Viridian Games

So the eternal war between “casual” and “hardcore” rages on, with Spore as its current battleground. Actually, I should amend that statement: the hardcore continues its war against the casuals, while most of the casuals don’t even know the hardcore exists.

I was really surprised at the low scores I was seeing for Spore before release. They made me kind of nervous…had Will finally dropped the ball?

But of course I did not allow them to deter me from purchasing the game myself (Galactic Edition, of course).

In the end, reviewers are hardcore. Most of the reviewers who played the game dinged it for its ease and lack of depth. I guess they were expecting the Tribe stage to be as deep as Rise of Nations and the World stage to be as deep as Civ IV and the Space stage to be as deep as Galactic Civilizations II. The problem is that Will wants people to be able to progress through each stage to the next one without too much trouble. He doesn’t want people to get to a stage and realize that they either just don’t like it or can’t do it. Because he knows that’s a shelf-level event. Thus each stage (up to Space) is designed to be an interesting experience, but not a particularly challenging game. This is very, very “casual” thinking.

And then, as if to clear up any doubt as to what kind of game Spore is, Will gave an interview to MTV’s Multiplayer Blog, where he said, “We were very focused, if anything, on making a game for more casual players. ‘Spore’ has more depth than, let’s say, ‘The Sims’ did. But we looked at the Metacritic scores for ‘Sims 2′, which was around 90, and something like ‘Half-Life’, which was 97, and we decided — quite a while back — that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of ‘Sims 2′ than the Metacritic and sales of ‘Half-Life.’”

A lot of people have taken this as a ding against Valve, but it’s not really. Half-Life 2 was a very successful game. Very successful. And it sold about one-tenth as many copies as The Sims 2 and its expansion packs.

Wright has figured out that he can both make great games and make a metric asston of money simply by appealing to a wider audience. This was obvious with The Sims, but was far less so during the development of Spore. The high-pitched whine you are hearing is the “hardcore” faction realizing that a game they assumed would be “for them” isn’t.

Will Wright has created the ultimate casual game.

That costs $50 and requires a pretty hot computer to play.

It’s this schizophrenia that is driving everybody crazy.

(So how do I like it? Well, being firmly mid-core, I am thoroughly enjoying it. I’m currently at the Tribal stage. I can’t wait to get to World stage and see how Will has simplified Civilization. Of course, the game still has plenty of time to kick me in the Mean Bean Machine, but I kind of doubt that it will.)

Braid was the first game I ever bought on XBLA. I did so at the behest of Megan, who played through the trial and loved it. I had also enjoyed the trial version even though I thought some of the puzzles were too hard to execute (of course, she benefits from having the reflexes of a thirteen-year-old).

So we’re playing Braid, right? We’re having a good amount of fun figuring out the puzzles and unlocking new worlds and seeing how time changes in each world. Some of the puzzles are just ridiculously difficult, but the game isn’t that long so if you keep at it you’re sure to finish it eventually. It’s going pretty good.

And then it ends.

I guess it’s just not possible for an indie game to have a satisfying, upbeat ending. While the maudlin text throughout the game alerted me that the ending was probably going to be a downer, it didn’t prepare me for the game becoming a lecture on the evils of the creation of the atomic bomb. No, seriously. I am not making this up. Johnathan Blow even includes the director of the Manhattan Project’s famous “Now we are all sons of bitches” line in the ending, which came as quite a surprise to me and Megan. Lest you think I’m spoiling it, believe me - it’s pre-spoiled.

If I want to be lectured on the evils of nuclear weapons, I’ll…you know what? I grew up in the 80’s. I’m never going to want to be lectured on the evils of nuclear weapons.

So overall: excellent concept, fairly well executed, with an ending that gives Metal Gear Solid 2 a run for its money. Hopefully Blow will realize that propaganda is the enemy of art and his next game will be more satisfying.

So two froody dudes, Dan “Gibbage” Marshall and Ben Ward, decide to stop piddling about with their own pathetic projects and team up, creating Zombie Cow Studios in the process.

