Moving to Tumblr (THIS BLOG IS DEAD)

I'm going to be moving my blog over to Tumblr when it becomes relevant. I don't have any time to write here at the moment (nor much to write about that's of any relevance).

I'll keep this up, and eventually end it when I'm set up on Tumblr someday. Probably after DETOUR is out the door and our next *freaking amazing* project is in the works.

Find me here: http://sandsweptzag.tumblr.com/

Nope, I'm not dead.

Just really busy. I'll get around to posting more of this. I've been up to my neck in web code, DETOUR design and refinement, and some other stuff we're not even talking about. I'll probably get back to writing more here when we've got a bigger crowd interested in what's going down.

And stuff is so going down.

EDIT: New Sandswept.net is up. I put a lot of time into this, glad to see it's deployed.

Elements of Game Design: Game Flow

Continuin my series about elements of good game design, it's time to talk about Game Flow. Game Flow keeps the game moving, fast-paced, constantly interesting, and one would hope, never dull for the player. Rewards, as I mentioned in the last post of the series, can be used as an element of game flow, but it does not encompass all of game flow. A game can not be driven by rewards alone -- at least not in the conventional sense.

What is Game Flow?

Game Flow is the term I use to describe the aspect and element of the game that keeps the player wanting. It is the element that tells the player you need to keep playing, you need to check this out and this is worth continuing. Liken it, if you will, to a game almost every one has played in the real world; tag. Almost every game of tag beautifully demonstrates 'game flow'. There is always a small element of danger, always something moving or progressing, and generally speaking, there's always a small place to take a quick rest or a breather, which also plays a great role in game flow. To bring a good example to the floor, I bring up Call of Duty a lot. I'm going to have to do it again, simply because the whole series demonstrates some of the key principles of game design and executes them in what I believe to be a beautiful manner. Here are the key elements to game flow and examples shown through the Call of Duty series and some other games I will mention.

1. Constant Goals (aka Action Action Action!)

To mention a bit of zen philosophy, this rule is very much about "living in the now", or in other words, taking the entire game and breaking it up into constant miniature goals and objectives. A nice example is as follows;

The overall goal is to assault a nearby German encampment.

- The player must go through a barn to get to the rear of the building.
- A German tank suddenly plows out of the barn and begins to wreak havoc on your and your squad! A new objective; The player is ordered to take out the tank with some nearby rockets.
- The player destroys the tank. A new objective; the player must clear the rest of the barn.
- The player must get to the rear of the barn and hop on a waiting allied tank.
- Riding the tank is what we call "The Breather" (we'll talk about this in a moment).
- The tank convoy arrives at the German encampment, the player must hop off before the tank is destroyed! (See? A small, but nonetheless significant objective)
- There are machine guns in the guard towers, the player must take them out with rockets so that his friends can move up and secure the rest of the camp!

Meanwhile, the entire time, the player's overall goal has been to siege the German encampment, but the player has been driven to that final destination by subsequent mini-objectives. Developers should be careful here not to railroad the player down a silly path. This is where multiple paths (something I'll touch on in a later article) comes in to play. Allowing the player to complete (or sometimes even ignore) these mini-objectives gives the player a lot more empowerment over their journey through your world. Developers should be careful about how they do this, and strike a balance between "too much guidance" and "not enough guidance."

In Call of Duty, enemies will continuously 'spawn' (appear) and attack you until you gain a specific amount of territory on the battlefield. This keeps the player in constant action, and gives them a very clear goal of "I have to fight my way up there." Sometimes this can feel like a bit of sensory overload, so developers must watch out for giving the player more than they can handle, not just in terms of skill, but in terms of how much information they can process. Too much and the player gets aggravated with the game, or feels rushed. This happens often (to me personally) in arcade games such Geometry Wars or Dance Dance Revolution. A bit too often my senses seem overloaded by all the action going on.

Another example of the Constant Goals element in game flow is found in Mirror's Edge, but on a much more subtle level. As the game can (usually) be navigated many ways by the player, each ledge, every gap, every pipe, is a new goal. In the game, important objects, ledges, and pipes, are highlighted in red, and in that sense they are very much the immediate goals that drive the player through the game.

While there may be an overall goal for you to achieve in a given level, there are hundreds of small things to accomplish along the way. This keeps the player moving and playing in the now -- in the present -- instead of hanging a giant carrot on the stick and only allowing them to get it once they've completed the entire level. Smaller, frequent carrots (goals) make for happier horses (players).

