Author: Scott

Hey watch this!

No, I’m not getting one. But gosh, are they cool! Thanks, Olde English!

It’s not exactly a runaway feedback loop, but it’s close. As I explain in my Off the Grid review, players earn points in Cheapass Games’ Enemy Chocolatier by owning neighborhoods. Once a player is earning points, he does so every round, with no guaranteed way for other players to stop him. The points end up snowballing (especially as that player continues to purchase new properties as his points steadily increase), and often the game’s outcome is apparent two-to-three rounds before it actually ends. As much as I like the game, I have to admit that it’s not fun to know you’re going to lose. There are definitely ways to hack and tweak the gameplay, but I’ve been a bit too busy to think them up myself.

I’m in Georgia this week, no doubt lying out on a floating dock, dreaming about Scottypedia (which is now technically possible thanks to my awesome hosts!). In recent news, Bonnie was on national television, and I’m starting as a full-time Joystiq blogger next Monday. We’re also moving to the city, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.

Pokémon Diamond and Pearl take everything I adored about the original Game Boy games… and keep it exactly the same. Same simple visual aesthetic; same synthesized battle cries; same basic battle system; same super-cute creatures and the motivation to “catch them all.”

Nothing’s changed in the latest franchise titles. Instead, more has been added on top of the already-perfect formula. Your pokemans can do more than just battle; they breed, dance, and compete in beauty competitions. The trading is made easier by local wireless connection, and the super-amazing Craigslist-esque Global Trading Station. You’re still out to catch all of them, but now there are more to catch. What’s most amazing, is that all these additions to the formula actually work. I love these games.

The logical next step for the series seems to be a massively multiplayer experience. A lot of people agree on this point. But how would a PokéMMO work? Here’s what I’m seeing:

• The Lo-Fi MMO aesthetic. We don’t need high-poly-counts! Eschew complicated graphics for quick-loading, low-bandwidth, stylized simplicity, similar to the graphics already present in Pokémon games.
• Turn-based battles. In an MMO? Well, yeah. Pokémon’s never been about who can click faster, so why change that now? We’ve limited ourselves to the standards set by WoW and those that preceded it for far too long. But how would turn-based battle work in a Massive game? Well, for starters…
• Battles occur outside of normal game-space. Anytime a player enters a battle, that player is taken to a separate screen, outside of the overworld of the game. The player’s avatar remains in the game-space, but indicates that the player is in battle.
• The first random-encounter MMO. Players walking in particular areas can randomly encounter wild Pokemon, and enter battles. Sensing a pattern here? A lot of these details keep PokéMMO in much the same realm as its single-player ancestors. If it isn’t broke, why fix it? And why go out of our way to make PokéMMO like every other Massive out there?
• Entirely PVP. Every player in the PokéMMO world is a trainer. Players can talk to other trainers, and request battles in 1v1, or 2v2 flavor. Battles are necessary for leveling up pokemans, but players must all consent before fighting. Trainer battles, like all battles, occur outside of the game-space. The avatars of the trainers in battle indicate that those trainers are battling each other.
• Players can watch other players battle. If two or more trainers are battling, other players can see their avatars in the overworld, and have the option to enter a spectator mode to watch the battle in progress. Spectating players can cheer for particular trainers in battles, and this encouragement can have an effect on the match.

Like the Pokémon games, the PokéMMO should practice a clear-cut delineation between the simple world of the characters, and the fantastic battles of the Pokémon. This has always been a conscious separation in the design of the Pokémon games. The simple, squat sprites give way to more stylized representations of both pocket monsters and trainers when a battle commences. This same division should be practiced in the MMO. It encourages players to use their imaginations, and Pokémon has always been about imagination.

The final element of a successful PokéMMO should be an open-endedness in the world and narrative design. “Make your own Pokémon adventure!” the box would say. Allow players to tell their own stories, develop their own teams of devoted Pokémon, and take on the world at their own pace.

Well, it’s a start, anyway. Any other ideas? Am I wrong about this being the first turn-based MMO? The first with random encounters? Am I wrong about everything?

Apparently my review was a little unclear on this point, but I find James Ernest’s Give me the Brain! to be a really fun card game, with a unique central mechanic that makes it feel like a non-digital version of rugby. With fast food. And zombies. It’s worth playing. You should play it.

I’m going to be rolling out a whole slew of reviews of Cheapass Games for Off the Grid, and I’m wondering if it might be prudent to implement a scoring system for my reviews. Part of me wants to create a simple “yes” or “no” system, referring to whether people should or shouldn’t bother to play the games. Another part of me really detests scoring systems, and wants to subvert the whole mess with a oblique scoring system that changes its vocabulary on a weekly basis.

At the moment, I’m leaning toward the latter. So I give Give me the Brain! 3 gold stars. Shaped like brains.

» photo from ravsitar on Flickr. Thanks!

