May » 2011 » DarrellHardy.com

The Victorious Condition of your Victory Conditions

Pop quiz, hot shot! What do you call a tabletop game without victory conditions? (Wait for all the smart alecs in the back of the room to shout, “A LARP!” and “my marriage!”) Those are all very entertaining answers, but the one I’m looking for is… a toy.

Toys are great. But without rules for victory, they aren’t games. They’re just… well, toys. And a finely-crafted victory condition can separate a good game from a great one.

Victory conditions must be clear.

Gain 20 victory points. Destroy your opponent’s 20 health. Empty your hand of cards. Be the first to get all your monkeys out of the flaming wreckage.

Some games require multiple victory conditions. Most don’t. If testing shows that you need to add a rule saying “You lose if you run out of cards” or “You win if your monkeys are the only ones unburned,” that’s fine — but start simple. The same thing goes for overly complicated victory conditions (“You win by have the most coconuts at the end of turn 7, or the largest ape at the beginning of the round, or by catching the Gold Snitch”). Only make it complicated if you have to — and even then, see if there’s something else you can simplify instead.

A path to victory must be obvious.

When I choose the Plumber at the beginning of the round, I get a victory point — and need 20 to win. If I attack with my creature and you can’t block, I inflict its damage — and need to inflict 20 to win. When I roll a die, that’s how many spaces I can move my monkey towards safety.

The trick is to make the path obvious, but easy for players to barricade. I can choose the Carpenter, who kills the Plumber. I can play a creature to block your attacker. I can move my monkey so you have no choice but to move yours into the oil slick back into the flames. A game should look simple to win, but not actually be that simple.

There must be multiple paths to victory.

This is different than having multiple victory conditions. I might have a dozen ways of getting victory points, but the single victory condition remains: get 20 to win. This also goes hand-in-hand with the obvious path to victory; the obvious path is usually not the most efficient one, but it’s the easiest to recognize and understand. It gets you into the game. Once you’re playing, you’ll see the other paths and understand how they might be better — but by that point, you’re actually playing the game, and haven’t been scared off by arcane rules of victory

And so on…

I didn’t think I had so much to say on the tiny little subject of victory conditions. Who knew? But have I said it all? Surely not! Jump into the comments and let me know your favorite victory conditions, or the ones that you hate, or any tips you have for their creation. And remember:

Don’t let your monkey go up in flames!

Leaves and Grass and Chainsaw Gas

Saturday morning, a terrible storm swept through my front yard, ripping limbs from trees and leaving the ground carpeted with twigs and leaves. Meteorologists didn’t notice the storm, but I named it myself: Darrell with a Chainsaw.

Like most of my home improvement projects, it started as something small and simple, but quickly snowballed into an all-day marathon of sweat and frustration. This one start with the lawn care guy I hired to aerate the place mentioning the true reason our front lawn looks like a mass grave for the Mud People.

“It’s these trees,” he said. “They’re not letting enough sun in.”

You mean the burning orb that reduces all grass to a withered yellow zombie husk?

“Yeah. Grass needs four hours a day of it.”

I paid the man and realized, as he strode off onto the horizon like a cowboy whose work here is done, that I’d prefer zombie grass to no grass at all. To the branch cutters! But when those weren’t cutting it any more (ha HA!) I knew I needed the big guns.

We’ve been blessed with neighbors who are well-stocked in manly power tools. They’ve been blessed with a neighbor who will borrow those tools, and therefore help justify the expense of purchasing them in the first place. (“See, honey? That’s the third time Darrell’s borrowed my electric nail-puller. Totally worth the $200 I paid for it.”)

I popped next door to borrow a cup of chainsaw. It was electric, but still gave off a satisfying roar that made me want to say, “Groovy,” in my best Ash voice.

I’m not sure how long I spent hacking at the trees in my yard. Once the chainsaw flow got going, hours passed like minutes, and tree bark fell like rain. It was glorious.