2. Plot (aka Storytelling)

Many games, movies, and other entertainment are driven by Plot. Story is a must for most games. From the very simple to the very complex, players generally expect a compelling story to keep the singleplayer (and sometimes even the multiplayer) moving along. This is most obvious in the campaign of many games. An event happens which drives the player to the next event.

The events can be something as revealing as the cutscene where we find out Cortana is now Master Chief's mother-in-law (plot twist?), or the part of the story where the science experiment goes horribly wrong (no one expects that one), or the player finds themselves transformed into an amoeba fighting white blood cells in someone's body! (It happened in some game I saw.)

The events can also be something small, such as a quick reference to something going on in the story (witty quip?), a new enemy (kill this boss?), a cinematic crash landing overhead (rescue the survivors?), or a civilian being slaughtered by the alien overlords (more emotion added to the player's drive to vanquish his foe).

Whatever the event may be, it should always lead the player along the path to the next story event, objective, and eventually, the final goal. The climax of the game should be built up to by all the events that brought the player to that single point. So, after all this talk of action and story, what if the player is feeling a little too much adrenaline? That's where The Breather comes in.

3. The Breather (aka Catch Your Breath)

Ahh... Well, that's what you should be saying during this moment anyway. The Breather is just as it sounds. It's the moments in the game where there really is no action at all. It's the moment after the battle, the moment the dust clears, the moment when everything calms down and the player's mind tells them everything is going to be OK. As zen will teach us, the mind can not be fully present without space. Consider this the necessary space between the events. I say necessary for a good reason. Without these moments, the player has very little time to regain their calmer state. With too much action, the body becomes dulled by the constant panic, or the constant energy they're putting into the game. Instead of giving the player constant fun, that merely gets the player tired, or dulled towards the game. You will notice this if you play a game, especially a very action-packed game, usually multiplayer, for too many hours -- it becomes a little bit dull.

This is the moment developers must give, use, and take advantage of. This is where you can sneak in Plot, or simply give the player art; be it a scenic view, a fun easter egg or a wonderful cinematic. You can do this actively, while also giving the player a spot to simply 'catch their breath', usually mentally, but physically too.

Game Flow is of key importance to any game, in order to keep the player focused and oriented, by dangling that magical golden carrot of Constant Goals, Plot, and the space that The Breather gives us.

And that closes this post. Remember the objectives, coupled with genuinely fun gameplay, and you can't go wrong.

It's a Boy!

Dear Baby Product Creators,

Gerber, Enfamil, Similac, and Baby Magazine, please stop sending Sandswept Studios complimentary baby formula and baby-related magazines. We did not have a baby. In fact, you could say we even had a miscarriage with the cancellation of our first project. This offends us.



If we were ever to have a collective child, it would be an abomination to the human race, and you would very well be hunted down by PETA (yes, PETA) for encouraging the nutrition and well-being of such a biological perversion.

Sandswept Studios is not a mother. That is all.


- Geoff Keene
CEO of Sandswept Studios

P.S. This stuff tastes disgusting.

Elements of Game Design: Rewards

I'm going to start doing a series about elements of good game design, titled "Elements of Game Design". Strange, I understand. I'm going to start off with Rewards. Rewards keep the game driving forward for the players, (but not in terms of game flow, which I'll be touching on in the next post) and keep players coming back. Let's get started.

What are Rewards?

First and foremost, Rewards are just what you'd expect them to be, hence the name. Achievements (Xbox360), unlockables, leveling up, you name it. Things the players are rewarded with for doing good things, or even just playing the game for a certain amount of time. Core but often overlooked components of a great game. Winning is a reward, but it is common (or you would hope!). The rewards I'll be mainly referring to are unlockable weaponry, attachments to said weaponry, player models or "armor", and so on.

To be clear, Downloadable Content (DLC) is not a reward. Generally speaking, if it costs money, it's not a reward, it is a product, in which you would hope to find additional rewards. We'll now touch on balancing rewards.

Balance

Balancing rewards is a big deal. I'm not referring to the unlockables themselves, being unbalanced, but rather the unbalanced distribution of rewards found in some games. Oftentimes developers will withhold a large (sometimes very large) amount of content in order to allow players to "unlock" it. While this can create somewhat of a feeding frenzy, where every one wants this content, it can also cause some distress to the players, and often, the hardcore fans. Here are the DOs and DON'Ts.

