Really only finite possibilities?

Been reading 37signals recently - their design philosophy really is inspiring...

In one post, they talk about how readers warn them of websites that rip off their design, and upon a warning from 37Signals, they sometimes get a response to the affect of "how many different ways are there to design a web page or a web app?"

Whenever I run into designer’s block ... I turn to the world of wrist watches.

A wrist watch is a tiny canvas with something to keep that canvas tied to your wrist. It’s just a couple inches round or square or triangular. It has a fixed, common purpose: Tell time...

And yet somehow, with these physical and practical constraints, watch design flourishes. From analog to digital to a combination of the two, tens of thousands of designs are born. Different type, different proportions, different shapes, different perspectives, different indicators, different buttons, different bezels, etc. Fresh new designs hit the market all the time. Here are about a hundred different interpretations of the same question: “What time is it right now?”

I would think the same thing about how it's so difficult to innovate standard genres in games. How many FPS's can there really be after all? Then Team Fortress comes around... and Portal, what about Gunz? I also thought that all the genre's really have already been created (or that new genres would just be combinations of the existing ones) - but here comes physics based games like Armadillo Run.

I don't consider myself a creative person - just resourceful. I assume that I'm like most people in hoping to be on the edge of innovation.

Read: Article

Guaranteed Play Video Poker

I subscribed to "Southern Gaming" for two reasons
#1: I am really into probability (especially video poker)
#2: It was free at the time.

I admit, most of the time they just go into the recycling bin after I thumb through them, but every once and a while I stumble on some fun articles.

In this one, there was just a blurb about a new style of video poker: "Guaranteed Play(tm) video poker".

In one test version at a 25-cent denomination, a $20 ticket bought 100 guaranteed hands of Deuces Wild. Instead of starting with 80 credits on the meter, as in a regular 25-cent video poker, the meter starts at zero - that's the key to casinos being able to offer the guarantee. Bet, and the credit meter moves to minus-5. Hit four of a kind for 20 credits in this Deuces version, and the meter moves to plus-15.

At the end, if you have positive credits, you can cash out. If the meter is negative, you just walk away - you never pay more than your original buy-in, no matter how negative the credit meter gets.

So what are the potential winnings here? Let's say you break even every hand. At the end of the session, you walk away with the same amount of money as if you lost every hand - nothing... for a net loss of $20. So in order to actually make out, you have to not only stay in the black to get paid, but you need to be up MORE than the amount of your buy-in. How many people actually double their money in a casino?

To combat this problem, there has got to be some user-side benefits or else the system would fail. You'll get more hands than $20 would normally buy or much better odds.

So what about strategy? When you're playing with virtual money and you're in the hole anyway nearing the end of your session, you might as well go for the gold. A low pair with some face cards? You would save the face cards normally... but when you're -100, being -95 won't do you any good, so go for the four of a kind.
So what's going on here - why this over regular video poker?

Read: Article

Paradox of the Active User (RTFM)

People like features, and will pay more for it, but the traditional active user doesn't read the manual and just starts using the product. The result is an uninformed user that statistically took more time to accomplish his/her task than if they spent time reading the manual in the first place.

This interests me because it seems to be the exact reason why I feel games MUST have active tutorials. Then, if the game is deep enough, it's supplimented by a detailed instruction manual. Unfortunately I can't recall a game that's had a good tutorial and scenarios that assist with the learning curve.

You know, I've always had in my mind that there were a few indicators of when you've made it as a game developer:

1. Your product is (at least attempted) to be shared illegally. I'm not saying to leave out copy protection, I'm saying that it's good when people like your product so much that they go out of their way to get it


2. You've made it to the top of search engine results (without paying for it)


3. You have a faq and message board on gamefaqs

Now this makes me question that last one though. Should you really ever have questions frequently asked about your gameplay? (or anything for that matter?) If you think about it, you should have addressed all questions in-game... or at least in some easily accessible way.

Read: blog article, definition

Procedural Content from Introversion

Ah Introversion - indie development's poster child. For those that don't know, they're an independent, self publishing, award-winning game developer.

The article comes from Game Career Guide and talks about procedural content and how the industry should shift towards it. Procedural content is the act of generating content dynamically through functions. In their examples, their next game generates the layout of a city given certain arguments. Roads and building attributes are based on population density, districts, and ground elevation. Entire cities are created by functions. What would take thousands of man hours for artists and level designers now took a few weeks of programming.

However, this is nothing new. At E3 last year, this was Will Wright's big concept in Spore. Everything from lifeforms to galaxies are all procedural. .kkrieger was able to pack an fps into 96 kb with graphics comparable to current gen shooters.

They go on to point out that they are not just talking about static models, but animation, and textures. Back to spore, the animals you create must be able to walk in a believable fashion without programmers knowing what you'll develop.

Like they said, with development costs and computing on the rise, the best way to fill vast virtual worlds will be with functions - especially for indie developers with limited resources.

Read: article

Nintendo's Game Sanity patent

Nintendo actually patents “Sanity system for video game”.

Law Blog comments: "A game system whereby a game character’s sanity level is affected by different occurrences. Game play is affected (for example, by the character not responding to the player’s commands, by the character having hallucinations, etc.) as the character’s sanity level decreases. In-game effects include (and we're not making this up) 'enormous roar that emits from a tiny rodent (mouse or rat)' and 'faint maniacal laughter (that gets louder and louder as the character draws deeper into insanity)'."

Bridges between AI and Design

Listening to a GDC Radio podcast of "AI and Design: How AI Enables Designers" by Brian Reynolds from Big Huge Games. Talks about how designing AI influences game design concepts.

First notion: start somewhere, even if it's just x = rnd(3). Then you can at least get feedback for next iteration:
"AI was dumb because he did X when he should do Y"
Then it's easy to go from there.

Examples of AI influence design:
In Civ, player's able to make and break treaties at will with no influence to other factions. Soln is to make a reputation guage - this affects design.

In Colonization (?) he talks of being able to make a treaty, and walk your troops in without computer noticing. It had no way of knowing. Design element soln: you can't put your troops within 2 squares of opponents.

Only halfway done.

Clint Hocking about interactive media

(Lecture at Futureplay)

He suggests that games can be places along 3 axis... we're currently focused on two:

Technology axis (group responsible: programmers)
This goes from data to resources
Either you rely on precomputed info or runtime. Think Myst vs some tiny game that creates textures on the fly

Representational axis (group responsible: creative team/artists)
Abstract vs simulation
Pong is abstract, it could represent anything. A game, or even a conversation. Rockstar's Table Tennis can't be argued to be anything else. It's a simulation.

His new concept:
The game "Call of Duty" is used as an example. You can play it, and think it's "fun". Well, the game designer has said it was inspired by the movie "Saving Private Ryan". It was of course a good movie, but when you get out of the movie do you say "wow, that was a fun movie!" ...? No, you don't - so he claims fun is not the right word.

"The solution I proposed was to stop talking about fun and start talking about an 'axis of meaning' that has at one end 'distraction' and at the other end 'engagement'."

Think Saving Private Ryan vs Snakes on a Plane, Final Fantasy vs Final Fight. Goes on to say distraction isn't bad, it's still enjoyment.

Continues to say that we're stuck as niche programmers making games to a niche group (18-35 male). Similar to other articles I've seen that talks about how the console wars are too focused on the core demographic.