And to celebrate, they decided to give away a game for free - an adventure game called Ben There, Dan That!, which stars…um, them. That’s right, you control Ben and Dan as they bumble through a loving homage to the classic Lucasarts Adventure games, doing things like smacking priests with bibles, visiting alternate dimensions, and…um…climbing out of a cow’s rear end. Hey, they’re British.

Now, even given the fact that they used Adventure Game Studio to create the game, that’s a heck of a lot of work to just give away. But I heartily, heartily approve of the process, and not just because I’m cheap. I think it’s the right thing to do because it helps them grow their community, and I believe that community is the solution to all of gaming’s problems.

Does your game stink? Get people interested in the potential your game might have and they can help you fix it. And you don’t have to do it all before you ship. Feedback after you ship is just as vital - but those lines of communication must be open.

Are you having trouble marketing your game? Again, community can help. Bungie’s testers sang the praises of Myth: The Fallen Lords to all their friends once their NDAs were lifted, which helped Bungie as they took their first steps into the PC market.

Are you having trouble keeping people interested in your game? Once again, community to the rescue. The most popular online first-person shooter in the world is still Counter-Strike, which kept copies of the original Half-Life on store shelves for years. The incredible response of the Korean community means that you can still walk into a Wal-Mart and buy a copy of StarCraft - a game that was released in 1998! Caravel Games goes even farther with their Deadly Rooms of Death series. The DRoD games consist of a layout of rooms, each containing a puzzle. The DRoD website gives you an overall map of the game - and clicking any room on the map takes you to a forum thread discussing that room. It’s an excellent way to provide player-based support, in addition to player-created content.

Are you having trouble funding your game? Yes, this is the iffiest one, but it’s been done. Lots of people have started by creating a small, well-supported game and then rolling the profits from that into something much larger. I think my favorite story of this nature is that of Jeff Minter, who was saved from having to get a real job by the incredible response to Llamatron, which Minter released for free along with a README.TXT file that included this paragraph:

Here’s the deal. You play Llamatron and check out the hook. If it gets you (and I reckon it will if you like mayhem), then send us a fiver and, as a reward for being so honest, we will send you an ace poster of our gun-toting llama, a newsletter, and a complete copy of Andes Attack, originally released in 1988 to considerable critical acclaim. Two games for a fiver - can’t be bad. And if the response is good, there will be more Shareware. And better.

And of course there’s also the aforementioned Dan Marshall, who is currently in the process of giving away two hundred pounds to an indie developer chosen by his readers.

This is the kind of thing Jeff Vogel is talking about when he says, “Shareware is a force for good.”

And finally, the big one.

Are you having trouble with people pirating your game?

Well, of course you are. People pirate stuff. They’re going to do it. You can’t do much about it.

If you want to come to terms with piracy, you need to come to understand that you’re not trying to eliminate it. You’re trying to reduce its impact to the point where you can still make the money you need to make on your game to stay in business. I wish I could tell you to just ignore piracy but I can’t - you should be going onto those download sites and demanding that they remove your game, because you do want pirating your game to be more complicated than just doing a Google search.

How can community help here?

Well, it’s harder to steal from somebody when you feel like you know them personally. It’s also harder to steal from somebody when they are trying to be the good guys.

The seminal example of using community to beat piracy is Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations 2. Absolutely no anti-piracy stuff on the disc. No CD key. No CD check. No phoning home. No refusing to run if there’s a compiler on the same system. No installing low-level drivers that monitor all data traffic without the user’s knowledge. Nothing. The only thing it uses is a unique account key that allows you to create a support account on Stardock’s digital distribution network, so that you can redownload the game if you lose your discs.

And yet it sold a bazillion copies and was a huge moneymaker for Stardock. And as I’ve mentioned before, one of those copies was sold to me. Even though I’ll never have time to play such an involved game. Why did I buy it? Because they were doing it right.

I have said that game design is a conversation between the developer and the player. But now I’ve come to realize that the metagame of game development is the same thing.