…and then the blade was too dull to use any more, the flow was broken, and I realized all the clean-up work ahead of me. Weariness settled in. Weariness and anger.

“Curse you, lawn guy!” I yelled, shaking the chainsaw to the sky. “Curse you and your zombie grass!”

Virulent Stories

I’ve been thinking again about player stories in video games. No, not the soaring epics crafted by the masters at Bioware and Valve, but the funky little stories that players tell about their own, specific experiences while playing games. As I’ve said before, these stories have value; these stories help sell games — but only if enough people learn the stories. And the key to that is (as much as I hate to use the word) virality.

Minecraft got a huge surge of popularity right out of the gate from YouTube videos. Ditto for Just Cause 2. StarCraft 2 has filled vast swathes of YouTube (and Korean TV stations) with game replays.

Anything on YouTube can easily go viral. How easy is it for players of your game to get their stories online there?

Free Realms was the first MMO I know of that made it a matter of one or two clicks to record your play session and post it on YouTube. Why don’t all the MMOs do this? If I have a good story, I want to easily share it with my friends. And if they can easily share it with their friends… well, the odds of someone new coming to check out your game go up quite a bit.

I’ve seen some attempts at using social media like this, but they are crude, pitiful things. When I see a Facebook post saying “Joe Samplename just got the Eat All the Kittens Achievement in KittenNomNom 3!” I’m less curious about Joe’s game than I am amused thinking that Joe called in sick and just got busted by PSN. The same goes for cheesy tweets proclaiming your levels or achievements to the world.

These aren’t player stories. This is just spam.

What I’d like to see is something like in The Sims. In that game, the system automatically takes screenshots during dramatic moments (births, deaths, weddings, more deaths, the other deaths, okay this isn’t funny anymore where’s the pool ladder? deaths) and lets you label them like pics in a photo album. (“Photo Albums,” children, are how the Old Ones used to store images. It’s like Flickr, but in a hard-bound book.)

Again, not all video games are about player stories, and that’s fine. But for those that are, I’d encourage the developers to consider how the players will record and pass along those stories. Stories sell games. The best stories go viral, and can sell lots of games. Let’s make it easier for that to happen.

The Shark

As part of my proud geek heritage, I’m a fan of Conan (the barbarian, not the late-night talk show dude. He’s cool too, but I can’t claim him as part of my sub-culture. Sorry). I’m not a obsessive fan, but I’ve read a number of Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales, and appreciate (and have been inspired by) the pure pulpy goodness found therein. I’ve also read enough to know that the true fans despise the post-Howard Conan tales penned by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp.

So I felt a twinge of apprehension — and yes, even guilt — when I picked up an old but serviceable paperback copy of Conan of the Isles written by these two. But it was 50 cents and I was in the mood for some sword and sorcery. How bad could it be?

Picture this:

Conan the barbarian, wearing a glass diving helmet and oxygen tank, walking across the ocean floor, fighting a giant octopus… when suddenly, a giant shark appears and saves him by attacking the eight-legged freak!

What next? Dinosaurs? Robots? Well, I’ve not finished the book yet (And I will finish it, no matter how silly it gets. It’s my curse.) so maybe I’ll discover that it ends in a battle between a T. Rex and Voltron, but after Underwater Fight Club, I won’t be surprised by much.

I love me some pulp fantasy. But after this, when it comes to Conan, I’m sticking to Howard.

Embracing Limitations

As a game designer, I’m afraid of the blank page. The white expanse glares at me, daring me to soil it with my half-baked ideas. I can feel it silently judging me, like Mr. Wilby from third grade, glaring at me over his glasses, his lips pursed, his head slowly shaking. When you’re free to create anything, it’s hard to know where to start.

Luckily, no page is truly blank. There are always limitations. Even if you don’t see them — even if they’re self-imposed — there are walls surrounding your game design. Every defining feature about the game adds one of these walls. Know the walls. Love them. Become like ivy, and use them as a framework and foundation.