DON'T rip players off.
No one likes getting ripped off. If you know you're ripping people off, chances are many of them do too. People aren't nearly as dumb (as a collective) as some people like to put across. If a game is released to the public, and a DLC (downloadable content) expansion pack or map pack is available immediately thereafter for a steep price, that's damaging to the image of the bean-counters making those decisions, and therefore, the company (or publisher).

DO give players frequent rewards.
Call of Duty: World at War is a brilliant example of this. While playing it, I notice I seem to achieve something almost every game, be it a new weapon, a mini-challenge (bonus experience for doing cool things), or even leveling up. Frequent and obvious rewards make the player feel heroic, courageous, and manly. (The women out there may feel the same way, but we won't tell anyone.)

DON'T leave out the hard stuff
From epic skills come awesome-sauce rewards. Pretty sure that's from Spiderman. Peter Parker has a 1337 uncle. But to stay on topic here; players want a challenge. Sure, hand out rewards willy-nilly (well, not too willy-nilly) but make sure you sneak in some really tough ones with some great payoff. The skilled or simply dedicated players should be able to obtain some rewards. Bragging rights are worth their weight in gold, am I right?

DO spread the rewards out
The rewards need to be spread sufficiently throughout the game, that not only do players earn many on their first time through, but continue to earn them after they return to play a second time. (or third... fourth... fifth...) This goes without saying for multiplayer as well. Looping back to bragging rights, what's better than showing off your sweet new armor that many other players don't have?

DO tie singleplayer to the multiplayer
Following on the curtails of spreading rewards -- most games these days sport both single and multiplayer game modes. Players who beat the story mode (or singleplayer, I suppose some don't really have much of a story), should be encouraged to do so by earning rewards for Multiplayer.

Next up...

Good Rewards

What exactly make for good rewards? I mentioned some things vaguely already, such as armor or weaponry. There are really two kinds of rewards -- we'll call them Internal and External.

Internal rewards are rewards the player receives, but they're generally not shown to other players. These are often "feel good" rewards. Things you get that may not show to other players, but the fact that you have them makes you, the player, really feel great. Some abstract examples of this would be unlocking challenges for doing something cool, which other players may not be able to view. Achievements, on the other hand, fall into the latter category; External rewards.

External rewards are much more obvious, and usually far more common. Achievements are a great external reward. Every Xbox 360 game has them to some level, some give more focus to them, some less. These are a great way to brag about just how awesome you are at everything, ranging from picking up a controller to being able to move the controls in an inhuman manner. These are a good example of giving easy and hard rewards, for players of both skill-sets (or simply players who play the game more, as mentioned before.)

Other examples of external rewards are armor or armor colors (which can change the appearance or sometimes statistics of a player), weapons and attachments to said weapons (which can drastically add some advantages, hopefully properly gameplay-balanced though), and much more. I'll close this little article with two examples of what I believe to be the best examples of games giving players great rewards (while there are many more, these are two that I frequently play, and yes, they are both FPS games). The games that don't reward well aren't worth mentioning, as people have long since stopped playing them.

Call of Duty: World At War -- Every time you score a kill, numbers pop up in a non-obstructive way and show you how much experience you've earned for your next level. With levels come rewards such as new exciting weapons and attachments, and within levels come quite a few mini-challenges, which further your experience earned. There's a fantastic amount of re-playability to be had in this game, and many diverse situations thanks for the ever increasing arsenal available to the player. While there is a ceiling to this (as in all games), it's way up there.

Halo 3 -- This game has a beautiful but reward system, as have it's predecessors. The third installement of the series in particular does an even better job, refining elements from the first two. First, medals are earned for certain types of kills, be they a melee, snipe, or even running someone over in a vehicle. Along with that, these medals pop up with a satisfying announcer voice saying things like "Double kill!". This kind of thing really gets the adrenaline going, and that kind of 'high' leaves the players quite satisfied with what they've done. This game also takes a nice advantage of achievements, and awards armor pieces based on what the players have accomplished, which gives them incentives to play singleplayer, as well as multiplayer. More playability for all.

In closing, rewards go hand in hand with longevity of play, and fun for the player. Don't forget these important nuggets.