If you want to succeed in game development, don’t just make games. Help people have fun. And that means getting personally involved, with all the risks that carries.

Tim Schafer cannot catch a break in this goddamn industry.

Move on, Tim. Go work for Pixar. Write an animated movie for them and make a hojillion dollars. I know you loving Gaming, but Gaming is currently controlled by her chain-smoking crack-addicted abusive alcoholic mother Corporate Game Development and until Gaming finds the courage to sneak out of her mother’s house and jump into your convertible so you can spirit her away, you two are obviously never going to be together.

Edit: I jumped the gun just a bit on this (though reading that headline, can you blame me?) I had actually gone to the Double Fine Action News Site to find out if Brutal Legend was going to be okay. I did not think to mouseover the picture of the weevil, but that’s Schafer for you.

Edit 2: Turns out that Activision did drop Brutal Legend - fortunately, Double Fine owns the IP. So things aren’t quite as rosy as Tim made them out to be. Yes, in theory, with Guitar Hero and Rock Band making squillions of dollars finding a new publisher for Brutal Legend should be a no-brainer, but please see the “chain-smoking crack-addicted abusive alcoholic mother” comment I made above.

Yes, it’s another “while you are waiting” post. Deal.

I’ve got a couple friends here at work whose websites are definitely worth checking out.

First, Patrick Rogers. He’s an avid Go player who recently hit traffic gold on his site by being the first person to post the complete lyrics to all three episodes of Dr. Horrible.

Second, Brandon “Rusty” Parks. Rusty’s a real character, as you’ll be able to tell when he starts talking about how the universe has a discrete pixel size and a discrete frame rate.

Third, Bobby Thurman…who I actually don’t work with any more and probably should keep in better contact with.

And finally, you know those people who keep coming into game development forums or IRC channels and ask how to program an MMORPG? Yeah, laugh at them. Go ahead. Because everybody knows that nobody can possibly write an indie MMORPG. And oddly enough, it’s being worked on by all three of the gentlemen I detailed above! What are the odds?!

The Spore Creature Creator. Is it awesome? Of course it is. Why?

Well, for starters, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an easier-to-use piece of software. How easy is it?

My daughter Jewel made that. She’s three years old.

The other thing that struck me is that the creator has all the functionality promised by Will in his original presentation video. While other developers have been cutting features, resulting in software that looks nothing like their original presentations, Will and his team have been working hard to not only implement everything but even add features.

And if you’ve never watched that video, I strongly suggest you set aside an hour and do so. Here, I’ll embed it to make it easier for you!

Thanks to SteelGolem for the tip that there is now a torrent for Warren Spector’s game development talks. You’ll need Bittorrent or a similar program to use it. It appears to be well-seeded at the moment, so grab ‘em while you can.

Just as I’d hoped, the University of Texas is making all of Warren Spector’s talks available. Fortunately, you won’t have to buy a DVD - instead, you can just download them all from here (Quicktime format, large files). I would like to suggest you do so quickly, before they change their minds (or run out of bandwidth).

Edit: Well, that was fast. They’ve taken the page down. Turns out they made them available before all the legal stuff was handled. There’s an alternate download site here…but I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be available or an oversight.

Edit: Now the alternate site is gone too. I guess we’ll just have to wait and hope the files become available again in some form.

Aquaria is a new 2D action-adventure game. It’s the culmination of two years worth of work by Bit Blot, which consists of Derek Yu (artist) and Alec Holowka (programmer, musician). The voice of Naija, the main character, was performed by Jenna Sharpe. The indie scene has been looking forward to this game for practically its entire dev cycle and for good reason…

The game was finally released Friday. I played the demo and it’s just as fantastic as I’d hoped. If you’re a fan of Metroidvania-style games you should definitely give it a try.

I finally managed to get to another of Warren Spector’s design seminars last night. This one was with Richard Garriott.

