For the final week of class we discussed what our final game was going to be and we had to come up with a pitch for it. Nothing too big, just a two minute elevator pitch about what our game was about to our classmates.  My pitch was “ This is a very relatable game that a lot of people can resonate with during this time. A great way to pass the time as you wait for news on what is going to happen next with the pandemic and the rest of this horrible year. And this is a game to bring some laughter in your day. It is a twine based story game where you can pick and choose how to spend the day. There is no real object, it is just something to take your mind off of things and make you smile”. We learned that pitching a game is an important process for developing a game, because you want to market your game as good as you can so people will want to buy it and play it, you have to pitch your game to publishers so they can sell your game. If students are trying to continue making games and pursue a career in this industry it is good practice to start pitching games. On a side note I would just like to say how much I have enjoyed this class and I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to meet so many wonderful people in person, and be able to bond and share so many great conversations about something we all have a common love and respect for.

We discussed what our plans were for our final group project. My group project is called “Inertia-D”. In the beginning, we were thinking of either making another board game or a text game, perhaps using twine. After some brainstorming, we decided to make a turn-based racing game that utilizes dice rolls. Since the theme of the game is racing, the audience would be pretty much anyone. There wouldn’t be that much of a story since it’s basically just a racing game. The game most likely will only require chips & cards to represent the gear that they are on, pieces to represent the players, some dice and a racetrack board. Of course as we develop the game, there can be more elements added to the game.

The racers will be able to track which gear they’re in with chips and a card, allowing them to move extra spaces the higher the gear, however, tighter turns require them to either slow down before reaching the turn or successfully rolling a drift on the turn. Failure to slow down or drift will cause them to spin out and miss their next turn, allowing other players to pass them. The car’s gear determines how many spaces the driver is able to move per turn within a range of 1 to whichever gear they’re switched to (1-4).

Turning requires you to be within a specific gear or lower depending on how tight the turn is. You would have to stop before the turn and shift your gear card down, then end your turn and wait your next one before you can turn the corner, this gives your opponent an opening to bypass you. Deciding to “drift” instead of shift gears will have the player roll the fraction found between their current gear and the gear required for a turn (gear 2 car turning a gear 1 turn requires a D12 roll where you must score 1-6 to succeed. Gear 3 car turning a gear 1 turn requires a D12 roll where you must score 1-3. Gear 4 car turning a gear 1 turn requires you to score 1-2 of a D12.), Upon failure of a drift, the car will spin out and their turn is skipped next. Upon a successful drift, the driver will roll a D4 and move that many spaces ahead past the turn. If the roll was below half of the highest value, then the drift is successful.

In conclusion, this game relies on randomness, however players still need to make decisions based on the situations they are in. Players can go for either a high-risk high-reward move or for a safer move.

In the talk “Nuke Possum Springs: A Night in the Woods Design Postmortem” given by Scott Benson at the Game Developer’s Conference in 2018, he discusses the discussion of the ups, downs, design philosophies, and decisions that went into making “Night in the Woods”. Benson discusses how he was an artist first and foremost and met the co-director of Night in the Woods over email after he had seen one of Benson’s vines. Through the work, he discusses how Night in the Woods started as this mystical town where the main character had a cape that fluttered and he takes the audience through the whole storyboard process that goes into making a video game. The two decide to take their concept and completely shift it into a new story. This was spurred on by Benson watching a movie called “Return of the Living Dead” which had characters that reminded him of his friends from when he was a teenager. He decided to move the art in the direction of anthropomorphic characters due to the “playful subversiveness” of their nature.

Having anthropomorphic characters in a game centered around a somewhat realistic depiction of life in a dead end town centering around young adults contrasts with the childish and cartoony nature of how anthropomorphic characters are usually used in traditional media. During the design process for “Night in the Woods”, Benson states “We want this town where you can walk around, we want to make this big world that you can explore, and we also knew that we wanted you to spend a lot of time in these places going back and forth, building this routine.”.

