Game Producer

Do You Know Party/Social Game Mafia? (Or “Werewolf”)

I’m not talking about the video game mafia. I’m talking about the mafia party game also known as “Werewolf”.

I’ve played this game live for couple of times and it was the most fun experience I’ve probably ever got out of gaming. We had 8-9 guys and it was amazingly fun. The whole idea of “two secret werewolves and 6 villagers” is an amazingly simple concept, yet it works. (Those who want more information should check the wiki page for more info).

I also very much enjoyed playing Battlestar Galactica which uses a traitor mechanism which makes the game interesting.

I’ve been pondering how to translate this game into a video game, and seen 2 different approaches:

#1: real time (or almost real time) approach:
I’m thinking somehow tie the idea into a real time in such way that for example there’s 3 players in a multiplayer game. 2 of the players are in the side of “good guys” and 1 is “bad guy”. Good guys don’t know who the bad guys is.

The players represent for example fighters who need to combat monsters. Players secretly choose their actions so that it’s not clear how much each person does damage to the monster (but there will be some clues though). The bad guy of course tries to sabotage and keep the monsters alive, while the good guys try to beat the monsters. The game ends after any one player dies (if it’s a good guy, then bad guy wins. If it’s a bad guy, then good guy wins), or when all the monsters are defeated (good guys victory).

By making the game real time, there is certain amount of pressure to handle actions. It also ensures that game moves forward and makes the game slightly similar to the social party game, of course leaving stuff like body language away.

#2: turn based approach
Similar to Mafia games played on forums, or Battlestar Galactica: players encounter something (whether it’s monsters or events or whatever) that they need to collaboratively beat.

No time pressures necessarily, but I’m pondering how well turn based system transforms into a video game.

Technology
Both of these could be (possibly) created with PHP/SQL/Ajax based system (although “real time” would need to be faked here, in reality it would take at least some seconds to get responses). Another option is to use some game engine with a real online multiplayer option, which would get the real multiplayer options here but would possibly be more work to create.

Themes
The game theme could be anything. Mafia. Werewolves. It could be about “a group of heroes who have just beaten the dragon, got their gold just to realize that there’s one traitor in the group”.

It could be about a heist done wrong (Reservoir Dogs style) where the players point guns towards each other and try to figure out who is the freaking rat.

It could be about a group of survivors fighting against hordes of zombies – with one survivor being infected…

Donuts model
In order to get donuts from this game I’m thinking that there would be couple of options:

• Pay for customization (pay for gear/make character look cooler than others/badges and stuff)
• Pay for expansions (additional events, items, characters, stuff could be added in the game when there’s at least one guy playing who has unlocked the expansions)

If the game was an online multiplayer only, it would be important to keep the base game free to build a good player base.

Back to design
Anyway.

This is one online multiplayer game design I’m considering. It has several good points: it resembles the game I’ve enjoyed playing, I have somewhat tested the design with different board games, it could be relatively budget friendly game to create and perhaps quite easy to prototype as well.

I have some other ideas lying in my head (like these ideas). I’ll be writing more about these in public – I’ve noticed that when writing things down (and especially to public) there will be unexpected things happening…

GDC 2010 (And Why I’m Not There)

GDC 2010 is going on, and I haven’t prepared any time to check out the goodies.

Oh, and this year I have a pretty good reason why I’m not attending. My project release date is any day now.

To Multiplay Or Not, That Is The Question

Online multiplayer is a tricky beast. There’s couple of things that make it bit difficult to decide from an indie dev perspective:

1) Online multiplayer is cool. Like the coolest way to play games. NHL ‘10 gets boring playing against CPU… but put there 12 human players on the ice and you are looking at a totally different experience. Left 4 Dead – I tried it like once solo (boooooring), but go for online multiplayer and it rocks. (Versus mode makes it even rockier).

2) Player base.

That point number two is the tricky part, the part that makes online multiplayer slightly painful for indies. In order to get players, there needs to be players. But in case there’s no players, new players won’t appear.

(The AAA game publishers have sort of figured out a solution to this puzzle: pour millions and zillions of money into advertising and building hype. Then the game might have a chance.)

