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Reality is Broken - Notes

This will mostly be quotes actually, and frankly they'll be out of context.  I have to type them up before I return the e-book to the library (and thus lose my nook notes/highlights), and this seemed like as good a place as any to keep them.

Reality is Broken - Jane McGonigal

"gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression." p. 33

"When we realize that this reorientation toward intrinsic reward is what's really behind the 3 billion hours a week we spend gaming globally, the mass exodus to game worlds is neither surprising nor particularly alarming.  Instead, it's overwhelming confirmation of what positive psychologists have found in their scientific research: self-motivated, self-rewarding activity really does make us happier.  More importantly, it's evidence that gamers aren't escaping their real lives by playing games.  They're actively making their real lives more rewarding." p. 53

Regarding fail sequences in Super Monkey Ball 2:

"This animation sequence played a crucial role in making failure enjoyable" p. 67

When the 2008 Prince of Persia came out there were a fair number of complaints about how easy the game was.  The complaints mostly boiled down to how easy it was because you never die.  Every time there would have typically been a death sequence, Elika comes and rescues you.  The sequence serves the exact same function as a death sequence (Elika takes you back to the last safe place, or the boss you're battling has time to regenerate his health), and shouldn't actually make the game easier.  Reading this section about how the failure animations actually help the player enjoy their failures makes me wonder if the issue many gamers had with the lack of deaths in PoP wasn't really that the game was too easy, but that they didn't get that same feeling of interest in the failure animation. 

Personally, I thought the idea of replacing a death scene with a rescue scene worked very well.  When Elika gets knocked out, the player as the prince goes to help her.  That exchange of assistance goes a long way to develop the relationship between the prince and Elika in a game without a ton of dialogue.  I imagine there is, however, a certain type of gamer who isn't particularly interested in the relationship between the avatar and sidekick, and who might even find the experience of being saved by the sidekick humiliating or at least not as interesting as a gruesome death.

"Meaning is the feeling that we're a part of something bigger than ourselves.  It's the belief that our actions matter beyond our own individual lives.  When something is meaningful, it has significance and worth not just to ourselves, or even to our closest friends and family, but to a much larger group: to a community, and organization, or even the entire human species." p. 94

"An epic environment is a space that, by virtue of its extreme scale, provokes a profound sense of awe and wonder"  p. 100

"In a series of ten challenges, gamers beat the world's most sophisticated protein-folding algorithms five times, and drew even three times."  p. 215

Regarding Albert Einstein and Chess:

 "Einstein ... once famously said, 'Games are the most elevated form of investigation'"  p. 272

 "To play chess as a more than casual player is to become a part of this problem-solving network.  It means joining a massively collaborative effort to become intimately familiar with an otherwise unfathomably complex possibility space."  p. 273

 Regarding the Lydians:

"This was [the dice games] primary function: to provide real positive emotions, real positive experiences, and real social connections during a difficult time

This is still the primary function of games for us today.  They serve to make our real lives better.  And they serve this purpose beautifully, better than any other tool we have.  No one is immune to boredom or anxiety, loneliness or depression.  Games solve these problems, quickly, cheaply, and dramatically.

Life is hard, and games make it better."  p. 299

"Moreover, when we play games, we consume less.  This is perhaps the most overlooked lesson of the story that Herodotus told.  For the ancient Lydians, games were actually a way to introduce and support a more sustainable way of life."

"We are starting to question material wealth as a source of authentic happiness."  p. 300

Planning a sample level

I've been planning out a self-contained level.  So far what I have are fairly disparate elements spread across several prototypes.  Here I am trying to combine them in a way that makes sense, and also implement some changes to the map view that I've been considering. 

Hole in the Ground

Tile Flip Puzzles

Planning Sketches

After spending some time planning out more complex mechanisms for surviving a tile flip, I went back and created prototypes of the easiest survival methods.  The first is simply walking to another tile.  I've added the idea of walking up to something in the world to get to the map view back into the prototype.  The map/landscape tile flip mechanic is faked for the time being (the landscape tile flips regardless of whether or not you've flipped the map tile).

The next one doesn't have a tile you can get to, but you can walk around the tile as it flips.  The white plane was added in because it's rather difficult to understand how the tile you're on is moving without a horizon to orient you. 

