked into yet.
This week, we talk about how to make good stealth games.
This week, we take a look at some more Latin American nations and their potential for game industry growth.
This week, we examine the pros and cons of Firefall's loot system design.
This week, we discuss how members of the gaming community treat each other.
This week, we talk about an early example of games attempting to push boundaries and do good.
This week, we discuss the need to change the conversation around video games.
This week, we discuss Bioshock Infinite and the problem with clinging to "the brand"
This week, we discuss how to make a game challenging, yet still enjoyable.
This week, we talk about how games can be a shared experience between kids and their parents
This week, we talk some more about the used games issue.
This week, we lay out some basic guidelines for designing a game on touch devices.
This week, we try to figure out why it is we cherish that "retro" era of games so much.
This week, we return to the subject of Game Compulsion and its causes.
This week, we offer some tips on how to be a successful indie game developer.
This week, we discuss some of the difficulties of integrating games into our education system.
This week, we discuss the importance of board games in the study of game design.
This week, we discuss a handy method for broadly defining one's characters.
This week, we bring you a fresh batch of interesting games worth checking out.
This week, we kick off a series of episodes on Choice in games.
This week, we discuss the use of the illusion of choice in game design.
This week, we attempt to reframe the question of how much choice a game needs to successfully engage the player.
This week, we conclude our month-long discussion of Choice in video games.
This week, we familiarize ourselves with an often-ignored game genre.
This week, we examine the difficult challenge of storytelling in a competitive game space.
This week, we discuss the increase in franchise scale and spectacle over time.
This week, we pull out some creepy games you REALLY may never have heard of.
This week, we begin a two-part series on the Collectable monetization model.
This week, we continue our discussion of Collectable Games, their benefits and their potential dangers.
This week, we discuss the under-appreciated role of the Community Manager.
This week, we discuss the debate over what does and doesn't qualify as a "game".
This week, we start a series looking at design problems in the US political system.
This week, we continue our series about design problems in the U.S. political system.
This week, we conclude our series on design problems in the US political system.
This week, we discuss some of the positive impact our community has on the world.
Good games inspire children to learn through play, whether in the classroom or at home. Understanding the educational needs of different age groups, from kindergarten to middle school, allows designers to create games that give children the opportunity to explore and grow.
The debate about net neutrality rages on, but the meaning of "open internet" vs. "closed internet" is seldom explained. Without an open or neutral internet, corporations like AT&T or Comcast can restrict bandwidth and charge people extra for faster connections or limit access to their competitors' services altogether. In the United States, a January 2014 ruling from the DC Circuit Court determined that the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) had no authority to enforce its previous rules about net neutrality. This opened the decision about how to govern the internet's future up to law makers in the US Congress.
Comedy relies on timing, but video games can go beyond the scripted scenes of films or television to create interactive "comedy by choice" that lets each player discover humor on their own.
Comedy relies on timing, but video games can go beyond the scripted scenes of films or television to create interactive "comedy by choice" that lets each player discover humor on their own.
Match three games like Bejeweled have spawned many clones, but none as successful as Candy Crush. Love it or hate it, it's helpful to understand why so many people play it.
Traditional education focuses on assessment, giving students one chance to get their homework right. Games can provide immediate feedback and teach core problem solving skills.
Games that can track player behavior down to the last click can also keep teachers informed about their classes' progress and give them time to work one-on-one with struggling students.
Games give players agency and teach the core 21st century skills of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity better than any traditional program of rote learning can.
Games show us the immediate, direct impact of our choices in a way that teaches us to plan for our goals and take control of our future. No lesson could be more valuable for a student.
H.P. Lovecraft and the Call of Cthulhu have inspired many horror games, but the power fantasy that drives most games conflicts with the unfathomable, unreachable terror of Cthulhu.
Games like Spelunky and FTL led a revival of the roguelike genre. Techniques adopted from other genres simplify the learning curve and make these games accessible again for modern players.
Games like Spelunky and FTL led a revival of the roguelike genre. Techniques adopted from other genres simplify the learning curve and make these games accessible again for modern players.
The PlayStation Vita tried to create a high end mobile gaming solution, but failed to achieve even a fraction of the sales of low end systems like the Nintendo 3DS or even the iPhone.
Many developers have adopted the trend of giving players early access to a game that's still in development, gaining funding through sales at the high potential cost of a good first impression.
Games like Candy Box, Frog Fractions, and a Dark Room uproot traditional game design that relies on spectacle and action. Instead they build an interest curve by appealing to our natural curiosity.
Open world games offer players great opportunities to explore, but developers must figure out how to organize their team to create an immersive experience across so many hours of content.
Games give players the agency to make decisions, but whether they highlight choices in advance or deliver consequences after the fact changes the experience and the game design itself.
For our 200th episode, we take a look back at all the good things games have accomplished, as an industry and a community, since Extra Credits started in 2008!
The number of games coming out has hugely increased thanks to distribution platforms like Steam and the App Store, but storefronts have become a cluttered mess with inadequate search options.
Skill should be the determining factor in Esports, but many competitive games include a random element such as critical strike chance or card draw that can change the outcome of a match.
Extra Credits reviews and recommends a selection of video games that might have slipped under your radar.
In turn-based competitive games, the player who goes first gets initiative. Designers must find ways to balance this advantage and keep track of win rates for both players as the game changes over time.
Squeezing money from their highest spending players causes most free to play games to push out the majority of their playerbase.
Historical games can be a great way to learn while playing, but giving the player choice means not re-enacting history as it happened. Systems and mechanics can make the player's choices feel like the choices of a historic figure.
Every quest reward or sellable item in an MMO generates more gold that goes into the economy, causing inflation as the gold becomes more common and less valuable. There are several ways that MMOs can drain that money out of the economy by creating "gold sinks."
Games based on popular movies or books often turn out to be disappointing for fans of the original material. These poorly made cash-in games often spend most of their budget buying a brand license and then rush through development in order to match release deadlines. Especially now when they are moving to the growing mobile and handheld markets, their poor quality leaves a potential new base of consumers with a bad impression of games. Special thanks to Scot for the suggestion! Thanks for supporting us, Scot!
Video game villains that don't match the overall tone of the game distract the player and can become more of a laughing stock than a threat. Game designers must understand the two basic categories of bad guys (mechanics villains and narrative villains) and know not only when to use them but how to approach their design.
Villains are people too. A compelling narrative villain does not just do evil things for the sake of being evil, but because their view of the world or the actions they've taken within it drive them to make choices which they see as necessary, or even good. Instead of just a big boss monster to defeat, these antagonist types force the protagonist to make choices and challenge how they see the world.
Our brains have a tendency to gloss over the minute-to-minute action in video games, leaving us with a few minutes of distinct memories after hours of gameplay. Unlike with books or movies, we have been trained to turn our brains off or "veg out" during our game time, causing us to miss out on the full range of experience games have to offer. We can change this by making a conscious effort to focus on our games, especially when they bring more complex narratives or themes to the table.
Successful game design requires focus, which means the designer must understand what types of play best suits their game and make sure that all the game mechanics support it. Planned gameplay allows many different solutions but gives players time to review their options, practice gameplay encourages strategic thinking within fixed maps or rules, and improvised gameplay forces players think on the fly to adapt to random elements. While some games use one category exclusively, most combine them to different degrees and find success in developing systems focused on a primary type of play.
Too many horror games rely on "cheap" frights like jump scares or cliche monsters like zombies. While they may succeed in making the player afraid for a few moments, they rarely leave a lasting impression once the game is over. More horror should make use of the uncanny, creating scenes and characters that seem mostly normal but are just "off" in a disturbing way. This technique gives players something they can relate to and makes the game world real enough that it seems almost possible that the terror in the game could actually be part of our lives. Plus: Mass Effect costumes for Halloween!
Good horror games have their own pacing that's unique to the genre. To keep the player scared, games use a cycle of tension and release that keeps the player on the edge of their seat. Not knowing when the next scare will hit, but constantly reminded of the danger around them by small clues like scratching noises and dark corridors, players effectively begin to frighten themselves as they wonder what will happen next.
Games are becoming more common than ever, but the time-consuming and expensive methods to rate them for mature content haven't grown along with them. Small games, especially indie games, cannot afford the fee charged by organizations like the ESRB or PEGI for a full rating which requires someone to review the game's content and mark it by hand. Allowing developers to submit their own games which are then subject to consumer review for accuracy would make it possible even for small games to get content ratings, however platforms such as Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and even the App Store would need to encourage developers to use the system.
Early games like the 7th Guest mixed film footage with the interactivity of video games, but the poor quality led to bad results that deterred other games from following their lead. Cloud Chamber, a "massively multiplayer story game" released in 2014, revives the idea of interactive film by centering its action on the players' response to the movies, taking advantage of people's natural inclination to want to discuss what they've seen by developing in-game message boards. Thus Cloud Chamber is able to make videos interactive without the age old flaws of intrusive action menus or pace-breaking player actions.
Games often start by asking the player, "What difficulty would you like to play on?" But how is someone who has never touched the game before supposed to figure out whether they want to cruise along on easy mode or challenge themselves with hard mode? Even the idea of dynamic difficulty adjustment, which modifies the game based on how well the player is doing, can be frustrating for players whose efforts to get better at a difficult section are cut short as the game suddenly drops their difficulty rating. Dark Souls 2 provides in-game mechanics to let players choose their own difficulty preferences and adjust them on the fly simply based on the items and skills they choose - and in this episode, we give you the secret to playing Dark Souls II on easy mode!
Games that ask the player to do nothing more than wait while numbers increase have seen a surge in popularity. They fill a developing modern need for activity, giving players a window in their browser they can compulsively check while cycling between other interests. The fact that they ask for so little makes it easier for them to fulfill a multitasking impulse, scratching the player's itch to feel like they're accomplishing many tasks when their main focus (like listening to a lecture or working at their desk) requires them to sit still.
Norway faces a unique set of challenges when it comes to developing its role in the games industry. Despite some notable successes, the Norwegian game industry has yet to make its mark on the world stage. While the country has a very healthy economy and government support for games as a growing industry, Norway's population is too small to support a game industry by itself. Because of this, game companies must succeed in the global market despite a lack of dedicated business and marketing infrastructure on the publishing side.
Game mechanics often come "first" in the development phase, with a narrative being tacked on later. But when game mechanics become separated from story, the disjunct makes for a bad experience as players become impatient or disinterested. However many of the best games, from Shadow of the Colossus to Dark Souls, have mechanics that enhance the mood created by the story and the characters, and visa versa. Achieving that synthesis is key to the field of narrative design in video games.
Snakes and Ladders, or Chutes and Ladders, has been around for generations, going back perhaps 2000 years to its invention in India. Though simple - or perhaps through its simplicity - the game conveys a deliberate message about life that has stood the test of time. Snakes and Ladders requires no skill, relying purely on luck to demonstrate to the player that fate is beyond their control, and that they will stumble upon both sins that bring them down (snakes) and moral actions that lift them up (ladders) on the passage towards their goal in life.
Making your first game can be difficult. Remember that your goal is to make a game, any game, not necessarily a complex game like the ones professional teams of game developers in a studio can produce. By starting small and focusing on the basic gameplay, a new game designer can learn a lot about their skills and build on that for their next game (or the next version of their first game). That way, you can actually complete a playable game instead of getting stuck on the details as so many first time game makers do.
Now that you know the basic principles of how to make your first game (remember: start small!), it's time to break that down into a process you can follow to finish your first game. These tips will move into the details: how to plan your production schedule for your game, what to do when those plans go haywire, and more. Above all, it's important to understand that every step of making your first game will teach you something important, and that the learning process doesn't stop when development ends: show your finished game to other people, get their feedback, and be proud of what you made!
When you're making your first game, we've told you to start small, but that may leave you wondering: just how small should you be planning for? This brings us to the concept of minimum viable product: figuring out exactly which features your game needs to be fun. It's often fewer than you think! Paring a game down to its basic mechanics has many advantages. It stops you from getting stuck in development, working on features too complex for your skill level. It ensures that you make visible progress towards a concrete end goal. And best of all, it allows you to focus on the core mechanics to make sure your gameplay alone is engaging.
Before you finish your first game, even before you're ready to publish it, you should plan your marketing and PR campaign. Being an independent game designer means it's up to you to get word out about your game! Start by thinking about what makes your game great and finding a way to say that. Once you've figured out your pitch, put together a short trailer and website so you can contact every news site, big and small. Remember, they want content, too! Entering your game into contests like the Independent Games Festival can help you get additional press if your game does well. Don't be afraid to call on favors, reach out to influential game designers, and join podcasts or livestreams to help you find your audience. And finally, think broadly about where you will publish your game. There are more digital distributors than ever, and they're more accessible than you may think!
Many studies have investigated whether or not there is a link between video games and violence, but few have looked at the bigger picture. What is the correlation between video games and empathy? Since games put us, as players, in the role of characters who are not ourselves, asking us to understand their situation and the problems that they face, they have the potential to teach us about how to empathize with others. While many gamers have anecdotal evidence about games that made them feel a character's pain, there's a disappointing lack of formal studies into that side of the question.