With indies, it’s slightly trickier.

Even AAA studios were vary of online multiplayer only games. Battlefield 1942 was an “online multiplayer” only game and publishers were staring the devs like a rotten fish or something (a true event based story I just made up) when they heard that it was going to be online only. I recall that it was said to the devs that they should get single player campaign or that game would never succeed.

Well, they didn’t. And the rest is history.

In case you don’t remember the game’s history, I’ll tell you: they made BF1942, they got an publisher, I bought the game, it was the most excellent game I had played for long time and I spent tons of time playing it several years ago, other people also bought tons of games and now the devs pretty much have a solid brand and tons of money in their pockets. Not sure about that last point, but the bottom line is: that game was a success.

The point is. I wonder if it’s monetary wise to even consider doing an online multiplayer only game as an indie. Businesswise my brain is telling me “stop thinking that, do a hidden object game”. The other side of the brain is saying “well, what kind of games do you play? Online multiplayer? Would it – like you know – make sense to focus on doing a game that you know you will truly like?”

How Much Pixel Art Costs?

I have experience and some clue how much doing 3D stuff costs, and before jumping into 2D world I’m doing a bit of research. Inspired by this fine piece of pixel art. I’m trying to find out how much it could cost to do something like the stuff in the picture. (Scene + some objects + guy with a batt + a 4-5 simple animations for characters, for starters).

I have no clue how much it costs to do pixel art. If you happen to know a pixel artist (or happen to be one!), I’d appreciate if you could give me some insight on this.

Casuality Creeps Into Hardcore Games

If you read my yesterday’s blog post, you probably noticed I bought bragging rights (that would be Playstation 3) for some very unknown reason as I have no time to play it anyway in the nearly future (baby coming in any day now).

Anyway, with my newly purchased PS3 I also got NHL ‘10.

There was several things that caught my eye in terms of “casual friendly”. Casual games are more about “guiding player gently to do something and then mainly rewarding the player” whereas hardcore games are more about “you gotta have fast reactions and if you fail you are dead”. Okay, that’s a tiny simplification, but you get the point.

In NHL ‘10, there’s several “casual gamer” friendly things.

Tutorials/learning puck handling
Before you can play the game, you can train how to shoot, pass and do stuff with the puck. There’s practice modes to give you a soft landing on real games.

Rewards/feedback
One really cool feature I noticed was that the coach gives feedback after each period. Depending how I played, I get feedback such as “good assists” or “avoid no bad penalties”. In the first game, I paid attention to these and they really felt good guidance on what to do more and what to avoid.

In-game guidance
During the game, there’s an arrow pointing “where to position”. For example, if I play the left wing attacker, the arrow points me “where I need to go”.

Many adventure or action games provide “where to go” information, but it was cool to see the same in a sports game. Really user friendly.

Penalty
Okay, playing as a goalie is hardcore: “if you do one mistake the opposing team will score”. And half of the time, you just wait for action to happen, and you have no control over getting your team to win – get some points you know.

But, in “be a pro” (or in online multiplayer) there’s a really sweet way to penalize player. It’s pretty obvious for an ice hockey game: penalties. In my first games, I was tackling too hard (doing bad things) and took penalties. Well, when you sit in the bench for 2 minutes (game time, that’s like 30 secs real time) watching others play… you sort of get the idea that “maybe I should stop getting penalties”.

It was cool way to penalize the player. Do stupidities = you don’t get to play for a moment.

Okay, there’s hardcore stuff as well
I’m not trying to say that NHL ‘10 is a casual game. Or that it would have anything to do with casual gaming. It’s a hardcore game. I’m just trying to make a point that there are several game design elements done similarly as in casual games. NHL has tons of hardcore things: first is the menus (they are from Dante’s hell: I have to press like 17 buttons and menu items before I get to play), then it’s the six axis controller (left stick to move, right stick handles the … well, stick. Down, up… buttons. That’s certainly not casual), difficulty levels (there’s really tough opponents), learning curve, and many many things.

But for me… it’s casual fun, I’m a casual hardcore guy anyway.