Working on these more simple survival strategies lead me to think about another way to walk from one tile to another:

Survival on a flipping tile

When thinking about how to improve the tile flip mechanic in the map view, I was considering choosing a constraint similar to the board game.  In the board game the player has a marker which can be moved only to certain spaces.  The spaces where the marker has been is always flipped.  For the video game, I was thinking that the marker could start on the tile where the player is, and be moved similarly.  However this would mean that every time the player goes into the map view, the tile the player is on will be flipped.  Which makes not falling off the tile a much bigger part of the game than it previously was.  This then lead me to think of the various ways to survive a tile flip.  One of the comments I've had repeated from players is that they would like to see the underside of the tile field.  So I created this simple prototype showing a possible "safe space" one might seek out after triggering a tile flip:

Here's what it looks like from a distance, so that you can see how it works:

Thumbnail Sketch

Book of Lenses

The main problem that I have with Schell's book is that he has a tenancy to occasionally get fairly unimportant things incorrect, which then throws everything that I don't have at least a bit of prior knowledge of into doubt.  The most egregious example of these mistakes is on page 117 where Schell makes the claim that we can understand line drawings because our brains draw lines around important objects.  In fact he says that "When we are presented with a picture already drawn with line, it has been 'pre-digested' in a sense, matching our internal modeling mechanism perfectly, and saving them a lot of work."

If you are interested in the actual reason that line drawings are understandable to us, there's a readable scientific paper on it here, but suffice it to say it has nothing to do with a tiny rotoscope artists in our heads. 

However there are many very useful insights in the Book of Lenses.  One that I found particularly helpful when developing a game board was the idea of thinking of a game space as a series of zero dimensional cells.  The below image is of two diagrams I created.  The left shows my first attempt, and the zero dimensional diagram of it, and the right is the revision I made.

Particularly because I am working with an irregular grid, it was difficult to see how the spaces related to one another.  Removing the extra dimensions made those relationships very clear and helped me to evaluate what I liked and didn't like about the design. 

One very interesting concept Schell discusses is the possibility for this type of diagramming to work with imaginary spaces.  For an example he shows a diagram of the game twenty questions.  One space is the mind of the answerer, another the mind of the questioner.  Another space, the conversation space, exists between the two.  I think this is a very interesting way to think about game spaces, and I would like to explore it farther.

Book of Lenses: Players

I will admit that considering my audience is one of my weak points as an artist.  I tend to find it very difficult to think about the audience without losing sight of what I'm trying to express which tends to make whatever I am working on into an incoherent mess.  So I was looking forward to the chapter on the player in The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, and was disappointed to find that it is mostly a discussion of demographics.  To make matters worse, the demographics are discussed in terms of fairly tired generalizations, and the chapter focuses a lot on the differences between male and female players.  There is a danger to focusing to much on the differences between male and female players. 

Men and women actually have much more in common than not.  The differences tend to stand out because they are so rare compared to the similarities.  Since those differences catch our attention so easily, there is an understandable tenancy to ascribe more importance to the differences than is wise.  Schell seems to fall into this trap.  While his points are not completely incorrect, he makes it sound like it is an impossible task to create a single game that will appeal to both men and women because the things men and women like in games are all polar opposites.  But clearly it is not impossible for games to appeal to both genders.  Schell even gives an example of how both boys and girls enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Buccaneer Gold experience at DisneyQuest.  Boys and girls may have had slightly different motivations for "blowing up bad guys" and slightly different style of play, but the game accommodated both with the same gameplay. This segment would have been much more interesting if it had focused on how to achieve that kind of gameplay, instead of making it seem like a hopeless task.

The one item in Schell's list of gender differences that I take issue with is the idea that female players shouldn't be given spatial puzzles.  While it is true that women on average have a harder time with spatial reasoning, as it turns out video games can actually help erase that problem.  Usually when we talk about the transformative quality of any particular media, we're talking about something intangible, but in this one case there is a transformative effect that has been scientifically studied.  That someone writing a book about game design presumably in order to influence the future of game design would discourage game designers from making spatial puzzle games that appeal to women seems very irresponsible to me. 

I thought it was interesting that the only demographics discussed in this chapter were age and gender.  Schell does mention that there are other ways to group people, and then talks briefly about psychographics.  Psychographics seem like they would be more helpful and nuanced.  However there's simply not much information about them. 

The chapter ends with a list of the types of pleasure one might find in a game.  The list is well thought out, and it has nice descriptions.  I feel like this is the part of the book where it should talk about catharsis, but it doesn't.  I'm not sure if I think catharsis should be included as a pleasure in itself; experiencing a tragic story is not always pleasant, but it can be cathartic and there is a sort of pleasure in that.  However from what I understand catharsis is also about relieving positive emotions, and therefore it could be the result of the pleasures in a game. 

First Person vs. Third Person

Throughout this quarter I've gone back and forth between first and third person controllers.  A third person controller feels very grounded in the space, which I feel is very helpful when the game-play tends more towards platformers.  You also get a better sense for who the character you're playing as is because you see them and their behaviors. 

However a first person controller has disembodied quality to it that I think shifts the player's focus to the space and exploration.  Although there are important platforming elements in this game, I believe the awareness of the environment and looking at it from different perspectives are more important elements.  For now I have settled on first person, but there is a possibility that may change again as the game develops.