Assumptions that certain games are only for people of a certain gender have driven game design decisions for years. Genres that are stereotyped as male, such as first person shooters, are surrounded by the trappings of a supposedly male identity: guns, warfare, and so on. Games that are stereotyped as female, such as match three games, are decorated with gender signifiers like gems and jewelry. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle as designers see mostly people of the gender-targeted audience buying that type of game and so they double-down on the stereotyping, but this approach causes games as a whole to miss out on many opportunities for creative new games even within established genres. By eliminating our assumptions that certain mechanics only appeal to certain genders, we can create new experiences and find new audiences.
Games often condition us to go through the motions of solving the puzzle or saving the world without really asking us to take on the role of the character we're playing. But a few games, by intent or by accident, manage to make their world feel real to us, and invite us not just to play the game but to put ourselves in the same mindset as the people on screen. One of the biggest factors in creating that sense of connection is the existence of consequence: when a game makes it clear to us that our choices have an impact on the world that we're playing in and the people on screen can suffer for them, it compels us to consider every choice in terms of how it would affect the people we see in front of us. In causes us to get into character for whomever we are playing, and really put ourselves into their shoes so we experience their story as if it were our own.
Games often turn to sci-fi or fantasy settings tod raw players in to an immediately interesting and exciting world. But what about the potential of games set in our modern, very real world? They allow us to explore situations that may come up in our own lives, but they run the risk of being either too mundane to engage our interest or too metaphorical for us to relate to them. Tsvetan Todorov's literary theory of the Fantastic provides one solution. By adding a twist of the supernatural to an otherwise very ordinary world, we can create suspense as both the player and their character struggle to figure out whether this supernatural event can be rationally explained (the fantastic uncanny) or whether it represents some previously unrecognized twist to their accepted reality (the fantastic marvelous).
For our long-running Games You Might Not Have Tried series, Extra Credits reviews and recommends a selection of video games that might have slipped under your radar. We've got everything from philosophical robots to roving Vikings!
Many multiplayer games have already embraced the idea of "soft" asymmetry, where different characters have skills and playstyles that make them unique but the overall game mechanics are the same. Recently, more games have begun to experiment with "hard" asymmetry where not only are individual characters different, but the game offers completely separate modes that interact with each other but share none of the same mechanics: for instance, a shooter (Dust 514) paired with a space exploration MMO (EVE Online). Where soft asymmetry promotes teamwork by giving players skills that work better when used with a team member, hard asymmetry has the potential to keep players (and their friends) invested in the same game even when they crave a different play experience.
During the convention season, games media often bursts with predictions about new trends and technology that will be the future of gaming - but many of those bold predictions never come to pass. Meanwhile, the small changes that don't make industry headlines have been building up, and right now in 2015 four patterns are clear. Asian markets in Japan, Korea, and China will expand into more parts of the West, especially as the cost to produce games gets so much higher than what their domestic markets can support. The short play sessions that have made mobile games popular with such a large audience will inform design even for traditional games in order to accommodate a maturing audience with less time to play. The power, flexibility, and above all usability of licensed engines will take over from in-house engines as they become too expensive to build with too few advantages. Finally, the rising cost of development will cause game assets to be re-used in spin-off titles that can help earn back the studio's investment in AAA titles.
Game length does not matter. Game quality does. Keep your work focused and don't be afraid to cut content that's good but not great. Special thanks to our audience for sending us their photos for the #ExtraSelfies tag! Every person featured in this episode is based on a real life Extra Credits viewer.
Games often focus on the flirtation and courtship of an early relationship, turning it into a game where saying the right thing means you will win over your romantic interest. These simple game systems fall far short of delivering on the complexity of human relationships. The player never has to face rejection, and they hardly ever find themselves on the receiving end of a proposition from an NPC companion whose feelings may be hurt by rejection (hi, Anders). Moreover, once the player's overtures are accepted, the game is "won:" very few games deal with break ups or the evolution of a relationship over time.
Games do not dictate our behavior, but they do affect us. They can affect us in positive ways, by letting us share experiences with other people or giving us a refuge from the troubles of our daily lives. They can also affect us in negative ways, however, by building Skinner Box traps that teach us to play for rewards, not for fun, and by monetizing our basic human interests instead of helping us explore them. While games are a business, that business is run by people who must take responsibility for the products they create and seriously consider the impact that games have in our society.
Part of treating players with respect is respecting the time they have to play your game. Exit points make sure your game offers players plenty of opportunities to put down the controller when they feel they have reached a good spot to stop. Gentle messages reminding them how much time they've played or offering accomplishments like new levels or zones can provide exit points. On the flip side, however, developers sometimes create unintended exit points with frustrating design choices. Long, punishing load screens in games where death is frequent may eventually cause a player who would otherwise want to continue decide to give up on trying more. Minimizing the number of unintended exit points while striking the right balance of intended exit points not only makes a game more humane, it also improves its design by preventing players from forming the negative impression of being "trapped" by a game.
How much time will players spend with your game in one sitting? The answer affects many aspects of your game's design, and you can remove the guesswork from it by thinking about the environment that surrounds your game and how that affects players' engagement with it. Are they at home, unwinding in front of their console? Or are they out for lunch, sneaking in turns between bites of food? Test the game in these environments, and learn how they affect the amount of time players are willing or able to put into your game. Then you can choose to design towards those constraints or perhaps decide that you need to move your game to a new environment (e.g. new platform, genre, or monetization method): in either case, recognizing those needs early will help you develop a better game.
The classic heroes whose stories have resonated through time have many features in common with each other. Whether it's strength or cunning or some other quality, they have greater powers than the average person - but they are not gods. They experience failure. This classical structure not only forces the character to recognize their own limits, it helps us relate to them as a human being and gives us a greater appreciation for their achievements. In video games, however, we see heroes who really can conquer every challenge. It lets us play out a power fantasy, but doesn't give us a meaningful story arc to watch the character grow. Studying classic heroes such as Achilles or Gilgamesh can help games improve their narrative by showing how we can write characters whose immense power and lust for battle can coexist with human failings that make a story more engaging.
Violence lies at the heart of the Western tradition. Rage is an essential part of human nature, one that literature, art, and games can help us explore in healthy ways. It gives us an outlet to cool down and helps us address the question of whether violence can be directed to a good cause, like saving the world or freeing people from oppression. There's value in that, but there's no value in sadistic games like Hatred. These games revel in the pain we cause to others, crossing the line from violence to cruelty. These games have every right to be made, and calls for a ban would be misdirected, but they have no right to be rewarded for exploiting cruelty to create sensation. Do not buy them. Do not glorify them. Do not mistake sadism for expression.
Valve's attempt to introduce a marketplace onto the Steam Workshop raises questions about the effect paid mods would have on the mod community and the game companies themselves. The modders get only a small percentage of sales, but that percentage is still better than the cost of licensing the game's brand or engine. Game developers must consider the risks of legal action if a modder sells content using copyrighted or trademarked material, because even if they had no direct hand in the content's creation, the fact that they make money from it may open them to lawsuits. It could also drive down the interest in DLC even further while driving up the demands on customer service, since players may have mistake bugs caused by their mods for bugs in the main game.
Rust assigns players a skin color on character creation, then ties it to their Steam account so they can never change it. This game design decision creates diversity in the player base and has forced many players to play as characters of an ethnicity different from their own. Since the game does not censor players' language, many of these players are hearing themselves called racial insults for the first time. While uncomfortable, this experience also pushes players who might normally be oblivious to those issues (or even participate in them) to consider things from a different perspective.
Force-of-Nature villains embody pure evil, or chaos, or other forces that move the world beyond the hero's control. They're not traditional characters with motives, desires, and a backstory that makes it easy to understand them. They exist purely to drive an agenda. The force they represent (and push relentlessly onto the world) defines the hero's values by interaction, giving the hero's human flaws and virtues greater value when contrasted with the villain's single-minded purpose. These villains are frequently portrayed as gods or monsters, like Sauron, but when written as humans, like the Joker or the Illusive Man, they are usually written as insane or obsessed.
Exploration appeals to basic human instincts, and the basic joy we get from discovery makes exploration a key element for many games. While the geographic discovery of finding new levels or zones is a great example of exploration in games, it's not the only type of exploration that exists. Among others, games can provide mechanical discovery, where players try new build paths or skill combos to increase their mastery of the game; content discovery, where players seek to unlock secrets or rush to open new packs to find out what they carry; and narrative discovery, where instead of being walked through a story the player must piece together backstory and lore from evidence they find around the world. This joy of discovery comes as much from the hunt as from the finding, but the designer must reward the player's successful exploration with new tools or insights to show that the game recognizes their efforts.
Designers graph gameplay engagement on a curve, making sure that new players have the time to learn and grow comfortable with the mechanics before introducing new ones. Yet for all that games have become more and more social with the spread of internet access, too many still bury new players in social mechanics while they're still trying to learn how to play. Just as games have tutorial levels, they should also ease the player into chat systems, auction houses, and guild participation one step at a time.
Once players like Emily have gotten comfortable with the mechanics of the game, they're ready to dip their toes into the social features. Early social challenges should be easy to complete in a single play session, like small raids that can easily be defeated by a random pick up group. Instead of just ramping up the difficulty to force players into groups, though, the game designer should give bonus rewards to players who work together (even if it's something as small as increasing their chance of getting better loot) without making solo missions impossible. Hitting this balance between low effort social tasks and better game rewards makes the player feel comfortable and confident about reaching out to other players, which is crucial to move them onto the next stage of social curve design.
Social play allows players like Emily to take on greater challenges than solo play. With the player's confidence in the game's mechanical challenges well established, the design can now push them towards social challenges. For example, the player may recognize instantly how to beat a high level raid boss, but to succeed at their plan they need to recruit other players to form the right party. Their successes naturally lead to them making friends with players they get along with, and at this point the community takes initiative into its own hands as players elect to join guilds or even step up to leadership. At the peak of social curve design, the prestige players get from coordinated play (exclusive loot, titles, and other visible bragging rights for beating the most difficult quests) becomes more of a reward than stats alone. While the designer must provide tools to make it easy for those players to coordinate with one another, they should still avoid the pitfall of making interactions automatic since that would undercut the entire cycle of social challenge and reward.
The Witcher: Wild Hunt distills all the best practices of hard-boiled detective novels and translates them brilliantly into a game. To understand how and why this works so well, we have to look at the origins of detective novels, going all the way back to Edward Allen Poe first showing us how feats of logic (as opposed to feats of raw strength) could be engrossing. Characters like Sherlock Holmes and authors like Agatha Christie turned that revelation into a formula, but one that often revolved around the English upper class or quaint country life with stories led by a detective who seemed outside and above it all. American detective novels like those of Raymond Chandler, whose essay in the Art of Murder could practically be a design document for the Witcher 3, broke with that tradition: they expanded the stories to not only show lower class people but humanize them, allowing the reader to learn and empathize with their stories through a detective who moves smoothly between both upper and lower classes with disdain for neither. The recent war upheavals in the Witcher create a society much like that in the hard-boiled detective novels, where everything and everyone is in flux. Geralt fits perfectly into the mold of the gritty detective, a sarcastic, unflappable person who can both give and take a beating but whose honor throughout is both unquestionable and unheralded. The main storyline of the Witcher III is a thread we follow as players, but the real value of the game lies in the stories we find along the way: the human moments we discover because the game gives us so much to explore.
Celebrity game developers from Japan have become frustrated with AAA development and begun breaking off to form their own, small teams. The AAA side of the industry is shrinking worldwide, focused solely on games that have marketability and thereby forcing derivative games with an emphasis on graphics over gameplay. In the US, this spurred small, relatively unknown developers to create games that succeeded on the back of innovations that broke with traditional rules. In Japan, however, it's famous developers who - frustrated with the limitations of large studios - have broken off to form small teams and return to their roots, perfecting old school game genres that they themselves created. While the success of this new direction is uncertain, the industry as a whole could stand to benefit from an increased focus on craftsmanship in our games.
Procedural generation can be used to create almost any kind of content, but in games, we usually see it used to create levels, enemy encounters, and loot drops. This random element allows games like Diablo to offer players infinite replayability, since every dungeon run will both look different and yield different results. This approach does have its weaknesses, however. Handcrafted levels will always be better at delivering a powerful experience that's mapped to the game's story pacing. Procedural generation is also best thought of as an economy of scale: the more levels you have, the more worthwhile it will be to program a procedural generation system since it's a complicated undertaking that must check for broken, unplayable maps and special rulesets in certain areas. It's also possible to merge the two, by having a specific handcrafted experience like a boss fight in the middle of an otherwise procedurally generated world. Overall, as more games start to focus on creating infinite content to keep players engaged, we can expect to see more procedural generation in our games.
A passionate community has grown around speedrunning, when players try to find the fastest possible way to complete a run. Different types of speedrun may require the player to beat the entire game or allow them to take shortcuts enabled by glitches. Game developers may want to attract an audience for their game through a design that appeals to this community, but to succeed they should keep three factors in mind. First, focus on tight controls so the runner can focus on their path through the game. Second, allow them the versatility of multiple approaches, but make sure the game provides enough consistency that each performance of the same route can be executed in the same time (or close to it). Scripted enemies vs. AI that generates random responses help with that! Finally, be mindful of how patching affects the speedrunners who are learning your game: you can still patch, but try to patch in new options for the community along with your bug fixes!