Okay, I’m going to be up front here. Richard is one of my Favorite People. He’s the reason I moved to Austin - when I decided to leave home to get a game development job, I felt that my two options were to move to Austin to work for Origin Systems or to move to San Mateo, California to work for Electronic Arts (please note that this was back in 1990, before they became the Borg). So I’m not going to be particularly objective about his talk.

My one real annoyance was that while Warren started with Richard’s chronology of games, Ultima IV was the last game in the chronology they got around to talking about (other than Tabula Rasa, of course). This was disappointing because I wanted to hear more about the development of Ultima VI and VII myself. But at one point Richard answered a question about dealing with his staff by mentioning that he is very easily swayed by the last person who has talked to him. This neatly explains why he and Warren kept getting off-track.

As a result, the session was a mish-mash of Q&A and Warren and Richard discussing whatever came to mind - Richard gave no formal presentation. That doesn’t mean that the session was boring or pointless - quite the opposite. What it does mean is that the summary that follows is basically going to be as random and haphazard as the session itself.

Richard and Warren did start off with the chronology, with Richard talking about his upbringing. His father was a NASA scientist who later became an astronaut and was constantly bringing experiments and equipment from NASA home that Richard got to play with; he mentioned that one time he got to use a image intensifier tube years before it found a commercial application in night vision goggles.

His mother, on the other hand, was an artist. She was the inspiration behind the silver serpent necklace he now wears.

And in high school he was exposed to the three things that combined to lay out his future path - computers, Dungeons & Dragons, and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. He became obsessed with the idea of programming a computer to play a role-playing game.

The first computer he used was a PDP-11 terminal. The terminal was never used, and Richard really wanted to try it out. In the first of many benign cons, he actually managed to convince his teachers and principal to let him have complete access to the terminal every day as a school class. The class had no teacher, no tests and no other students - it was just Richard playing around with the computer unsupervised. All he had to do was show progress on a program at the end of each semester to get an easy A. Not only that, but he managed to con them into considering this his foreign language credit - that’s right, the foreign language Richard learned in high school was BASIC. This was what made it possible for him to write his first RPG.

Writing that RPG wasn’t easy. The PDP-11 wasn’t actually at his school; he had to use a terminal and punch paper tape in order to program it, and it took forty seconds for the PDP-11 to respond to input while the program was running. That gives a new meaning to “turn-based”…

The first program he wrote (which he simply called “D&D 1″) was effectively a Roguelike (and dammit, I meant to ask him if he’d played any other Roguelikes before he wrote it, but I forgot). It was so complicated that his father actually bet him that he’d never finish - if Richard did manage to finish the program, his father would split the cost of an Apple II with him.

Of course, Richard did manage to get D&D 1 finished, but it took a while for him to get the Apple - by the time he did he was up to D&D 28! He converted D&D 28 (which he called “D&D 28B”) to the Apple and continued to improve it. This led to him later publishing that same game as Akalabeth, which started his professional game development career.

Richard is pretty proud of his latest game, Tabula Rasa. Now, before I get into this, I just want to say that I really like what NCSoft has been doing in general…even though I don’t play any of their games. They are proving that MMOs don’t have to be fantasy-based and they don’t have to require subscriptions and they don’t have to be Everquest clones. Yes, it’s easy to snicker at the failure of Auto Assault, but NCSoft more than any other company is trying to break the mold of MMOs. And Tabula Rasa is the latest iteration of that. It’s an RPG, but it’s one where positioning is important, you can actually get behind cover, and you don’t roll for damage until you actually pull the trigger on your gun - there is no “auto-attack”.

Tabula Rasa also uses a very interesting system to handle instances and big events in the game. I seem to recall a long time ago mentioning that World of Warcraft would probably have been the best RPG I ever played…if anything I did in the game actually mattered. Anything you do gets undone five minutes later so that someone else in the game world can do it again. Tabula Rasa actually fights this by having things appear differently in the game world for different players based on their own actions. So instead of the world continually getting reset, it appears that the world is moving forward…just at different rates for different players.