A real landscape, finally

Astute observers might notice that the map and landscape tiles have their days and nights reversed.  That was in error and will be fixed in future iterations. 

The goal I had with this prototype was to start developing the look of the world again.  There are now two distinct sets of tiles for the first person and omniscient views (previously there were two cameras looking at the same set of tiles).  I would like to create map tiles with useful data about the landscape drawn on them, as opposed to the current generic pattern. 

The style of the landscape itself has evolved slightly from the very first project.  I have added a stronger bevel to the edges of each tile, which I feel emphasizes the seams between tiles.  The bevel also helped with getting the edges of the tiles to line up with each other in the Y direction. I'm undecided about lip where the river meets the edge of a tile.  The idea was the keep the continuity of the bevel and the edge height of the tiles.  However I think it's interrupting the line of the river too much. 

Beginning development of the 1st person view

Below is an early test of the physics system showing objects sliding off a tile as it flips.  I wanted to see how size, shape, and orientation effected the motion of the objects.  I like the way the cylinder standing on its end falls over, and how the larger sphere gets caught by the neighboring tile before falling off. 

Next I added in the first person controller and the camera swap script from my earlier prototype.  The objects were not included, and more tiles were used overall to get a sense of how the world might look with ghosted tiles.

Then the physics objects were integrated with the first person/omniscient view swapping.  A new method for revealing tiles based on activating neighboring tiles was added as well.  This is probably the first prototype that has a couple different rotation rates.  The small tile that flips near the end of the screen capture turns quickly enough to actually fling a sphere up and onto the other side of the tile.  The larger tiles turn slowly and everything tumbles down.

There's a strange glitch where you sometimes see through a tile to an adjacent tile.  This was solved later when the Maya models replaced the Unity cubes.

A Book of Lenses: Themes and Resonance

If I'm understanding this chapter properly, Schell is arguing that games are not art.  To try and use game design for artistic expression is selfish and pompous, according to Schell (48).  Game designers should in stead be merely creating transcendent and transformative experiences (Schell, 53).  He seems to be arguing for and against the same thing.  I almost wonder if he wants to argue for games as artistic expression, but is afraid of losing the audience for his book.  So he flat out denies the possibility for games as serious artistic expression, then uses other words to describe games and hopes no-one notices that those other words mean artistic expression. 

We can create games with powerful themes right now.  But Why?  Why do this?  Out of a selfish need for artistic expression?  No.  Because we are designers.  Artistic expression is not our goal.  Our goal is to create powerful experiences.  It is possible to create games that do not have themes or that have very weak themes.  However, if our games have unifying, resonant themes, the experiences we create will be much, much stronger. (Schell, 48)

Schell almost seems to be arguing that designers should take the methods used by artists to express deep personal truths, and turn them for use in creating emotional manipulation.  Why manipulate peoples emotions?  It's not really explained until:

When you manage to tap into one of these resonant themes you have something deep and powerful that has a true ability to move people and to give them an experience that is both transcendent and transforming. (Schell, 53)

Which is a pretty good way to describe what I understand to be the importance and power of artistic expression.  So far in this book I've noticed Schell has an excellent ability to explain how an artistic mentality can be applied to and good for game design, but there's an odd sort of fear of fully embracing all that art is.  If games can be emotionally resonant, transcendent, and transforming, why stop short at artistic expression? 

Cited:
Schell, Jesse. "The Elements Support a Theme." The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.
Amsterdam: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, 2008. Print.

Right and Left Clicking

Flip solid tiles by left mouse clicking.

Flip and activate ghosted tiles with right clicks.

Flip and deactivate solid tiles with right clicks.

The above screenshots show my attempts at making a coherent way of both flipping tiles and activating/deactivating the tiles. 

Solid tiles flip when you click on them.  Nothing happens when you click on the ghosted tiles.  Right clicking either activates (turns to solid), or deactivates (turns to ghosted) the tiles. 

There is still an awkwardness to the two different controls.  It's a little bit confusing, even with the knowledge of which click does what.  It might be enough to give some visual feedback when you hover over an activated tile.  I'd like to try adding a brightening effect when you mouse over an active tile. 

It's also possibly that having the tiles flip over as well as fade in and out is part of the confusion.  Perhaps they should simply fade in and out.

Irregular Tiles

When thinking about how to gradually introduce the idea of the tiles, I began to wonder how the tiles would look with a less regular grid pattern.  The above are two quick sketches of possible patterns. 

One of the much larger tiles could be a good starting place for the player.  The other tiles may be far enough away that they are not immediately visible. Once the player does find the edge to another tile, there would be enough smaller tiles nearby for them to get a better sense of how the world is constructed before seeing the birds-eye view of the world.

I think the irregular pattern offers better opportunities for expanding the number of tiles through the game-play.  The tiles could be added on to the edges without "messing up" the edges of the square grid (since there isn't a true grid). 