Mirror's Edge: Double-Take

Awhile back I mentioned something or another about Mirror's Edge, after having played the demo. I finally got my hands on it and actually played the full game. My opinion really doesn't change. The End.

No, just kidding; I have more to say.

I jotted down a couple notes about the game, so I suppose I could just go over them one at a time.

Short: But Just Right

This game was short. No doubt about it. I beat the game in a little under a day. To be honest though, I don't have a problem with that. Given the amount of time I invest towards Sandswept I've had very little time to play much of anything. Short games are very appealing right now (but long ones are always better, right?). This brings me to the next point.

Time Trials: 2 Minutes of Fun

The Time Trials are where I really enjoyed the game. Without checking out Leaderboard and/or Friends' Time Trial ghosts (a genius feature), the game requires an awful lot of clever 3D thinking. It's nice to have a good fast-paced brain challenge. I topped a few folks on my friends list within a few tries -- Take that, Dan Paladin's Time Trial score. That's all good fun, and very easy to pick up and play. I'm not sure if anyone plays the game anymore, as I arrived to it a bit late. While the game has no multiplayer, comparing scores and racing ghosts brings me back to the days of Mario Kart on the SNES... Just without all the falling. Looping back to "the game has no multiplayer"...

The Game Has No Multiplayer

I like multiplayer. Coop, Multiplayer, something. Give people something. PC, XBOX, even the PS3, are very heavy "community" platforms. In fact, almost everything is these days. Every one likes playing with friends. It just makes a game that much greater, longer lasting, and all around better.

But all that aside, I found the game had enough content to keep me satisfied for a week or two; about as long as all the singleplayer-only (aka "Really Bad Multiplayer/Coop") games have held me (Fable 2, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and so on)

Mirror's Edge has pretty solid gameplay (aside from a few frustrating hiccups with controls and not grabbing walls/enemies properly) and I'd say it's worth playing at least once, while the Time Trials can keep you busy for a good while after. It really harkens back to games like Perfect Dark (stylization, not really gameplay) and ONI (much more so). Not worth a purchase, but definitely worth a play. Good job, EA/DICE.

Now where's Mirror's Edge 2 with Multiplayer?

That's Choice

Looking back at my last blog post regarding hysteria for the Swine Flu; looks like it was a pretty mild thing. Consider this; write down your predictions for future events (generally big things, like "Where is Iran headed?", and look back at them a few weeks, months, even years later. You get some interesting patterns based on how you view the world. With me it's always "People keep surprising me", both in all the good things they will do, and all of the bad. I'm very glad the Good seems to consistently be winning, no matter how prominent or loud or advertised all the Bad is.

But moving on! Today I've officially designated DETOUR "Content Complete". Now for that pesky left-over testing, code-work, localization, and so on. We can see the destination but we still have to walk to it. As for DETOUR itself, it is just looking great. The visuals are shiny and the gameplay has put a smile on my face on many occasions as of late. The Sandswept team has pulled together a very nice experience.

With DETOUR we've hit a mark somewhere between the three points of Comedy (both in dialog, SFX combined with visuals, and overall parody), Strategy, and Agility (ability to move your hands and brain in a synchronized destructive forte of art and class). We have found ourselves calling this an "Action RTS", both for it's fast-paced action and relatively short games, and the amount of cunning and strategy that really affects the outcome.

There's a few games out there, even RTS games, that seem to tip-toe around being a game where the really letting the skilled, smarter players always win. In attempts to make a "Casual" game, many developers seem to shy away from making the game a real challenge, and instead make it more of a fun la-dee-da cakewalk for everyone. Is this so they don't scare away the lesser skilled players? Is that really necessary? There are plenty of Triple-A titles (perhaps all of them?) that are focused on a very competitive experience, but leave plenty of room for goofing off and having a fun experience if you so choose.

That really brings up another thought; Choice! Lots of games brag about choice, multiple paths, and how these choices will effect your game experience throughout the story. What about the more fundamental choice, such as editing game options? When developers force the players into "the right way" to play a game (and generally most games can be played differently if the effort were put into allowing that), they take away the player's real choice. Good and Evil choices are solely based on the story and character development. What about the choices to play the game a completely new way, a la Warthog Jousting in Halo or Tower Defense in Starcraft? Completely unintended, but the customization, physics, and open-endedness of editors have given players so many ways to play the game. The two games I just mentioned are amazingly successful because of that bit of extra choice, customization, and modification. The games that wear out quickly are the ones in which players can't change the way they play. (And yes, those games are also beautifully designed and very fun, but a large part of the fun and design is the ever changing ways to play)

Competitive players might analyze a game to a deeper level, and decide that by enabling/disabling certain rules, they can get the game to where they feel it's "more skillful". Casual players might want to just goof around with ridiculous variables and have some crazy fun. The games that let these distinct groups (who can never seem to agree!) will be (and have proven to be) the successful games.