Making new content is expensive, time-consuming, and risky. Many publishers have fallen back on remastering their previous games, where they only need to upscale the graphics and can rely on an existing fanbase to buy the game again. This risk averse approach to publishing has led the current generation of consoles to be dominated by remasters instead of new AAA titles. Remasters can make old games more accessible, but recently they've been focused on simply updating last gen games that many people could still easily play. But truly old titles have become so out-of-date that any remaster would require the game to be built from the ground up, as we're seeing right now with the Final Fantasy VIII remake, and cost just as much as a brand new game. Despite the trend of games being remastered, then, many classic games are actually being ignored.
World War 2 games like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and Battlefield flooded the market during the 1990's and continued to dominate the first person shooter genre for years to come. Players grew fatigued with the sheer number of them, however, especially since it seemed that many replayed the same battles over and over again in new game engines. But in their rush to recreate the most famous moments of WW2 for the Western World, they left huge, important, and very game-worthy parts of the war unexplored. It was called a World War for a reason, yet many fronts of WW2 in Africa or Asia have never been covered in a game. Developers could also focus on a specific battle rather than trying to cover the entire experience, allowing players to experience the highs and lows of a single, fierce struggle. They could also change the gameplay from traditional run 'n gun shooter to styles that have worked for games like Far Cry or Red Dead Redemption, focusing on raiding parties or freedom fighters. And finally, they can make the world outside the battle feel more real by engaging with real themes of the war - far too many WW2 games have simply ignored the Holocaust and acted as though the war took place in a cultural vacuum.
Progression systems in games are far too often designed as Skinner boxes: psychological traps that feed us carefully measured rewards to create habit-forming activity loops. Skinner boxes are not rewarding in themselves, but progression systems can be, and they should be used to create a better game experience. Building in choices that allow the player to select their own build (and optimize it) lets the player think ahead and makes progression a part of the game experience in itself. It also helps them become familiar with the systems in the game at their own pace as they level up. These systems can even actively make the game better by encouraging players to try and then improve on the most engaging types of play, giving rewards for skill or strategy, for example. Finally, they can actually enhance the story, giving the players faction alignment that responds to their actions in the game and locks or unlocks hidden parts of the story as they progress.
We're big fans of Seattle-based "escape the room" designers Puzzle Break, so we teamed up with them to run a big, 100+ person party during PAX. The premise is simple: you're locked in a room with a group of other people and given one hour to find the key to escape. Most groups don't finish in time, but it's still the best team-building exercise ever. Turning a puzzle game into a multiplayer experience creates three distinct aspects of play: finding the clues, assembling those clues, and then using them to solve the puzzle. People who normally might not enjoy the solo experience of a traditional puzzle game, such as those who enjoy exploration or communication, will find lots to do here. Even traditional puzzle solvers will need to apply different types of logic to solve the wide variety of challenges in the room. This set-up allows everyone to display their talents, and rewards groups for having a diverse set of skills. It also teaches you a lot about the members of your team!
The Fallout Shelter app's breakout success took everyone, including Bethesda, by surprise. It's a casual, free-to-play game - exactly what many hardcore players hate - but it became so popular that its revenue overtook Candy Crush, the traditional King of the mobile market. Nor is it just the traditional mobile players who hopped on board: user reviews and the game's forum come from the hardcore audience. The simple gameplay inspired by Tiny Tower has very little interactivity and is heavily timer-based. It also makes the best characters available only to those who pay money for the game's "lunchbox" gachapon. So why does this game succeed where other hardcore-into-casual games like Bioware's Heroes of Dragon Age or EA's Dungeon Keeper reboot failed? It may be that the lack of energy systems and PvP, traditional drivers of F2P monetization, made the game more friendly and less demanding to play.
Geralt in The Witcher III: Wild Hunt finds himself torn between two women he loves. His relationship with Yennefer is passionate but tumultuous, while his relationship with Triss is more tender and caring. Choosing between these two women doesn't feel like picking your favorite option at a buffet, a fault that Bioware romance options often fall into - it feels like defining Geralt as a person through the choice he makes. Geralt's relationship with these women reflects an inner conflict about who he already is (Yennefer) and who he wants to be (Triss). It also showcases a weakness in the "blank slate" character model so common in Western RPGs: by giving the player full control over who the character is, we actually limit ourselves since we can only define the character in broad, easy to design strokes such as "good" or "evil." The defined character and existing backstory of Geralt allowed the Witcher 3 developers to create nuanced choices that help the player think about who he is and what his choices mean.
To understand the debates over frame rate that pop up over so many new game releases, we have to start with an understanding of what frame rate means and does. All moving video is really composed of a sequence of still images, or frames. The rate at which we change those frames determines how smooth the motion looks. In film, the standard frame rate is 24fps, but that's actually a slow rate which creates effects like motion blur that our brains have been trained to recognize as cinematic. Video games aim for a minimum of 30fps, however, because the interactivity means that a slower frame rate can make the game feel laggy. While developers sometimes hit a higher framerate, we usually only hear 30fps and 60fps discussed because our TV and computer monitors refresh in intervals of 30, although we can turn off vertical sync (vsync) to get somewhat closer to the refresh rates pumped out by our graphics cards. So why do developers sometimes cap frame rate at 30fps? Sometimes it's contractual - they're prohibited from making a PC version definitively better than its console equivalent - and sometimes it's bad architecture - a game that's programmed to check something every frame becomes more laggy the more frames there are. But in the end, to achieve a higher framerate, developers have to trade off other aspects of the game's performance, and every industry study shows that better graphics trump better framerate when it comes to sales.
Since we last talked about power creep on Extra Credits, the phrase has become widely used by many players and yet it is often used incorrectly. Many Hearthstone players responding to the recent "Grand Tournament" expansion have called out the wrong cards as examples: Evil Heckler and Ice Rager are numerically better than cards from the original set (Booty Bay Bodyguard and Magma Rager), but those original cards were so weak that they almost never saw play. The new cards fix that because they meet the game's power curve (the graph of power vs. cost to play) so they're actually playable. But the last set, Goblins vs. Gnomes, contained a card that serves as a perfect example of what power creep actually is: the Piloted Shredder offers such high value relative to other cards of that same cost that it basically becomes the best choice in almost any deck. To respond to that, Blizzard added more cards that have the same cost as the Piloted Shredder, but can kill it without dying themselves. This is true power creep: when one element of a game becomes so strong that the entire game must shift to match it. It effectively deletes the design space for any equally costed card that can't compete with the Piloted Shredder, and if Blizzard can't find a way to reign it back in, then it will eventually force the entire power curve of the game to creep upwards.
Most games released today are expected to have at least a 5-year lifecycle with patches and expansions. As the original design team moves on to new jobs, they must be careful about what they design and try to lay down a set of best practices to prevent new designers from creating new features that accidentally break the game. Hearthstone's Grand Tournament expansion provides good examples to look at. The Tuskarr Totemic, which summons one other card labeled "totem" into the game when played, is currently balanced since only one-third of totems are strong cards. To prevent this card from getting out of control, Hearthstone designers will need to maintain that ratio or the odds of the Tuskarr Totemic completely changing the board in favor of the player who uses it get out of control. On the other hand, the Druid's Living Roots card is currently balanced, but has much more potential to unbalance the game because it can be used to summon multiple small creatures. This opens the door to combinations: any time another card (like Savage Roar) rewards having more creatures on the board, Living Roots can become unbalanced. Finally, there is the new Druid card Astral Communion, whose properties boil down to "win the game immediately" or "lose the game immediately." This card accelerates late game in such a way that it basically has to be unplayable (like it currently is) or it completely breaks the game, making it a risky card to release and an interesting choice from Hearthstone's designers.
Bartle's Taxonomy was the earliest attempt to break down player psychology in a multiplayer environment. Richard Bartle, who created the first MUD in 1978, interviewed the players of his games about why they played. Their responses fit into four categories, which we now call Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers. Achievers focus on in-game goals like getting high scores or collecting gold. Explorers seek to discover new locations on the map or new ways to use the mechanics. Socializers come to meet people, often organizing guilds or collecting on social forums. Killers seek to dominate other players, usually by killing them in PvP. Bartle went further than creating these four categories, however: he also mapped them to a graph with Action-Interaction on one axis and Player-World on the other. This simple graph helps developers evaluate new content: what category does it fall into, and therefore what type of gameplay does it encourage?
Dr. Richard Bartle's Taxonomy provides rough guidelines for understanding the types of motivations that players have. It also allows us to appeal to those players in broad groups, for example, providing easter eggs to lure in Explorer type players. These players groups also have a natural synergy with each other: for example, killers like to prey upon achievers, so they require a population of achievers to enjoy the game. But if there are too many killers, then it gets in the way of any achievers succeeding at their own goals, so game designers have to make sure that they balance these populations by keeping track of what type of gameplay they're encouraging most when they add features.
Horror settings fall into two basic categories: places of disempowerment and places of isolation. Places of disempowerment - such as alien worlds and the bottom of the sea - force us into situations where we don't understand the rules of our environment, and can never tell when our expectations will be suddenly reversed. Places of isolation, like remote cabins and arctic research stations, make sure we know that no one will help us: if we can't find a way to survive, we will simply die. The inherent terror in these settings can be amplified by giving them a haunted past, such an ancient graveyard or an abandoned asylum, or by making the place itself possessed of malice and willpower that's directed against those inside it. Finally, these settings can provide psychological landscapes that reflect someone's inner struggles and fears directly back onto them.
Destiny is rarely great, but it is consistently good - enough to become a "comfort food" in the games world. The first person shooter style gameplay is familiar enough to most players, and executed well enough by Bungie, to feel interesting and accessible without requiring too much gameplay. Even as the game evolves over time, the designers have consistently hit good notes without reaching for brilliance or attempting to introduce radically new design ideas or even, frankly, fix all of the design flaws that have been around since the game's underwhelming launch. This is because the game must appeal to a large audience, and while it doesn't offer the best in PvP or the best in PvE, it does both well enough that players who enjoy either of those options can often agree to settle on Destiny in order to play with their friends.
Randomness has three major functions in game design: 1) it creates exciting moments, 2) it gives the weaker player a chance to win occasionally, 3) it forces players to adapt to changing circumstances. When adding random elements, game designers must look at the delta of randomness, or the difference between what baseline impact that element has without a random effect and the realized impact it has with its random effect. Hearthstone once again provides an easy example: a card with a random effect should have its baseline below the average power curve on the assumption that its realized random effect will boost it over the curve. Surprisingly, cards with the least variability in their random effect tend to be more exciting for both players than cards with a large but unreliable random effect. Large randomness can swing the game in ways that make it seem like the outcome was decided the moment one player lucked into a huge random draw. But small random effects can still give one player a slight advantage without completely shutting down their opponent, giving both a chance to play around the inherent RNG in the cards.
While a positive random effect can only benefit the player who controls it, there are other varieties of random effects. Negative randomness means the effect can actually be bad for the controlling player - for example, if their card or character (like Ogre Brute) randomly targets the wrong enemy. Where positive random effects needed to be balanced by putting a card below the power curve, negative random effects should be offset by raising a card above the power curve so the player feels like they're getting a reward for risking it. There is also reciprocal randomness, where the random effect applies to all players in the game. Hearthstone's Spellslinger card generates a random spell for both players, but is not a well-designed example because its ability to generate any spell in the game for either player creates far too large of a delta of randomness. Winning or losing in that case doesn't rely on the player's ability to adapt, but simply on luck of the draw. A card like Mechanical Yeti which generates similarly powered advantages (or perhaps disadvantages) for both players does a better job of generating small but impactful results for both players. Ultimately, randomness in game design should not aim to create big moments - as those can make it feel like the game tilted unfairly - but should instead be focused on creating engaging moments for all players involved.
An antihero is someone whom you want to see succeed, even though it almost feels like you shouldn't. They're not villains, whom we can love but whose plans (like world destruction) we can't support. The antihero has an objective we agree with, but a personality that just grates on us. In Western literature, the predecessors of the antihero include Shakespeare's Hamlet or John Milton's Satan from Paradise Lost: they had grating, yet attractive, personalities, but their goals were not really those of a hero. Lord Byron introduced the first real antihero in his poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, which became so well known that "Byronic hero" is another way to describe the antihero. Since then, we have seen antiheroes in everything from Kafka's Metamorphosis to detective noir and pulp sci-fi novels. They tend to appear when a new generation of writers in a genre wants to escape the stale cliches of their predecessors. Games may be due for an antihero movement, but since they are interactive, it's difficult to make an actual antihero rather than just a character who acts like a jerk in between action sequences. Brooding is not very engaging for the player, for example, so how do you create brooding moments for an antihero when the player is in control? How do you make players feel that angst?
Consoles take a complicated route to get from us - all the way from being minerals in the ground to being assembled in factories across the world. A close look at how this happens reveals ethical and logistical difficulties worth talking about. Varying labor laws, outsourced work, and even worker reluctance make factories hard to inspect for good working conditions. Further down the chain, the raw minerals used in consoles often come from war-torn regions such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where local militias seize control of the mines and use them to raise funds to propagate their brutal civil war. The electronics industry has gotten better about rejecting conflict minerals, but it's far from perfect. Microsoft and Sony are part of industry organizations to track and reduce abuse along supply chains, but Nintendo has only made small steps and simply refuses to collaborate with the rest of the tech industry to help solve this problem. Console manufacturers can still do more by putting a bigger focus on supply chain audits, voicing support for laws that would improve nationwide standards, being vocal to draw attention to these issues, and giving factories a bigger lead time for product launches. As consumers, we need to understand the impact our demand for launch day console availability has on pushing more unsafe labor practices and consider whether a small price increase (perhaps as little as $5) to guarantee that our consoles were manufactured without conflict minerals would really be too much of a price to pay.