But the strange thing is that despite the fact that it’s “Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa”, Richard deliberately pulled back from doing a lot of the design work. He described the backstory and game world and made a few key design decisions, as well as creating the Logos language for the game, but after that he mostly oversaw the design and kept it on track rather than doing it himself. He called himself more the “creative director” of the game, saying that Starr Long was the actual director and producer.

He’s actually very proud of Logos, which is a pictographic language (not merely a substitution cypher like the Runic, Gargish and Ophidian languages were). He wanted a language that was just as easy (or rather, just as hard) for an English-speaking person to read as a German-speaking or Korean-speaking person. He based the language heavily off of pictographic languages for handicapped people and considers Logos to be superior to many of them. And he showed us how to read it…it’s actually not hard. For instance, the Logos on this screenshot means, “the fight for control of the universe begins now”. Logos is usually read top-to-bottom rather than left-to-right, though.

It’s pretty obvious to me that Richard has a Reality Distortion Field. When he mentioned convincing his teachers to let him at the PDP-11, Warren interjected that Richard did stuff like that all the time…which jives with Mike McShaffry’s anecdote in Game Coding Complete where he and the other programmers on Ultima IX went into a meeting early in the project with the express intention of convincing Richard that an Ultima VII-style streaming world just wouldn’t be possible in 3D…and came out of the meeting convinced by Richard that an Ultima VII-style streaming world in 3D was obviously the right thing to do.

Then came the question-and-answer session. I asked Richard if he’d ever consider doing a single-player RPG again and he said yes, but that his next project would be another MMO. Much later I asked him if he ever thought we’d see MMOs with the deep world simulation of Ultima VII and he said that hopefully I’d see one when he made one, and that’s probably what his next project would be. So if Richard’s next project turns out to effectively be an improved Ultima Online, I am taking full credit. I put that idea in his head. It was all me, baby.

Let’s see…what else did he talk about…oh, he said that they put up with player-run Ultima Online shards until some of them started charging money, at which point he simply picked up the phone, called the FBI and had them arrested. It’s kind of stupid to do something like that when it’s so easy to find out through your ISP who you are.

Also, to his credit, he took exception when Warren called Ultima Online the first MMO, but pointed out that previous efforts were either very difficult to get into like textMUDs or were linked to proprietary online services like Kesmai and thus had very limited markets. Ultima Online was the first mass-market, internet-based MMO and proved that genre’s viability. Richard had been turned down by EA again and again when he proposed UO to them and was only able to start the project by cornering Larry Probst personally and applying the Reality Distortion Field, which got him $250,000. He was able to create a viable prototype with that $250,000, but in order to get beta testers they needed more money to duplicate and mail CDs, which they didn’t have. So Richard & Co. put up a web page, one of the first Origin and EA ever had, to tell people, “Hey, we’ve got this game and we think it’s going to be great, but if you want to get into the beta test it you’ll have to send us $5 to cover the cost of shipping you a CD.” All their co-workers said they were crazy, but within a week they had 50,000 takers - and this was when the biggest MMO in the world had 15,000 subscribers. That was the point at which Electronic Arts perked up their ears and actually started investing in the project.

He also said that one of the most touching moments he ever had was when he was GMing UO invisibly. He said he was near a player who was fishing (fishing being one of the most popular activities in UO) and was actually wearing shorts and a straw hat to look the part. The fisherman was approached by an adventurer who had obviously just come from a dungeon run and who said something like, “Ho, fisherman! It is obvious that you are poor - you have no armor and weapon! Here, take some of the spoils of my latest adventure!” and started laying money, armor and weapons out on the ground for the fisherman to take (player trading having not been implemented yet).

At which point the fisherman player said, “Stop! You misunderstand! I am a fisherman. I catch my fish, take it into town and sell it, and then spend the money with my friends at the pub. I like this life and desire no other. Be off with you, warmonger!” Richard considered it one of the great accomplishments of his life that he had created a game that people could get so far into.

And I think that’s all I can remember…for now, at least. Like I said, it was a great evening.