To put the example more in perspective (and looping back to the earlier topic), with DETOUR we're allowing customization of game options, ranging from something simple, such as Score, to allowing the players to toggle on and off various items and their attributes. All developers should be able to say this; You don't like the way we balanced it or set things up? Great! Change it!

That's choice.


Pardon our Dust.

Does the H stand for Hysteria?

Obviously every one is talking (and blogging, and twittering) about the H1N1. I suppose I will jump on that bandwagon and give my thoughts on this. First off; It's like a disease apocalypse movie! Or, you know, could be, if the right mutations were to take place. Scary stuff? Given the numbers, most of the fears are unfounded. 300 or so confirmed cases, in over a month? And the only death in the US was a child from Mexico, so it's really not even a US death. While the whole thing is still pretty surreal as a threat, they did close down the local school district due to a 'possible case'. Turns out it was allergies or some such. That hits a little close to home, but I sure don't know any one with this flu, and certainly people aren't dropping dead. If it mutates and becomes less treatable, we could have a major crisis. That's a big IF.

Joe Biden apparently scared every one, even though I'd say his advice was not that far off. When there is a new virus going around, you should avoid situations that could spread it. It only takes 1 person to become 2, 2 to become 4, and so on. I still don't understand why it's the social norm for people to cough covering their mouths with their hand. Why not use the crook of your elbow, for example? Your hands are touching everything ALL the time.

Anyway, there's three outcomes.
1) A few people die. (~5000) (It quiets down in a month and we all go back to our normal lives, worry free.)
2) A good amount of people die. (~100,000 to 100,000,000) (Riots, looting, not enough medicine, very damaging to our societal structure.)
3) 98% of the population dies. (Billions) (Government collapse, back to savagery)

We're somewhere at the very low end of #1, and not even close to #2. Since this is a new, unpredictable virus, we could hit #2 before this is done. No one wants to imagine #3. These things are exponential, so it could snowball out of control very quickly, no matter how ready the world thinks they are. Could you imagine if what was happening in Mexico City was happening everywhere? How would we really handle that? I'd say "not very well."

While half the politicians sit there telling the doctors "You're making people panic!" and the other half thinks no one is panicking enough, they're both right. Restricting some travel, taking more hygiene precautions, and staying away from that coughing guy over there -- Good ideas. It would definitely lessen the blow if this were to become a true, deadly pandemic. Over-reacting is slaughtering hundreds of thousands of pigs (Good job, Egypt) thinking it will stop the disease. Telling people to stay away from others, and sneezing a little less on your friends -- That's not over-reacting.

As for Egypt's pig slaughter and the opportunists attempting to get the US-Mexico border closed, they're just preying on the situation, seeing an opening to finally get their political/religious stance moved ahead quicker.

More present now than before this incident; we all carry on, hoping one day we don't wake up to a mega-disaster. Don't we do that every day?

Lifespan of a Blog

In theory, the life-span of a blog is equal to the mind of it's creator. That does not bode well for me.

Blogs are generally created on the idea of "I have a great list of stuff I want to talk about!". Generally blogs go on for a couple weeks, maybe a few months, and then you run out of ideas. Currently, I'm out of ideas. As only a few people -- either people wanting to check up on me, or just some random folks waiting for me to drop some information about Sandswept's project(s) -- visit this blog, I don't think anyone will miss the large gaps in blog posts.

Perhaps once our game(s) pick up I can post a bit more here, as there might be someone out there who actually wants to hear me talk about developing a game, starting up a company, and managing a project and team.

After all, I am currently too busy developing a game, starting up a company, and managing a project and team.

Things I don't seem to have time for... #2

- World of Warcraft
- Writing anything that isn't directly related to DETOUR
- World of Warcraft
- Posting news stories
- Blogging
- Catching up on the news
- Checking out websites that are not Sandswept.net
- Finishing this po