Benson didn’t just expand the length of the town, he stated how in games like “Fallout 3”, he’d be jumping around like this hero, so he wanted to extend the world with more verticality, allowing the player to bounce off of mail boxes, cars, windowsills, and even power lines, extending the height at which you can explore this town and really get into every possible space of it. I believe the most valuble thing to take away from this talk would be how games can forge a connection between the creator and the player, how even when playing as a cartoon cat, we can feel human emotion drilled deep into this game’s narrative and world.

Source: https://youtu.be/Xzhe45Q8780

In week nine, we discussed Fullerton’s chapter on player viewpoints and immersion. In the chapter, Fullerton explains the first person and third person’s perspective. She also talks about the overheard perspectives in games. She mentions how they all provide different views and angles to the game. And this is important to most games because of the advantage and disadvantage each view has. “The controls, viewpoint, and interface all work together symbiotically to create the game experience and allow the player to understand and have agency within the system” Fullerton mentions. This goes for many games like first person shooter, strategy games, adventure/story games. Camera angles matter a lot to the player for their ability to move in game. This affects the player’s experience. If the game’s camera angles make it difficult for the player to move around the map it will make for a bad experience. In games like Call of Duty or Rainbow Six Siege first person is important to be able to see your opponent better and any obstacles in front of you. It helps you focus more on the objective in front of you. The disadvantage is that you are not going to be able to see behind you or to the sides unless you turn around. It mimics that real life feeling by forcing you to move your body in game to look around, unlike third person where you can just move the camera to see around you. I personally enjoy first person way more than third person, but third person is a great way to show you the entire map, and everything in it. Overhead camera angles are perfect for real time strategy games. It allows you to see everything in the game so you can properly adjust to what is happening. No one camera angle is better than another, each one has their pros and cons, it just matters about what kind of game you are trying to make.

We discussed what our plans were for our group project. My group project is called “Capitalism” and it revolves around the theme of poverty and income inequality. In terms of the audience, most people should be able to relate to the game because everyone, to a certain degree, falls into an economic class, whether that be low, middle or high. We initially got our inspirations from Monopoly, but we wanted our game to be different enough in terms of mechanics and overall experience. We want players to feel the gap between the lower income class and the high income class, so we decided to make two types of characters. As a result, there are three lower income characters and one high income character. The primary mechanics follow the use of character cards. Each player starts with a card detailing their character’s name and economic status.

The board itself consists of three rings of sixteen spaces, with each ring representing a separate economic class. The three lower class players begin along the outer ring of the board making their way clockwise towards the center while one player plays as the upper class along the inner ring of the board, laying traps to prevent the others from reaching his inner zone. Life events, which influence the economic status of our characters, exist for both upper class and lower class and take the form of cards that contain drastically different effects. While some life events are positive and lead to gaining effects which help you get ahead, some hinder you during gameplay. Beyond traps and life events are perk cards, which can be acquired by landing on their respective spaces. Perks are one-time-use cards that remain within the player’s inventory until revealed to everyone else; they could boost your rolls, negate traps, and could be played strategically to assure victory.

The upper class character has to race three times around the inner circle while the three lower class characters have to complete a full circle around the outermost ring, middle ring, and then innermost ring. Once a lower class character reaches the innermost ring, they become an upper class character, and any lower class life events that may still be affecting them are discarded. They may keep their perk cards, however, to use until they have no more. Once you’re an upper class character, the same upper class rules now apply to you – you can buy traps to prevent others from finishing the circle before you. Your traps, which cost one influence point, will affect every other player on the board who lands on it (with the exception of yourself). You may also refer to the upper class ability reference sheet, which details a variety of rewards you may purchase with influence points.

For our final week, we concluded this course by focusing on Fullerton’s experiences with creating games, how game designers are nowadays, and storytelling. In a video presentation, Fullerton tells us how she approaches narrative games, stating we shouldn’t settle for “formal, abstract, rational, challenging,” as it’s similar to playing safe or mainstream. We should instead strive and push for “dramatic, narrative, meaningful, sublime” types of games, meaning we should explore more of our innovative and narrative side. An example of this was when Fullerton worked on a game called “Cloud.” It originally had a complex narrative, but she chose to work on game mechanics first and the team ended up forgetting about the narrative. Her co-worker had to fill in the gaps with his own take, but it ends up being successful. From this experience, she states how gaps can be a good concept for games, starting with a light narrative framework and the freedom to add anything that’s needed, or let others/players fill it in. Instead of a simple hero story or set narrative, they want to focus on an open narrative and let players put themselves in it, tell their own narratives instead of the one provided.