Sorry, Lost Track of Time. Here’s The Blog Post I Was Supposed To Write Yesterday

This article is about game design and “knowing better than others”.

I got PS3 + NHL ‘10 couple of days ago. I read some reviews and heard that NHL provides a “be a pro mode” where you can create your own custom player and gain experience during your ice hockey career. After I heard about this (please keep in mind that my NHL experience stopped to ‘95 since all those ‘97, ‘01 were crappy) I thought that “it’s a stupid idea, people want to control their favorite NHL stars, not create their own guy there”. I knew that EA got this thing wrong.

Well, I knew it totally wrong. I got suck down in the game and got that “just one more game” feeling and forgot to write a blog post.

To break down the situation, here’s some facts:

• NHL ‘10 comes with “be a pro mode” where you create your own custom player.
• EA thinks this is a good idea: EA’s group of designers obviously think this is a good idea and they probably have some years of experience in doing ice hockey games and improving the game.
• Jesse Schell (author of Art of Game Design) suggest that this might be a good idea: in his book he mentions how “boys want to be superstars/heroes”. Don’t remember exactly how he put it, but basically I can draw a conclusion that book favors this idea.
• Then there’s this guy who plays NHL ‘10 using nickname “cheeseinmyhat” who had already decided that “be a pro is a sucky” idea before testing the game. That would be me.

EA thinks it a good idea.

Designer work suggest the same.

Yet I come “knowing” how “that won’t work”.

Boy was I wrong.

I tested the game once and immediately fell in love with the idea. I tested the game online and in the very beginning it was cool to see “HIETALAHTI” in the back of the jersey (hockey shirt? whadda heck is that called?). I was in the game now. It wasn’t just playing as Koivu or Selänne. I got in the game. And after some matches, when I saw “HIETALAHTI” appearing as 2nd star in the game – it was a great feeling.

And all because I could put my name somewhere.

Couple of notes to self:
- Saying “no” to something before checking/testing/evaluating the idea is not leading anywhere.
- Need to get more points in NHL ‘10. I wanna see my name more on those 3 game star selections.

P.S. If anyone wishes to play against – or with – me NHL ‘10 with PS3, you can find me using nick cheeseinmyhat.

Is There Any Reason To Use Pure 2D Engine Any More?

Blog post about 2D got several comments. The discussion got me thinking that is there really need to use 2D engine for games? If you can create 3D models and render isometric/top-down views – what’s the benefit of using 2D engine?

One obvious advantage is that you can render very high polygon objects in 2D (as in Lylian game for example). Another reason could be if you are doing a physics based game and want to stick in 2D (thinking of Crayon Physics)

Besides these, is there any reason? Why not use 3D engine, and then render stuff in 2D?

(I’m talking about downloadable indie games, not Flash games for example)

Is There Only 2 Ice Hockey Games In This Planet?

I bought PlayStation 3 and copy of NHL 10. I saw that also NHL 2k10 has their version.

Out of curiosity, I started to check out what ice hockey games there are available, and came to conclusion that for PC – there’s hardly any. NHL ‘09 PC got horrible ratings from players. There really didn’t seem to be alternatives for these 2 series.

There were several flash games that mostly resembled (1) air hockey or (2) some sort of shoot out (couple of pretty interesting though). Couple of other hockey games there, but there isn’t many ice hockey flash games though.

Then I tried checking indie/shareware, and there was hardly any. Some downloadable air hockey game, and several hockey manager games – but that’s pretty much it.

Are there any ice hockey games for PC? Games that somewhat model playing as an ice hockey player (not as a manager). 3D? 2D?

Blog RSS Feed Now Working

Thanks Thomas for pointing out that RSS feed was not working after wordpress upgrade. It was due my own custom code (just had to delete one folder and it started to work again). Now you should be able to subscribe to RSS and view the stuff properly.

Please notice that I also post any updates to my Twitter page in case you want to use that as an alternative way to receive updates.

2D?

I’m pondering what pitfalls there might be in 2D development.

You perhaps could share a link or two and lead me near to some good articles?

Or perhaps share your own experience.