Gamers hell review!

Gamers Hell cast their vote on Dreamlords and and it's an eight!

8 / 10

Read the review here

This review, although the score is very high, is much more informative then the terrible Zitron review, how much worse it would have been for us if he had put forth his review with such detail and clearity.

Flying!

I have sworn not to rant about flying in this blog since it is a game design blog but I just have to give myself a break!

Here is me performing a very difficult landing in flight simulator X.

$$ and The Movies

One topic that is often discussed passionately amongst game designers is the question whether or not making money is the "main thing". A natural response is "yes" but if someone raises the following question, is it more important then making a brilliant game? Then thee is a debate.

So what do I think? I used to think that with great gameplay, or at least smart gameplay, players would always come. That doesn't seem to be so, The Movies for instance is a very notable example of this not being true. Most reviewers and industry people think that The Movies is an astonishing feat of development in general but design specifically. And despite this, The Movies didn't perform well at all and was far from a block buster.



Why is this? Ambivalent game identity and over-ambition. One of the things I am so impressed by with the movies (and many with me) is how they, from a design perspective, integrated all features into a whole, a very well functioning game. Almost every aspect of all features were cleverly integrated despite the vast amount of unusual challenges design-wise.

However, all this design magic where to be for nothing, since the game didn't sell. The fantastic game design solutions made no one happy even though they were great because the main bottom line of the game wasn't appreciated by the players.

For those of you not familiar with The movies, there are two major features in the game that are equally big. There is a tycoon game and there is a (superb) movie making tool.

Peter Molyneux once promised that "yes you are indeed going to be able to make movies and watch them within the game itself". This statement cornered the design team, the tycoon mode was absolutely necessary to have a game at all, and Peter had promised the movie making tool...
Dilemma

Since the designers (and whole team) where so damn good, they solved the challenges so well that both modes became equals and in effect, competed for the player's attention.

This is something you don't generally want, having your features competing against each other, but rather work in harmony/symbiosis. (I am the first to admit I only draw this conclusion after the movies proved not to be a hit)

One detail that I think stands out as a conflict between the modes is the rating of a movie within the game world. Since it's a tycoon game your movies will bring you the income, actors, sets, food trollies etc provide expense. Now there is also the movie making tool within the tycoon game, so you are free and encouraged to delve into a single movie, directing it with your bare hands and voila, some algorithm decide that it blows and the revenue is 5 bucks.

Why create real art for an algorithm to judge? Lionhead felt the same thing and rallied to enhance the movie making tool to have a stand alone community where real people would judge real art. Once again, great solution, but it further split the two modes apart.

Imagine two people discussing how to play the game.
Run a movie studio, make movies!, hire actors and manage salaries, make movies that are great, but don't earn revenue unless you have hired the right stars, placed a food trolly and provided your main star with botox, but other people might love them! But my studio will go bankrupt! Develop new scenery through R&D! Yeah.. but you don't need that since all sets are available in the sandbox so you can make cooler movies!, Yeah but that won't be real.... Who cares if the movies are cool?, I make movies for real people!, I use the same set for all movies and earn good money, well I only use the sandbox..!!

In the end, all obvious problems have been cleverly solved by the dev team so only the not so obvious problems remain.

If you haven't already, try the m

Story in games

I was recently asked to share my view on story in games for a research project. Here is my reply:

I think the consensus is there all right, but more then saying story is bad, what companies are saying is that good gameplay is much more identifiable then story, so in a sense story becomes a risk factor. Since a story so clearly can be good or bad, putting a story in the game can equally clearly enhance or reduce the game. Building a strong game with no story e.g. Battlefield 1942 / 2142 is in that regard "safer".

The old stigma for the game industry regarding story is the linear nature of a story. Only if you make a linear game can a strong story really add to the game in a big way, but even then you take the risk that the story won't be popular with the gamers.

Another factor why story always takes a beating is because it doesn't really matter... This becomes clear in games with a bad story. Take Gears of War for instance, the story is OK I guess but compared to literature it's very basic and flat like an action comic. Critics and players alike love Gears of War despite this fact which suggest that gameplay/graphics etc is much more appreciated among the audience then story.



I do think that traditional storytelling will continue to face difficulties in games and that the best way ahead is to adopt the art and craft of storytelling into the games medium.

For instance, background story has a wider use then story per se, look at the warcraft universe, they have a very strong back story that they draw from when creating the game, however, they also have a story, that is fairly complex but most players don't know about the specifics of the actual story because it doesn't affect them in any way.

To integrate storytelling in games I think it needs to be merged with aspects of game design and simulation so that the story can grow within the game and also have an impact in the game.

The bottom line is I think, stories are unpopular because they don't matter. Make the story matter within the boundaries of the game.