For our long-running Games You Might Not Have Tried series, Extra Credits reviews and recommends a selection of video games that might have slipped under your radar.
China has gamified being an obedient citizen with the creation of Sesame Credit. The game links to your social network and gives you a score for doing things that the government approves of, but it also reduces that score for doing things the government disapproves of. Even your friends' scores affect your own, and being friends with people who have a low score will drag your score down as well. This insidious system applies social pressure on people to ostracize their friends with lower scores, either forcing those friends to change their ways or effectively quarantining their rebellious ideas. While many sci-fi visions of a dystopian future have centered around a bleak government that controls through fear, Sesame Credit shows us that a government can use gamification and positive reinforcement to be just as controlling. And it's real. While currently the system is opt-in, the government plans to make it mandatory in 2020. Once mandatory, it may give rewards for good scores or penalties for bad ones. And in the meantime, making it opt-in has already set the tone for the game: people participate willingly, so they find it fun, and they set a very high standard for what the "average" score should be. Already people have begun sharing their scores on social media.
A video game takes up more of our time than movies, TV, or books, but they have far less to say. Literally: while TV scripts have about 120 words per minute of dialogue, we timed several narrative heavy games at about 16 words per minute. Many of those words are aimed at giving the player game information, not plot exposition, but even so, games like Destiny waste the time they do have on instructional text or throwaway lines. Characters simply restate what's going on around them or make meaningless comments to cover the gap in boring sections of gameplay. Contrast that with the Witcher 3, which dispenses instructions in five words and then proceeds to tell a story. Good dialogue should meet at least one of four basic criteria: 1) Tells us about the world 2) Tells us about the speaker 3) Tells us about other characters, or 4) Moves the plot forward. When games have so few words to build their story, it's a shame to see those opportunities wasted on filler.
The television show "Mr. Robot" provides a very good example of how to get the most of a scene. SPOILER ALERT in this episode and this description! In episode 9, the show reveals that the antagonist is actually a facet of the hero's split personality. In the scene where it's revealed, they use music that not only reflects the protagonist's state of mind, it also references Fight Club, a movie with a similar story reveal that used the same music. With this simple choice, they have created both an internal reference - the mindset of the character - and an external reference - the similarity to Fight Club - which come together to form a richer interpretation for the viewer of the show. Let us know in the comments about games you've played that also manage to pack multiple messages into a few simple references!
The European Union (EU) has passed laws regulating free-to-play games, but their focus has been on limiting the way Free-to-Play games target children. It's not a bad start, but since children only make up a small sliver of the F2P market, it still leaves the major targets of predatory F2P companies unprotected. People with depression, compulsive personalities, or people who form close bonds with the internet community are deliberately exploited by companies that expect to pump thousands of dollars of revenue out of a single one of these users by preying upon human psychology. We're leary of the form that F2P regulatory laws could take, especially seeing as the versions in the EU triggered both Apple and Google to overcompensate by punishing innocent developers, but as long as companies continue to build game economies on the assumption that they can exploit these "whales" then we are running a dangerous risk of requiring government intervention to protect the players.
It's a brand new year, and there a few interesting trends we're keeping an eye on as 2016 shapes up. For starters, the Portable Steam Machine may create a unique space for itself in the market. Since Apple devices like the iPad took over the mobile scene, there haven't really been any portable games designed around a controller input other than Nintendo 3DS - and its control scheme is unique enough to make porting to other systems difficult. The Portable Steam Machine, on the other hand, is built to play on both a handheld and a computer and it has a built in controller that unlocks diffferent avenues for game designers wishing to be successful in multiple sections of the market. We're also keeping an eye on the rapid acquisitions of non-Chinese game developers by Chinese corporations like Tencent and Snail Games. The quiet but rapid rush of acquisition we've seen over the last year has now reached a phase where it needs to pay off, and Chinese companies need to be more strategic about their investments. But they've been largely more hands-off than Western firms like EA when they acquire games, and the relationship between Riot Games and Tencent (which recently acquired 100% ownership) will serve as a bellwether to see how this shakes out. On similar lines, China recently lifted its ban on consoles, so we may see new Chinese game developers form to build games in their new console market. We're interested in whether those games remain in China or become localized and exported to other countries, bringing another new voice and new cultural perspective to game design. Finally, we hope to see whether the Western acquisition bubble will pay off. Microsoft and Activision invested billions of dollars into acquiring Minecraft and King Games (Candy Crush), respectively - even more than Disney paid for the acquisition of Marvel or Lucasfilm. If these investments pay off, expect to see a change in the valuation of all game development companies - but if not, expect to see in
Why are there no good movies about video games? We asked our friend Movie Bob to weigh in, since this topic is his specialty. And there's no single answer to it. True, video games have a different storytelling style because of their interactive nature, but books and plays and even song also have different approaches that have been adapted successfully. The bigger concern is that the people with money and the power to make decisions in the film industry didn't grow up with our classic games. Looking back to Tim Burton's Batman, that movie was a hit that spawned multiple comic book movies - but they were all based off old franchises (Dick Tracy) or new fads (Spawn) instead of the most popular and enduring characters (Spiderman). They picked the wrong properties. Another challenge is that in games, caring about the story isn't necessarily part of caring about the game. Street Fighter has a narrative that most players don't even know about. But what if there's something worth adapting about a game aside from its story or mechanics? What if you adapted its core gameplay: a first-person experience of war. It would be distinct, and it would be distinctly Call of Duty. It even has the potential to feel more personal for the audience and to tell a good, original story that may not even need to connect to the game beyond that persepective.
The most important skill for a game designer is understanding the fantasy or player experience their game wants to deliver. Dig deep into the genre of the game, study both the best and worst examples from all media to understand why people love that genre, and then design visuals, story, and mechanics that make the most of that understanding.
Pokemon Go demonstrated the potential of a well-themed augmented reality game to capture people's imagination, but as far as game design, it doesn't offer much. We take a look at how a hypothetical D&D competitor could use the same type of location and resource structure to make a more engaging and accessible game.
Free-to-Play mechanics bring persistence and progress to simple game systems, only to slam players into a frustrating paywall. But replace real money with in-game money that every player earns by enjoying the main single player game, and suddenly the same mechanics that make free-to-play so maddening become the foundation for a memorable and even beloved mini-game like Gwent or Blitzball.
Pokemon Go has taught us a lot about how to make real world games. Unfortunately some of it is what we really, really have to do better. Find out all the places where Pokemon Go stumbles.
When games and the real world meet, we have the chance to do some real good. Join us as we explore how we can use gaming in the real world to make the world a better place.
Dave and Max: Games can teach us about ourselves and games can teach us about the world. Sometimes it's important to see not only how games can help us understand ourselves but how our play prepares us to take on the challenges we'll we know we'll be forced to face. I hope this episode helps you step into these challenges without fear and helps arm you with the knowledge of how well prepared you really are.
Sony's announcement of the PS4 Pro is the next step in their gamble on PlayStation VR, but it also seems poised to end the console "generation gap" and make upgrades in the console market more like those in the PC gaming world. But is this a good thing?
Overwatch has the most wildly asymmetric levels we've seen in a multiplayer FPS. And yet, each level is meant to funnel players through a perfectly crafted interest curve. Does it work?
Overwatch's character diversity is its best feature, but it also makes each new map and new character much more challenging to create. How do the designers adapt each release to keep the game's variety of playstyles relevant and fun?
Ever wonder why characters in horror stories take so long to realize that the danger they're facing is real - and deadly? True horror turns our strengths against us, turning our rationality into a weapon that makes us doubt our own perception before we dare to question the reality we always trusted.
If you want to try games that feel different, that always feel new and ambitious even if they're not necessarily the most polished experiences, then check out this list of Games You Might Not Have Tried. We review and recommend interesting but under appreciated games on a variety of genres and platforms for you to discover and enjoy.
Video games let us be heroes who accomplish the impossible. They teach us to take control of difficult situations and find our way through. When we apply those lessons to our real lives, how much can we accomplish?
When players can generate their own money in infinite supply by killing monsters for in-game gold, MMO economies quickly get overrun by inflation. In the past we've talked about how designers can create gold sinks to solve this problem. Today we'll talk about other ways game designers approach it: by adapting the same tools used by economists in the real world.
Accretion happens when, instead of fixing broken mechanics, developers just build new ones and let the old ones become obsolete. It allows longterm projects like MMOs and yearly sequels to keep going as the new teams pick up where the old ones left off, but it can also bog the game down and make it completely inaccessible to new players.
Sara Winters, born with ocular albinism, was legally blind for most of her early life. Game therapy helped her brain learn to make sense of the images processed by her eyes: it helped her to read, to find friends and community, and to build a life helping others. She shares her story with us Because Games Matter.
Daniel Starkey had been through a difficult break-up that left him feeling alone in the world. He started playing Dark Souls, a difficult game that stranded him in another lonely world - but it helped him discover the patience and focus he needed to get himself back on track.
Zhenghua Yang (Z) woke up one night, choking on his own blood. His platelet count had dropped below fatal levels and doctors gave him only two hours to live. But Z survived. He spent two full years hospitalized, feeling lost and hopeless until video games brought him to a new sense of purpose and a community of friends. Now he develops his own video games to explore their potential to teach, inspire, and yes: save lives.
Too many strategy games are over hours before you actually win the game. Once you build up enough of a lead, you have the resources you need to respond to all the game's minor challenges. The key to fixing this problem is uncertainty: hidden information or unexpected events that make you change your plans and keep the game dynamic.
Casinos and online gambling sites have begun to recognize the potential to use video games as a new source of revenue. With more and more skill-based games being re-purposed for gambling - sometimes legally, sometimes not - it becomes important for developers to look ahead at the features these adaptations may have.
User experience designers act like translators between the game and the player, crafting everything from menus and tutorials to in-game effects to help players learn and interact with the systems.
Even if we reduce game literacy to just "being able to play," the number of genres and platforms make it surprisingly difficult for even experienced players to claim well-rounded literacy. But the creative rewards for a game literate community could be immense.
Advanced game literacy lets us analyze our games beyond the surface level, finding meaning in the mechanics and much more. To get there, we need developers, consumers, and academics to help create a community of analysis.
Why are hobby and personal games important? Even though they rarely make waves in the mainstream game industry, they are a fantastic outlet for expressing a wide range of creative possibilities.
Want to binge watch some TV shows that are interesting, different, and off the beaten path? We've got you covered. Here are some of our favorites from the world of television!
Progress bars and other forms of gamification have begun to crop up everywhere. But what about the pure joy of undirected play?
Xbox quietly introduced a new feature that creates family sharing, more accessibility, and custom co-op modes. Let's examine Co-Pilot mode.
We can't remove politics from games. They express our perspectives and understanding of the world, just like movies, books, or any other art form. We can agree or disagree with the stances they express, but all media is political.
Making games is hard. You need all kinds of technical and creative skills, but most importantly, you need to know how to manage the many kinds of stress that come with it.
When a game comes out, blame or praise often falls on the one person we think of as its "auteur," the lone visionary who directed its creation. This skews the reality of development: games are the product of a whole team whose diverse contributions all help shape what it becomes.
As games grow connected to our online accounts, they start learning about us: our names, our friends, and so much more. That connected information has the potential to create really cool experiences, but only if it's not abused.
Cutscenes have long been the whipping boy of "bad" game design, but Yakuza 0 shows us they can still be amazing in a modern game if done well. What was Sega's secret?
Nothing feels worse than seeing a game you really like but can't play because it's only being released in another part of the world. But does it have to be that way? Here's why we think every console game should be published worldwide.
Sometimes a game is more than just a game: it's a lifestyle. You play it enough for it to become a part of your life. Often these games have different playstyle genres, but the way we play them makes them "lifestyle games."
When launch day bugs ruin a game, why don't publishers just delay the release to fix everything? While it's definitely bad business for them to make such broken games, it's worth taking a look at how the problems get that bad instead of just blaming "lazy developers."
Firing somebody is hard, but if one team member isn't keeping up, it's better for everyone if the team leader fires them early before their part of the project falls behind. It's better for the team, better for the game, and often even better for the person being fired.
Games driven by personal data have the potential to change the medium in exciting new ways, but they also have the potential to cross boundaries. What laws regulate a game's ability to harness player data, and what responsibility do devs have to use that information wisely?
Some recent Japanese games have tried to examine the hentai sensibility, with varying degrees of success. Where Yakuza 0 succeeds in finding a new perspective through bawdy humor, Persona 5 tries a more serious look that falls flat when the game thoughtlessly engages in sexual objectification.
If you want to try games that feel different, that always feel new and ambitious even if they're not necessarily the most polished experiences, then check out this list of Games You Might Not Have Tried - Console Edition! We review and recommend interesting but under appreciated console games for you to discover and enjoy.