So, that’s over. Good four years, though. Went in fancying myself a writer; came out fancying myself a game designer. In between, lots of missteps, parties, classes. Beautiful scenery. Bard really was a place to think. I did a lot of thinking there.

Next step? Summer in New York City. Try and find clever ways to publish non-digital games. Design more. Write more. Learn to cook.

One of the reasons it’s been a particularly game-centric semester for me is that I’ve been preparing for Bard’s second annual Tech/Action conference, which this year was themed “Games, Simulation, Conflict.” The conference lasted two days, with activities on the first day and lectures and presentations on the second.

The “big deal” of the conference was the inclusion of Buckminster Fuller’s The World Game, a large-scale simulation of global economy originally designed for the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal. Now referred to as the “O.S. Earth Global Simulation Workshop,” the game has become a educational/team-building tool brought to schools and corporate retreats across the United States. There’s a lot I could say about The World Game, but I’ll summarize by calling it a weak game, and an underwhelming simulation. The data used was ten years old, and the game’s odd bartering mechanic, and emphasis on wealth, made it unclear what differentiated an impoverished country from a human interest organization.

On the second day of the conference, a number of speakers talked on topics relating to simulation, games, and conflict. Bard’s own Gautham Sethi talked about Game Theory (which I still don’t entirely understand). Kathleen Ruiz spoke on the role of empathy in games, with examples from her own work (including the beautiful, quest-oriented “Stunt Dummies”). McKenzie Wark discussed his book Gamer Theory (which I recently reviewed).

Eddo Stern introduced us to Darkgame, an in-development title based on sensory deprivation. Bonnie Ruberg asked “Are Conflicts Sexy?” and presented her argument with numerous examples. Ed Halter spoke briefly on various Muslim games, and their relationship to American war games. Finally, Alex Galloway gave an interesting talk on Guy Debord’s Kriegspiel, and his own work to restore the strategy game and develop a fully playable, digital iteration.

I also presented at the conference, doing a short, ten-minute presentation about the role of conflict in game design. A slightly modified version of the slides is available here in PDF format for anyone interested. All in all, the conference was an interesting experience, and a great opportunity to meet a lot of people who are seriously thinking about games.

Also, I’m graduating next week. More on that later.

Proper noun, mind you. I’m talking about game designer James Ernest and his Seattle-based crew of non-digital developers. I fell in love with Kill Doctor Lucky last year, and I’m just now starting to review more Cheapass Games for Off the Grid starting with three of the company’s Hip Pocket Games, which are lovingly distributed in ziploc bags like so many drugs. It’s a valid comparison.

I’m a big fan of Ernest’s approach to game design. Zimmerman and Salen commissioned him to design a game for Rules of Play, and he came up with a playing-card game about magicians called Caribbean Star. Here’s what he had to say about his process:

Whereas some game designers prefer to create a game mechanic first and then adapt that mechanic to an appropriate theme, I prefer to start with a theme whenever possible. This gives me more creative ideas when trying to invent game mechanics, and it makes for a game whose mechanics seem better suited to the theme. When a storyline gets added after the game is designed, you can really tell, especially when a play that seems reasonable in the storyline is not allowed in the game.

How awesome is that? What’s more awesome is that the inverse is also true: design a game whose storyline supports the mechanics, and you can create definite “aha!” moments for players, as well as assist in the understanding of the rules. Ernest’s games have been very influential for me, as have his instructions for those games. It goes without saying that I would love to work at a place like Cheapass. If I was planning on being in Seattle for the summer, you’d better believe I’d be knocking on his door (in a friendly way, not in a stalker-y way).

More Cheapass games are enroute to me now. I’m looking forward to playing them.

At least, this is the conclusion I reach in my review of McKenzie Wark’s Gamer Theory, published as part of my Off the Grid column on Joystiq. Wark developed the hypertext version of Gamer Theory first, later including the first round’s comments and criticisms into a print-based version published by Harvard University Press. In tandem with the dead-tree issuing, he also introduced Gamer Theory Version 2.0, which re-opens the commenting system for the digital text.

The result of this dual-publication is the inevitable comparison between the two mediums. In my opinion, hypertext clearly comes out on top. The text is made stronger by its original format, and the accompanying commentary serves the text better when offered simultaneously, rather than being pushed to an endnotes section.

Arguably, however, the hypertext version is stronger because the content was originally conceived as hypertext. And Wark has already commented on my review, stating that “are supposed to be different reading experiences. The former stresses the role of the comments more while the later ‘hides’ them a bit to produce a more linear reading feel.”

Still, I do wish that Wark experimented more with the print medium, rather than intentionally working within convention. His decision though. Wark’s (hopefully) coming to Bard toward the end of the month for a small conference on games and conflict. I look forward to meeting him.

Also, the senior project is done. I plan on posting some of the material on my site in due time. I’ve already looked into installing MediaWiki, and my host doesn’t support it (yet).