Next, we looked at Fullerton’s game called Walden a game, based on a book about Henry David Thoreau living in the woods. We mostly just explored the environment, write down or read notes, and build equipment, which wasn’t much. When discussing over it, we see that the design of the game was intended and what Fullerton explained in her presentation. Rather than focusing on a heroic or cinematic story, we’re playing to experience emotions or thoughts and reflect on them. There’s no challenges or skills needed, just take in the visuals, narrative, and find the meaning of playing the game. This made me think of the games I usually play. While they’re definitely focused on skills or challenges, the narrative is always the most fascinating part for me. It makes you question why we’re doing this in the game, like fighting against aliens or what made the world post-apocalyptic. It’s even better if they let you explore it on your own, connect the pieces and feel a dedication to the story, characters, and the world created by the game.

Sources

Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 4th Edition. 2019.

GDC 2014: Tracy Fullerton – “Breaking the Mold: Experiments in Evolving Game Narrative from the USC Game Innovation Lab”

Accessibility is an important step in the game design process. When designing a video game, one should keep in mind that no one person is the same, and some might be at a mental, physical, or biological disadvantage to those that play your game as an average consumer. One needs to think about what kind of limitations there could be when playing through your game, what if the player needs a guide to help them through the game like waypoints and quest markers on a compass? Sometimes the issue might rely with hardware. Standard game controllers require two hands with two thumbs and two index fingers in order to play a game, however, what if the player was missing a digit? What if hey were missing an entire hand?

To solve this issue, in 2009, the charity AbleGamers worked alongside Evil Controllers, a custom game controller manufacturer to design one of the first adaptive controllers to simulate a Dualshock 3 and a 360 Gamepad. The result was the Adroit Switchblade, a small black box complete with 3.5mm ports mapped to every input of the controller. AbleGamers state on their page “Our efforts would lead to a big push in the community for accessibility as gamers with severe muscular and physical disabilities, such as muscular dystrophy, would be able to play video games for the first time…”.

In May 17, 2018, Microsoft would unveil their new “Xbox Adaptive Controller” (XAC), announced on Global Accessibility Awareness Day. The Xbox Adaptive Controller works with both PC and Xbox One and uses the same 3.5mm jack system as the Adriot Switchblade, the difference being now the Xbox Adaptive Controller has two touchpads that can be mapped to any input. The device also includes a switch for three custom profiles that could be set for different games to allow for easier inputs with some depending on the type of game and their controls. The price of the device is $100, making it 1/3 cheaper than the Adriot Switchblade. The Xbox Adaptive Controller to-date is the most innovative and cost-effective method for hardware accessibility in games to-date.

Source: https://ablegamers.org/xbox-adaptive-controller-the-evolution-of-accessibility/

DMS Blog Post #9

During week 12, we talked about the accessibility of games. We described it as games being available to the public, it’s easy to use and understand, and how broad the game can be in terms of audience and the content. We then talked about the accessibility in games we usually play, such as tutorials, limited amount of controls, using familiar controls like WASD or joystick for movement, and an accessibility option (subtitles, brightness, difficulty mode, etc.). This really helps players familiarize themselves quickly with games nowadays, with previous knowledge of similar games and control layouts or introducing new mechanics slowly. Next, we looked at the Xbox Adaptive Controller, designed for people with disabilities. It adjusts things like increasing the movement, having bigger buttons, or use other senses to function. Though the controls are different, they’re easier to use and this allows them to play games that are intended for regular controllers or players. During the next class, we read some tips for accessibility and gaming. Some things we noted was that people with disabilities are rarely considered because it’s rare and they don’t want others to know or it can lead to harassment. That’s why games with accessibility options are always helpful and dependable, caring for all players.