Did you know Persona 5 is based on Jungian psychology? Learn about the symbolism behinds the masks and major arcana! These concepts can be surprising helpful when analyzing or even writing games.
So you want to be a game journalist! Where to start? Freelancer Rob Rath shares his experience and advice, from practicing writing on a personal blog to researching the types of articles sites publish and even how to write a good pitch.
Whether you've been with us from the beginning or just found us on YouTube, you are what makes Extra Credits special. Your support and encouragement keep us going. And the conversations and questions you bring with you to your friends, your family, and your world are the reason we started this show in the first place.
Content Warning: Abusive Relationship. Harm doesn't end when physical or emotional abuse stops. In Injustice 2, Harley Quinn is a hero who's still dealing with the aftermath of her trauma - and neither of those aspects of her character detracts from the other.
Games have made great strides in the last few years towards public recognition and arts funding in the United States, but all that could fall apart unless we step up to support the programs like the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities which make it possible.
Game design is a language and games speak to us in ways that we can understand. But how does that work? By understanding three simple ideas, we can both make better games and learn what makes the ones we play and love so special.
Since the founding of the Olympics, games have been a tool to bring people together, allowing us to compete but also to recognize the humanity in our opponents. Although online games have become a breeding ground for toxicity, they still have the potential to teach us about each other and find role models in professional players.
Every game has some skills or abilities that are just weaker than other abilities. Players wind up ignoring them or resenting them, so why include these "red herring" mechanics? While it can be just lazy design, there are also some very good uses for these marginal mechanics!
Games often advertise their complex AI, but in truth, offering a wide variety of simple NPC behaviors unique to each enemy often feels more engaging AND challenging to the player than putting them through multiple hours of facing a bunch of NPCs operating on the same AI behavior tree.
Once development begins on a feature, game developers often get drawn into a sunk cost fallacy that compels them to keep working on that feature even when it's failing. Cutting those features is hard, but often the right choice to make the game better.
Accessibility design makes the game better for all players, not only the disabled. By planning ahead and making more options available, designers can give players the tools to customize their experience in a way that fits them best.
The Extra Credits crew gathered at PAX West in 2017 and did a panel! We hope you enjoy our answers to audience questions and the debut of Scott's yearly secret video.
The first data we see affects our opinion about everything afterwards - so a good review score makes us like the game more, and an apparent sale makes us more eager to buy a game with a higher price point. This anchoring effect is even built into game design itself.
Games embrace power fantasies that let the player do whatever they want, to whomever they want, without anyone questioning the morality of their actions. But questioning and re-evaluating our choices is an important part of life, and players don't need to be treated so delicately that we never address these issues in game.
What we want to believe about ourselves and what's actually true may be very different things. Prey: The Enemy Inside starts with a simple psychological test... and then puts you in situations that may reveal your answers to be lies.
When we stay up later than we wanted just to hit a progress point in our games, we have fallen into the arbitrary endpoint trap. Some games deliberately manipulate us to do one more level, but many times we're doing it to ourselves and making playtime a chore.
If you want to try games that feel different, that feel new and ambitious even if they're not necessarily the most polished experiences, then check out this list of Games You Might Not Have Tried - Halloween Edition! We review and recommend interesting but under appreciated games for you to discover and enjoy.
Why have we become obsessed with a game where nothing happens for minutes at a time? It's because PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is something rare in games: a multiplayer thriller. CORRECTION: This episode was co-written by Rob Rath, not only James Portnow as listed in the endslate
If you want to try games that feel different, that feel new and ambitious even if they're not necessarily the most polished experiences, then check out this list of Games You Might Not Have Tried! We review and recommend interesting but under appreciated games for you to discover and enjoy.
We loved games from Quintet back in the Super Nintendo era: ActRaiser, Soul Blazer, and Terranigma touched our hearts with their gentle, melancholy exploration of themes like working through tragedy or facing the dark experiences in our lives.
The games industry gives less to charity than any other major entertainment industry, but charity events can be great both for business AND for making the world better. DomiNations (Big Huge Games) shared data from their own charity events to help us show how!
Games Workshop started handing out bits of the Warhammer License like candy - but did it work? We think so! They used the great detail of the Warhammer Universe to distribute risk and create tiers of investment in games with varying quality levels, resulting in a test bed for small studios and a template for working with big ones.
Companies rely on metrics to tell them how players respond to a game, which can mean that short-term bumps (like revenue gained by adding microtransactions) disguises real player unhappiness with a game's quality and a publisher's integrity over time.
When resources are limited, self-interest works against itself. We see that in games like DayZ, where players could team up to fight a common threat, but the fear that someone will backstab you leads everyone to assume the worst and therefore behave as enemies.
Sometimes games trick us into having a more engaging experience by simulating near-death escapes and gently massaging the odds to be kind to us. These hidden game mechanics play into the expectations of our human psyche to give us the results we expect.
Quality Assurance, or QA, does not mean you sit around playing games all day. At least, not for fun. But if you have patience, love experimentation, and find the right team, it can be an extremely rewarding job.
You would think that paying $60 for a game would be enough, but so many games these days ask for money with DLC, microtransactions, and yes, lootboxes. There's a reason for that.
Let's talk numbers: marketing, office space, dev tool licenses, voice actors, and more that goes into the average AAA game budget. Why do some games never turn a profit while others seem to magically make it work on the cheapest budget possible?
Why does the games industry seem to prefer lootboxes over other types of microtransactions nowadays? Why are they so easily manipulated to abuse players' agency? How can we make them better?
Legislating regulation around in-game purchases seems like a good idea, but let's proceed cautiously: the phrasing of such potential rulings could create situations that unfairly affect gamers themselves, not just publishers.
Many video games offer you the chance to make “good” or “bad” choices, but often times these choices lack weight; you as a player aren’t emotionally attached to the circumstances, the causes, or the outcomes. Nier: Automata, however, lets players truly empathize with others in a crucial end-game choice.
Why does a small, incremental increase in a stat sometimes feel like an overpowered boost? How can we use break points to improve the player's experience? Guest art by Allison Utterback! https://twitter.com/ingrid_archer (No, not THAT Allison, but a very awesome Allison nonethless.)
Academic research in games should be challenging our need for commonly accepted principles like Skinner boxes or certain narrative structures. Historically it tends to be focused on finding only certain types of quantifiable data, which can be distracting from the medium's overall progress.
Sometimes bad design is created intentionally, to cover up a flaw in the system instead of fixing it. Using cities like Seattle and London as examples, we examine how architecture is designed to remove homeless people from the public eye without actually helping them.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus offers up one of the most honest depictions and criticisms of Nazism and bigotry in modern mainstream games, and part of that is due to its "b"-game-like nature--similar to b-movies that transgress the standards of their time.
The Assassin's Creed Origins team recently added a non-violent exploration mode to their game coupled with an educational voiceover narrating facts about ancient Egypt. How could we improve on this museum-like experience
Game designers must decide how to segment and present choices so that the player isn't overwhelmed. From character creation to strategy, there's a lot of complexity to the user experience.
Say hello to Matt Krol, our new narrator! Today we're talking about about that cursed buzzword "blockchain" that's appeared on the fringes of the game industry within the past year, most infamously Cryptokitties. How could blockchain tech actually provide good game design value?
Thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. The first 500 people to sign up at this link get their first 2 months for free: http://skl.sh//extracredits Why do team-based video games like Overwatch seem to struggle with judging team cooperation and not just individual skill? The answer, surprisingly, comes from chess.
These games are definitely perfect...ly suited to expanding your game design knowledge, even if they have some flaws here and there. It's another edition of "extra" game reviews: Games You Might Not Have Tried!
Procedurally generated content seems like a really appealing route for a lot of indie developers--it's what AAA game studios are doing, and it seems to protect game balance! But often times it's worth the extra effort to craft a few handmade pieces, even at the risk of "breaking" the game.
E-sports scholarships are becoming slowly more commonplace, but they have inherited some of the bad qualities of other college sports, as well as unique issues like the usually short lifespans of video games themselves. Should you pursue an esports career?
Let's examine the elements that make up "game writing." Plot, characters, and lore all have to be balanced depending on the type of game you're making--knowing what to cut from your story bible is just as important as knowing what to keep.
Let's compare the RNG design in Hearthstone and Slay the Spire and figure out how we can design RNG for strategic difficulty without veering into completely frustrating players.
Today we're talking about a Japanese word "ma" and how it applies to game design. Incorporating rest, space, and emptiness can make the rest of the gameplay, action, and narrative stand out.
Games can help us heal, emotionally as well as physically. We need to do more research on their positive impacts and how we can maximize the emotional value of commercial games, not just on the harmful effects of gaming disorders.
Having 500+ hours logged on a particular game or franchise shouldn't be a job requirement to work on that particular game or franchise--in fact, by working with folks who aren't already "super-fans" of your game, you'll end up making better creative design decisions.
We can learn a lot from Steam's player numbers about why certain games, like PUBG and Paladins, continue to be popular on Steam, as well as why niche driving simulators are doing better than adventure games.
Gestalt design principles--how we understand groups of objects as a whole unit via symmetry, proximity, closure, and more--is a powerful tool in game design to quickly and effectively communicate visual information to the player.
How can we use empathy, intuition, and other types of design vectors to create interesting gameplay besides the most popular mechanics--which are based in reflex and logic challenges?
Check out some new games to play this month! Here's the list of the games in this video, accompanied by a link to the PC versions on the Humble Store if available (if you do decide to make a purchase through any of the Humble links, you'll be informed that a small percentage will go back to supporting Extra Credits, i.e. paying our artists!). * Yoku's Island Express (NOTE: if you own a Switch, we recommend getting the Switch version instead, as the controls and portability are very delightful) https://www.humblebundle.com/store/yo... * Legendary Gary: https://store.steampowered.com/app/68... * 20XX: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/20... * Cultist Simulator: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/cu... * Wars Across the World: https://store.steampowered.com/app/34... * Prey - Mooncrash DLC: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/pr... * The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit: https://store.steampowered.com/app/84... * Omen Exitio: Plague: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/om... * Cardinal Cross: https://store.steampowered.com/app/81... * The Painscreek Killings: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/th... History of Virtual Reality, part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWIyz... brought to you thanks to Oculus Rift: http://bit.ly/2vJIFRZ
The design of multiplayer games means that, in most cases, half the playerbase is losing games at any given time. However, that shouldn't mean that half the playerbase is miserable or is unable to have fun. You can still have fun learning how to be a better team leader and practicing mechanical skills--which is important for combatting toxicity in multiplayer games.
Every developer should be taking full advantage of the visual and interactive mechanics in games to deliver extra layers of meaning without having to do all game storytelling through text. And players can enhance the depth of their gaming experiences by paying attention to possible metaphors that exist!
Let's look at how, in 2005, World of Warcraft accidentally provided a virtual simulation of a pandemic that academics have been studying in papers since.
From internet drama stories of Crusader Kings 2 to the secret rooms in Enter the Gungeon, there is value in designing really cool gameplay and story experiences that not all of your players will necessarily get to experience (at least, not immediately). Stoke imagination and wonder by including exciting details that players can enjoy experiencing, even if only vicariously through shared transmedia knowledge.
A good new player experience consists of three pieces: the hook, the tutorial, and the reward. Spider-Man (2018) is an example that gets this right, by giving players an amazing experience right off the bat and not waiting until the second act.
Guest writer Evan Hill (a level designer from Naughty Dog) talks about creating surprises--expectation gaps--in your game, and why adhering to a "lifelike" experience isn't the same as preserving the player's sense of immersion.
Happy Halloween! Today a whole bunch of the Extra Credits folks are here with some spooky scary skele-games for you to try!
Adding streaming-friendly features to your game *can* increase its marketability, but they have to be as well-thought out as the rest of the gameplay mechanics that cater directly to players.
Context sensitive game design is often the key difference between a good tutorial, and a condescending, painfully obvious and frustrating tutorial.
The GDPR stands for the “General Data Protection Regulation.” It’s a European regulation that became effective in May 2018, designed to overhaul the way we think about data and data privacy--even internationally--especially when it comes to the privacy of your game-playing data.
Happy 400th episode Extra Credits! Consider taking some time today to play a game you love. YOU matter, so, take care of yourself!
Growing up, MJ fought non-stop with their brother--until they discovered Pokemon Stadium together. It would not only change their own life, but that of their entire family, for years to come.
High school English teacher Patrick wondered how he could connect better with his students--for one in particular who kept to herself, she just needed someone to let her know that it was OK to talk about video games in the classroom.
Since audio is so important to communicate critical information, it needs to be designed neatly. Cluttered audio is confusing to players. We look at examples of audio in Counterstrike and Overwatch to learn about this.
Video games provide catharsis in a very unusual way from film and literature, and understanding how they do that is important for creating deep emotional experiences.
Most of the time in game development, the game isn't actually in a polished and/or playable state until very close to the release date, which is why many studios are reluctant to release early builds or demos even at major marketing events like E3. Learn about the role of the build engineer!
Bandersnatch wasn't the first interactive film on Netflix, but it attracted a lot of views from its association with Black Mirror and meta-narrative attempts. What kind of commentary does it make about *us* as players and viewers?