It’s true that most designers rarely have to face the horror of the blank page. We’re usually handed a rough idea, complete with plenty of limitations thank you very much, and a hard deadline circled on the calendar with fire.

But if you’re working on an independent game pitch, or trying to develop something based on a property rather than a platform, you might find yourself gazing across the ivory expanse and feel like you’re adrift on a sea of possibilities. If that’s the case, let me throw you a life vest made of bullet points.

Is your game a book? Then you’re restricted to what books are, and must consider page count, format, art quantity, ancillary game bits (dice, beads, etc.).
Board Game? You’ve got a much larger box to think inside (pun intended) with cards and tokens and boards, but here, your biggest constraint is price point. Even without knowing the actual costs of manufacturing, you can look at games in your price range to figure out how many components you can stuff into the game. Then consider how many cards you have in the deck, how many square inches of card, and how big your board must be.
Video games appear to have an infinite box. It could be anything from Bejeweled to World of Warcraft — which is why it’s so important to identify and embrace your limitations. Who is your player? Is he buying your game in a box? Downloading it? Playing it in a browser? What’s his skill level, and how long is each play session? Is he actually a she? (Video games also have tons of technical limitations which you’ll need to consider, but by first narrowing the scope through design, you know whether to fret about framerates, server bandwidth, or a mad genius AI.)

Of course, rules were made to be broken, walls to be broken, and limitations to be exceeded. Once you’ve defined the borders of your project, you can always design beyond them (assuming they weren’t put in place by management). But before you can officially break the rules, you need know what those rules are — even if you’re just making them up yourself.

Time Enough for Fun

I made the comment on Facebook that, for a guy without a job, I sure haven’t been playing much World of Warcraft.

That was three weeks ago. I still haven’t loaded the WoW client. I simply don’t have the time.

I’m not complaining. Far from it. I consider myself blessed to have enough colleagues, contacts, and creativity to keep me too busy with paying work to have any time left over for grinding my way through Azeroth. And yet…

On a certain professional level, I should be playing more games (video and otherwise). I’m seriously considering setting aside 30 minutes a day to simply play. But if playing games is just another bullet on my eternal to-do list, will it still be fun? Or does it become drudgery, such that while I’m playing through Portal 2, I’ll be thinking, “Man, I wish I was outside pulling weeds.”

Guess we’ll find out. I’ll let you know.

At War with the Birds

I made an amazing discovery last week. When a bird wants to destroy a structure, it does not, in fact, launch itself with a giant slingshot. Instead, it attaches itself to the wall and unleashes a torrent of beak-based pounding (BAMBAMBAMBAM!) until it bores a hole clear through it. Then it laughs, a sadistic twinkle in its beady little eye.

As I mentioned on Twitter, our house is under attack from a woodpecker. In the half-day it took to realize that the hammering noise was not the construction from next door, but in fact Satan’s own feathery minion, the beast had drilled a hole 3 inches in diameter through the wooden siding. It was a declaration of war.

According the ever-reliable Internet, this specific vandal was a Northern Flicker, a type of bird that doesn’t like loud noises or reflective surfaces. So my temporary plan was to hang a shiny, plate-like wind chime over the hole.

The next morning, he knocked it down and went back to work.

Next, we filled the hole (and the space behind it) with foam gap-filler. It was only stage 1 of Operation: Plug It Up, but I still gave a groan of anger and frustration when Woody reappeared and started banging on the foam. Stage 2 of that operation was filling the remainder of the hole with a vinyl-based concrete-patcher. Even the most persistent Flicker will think twice after banging his beak into a wall of concrete.

But if there’s a little space right next to the concrete… BAMBAMBAMBAM!

So now there’s a makeshift mobile hanging in the wind near the hole. It’s a shiny, noisy pie tin, twisting in the slightest breeze. The wall has been silent this morning, and I’m praying that we’ve won the war (for this year at least).

Because killing Flickers without a permit is illegal. And I don’t want to go to jail.