More story development

The beginning area would be an interior, with a prominent view to the exterior.  In the folktale, the place where the bear takes the young woman is a large castle and she had a silver bell.  When she would ring the bell whatever she needed would appear.  You get the sense that when she rings the bell she is transported to whichever room in the castle she needs to be in.  In the game the castle could be a single room that changes in a similar way to how the tiles will change later in the game.

In the view of the outdoors there should be a small sliver of another tile in a difficult to find place.

In the folktale there is a contrast between the lack of food in her parents' home to a great deal of food in the bear's home.  Because I'm skipping over the first part of the story, that contrast is lost.  However a similar contrast could be drawn between the castle and the journey.  Perhaps if she doesn't eat something, after a while she starts to slow down.  So you have to try and find food on the journey.

After the text-based night sequences, the castle is gone in the morning.  She is alone in the mountains.  She should get close to another tile, but not actually cross to another tile yet.  She travels to the three crones, and all the obstacles should be things she can get past without flipping any tiles.  They should be things like bodies of water she needs to get by, or mountains that she needs to find passage through.  The journey to the second and third crones should introduce the idea of crossing from a day to a night tile. 

When she travels to the four winds, the idea of flipping the tiles comes in.  The way the flipping works could be a bit different.  Perhaps when you click on a tile, it rotates part way, and when you leave the wind blows the tile the rest of the way over.  Unlike the folk tale, the wind is not carrying her to the next wind, but rather clearing the way.  The obstacles could be things like ferries that only run during the day, or dangerous animals that sleep at night.

Since the winds have different strengths, each would only be able to effect a certain number and location of tiles.  Below is an early illustration of how the winds could effect progressively larger sections of the world.

"If we are ever to get there we must have the day before us" - the North Wind (East of the Sun, West of the Moon)

Perhaps, when the world is flipped entirely to day, the north wind has the strength to flip over the entire world together.  The back of the world, in night, could be where the troll's castle is.  It would be impossible to travel to ordinarily, and trolls are vulnerable to sunlight. 

Compass:
If I switch the perspective to third-person, I'm not sure how I want to deal with the compass, or if it even makes sense to still have it in the game.  I could be interesting to have the directions marked on the compass correlate to the wind markers rather than the sides of the world.  They would not necessarily be ninety degrees from one another.  It would be good to make the compass more usable, like a real compass.  The outer ring would need to be something the player could turn.

Tiles:
I think the regular grid isn't interesting enough.  The tiles could be of different sizes, and some could be rectangular.  They would still be rectangular, but they could form more interesting patterns if the sizes were varied.

(possible) Story Events

Tiles:

Search/Find

• Return items to their proper place in the world.
• Items from a night tile could be on a day tile and vice versa (before tiles can be flipped)
• What happens when an item is removed (or when it is returned)?
• Access to new parts of the world
• Find new objects for other places
• Is there a version of each movable object for each side the tiles?

Movement of time:

• Things in the world age/grow/evolve/change with the tile flips.  

Scale:

• Much larger scale tiles.
• Starting world, almost entirely on one tile.  Perhaps only a part of the next tile can be seen in the distance.
• Mountainous region: in the transition from the starting area to the main quest, there could be a high lookout point where the player can see the tiled landscape.

Top: small tiles. Below: large tiles.

 Story:

 In working on the prototype I found myself thinking of East of the Sun, West of the Moon.  In trying to develop a story for this piece I find this particular folktale comes to mind even more.  

Beginning:

• Interior, the bear’s castle in the mountains
• Bell that transforms the space from day to night
• Interactions between the protagonist and the human form of the bear take place through branching text or another less visual form to illustrate that he cannot be seen.
• Keep track of the days?

Transitional moment:

• Some point in the text could allow text to be rearranged and eventually to create a light, triggering the prince’s curse
• Beginning of the journey
• If a year (365 cycles through day to night) is spent without lighting a candle, the curse could be broken without the journey.  

Journey/Quest:

• 3 aged women
• Golden apple
• Golden carding comb
• Golden spinning wheel
• 4 Winds
• Stone Markers
• North wind - hardest to get to, is the strongest wind and takes the player the endgame

Ending/trials:

• Less certain how literal these should be.  In the story:
• trades the items one at a time to see the prince.  He is asleep the first two times, and awake the third
• Prince proposes a test for his new wife.  The troll fails, but the girl succeeds.  

Notes:

• Mostly likely would need to be in third person perspective, if the story becomes about a specific character.
• if 3rd person, there will need to be a way to have the lighting effect the character differently as she moves from a day tile to a night tile and the reverse.

Prototype Overview

Screen shot of the first person view.

Screen shot of the omniscient view.

Screen shot showing a tile flipping over from day to night.

Concept sketch for the first person view.

Plan for the map.

Early sketch of the tile concept.

Sketch of a single tile.