Ironically, many of the marketing promises of Destiny ended up being a great advertisement for Warframe. Although not without its flaws, Warframe has overall delivered a stronger gameplay experience and tonally consistent atmosphere than Destiny did.
Good character design should successfully capture the fantasy of *being* a particular character. Even with mechanical constraints on gameplay possibilities, compelling characters are still achievable via techniques like ludonarrative resonance.
Today we finally delve into tabletop RPGs you might not have tried, with the help of RPG designer Eddy Webb.
We discovered a fascinating, feel-good story about Tim Sweeney (the founder of Epic Games) and how his love for the forests of North Carolina got him into game development!
The famous folks who made the games of our childhood, such as the Legend of Zelda series, were inspired by their own life experiences, rather than referencing previously created games. So why is it so common for young developers to almost entirely rely on these games as their sole templates, rather than designing from a wide variety of real-life inspirations? The rise of “lifestyle games” contributes to this imbalance in how a designer spends their time. Design students should remember to seek out experiences in all their forms, if they want to truly be a crafter of experiences. It’s also a huge part of why Extra Credits often talks about subjects “seemingly” unrelated to game design--they actually do matter in the big picture of a design education. Thanks to Samuel Dassler for guest-writing this episode!
As a GM, one of the coolest things you can do for your players is to pay attention to what they spend their stat points and how they build their characters, so you can create more gameplay moments that match what they're looking for (even if they don't consciously realize it!). Thanks to Eddy Webb for guest-writing this episode!
We bet you REALLY haven't tried some of these undercover hidden gems of the gaming world!
Announced at GDC 2019, Stadia is potentially an incredible game-streaming technology that will dramatically increase convenient access to games to people all over the world and from all income levels, but will it actually stick? What barriers and hurdles does it face from ISPs and content creators?
You can de-emphasize a story without completely removing a narrative from a game. From the Super Mario games to Portal, there are many opportunities for narrative elements to enhance the gameplay and give the player a reason to, well, keep playing!
Technical debt is what happens when problems caused early on in development aren’t dealt with until later, causing them to be significantly more difficult or expensive to address. They can affect any part of the production pipeline--what do producers need to know in order to correct these project management issues?
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice offers some great examples of how to address mental illness respectfully in games, but we found some other examples in media as well as recommendations by actual psychologists. Many thanks to Heidi McDonald and Dr. Kelli Dunlap for their research and writing for this episode!
Many times, the "game celebrities" we think of are the names of studios and publishers themselves, or just a small handful of historically notable names--but even these names aren't often well known outside of the gaming world. This can result in a general perception of game devs as nameless and unimportant, reinforcing power from the studio heads.
Having mutual trust at the table means we can use tabletop RPGs to explore ideas that are uncomfortable for us. When the game is run safely, we can use these experiences to help us understand how we would confront these things in the real world, and it can give us an experience to share with others when we leave the role-playing world.
The Kuleshov Effect first came from the world of film, but it has fascinating applications in video games when players interact with non-playable characters. Context, juxtaposition, and emotions can be used in gameplay to create psychological fidelity in addition to the technical fidelity of mocap, voice acting, and artistic design.
Doom (2016) and Dragon Quest XI were successful sequels/reboots with their fans because they focused on modernizing the already loved and proven atmosphere and mechanics of their original games. You don't necessarily need to add in new elements just because other games use them--find what works for your game and for your intended audience.
Let's talk about how game saving works, the different types of saved-game systems, and which types of game designs encourage the practice of "save scumming"--which we don't think is inherently a bad thing, but it can feel frustrating to players if they feel like that's their only guaranteed chance of success at a difficult gameplay situation.
"Bleed" describes one type of emotional impact games can have on players, where empathy is high and the barrier breaks down a bit between who you are and who you're playing as. We discuss different game narrative techniques to encourage emotional bleed.
Historical and current political context matters in game design. Don't treat Nazis and terrorists like they are just one of several morally equivalent character skins for players to try on. Rainbow Six Siege is just one example of a game that includes thrilling PvP mechanics without normalizing morally wrong ideologies.
By keeping a consistent tone with the gameplay, tying up all loose plot and character threads, and balancing the emotional payoff with the emotional buildup, games can have amazingly powerful endings that leave us wanting more. We look at some well-done examples like Super Mario Odyssey, Portal, and Silent Hill 2, as well as some weaker examples like the endings of Psychonauts and Assassin's Creed 1.
We're kicking off a mini-series called "Learning to Play Magic" over the next few weeks to teach you how to play... with a cat! But for today, we're just talking about the design lessons you can learn from playing MTG.
Games can teach us to keep a good perspective on life, both when it comes to planning for the future, and when it comes to seeing the current (stressful, struggling) moment in context of its real long-term impact.
Beautiful visuals and spell-binding stories can be found in games even without photorealistic, over-wrought intensity. We look at examples like Undertale, Dark Souls, and even Overwatch as examples of how "imagination gaps" can be intentionally designed as a jumping-off point to engage the player even more than if everything was laid out at the start.
Today, we dig into the lore, personality, and philosophy of all the different Magic colors, as a prelude to strategy.
Tabletop roleplaying games don't have an overall "win" or "loss" condition, but they do have individual moments of wins and losses that can be exaggerated and customized for more engaging gameplay.
What makes a good UI and a good HUD? Can you make narratively immersive UI that doesn't end up distracting or confusing the player? Is it okay to just make "boring" UI?
Why is cooperation so difficult? Why do people make choices that seem to be worse for everyone involved, including themselves? Welcome to The Prisoner's Dilemma.
We discuss the various design considerations that go into running a digital games storefront, from functionality to relevancy, and shed some light on the game certification process for consoles in particular.
Games teach us that it's okay to make mistakes, that we'll inevitably mess up in the game just like we mess up in real life. How does one pick themselves back up after an unexpected disappointment, crisis, or failure in achieving their creative goals?
We've talked about specific core loops of games before, but there's a core loop that every game shares: The Real Core Loop. Very creative name, I know. But understanding this loop can help reveal what kind of game you're creating & how to minimize frustration on the player's end.
Ah, the infamous Kobayashi Maru. The no-win Star Trek scenario is actually more common in video games than you might think. When games employ random elements, you increase the odds of creating a scenario where before the player even touches the controller, they have already lost. That must be a huge game design mistake, right? Well... It's not always so simple.
With whole new worlds open for exploring, game designers ran into a quick problem: how do you make sure new players don't run into a difficulty brick wall, and experienced players don't have to wade through trash mobs? Games like Oblivion and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey tried to fix this problem by simply scaling enemy difficulty to grow along with the player. But is that really the best solution? Or does level scaling doom open worlds to a same-y slog?
Welcome back to our guest writer Eddy Webb! After his last episode, Eddy's been doing some thinking about failure in tabletop RPGs. More specifically, how failure can bring everyone at the table closer together. How? Through the principle of reciprocity. Letting yourself fail can help let another player shine and just by offering the spotlight to someone else, you can build a better play experience for everyone.
For All Hallow's Eve, we're reviving an old episode from the dead: How to make a proper horror protagonist! It's been six years since we've talked about horror protagonists and the games industry has given us more examples of prime horror examples. So let's talk about the main points you should follow to write up a great horror protagonist.
The Hallway by Ellie Samson Momentary by Zack Contest to Suggest by SRPent & OutOfCharacters Obolus, Please by Lei Into the Bullet Hell by Hot Girls with Broken Legs Moving Makes You Smaller by Moldoveanu Florin Doods: Radical Passage by Vandervas Generator 80 Days by Evan S.
If you want to get a job in the games industry (or most any creative industry for that matter), then you’re going to need a portfolio. Why? Because they’re the second step towards getting you an interview. So we're going to teach you some of the basics when it comes to putting together that amazing portfolio for the dream job!
It's important to give credit where credit is due, but doing so might be trickier than some people might realize. Games take a long time to create and people may come and go on a project or be moved around to different departments. And the lead artist in one studio might not do the same tasks as a lead artist in another studio. This all makes credits very complicated! But that doesn't mean we can give up on credits either. Credits should not be "extra".
Nothing is more frustrating than a game crashing behind a loading screen, or the game grinding to a halt as you have to travel in-between areas. Even as tech gets stronger, our games get bigger, so it doesn't look like loading screens are disappearing anytime soon. But do they have to kill the pacing of the game and bore your player to death? We don't think so! We talk about a few examples of loading screens done right and how to engage your player during the waiting game.
Imposter Syndrome is the psychological phenomena of thinking that you're less capable or deserving of your achievements that you are, leading you to think that you must have "fooled" your way into your position or success. And it is SUPER common in creative fields, including the game industry. Where does this phenomena come from, why is it so harmful, and how can we prevent it?
J.J. was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when he was 7. The hospital can be a scary place for a child, but it was in C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital that J.J. was introduced to video games. An activity therapist named Jerry Reed presented J.J. with Pitfall. Video games impacted J.J.'s life so profoundly to the positive, J.J. became a Certified Child Life Specialist at the very same hospital, 20 years later.
Victoria was always a curious child, but an undiagnosed anxiety disorder and ADHD gave her a rough start. It was difficult to make friends and at school she was known as the weird kid. After she was diagnosed, medication helped! But she still struggled socially. But after her parents read about Game to Grow, they decided to give it a shot. D&D allows kids like Victoria to explore social situations in a structured, no-risk environment and soon, Victoria was breaking out of her shell.
Our final story also comes from C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital ( https://victors.us/streamformott ) Jacob was born with primary ciliary dyskinesia which means spending an hour every day receiving treatment to help prevent lung infections. During those treatments, Jacob was able to help pass the time by playing games. But when a tumor was found in Jacob's kidney, he had to stay at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. The week leading up to surgery was long, boring, and isolating. But the Child Life Specialists at the hospital changed all of that by visiting with toys and games. Games that gave Jacob something to look forward to and helped give Jacob hope.
Escort missions, the bane of almost every gamer. You can see countless forum posts, articles, and memes trashing the helpless victims we're supposed to be protecting, but who keep getting us killed over and over and over again. Why do designers keep punishing players by chaining them to NPCs? And is there a way to do escort missions right?
With graphics that age quickly, cartridges and game systems that can be elusive to find, and so many new games coming out every week, it can be hard to understand why anyone should have to go diving through the primordial ooze of games from yesteryear. But if you're looking to get into game design, there's a lot of reasons you should try to twist your hands to fit a N64 controller. Even if newer games copy a particular formula and genre, you should try to dig into the roots of what makes that series good or popular.
Eddy Webb tackles the tricky subject of how to play a villain well. We've all had that experience with that one player who wants to dive right into the Chaotic Evil side of the chart... and that's okay! It's fun to be bad every now and then, and can even really open up stories to some great possibilities. But as with all tools, there are ways to use it poorly (and how!) so we're here to help show you how to play bad, good.
You would think that an industry built on technology and a lot of solitary work would be perfect for introverts. But there are a lot of ways that the gaming industry is still geared towards people with more extroverted tendencies. Networking events that involve large crowds, brainstorming sessions that require immediate responses, and deferring to the loudest voice are all ways that unintentionally make working harder for introverts. So how do we help create spaces in business to help everyone have a voice? Guest writer Renato Pelizzari is here to help answer that question.
Ever wonder why there are some NPCs that stick with you for ages after the game is finished and others that you forget almost as soon as you have encountered them? We've talked about writing characters a number of times on this show, but today we want to look at how NPCs with different kinds of relationships with the player can be written with more depth. Let's take a look at villains, mentors, and companions and see what makes them tick.
It's happened to all of us at least once. A game that we might have loved suddenly disappears (or is patched out). There's no way to access it or find it... except through roms. That's okay. You bought it once right? That means it's yours! Weeellll... The legal grounds of ownership can get trickier than you might expect, especially as more and more of our media becomes digital exclusive. Luckily we have lawyer Ryan Meyer from the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney LLP (https://www.dorsey.com/) here to explain what an archival copy really means.
Sometimes a game flops. And negative reviews are inevitable. But with the rise of aggregate review sites came a new way for consumers to let studios developers know just what they think: review bombing. We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of reviews on the internet.
From the beginning days of gaming, it was pretty customary to build new sprites and engines from the ground up because of changing technology. But now that tech is bigger and more expensive to use, is that slash and burn mentality always a great idea? Is asset reuse in games an example of laziness or cut corners, or is it a useful tool in a game designer's toolbox?
We've talked about gamification before on this channel, but let's dig into some more. Gamification can feel like a huge drag, but that's usually because designers focus exclusively on extrinsic rewards. But how can you incorporate intrinsic rewards as well as extrinsic? What would that look like?
Thanks to the help of guest writer and astrophysicist Erin Macdonald, writer of the Science of Sci Fi (https://adbl.co/2yRxVWK), this Extra Credits is going to be a little unusual. Have you ever wondered how rooted the science in scifi really is? Well in Mass Effect's case, there's actually some very solid ground. We'll be talking about how the Mass Effect relays work and what the theoretical working behind element zero is, and how, if we could replicate those effects using real elements like dark energy, we might also be able to date some aliens. ... What do you mean that wasn't the point of Mass Effect?