For examples we looked at the games Jackbox Party Pack and Blindscape. What makes Jackbox very accessible is that it can be played on almost any devices. All we had to do was go on thier website on our phones and type in a passcode to get in the game. The game also has a cool feature where people can participate as the audience, where they spectate the game and vote for whoever they want to win. Another thing that makes it great is that there’s barely any restrictions, no right or wrong, and it can be relevant to real times like making the answers UB related. For Blindscape, it’s a free mobile game, and the whole experience was just a black screen and listening to a narrator. The purpose of the game was to experience how blind people would play a game, use what you hear and touch to progress instead of seeing. Though it’s not very accessible for us to play, it’s a good way to show what’s necessary to add for games to make it as accessible as possible.

Sources

The Jackbox Party Pack, Jackbox Games

Blindscape, Gavin Brown

In the talk “Balancing League of Legends for Every Player, from Bronze to Bengi” given by Greg Street at the Game Developer’s Conference in 2017, he discusses the ideology behind balancing a video game and designing it to include both low skill players and high skill players. Through the work, he discusses the example of “AI-Dependant Power”, citing examples such as Heimerdinger from “League of Legends”, The Engineer from “Team Fortress 2”, and Torbjorn from “Overwatch”. Greg Street would go on to explain “The problem with AI power, in this case, the turrets, (but it also could be like your character has a pet) is that AI power doesn’t scale really well with skill level. If you think of the power as a pie chart, the AI part of that takes up a really big part of that pie chart… So as developers, we kind-of have to have to choose where we turn those turrets…”.

The issue with AI implementation into an competitive environment would be scaling it so the computer is a formidable foe to both novice and experienced players without giving the player controlling the AI too much to just sit back and rely on. This becomes an issue where if the turret is too powerful and kills too easily, then it’s difficult for everyone at the floor of the skill chart. If it was catered towards them, then the turret wouldn’t have any viable use in competitive play. The goal of the game designer is to find the porridge that tastes just right, the middle ground that can attract both novice and experienced players towards both being an opponent to the turret and playing as the turret.

Greg Street also brings up Latency and how that could affect how others play. He says “We recently did a study to look at play rates and win rates of certain league champions according to different ping rates. We found that places like Korea (which has really good internet) actually allowed players to use different champions and have different win rates than players in the US…”. This provides an interesting dilemma on how the designer would account for the various internet speeds of people around the world. One example to mitigate this issue is to extend the window for attacks or provide some sort of input delay.

Source: https://youtu.be/ii_Q4OCoHvU

Harassment in video games is a sensitive topic for many because it seems to spark more outrage on whether or not harassment exists in a virtual space harassment in video games is a sensitive topic for many because it seems to spark more outrage on whether or not harassment exists in a virtual space rather than the harassment themselves. I’d like to propose a video showcasing actual harassment received during several regulated competitive matches of “Counter-Strike: Source”.

The video in question is “Phoon too much for Zblock”, a classic bunnyhopping montage showing various clips of the titular player “phoon” using the ability to bunnyhop, a speedrunning tactic that tricks the game engine into believing you are perpetually in free fall by repeatedly jumping before the game can register you as grounded. “zblock” refers to the ESEA’s cheat detection plugin that recognizes if players are running scripts or not. Phoon wasn’t running any, just being good at timing his jumps perfectly and flanking the entire enemy team before they can make a push. This upset a lot of his opponents, most of them writing false reports to the ESEA in attempts to get him banned from competitive play, the first couple seconds of the video is a montage of the harassment he received “This kid pushes like a fucking idiot dude.” “I honestly hope this kid dies in his sleep tonight.”.

I believe this stems from a bigger issue in which toxicity exists wherever competition is. The addition of a screen name gives others anonymity, giving them a sense that they are separated from anything they say or do online, which is hardly true. This combined with the highly competitive nature of Counter-Strike and you have an extremely toxic environment that promotes poor teamwork and crying over a game instead of encouraging others to get better at it. I feel the way that phoon deals with it is extremely professional and positive, opting to make them eat their words by flying around the map “like a speed demon” and making a compilation of those same people trash talking them being swiftly shut down by both him and the ESEA admin who sees nothing wrong with phoon’s play. I believe we can all use “phoon too much for zblock” as a guide on how to properly deal with harassment in a game as opposed to retorting back with name calling and stooping to their level, or complaining about it online.

Source: https://youtu.be/SNvDUO42Hys