We've always said that Games Matter, but there's a lot of different ways games can help us and the world that we live in. This week, we're going to dive into some games that have a real and tangible effect on our physical meat space.
here's a lot of ways that you can approach a game. But what happens when the only way to have fun is to play "optimally"? What does Optimal Play even mean? And how can you best design a game to accommodate different play styles?
Hey everyone, we wrote this episode several weeks ago, before the murder of George Floyd. While it is important for everyone to take action in the ways that they can, it is equally important to take care of your community and yourself to prevent burning out. We hope that this episode can still offer some ways and ideas that you can connect with your loved ones.
The Trolley Problem is one of the most famous hypotheticals in the philosophy of ethics. There are endless permutations, focusing on different aspects of the question: What if the one person on the second rail is a great leader? Is ethics a simple numbers game where 5 is always greater than 1? All very important questions but ultimately there is no correct way to answer the trolley problem. And many games strive to mimic this design by providing players with choices that, like the trolley problem, reveal more about the player's philosophy than a simple right or wrong answer.
We talked a little bit about video game copyright law beforehand but let's talk about including real-world brands and people in your game. Trademark and visual likeness is similar to copyright but has a few key differences that can make or break your case for fair use. So could you include a McDonalds in your game? Or would it have to be MacBonald? And if a person is dead, does that mean you can use their face without issue? Well, it can depend on how you're using it!
Skinner boxes are fairly infamous in the game space at this point, but not all boxes are created equal. Why do some games grip and hold onto our attention but some games just end up falling by the wayside, despite having great graphics, gripping narratives, or engaging gameplay? Why do some RPGs just feel a little... off? That can be a factor of operant conditioning which relies on two big factors: variable ratio reinforcement schedules & variable interval reinforcement schedules. After all, finding a penny 200 times and finding 2 dollars results in the same outcome, but feels drastically different!
With games that continue to expand into vast open worlds and the number of hours a game takes to complete goes up and up and up, we have to ask ourselves: is this game really worth my time? Is this 90 hours of engaging material? Or is it 5 hrs of engagement stretched over 90? How do you design around potential grind fests, even when you're working in a genre that needs them so the player doesn't burn through new content, like MMOs? Even small changes to game design choices and UI design can save players some time and prevent people from burning out.
Fawzi Mesmar, the author of Al-Khallab on the Art of Game Design, has worked as a game designer and manager in many different parts of the world. Through his journey and career, he's noticed that each place he's worked has a slightly different approach to how management and employees work together. And each one has its own unique benefits which can help inform how a studio approaches work. By learning from each style, we can work better together in our increasingly global teams & you can adapt them for your own particular style.
Thank you to Lane Stanely for writing this episode ( www.lanemichaelstanley.com ). The Bystander Effect is a fairly well-documented phenomenon that states when people are in a crowd, they are less likely to offer help to people in need. There are a number of reasons for this. One might be the assumption that someone else will take responsibility. Another might be that we tend to look to other people to gauge how serious a situation is. When no one is reacting, we assume that the situation isn't dire. But how does this effect show up in games like Overwatch or League of Legends? Can MMOs like World of Warcraft help us overcome the effect?
President Trump wrote an executive order asking for clarification on section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. But what does that mean? What is CDA 230? And more importantly, why should people in the games industry care? CDA 230 is often referred to as the 26 words that formed the internet & grants Platform Immunity. That's the stipulation that provides platforms & users can't be held liable for what other people put out on the internet. It also is what grants platforms the power of the ban hammer.
You ever just feel swamped by the number of game titles out there? Sometimes it's easy to miss gems in the tidal wave of games on every storefront. We explore the 5 biggest reasons why you might not have found your favorite game. From localization issues, to niche storefronts like itch.io or dmm.com, to different cultural taboos, there's a lot to navigate! What is your favorite overlooked game or platform?
Portal has a lot of science fiction elements from selective matter destroyers, hard light bridges, and cake. But the core gameplay is focused on a very simple principle in physics: momentum. Manipulating momentum is key to solving all of the problems Glados sets out in the game, so you can contribute to Apature Science the best you can. But what if the portals in Portal actually destroyed every principle of energy we know of today?
Destiny is a fun looter shooter but in order to balance the game, each of it's three main environments are treated more or less the same. The Moon, Venus and Mars have more or less the same gravity and movement variables. So what would need to happen in order for that to be true in on their real-life counterparts? Maybe there really is a wizard in that moon.
Bioshock Infinite takes us through Columbia where things aren't exactly right... And then we find Elizabeth who can tear rifts in reality. Booker, catch! But... how stable is this plot on real world physics? Strangely, Bioshock Infinite gets a lot right on the underlying quantum mechanics of the world. And it gets one very important thing wrong.
The Extra Credits team is going to be celebrating LGBTQIA+ Pride Month by playing games and hanging out with all of you on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/extracredits all day today! We'll be roughly following the schedule below, so tune in to chat with the crew!
The last of our mini series of science in video games, we turn to one of the classics with full life consequences. One of the most ingenious & famous guns of Half Life is the gravity gun, a weapon that doesn't fire bullets but makes it so you can pull items to Gordon Freeman, or launch them into the stratosphere. But... how would that actually work on a science level? Dr. Erin Macdonald helps break down the science with gravitons, quantum gravitational fields and words that feel more comfortable in a scifi novel than actual science.
Abraham's love of games started by sneaking down to play Wolfenstein 3D and thanks to the encouragement of his mother, he was able to follow his passions. And when his mother became sick, he was able to find a lot of comfort in games which led to thinking: "could games be helpful & theraputic to others too?" Fast forward to the future, where now he works at Children's Hospital Colorado as a Gaming Technology Specialist.
You might remember Jane McGonigal from our earlier episode about games helping the world & she was kind enough to share more of her story! Back in 2009 she hit her head and got a concussion. But unfortunately, the concussion didn't heal quickly and Jane was forced to deal with Post Concussion Syndrome. This made it difficult to remember things, difficult to read or write, and frequent headaches. To make matters worse, it was difficult to express these symptoms to friends & family. But Jane McGonigal ended up using that trauma to create a game to help herself, and other people also suffering: Superbetter.
We love a great character creator at EC, and we love cyberpunk! So of course, Cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to be a dream. And what we got was... ah, not exactly what we hoped for. But there were some basic problems with the basic design of their character creation screen, even before you hit the streets of Night City. So what exactly did CD Projekt Red do wrong and what can we learn about making inclusive character creators?
Roblox is might be one of the biggest games no one's heard of and a big part of that is their audience. Roblox dominates the younger gamer space, with around 75% of kids in the United States logging in and a massive concurrent user base. They have a great model, giving revenue to game devs who use their platform and making game development accessible to even tweens. Despite all of this... They still operate at a loss. So what does it mean for the future of Roblox to go public on the stock market? Aw yeah we're talking stonks! (that's what the kids say these days right??)
With the pandemic making home games more difficult, a lot of people have turned to getting their tabletop roleplaying fix by watching other people play. Some of these shows have gotten so big that they've actually introduced new people into the hobby, instead of the other way around. Critical Role, Rivals of Waterdeep, and The Adventure Zone come to mind. Heck, even we've given it a go for a charity stream! But what are the differences between playing rpgs at home, and producing them for an audience?
There's been a spicy issue that's come up a few times in the tabletop roleplaying community over the last few years: how do we handle evil races? Are they a vital part of the fantasy genre, imported from Tolkein's works and therefore untouchable? Or should we reexamine the way that speculative fiction can sometimes just paint species and culture with the same broad brush? Well, we think that outside of any connection or implication of real-world situations, evil races are just... kind of bad and lazy game design.
As games become more and more popular as a past time, there's become a growing conversation about the difficulty of games. We've all had that experience where we've hit a wall in a game we otherwise loved or a game was so easy it couldn't engage us for more than 10 minutes. Most games attempt to answer this difficulty by offering different modes that usually tweak enemy & player health, or enemy & player damage. Which is... fine. It's fine. But what about games like Ghost of Tsushima, Control, and the new gold standard, The Last of Us Part 2?
A good game designer knows that no idea is perfect and that you should start creating now instead of obsessing over the concept, but what happens when something isn't working out? Where do you go from there? Most of game design is based in iteration & feedback which will tell you when one of your ideas isn't working. But the actionable part is only half the battle. One has to develop emotional intelligence to learn from your own mistakes and improve. And that comes from a lot of practice.
Everything old is new again! All storytelling mediums eventually wrap around to trying to retell the stories of the past, but what does that mean? What is the difference between a reboot, remaster, and a remake? And how does Final Fantasy VII: Remake challenge the definitions we've set up for ourselves?
As we refocus the conversation about games around accessibility, there's one area that often gets overlooked. Technical accessibility can be just as important and as big a barrier for people as physical accessibility. Computer games can get expensive when you account for all of the parts that go into building even a modest gaming rig. And as games have exploded in budgets for dazzling particle effects and cutting edge graphics, it can cut out a lot of gamers from the experience. So how do developers go about making games that can be played on high and low end machines?
Nothing is more iconic to fantasy roleplaying games than class systems. The warrior, the mage, the rogue. These archetypes make up a lot of what people envision when thinking about games like Dungeons and Dragons. So how can you make your own classes, regardless of what genre you're designing for?
We've seen a lot of sandbox games and tools to make designing more accessible emerging and it got us all thinking: how do you design the tools to let someone else have enough flexibility to design their own experience? How do you prevent getting lost in the weeds of tool designing? Is this just tool-ception? But here are 6 guiding principles that can help solidify your designs so that players can solidify theirs in ways you never expected.
Genres can be a loose collection of ideas and mechanics so it isn't super surprising when particular games bust the mold. But usually those games are either unique or end up spinning off their own genre (Soulslike anyone?) What about wrestling games? Are they sports games? Fighting games? Or their own unique genre blended from the two? What do you think?
It's been 5 years since we did an episode on videogame movies so let's take a look at where we've gone and where we've yet to go. In a world where comic books rule the cinema and an entry into the Mad Max franchise swept through the Oscars, why have video game movies been left by the wayside? We think that it has something to do with how video game movies tend to treat the main characters... or rather, not treat them, as a way to preserve lore perfectly.
You ever have the absolute need to do something in a game, even if it was detrimental or made the game harder to enjoy? Anything from rolling through the fields of Hyrule to storing every last potion right up until the end credits roll juuuuust in case. Well sometimes that can be the result of messy design decisions. So how do we clean up our design and make sure the player can get to the good parts of the game, without the compulsory parts?
When we talk about game design on this channel, we often talk about the mechanics or even the narrative design of our games. But in order to play them they have to... you know... take place. Somewhere. Enter the level designer! There are loads of specialized level designers and loads of different kinds of levels but here are some tips and tricks of the trade!
Streaming has become a huge part of the games industry and we've seen how streaming can take a game and suddenly launch it into viral status like it did for Among Us. But are streamers overall helpful to the games ecosystem? Or does streaming actually hurt devs in the long run? Join in as Geoff and Will battle it out.
Ariana Grande's concert in Fortnite might not been the first of its kind, but it was the first that made Matt feel the way he did. And sometimes making a polished script is a little too long to catch the fleeting feeling. So let's go off-script and talk about the concert, what made it work, and what it might be signaling for the future.
While we've had episodes on Free to Play games, and on some of the paid elements like lootboxes, we've never really made an episode on monetization models in video games. And that's big because like it or not, how you choose to make money off your video game can have huge effects on how you go about designing your game. So let's pry open the game and take a look at premium games, downloadable content, season passes, and yes, even loot boxes.
Looking to add a little depth and intrigue to your D&D game? Wondering how to give your players tough choices throughout your narrative? Confused as to how designers can make you rethink your decisions and moral code when playing a game like Mass Effect? Well, find out all the secret details to building fictional belief systems and creating fictional morality today!
A lot of us have been playing video games since our early childhood. Interacting with our favorite medium for years but, outside the joy games can bring, does our dedication to them bring us any real-life benefits? Or to put it more bluntly, can the virtual skills we develop in video games materialize into real-life skills, and can we answer that question with some research and a jet ski?
Is AR (Augmented Reality) the future of technology? Will this create a virtual utopia, giving us the ability to translate languages in front of our eyes and make better choices based on instant information? Or will it be taken advantage of? With the government and companies manipulating the world around us.
Curling up with a cozy game like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Spiritfarer, or Behind the Frame for the holiday? Come to think of it, what makes these wholesome games so cozy in the first place? Is it the narrative or theme? Maybe the mechanics, or connection you feel to people and characters? Join in on our discussion as we go behind the game design and explore the cozy game genera.
Shopping in games is Garbage! However, it's only because we're breaking the surface on a mechanic that hasn't been fully developed yet. Many Tabletop Games have a vast number of player interactions and situations that help these mechanics along but how do we translate some of these highly developed ideas into your next video game? Join us as we discuss where to get started with your bartering mechanics and game design here!
Are you a victim of Dark Patterns?!? Dark patterns are being used in video games and subscription-based services but what is the line between helping players out in a game and intentionally or unintentionally obscuring, subverting or impairing a players' autonomy, decision-making, or choice? Find out in our latest dive into video game design in Extra Credits!
Did you know the tabletop game industry is having an extinction-level event? With small and even large publishers like IDW Games stepping out of the industry due to the paperpocolypse, the rising cost of shipping, containers left sitting at the port, and the pandemic eating into convention sales. It's shaken the industry to the core and who will make it out of the fray?
Time loops can be seen in TV, Movies like Groundhog Day, and video games like Majora’s Mask but what we really want to know is who did it best? Or rather, what's the best way to experience it.
Ever wonder why most licensed games don't live up to all the hype? Game Developer Eddie Webb discusses the challenges associated with designing a game around an IP. Confessing all the gritty details of why these games might not please the fans and may be under-produced.
Player decisions make good video games great but what goes into making your choices truly matter? Join us as we discuss how your choices not only influence the game but create your own unique game state.
Does Canon Matter? Or should we even care? Canon refers to a collection of rules or texts that are considered to be authoritative. Which has come into play BIG TIME with today's, Marvel Movies, Game of Thrones, video games, and more. However, does the following canon ultimately help or hurt these creative projects? Let's join Game Designer Eddie Webb and find out today in "Should You Care About Canon"
After spending a few years away working on his next game in the wilds of Design Land, James Portnow writes in to tell us what he’s learned about crafting a High Concept for a video game and how you can avoid the many perils and pitfalls that happen along the way.
Why do designers make the choices they do in a game? Did Fromsoftware purposely discourage players from using the sword and board strategy? Why did they make more builds dependent on magic? We'll answer all that and more as we dissect Elden Ring!
After crossing through the Concept Cliffs of Design Land, James Portnow writes in to tell us what he’s learned about crafting the concept art for a video game in the Art Arroyo and how you can avoid the many perils and pitfalls that happen along the way to creating your very own game!
In 2018 we discussed blockchain and how it might potentially change the gaming industry. Now that it's 2022, we've found that the few games giving players the ability to acquire, buy, and sell virtual items in an open decentralized marketplace often are leading to legal troubles, money laundering, predatory crypto-related scams, and less interesting games with lower player retention. AKA: Not exactly the change we were hoping for. But since these open-loop economy games now exist, how might the industry (and the law) better protect players in the future?
Design documents! One of the most important things you can create for your video game. However, getting it right can be troublesome! Design docs don't only convey information to different groups but also retain all your gaming info. If it's done well it can provide your team with a straight path to follow to success! End formula for fun1 (angled brackets aren't allowed in descriptions lol): IF: - FAITHVALUE * RAND(0-100) greater than 1000 THEN: CRISISOFCONSCIENCE End formula for fun 2: RULERRESPECT = RULERRESPECT+ ((FAITH/100)*FAITHVALUEINCREASE)
EVERYONE has had to deal with a little tilt now and then, but would it help to let you know that there's a reason behind every death? In fact, failing just may help you win faster! Giving you the right data and feedback to push you further in your game. Join us as we talk about this Game Developer's secret and you'll Never Tilt Again!
Probability! A cornerstone for the design of any game. It can build excitement and suspense but, it can also confuse and upset players. So how do you keep probability and players' choices in games meaningful without bogging them down with the specifics? Let's enter the psychology of gaming and how you can twist and obscure probability to build anticipation and emotion for your next game design.
You deserve better side quests than having to bring 10 rat butts to the local tavern owner, in EVERY game EVER! That's right! Because creating meaningful relationships between characters and quests can make your world more insightful and interesting for the player. Keeping them invested in what's happening and ready to explore every corner of your world.
Emotes! They're everywhere! On your phone and in your games but are they making us worse people? Are they being used the way we think they should Or should we be trying to craft more emotes with the players' well-being in mind? Find out more in "Trolling with Emotes"!
How do you create emotion and heartbreak with math? Video games can create meaningful player interactions and connections with characters but we need to stop treating them like trophies. Instead, we need immersion that makes you connect with the character to make them feel more real in the world around you. So sit back and let us drop some mathematical knowledge into your game's next design!
"Cognitive behavior specialists are always working to reduce traumatic memories and flashbacks. In line with that mission, professor Emily Holmes began researching a new idea on how to lower the occurrence and severity of these flashbacks via an experimental preventive care method - one that uses Tetris to engage with a patient's mind in hopes to affect how long-term traumatic memories are formed. But is this method "too good to be true?"
Is there a franchise that you spend on average an hour a day playing, watching, engaging with on Wikis, Reddit, with friends or just generally thinking about? Do you ever wonder why you keep coming back and obsessing about these franchises? Have a seat as we discuss the intricacies of how companies design user retention and why we just can't stop playing their games.
Rock Band and Guitar Hero were two multi-billion dollar video game franchises that just disappeared practically overnight. So what's the story of what really happened to the most popular rhythm games on the market and why haven't they returned?
Would you believe us if we told you that game designers are constantly stealing open-world designs from Disneyland theme parks? From the moment you walk through the gates to the highly themed areas. Designers have been stealing these key points to find better ways to organize their own open world and help players feel more immersed in their content.
How clear should your quests be? Should they be easy to understand with exclamation marks across the map or full of deeply hidden lore that players need to seek out? Is there a good in-between and what's best for your game? Find out in our newest gaming episode "When Challenging Quests are Controversial"
Are you a Junior Game Developer that wants to know more about what you should expect when designing a game? Do you want to know the best ways to innovate something or understand where the best places are to spend your limited amount of time? Then have a seat as we hear from a Junior Developer and what he's learned while working on his first game!
Lots of questions come up with the use of AI art. Just how legal is it? Do I own what the AI makes? Is it unethical or too risky to use for my own game's design? Join us as we consult with Game Lawyers Joe Newman and Jonathan Downing to discuss just how to navigate these legal landmines.
Ever wonder why a game leaves you wanting more? Tempting you to play just one more level or not quite getting that last item you need. Games keep you coming back for more and we're here to tell you that satisfaction is NOT guaranteed... and THAT's the point! Game developers are constantly looking at how to utilize the paradox of satisfaction. Creating an experience that doesn't quite satisfy your gaming experience and leaving you in a state of perpetual temptation.
Your favorite game is getting a remake and you're cha$ing your childhood nostalgia. When it hits the shelves you realize that this isn't as good as the original..... why is that?
How are Tarkov-like games the answer to the future of the declining MMO Genre?
Do mechanics limit our understanding of genre? Or can we re-invigorate and reinvent genres without harming the core of what players expect?
It's ok to be wrong but everyone needs to learn how to fail faster because no idea is made fully formed. Your ideas can't be precious and your ego can't need protecting. Every failure is a chance to GET IT RIGHT! If everyone can be willing to commit the team will succeed.
It's hard to get people to accept change. So how can we make changes in a game without costing you your fan base and adding real value?
The unreliable narrator has been used as a fantastic device to mislead people in books and films. Creating dramatic story endings and plot twists but why does this plot device have such trouble traversing into gaming media? Is creating an unreliable narrator in gaming impossible?
Do you play games to recharge and can we design games specifically for comfort? Find out today as we discuss finding solace in pixels!
"The History of D&D Hasbro Refused to Learn From" is a riveting exploration of the legal battles that have influenced the evolution of Dungeons & Dragons and the entire RPG industry. We will take you on a time-traveling journey through the origins of D&D, the rise of third-party publishers, the licensing agreements, and the subsequent lawsuits that changed the game's trajectory. Discover how legal disputes and fan discontent have shaped the game we know and love today, and get a glimpse into the future of this iconic tabletop RPG. Prepare for an epic dive into the decades-long drama of D&D's legal and fan challenges!
How do you break down the player goals in video games? Does each game need every subset from instant goals to long-term goals? As it turns out, goals aren't just for adventuring through dungeons and defeating bosses but can be used to direct the player's experiences. They should be scaled or even omitted for comfort and each genre of game you play. Creating the ultimate gaming experience for your players.
Looking across the last 15 years of Magic the Gathering, we noticed the genius game design of their newest card, Battles! A card that gives players, the ability to have all their turn one fun and their big monsters too! Will this card forever change the dynamics of MTG?
The wild tale of Dark and Darker is a David and Goliath-type story between indie game developer Ironmace and Nexon games... or is it? Let's dive into this shipwreck of a mess with wiped servers, disgruntled developers, and legal allegations between the two companies and find out who's really to blame.
Why is matchmaking so terrible? There's a lot that goes into matchmaking that we don't think about. We're not just talking about the number of players, consoles, game modes or match time. Developers need to start by thinking about the basics like ping, queue time, and player skills. Or, maybe how we should entertain the players while they're in longer queue times.
Ever impulsively bought something at the supermarket? You're not alone, and it's no accident! Dive deep into the meticulously crafted world of supermarket design, a strategy honed over a century to entice, engage, and encourage consumers to buy more. It's a design that is being used by digital markets today and heavily seeded in free-to-play video games. Learn how companies are setting you up to buy more!
Ever wondered about the nuances of 'Fair Use' in copyright law for video games? Back in 2016, we delved into US Intellectual Property law, touching upon striking a balance between protecting original designs and encouraging creativity. This video dives deeper, focusing on one of the most misunderstood areas of Copyright law: Fair Use.
Ever noticed how some game elements feel just right, even if you can't pinpoint why? Dive with us into the meticulously crafted world of game design – particularly, the intriguing genius behind Genshin Impact's login screen.
How do great game ideas happen? Join us for practical advice on how to create unique and original game ideas into fantastic content for your developing game.
Remember when games were more than pixels on a screen? They were portals to friends, communities, and shared adventures. But in today's hyper-connected gaming world, loneliness is a growing concern. In this episode, we explore the rise of gamer isolation and propose a radical idea – what if matchmaking could be the solution?
Embark on a journey through gaming history as we explore the rising trend of Roguelite mechanics, echoing the transformative impact RPG elements had in the early 2000s. These mechanics, characterized by short, repeatable playthroughs with randomization and meta-progression, are infiltrating diverse game genres. Offering short-session play opportunities and massive content reuse. Will Roguelites shape the future of gaming, unfolding a new chapter in the ever-evolving landscape of game design?
Unlock the secrets to player satisfaction! ???? In our latest exploration, we delve into the Player Hierarchy of Needs, a gaming twist on Maslow's model. From grasping the basic elements of play to the immersive core fantasy, and finally, the external fulfillment that resonates even after you set the controller down. ????️ We'll dive deep into the layers that make or break a gaming experience. ????✨
Journey back to the golden age of tabletop gaming in 2012, witness the rise of board game cafes, and then brace for the industry storm. From the monster that is Amazon to the impact of Magic The Gathering Arena, discover how these factors, along with the recent challenges of COVID lockdowns and supply chain issues, have capsized many cherished game stores.
????️ Join us as we dissect the intricacies faced by game designers in crafting expansive urban environments, from the sweeping vistas of Skyrim to the intricate cityscape of Cyberpunk. You'll uncover the crucial role of landmarks in guiding players through open-world experiences and how they can transform exploration into a captivating journey. ????✨
????️ Ever felt like your gaming progress hit the brakes or went into overdrive without warning? In this video, we unravel the overlooked yet critical concept of V and delta V's Jerk Principle in game systems, exploring how these terms represent velocity and change in velocity and shaping the player experience. From leveling systems in MMOs to weapon balancing in action games, every tweak in Delta V can lead to drastic shifts in gameplay. Join us on this journey to uncover the secrets behind those sudden shifts and balanced gaming progression!
Join us as we delve into the current state of the gaming industry as a flurry of studio closures, job losses, and major tech players are pulling back from their gaming investments, sparking fears of a looming collapse reminiscent of the 1980s. But are we really on the brink of disaster? In this deep dive, we explore the root causes behind the industry's turmoil, from economic shifts to corporate missteps.
Are games losing their creative edge in favor of pandering to nostalgia and IP recognition? With examples like Skeletor in Call of Duty and Marvel sets in Magic, we explore how the industry's focus on brand recognition is eroding the depth and immersion of gaming worlds. Fortnite's success in blending diverse IPs has set a dangerous precedent, where profit trumps artistic integrity but it's not too late to push back against this trend.
Extra Politics is an 8-episode mini-series exploring the United States political system from a game design perspective. Today we're discussing why candidates spend their action points during the election cycle in bizarre but interesting ways.
Today we discuss what a win chart is, and how win charts explain why election polls aren't always accurate--or in some cases, completely inaccurate.
Today we're learning about the structural powerups built into US elections that give advantages to whoever is currently losing the race.
Today we talk about why we need stable social rules in order for our political system to work.
Today we talk about what cheating in a political system looks like, and how we can counter cheating!
Today we talk about how checks and balances in our government should work, and why they aren't right now.
Today we discover why, if a rule is missing, any of our political "mini-games" (such as electing someone to office) can break the designer's intent.
Today we talk about how to fix gerrymandering, which is probably the biggest exploit we have in US politics.
Welcome to the return of Extra Politics! We'll be examining different problems in our political systems for the next 4 weeks, right up until the election. We're using the lens of game design to understand how our political systems are constructed, how certain mechanics interact, and what patch notes might be helpful for the future. First up: social media. We all know that misinformation is rampant online but how does that impact our democracy? What can we do to try and fix bot farms? Is there any way to start valuing more valid sources of information over things that get clicks like fear and outrage?
The D&D one shot is nearly here! Thank you all so much for your generosity during our charity livestream. Now we get to show you our appreciation by having Matt, Ali, Jac, Will, and Geoff dive into a dungeon to wrangle some monstrosity in a one-shot run by Arthur. We've been working on this for a while, and we can't wait to share it with all of you.