To mention a few great examples where story have been integrated to some extent within the game:
Beyond Good and Evil
Half Life 2

These games have made an effort to take as much as possible from the story/back story and make it real in the game, this is one of the huge advantages with the game medium, not only create this and that weapon but also having huge tv-monitors on walls talking acting out the story, propaganda leaflets and posters on the walls etc to include you in the story you could otherwise just read about.

Nordic Game Conference

I have just recently returned from the southern tip of sweden (malmö) where the Nordic Game Conference is held.

The NGC is very good event for nordic game developers to meet and exchange knowledge (and staff).

The great news is that Lockpick Entertainment won some hundred thousand danish crowns for one of our projects (not dreamlords) and we were also the swedish nominee for Best New Talent 2007 by IGDA, something we are very honored by. In the end, the Danes won the award but at least we are the most talented in Sweden ;)

"Sweden's Best New Talent 2007" -IGDA

Here is Jon Selin looking crazy as always =) He recently quit Lockpick after completing Dreamlords. He was recruited by Icelandic developer CCP who made a good signing for sure.

The all seeing orb

Don't try to hide, don't even think about it!

The all seeing orb will always see you, watch your every move... it is.. omnipotent!

Anyhow. Not much activity lately, and since no one read this blog, there is really no harm done =)

My next post will be a retrospect look at a game that I really admire in many ways; The Movies by lionhead studios. I isn't really brilliantly fun or balanced but it is an incredible feat and possibly the once game with most features that actually made it from idea to working in game.

So that is whats coming next. You are watching CTP.

TenTonHammer Review

The reviewers at TenTonHammer.com praise dreamlords with

4 / 5

Thanks!

Zitron's revenge

Ed fought back. Rather well so. Nice move.

To my amazement some people have actually read my rant about Zitron.

I am sure that I would be entertained by Zitrons reviews as well, but you cannot expect me to be entertained when he kills my game?

Surely, looking him up on the net, was an act of fury but nevertheless, he made me furious, thus an act of fury...

More good news

More reviews keep coming in and this time it is MMORPG.com which I would call the first of the big fish.

7.6

We scored a very respectable 7.6 out of 10 and I couldn't have dreamed of a better score at a huge international site.

I would like to thank MMORPG for following the development of dreamlords with some interest and embracing us in the mmorpg family (after some persuasion).

Obviously I am biased to say they did a good job, but really, their coverage of dreamlords have been very professional and the rating they now produced is the result of many playing hours and years of following our project.

Booyah!

Stratics comes to the rescue.

Read their review here

8.0

I feel it needs to be said.
Normally I wouldn't say that one review is more right then another... But yes, I do think the stratics interview, or ANY other interview is more correct then Zitrons. That's just my honest oppinion.

We also dug out some server statistics on him showing that he hadn't activated one single technology being perfectly equivalent to; not becoming level 2 in wow.

This, might very well be our fault not making this clear etc, but his criticism did not bring that up.

Officially killed by Ed Zitron!

Dreamlords has received its first head shot!
The killing blow is dealt in PCZone UK and it is made perfectly clear that dreamlords is possibly the worst game ever! (and obviously I can't handle it well)

So how am I going to tackle this, besides throwing things around in absolute rage?
Obviously I am going to take this guy apart and engage myself in war! Like any reasonable person would. Something that might haunt me for the rest of my life given this particular reviewer's reputation... I present the man with the plan, Ed Zitron a permanent residence of, and lifetime chancellor of "Doctor Ed's house of pain".



So what of it?
Has mr. Zitron no right to hate dreamlords? Of course he does, and he could perhaps even have risen some questions that other reviewers have missed or been kind enough not to mention, my objection lies entirely in the lack of actual analysis of the game and lack of constructive criticism.

I get the distinct feeling that Ed has an image to protect which makes what he has to say rather light weight. It's like evidence in court, this man your honor is clearly biased.
Dreamlords isn't the best game ever, in fact it's rather well known to have it's downsides that are being taken care of one by one. Once again I don't mind him hating the game but I do mind the fact that he forgets to mention several important factors that are important for the reader to make up their own mind. Ed is not reviewing dreamlords, he is laying down the law, which in this case is; his own opinion and irrefutable judgement. Ed Zitron is not a reviewer, he is an entertainer.

On a personal note I certainly don't trust this man's reviews. Here is an example.
Guitar Hero 2 (OBS Ed's editor has informed me that he stands by Eds review but that he disagree with the judgement cast.)

So now that I feel I smeared him at least a little bit I feel better. And now I am going to indulge in much more positive news.

A more balanced presentation of dreamlords on gamespot player reviews
We just scored 74% in the largest swedish PC Gaming magazine (PC Gamer sweden) that was a blast.

Finally
Just look at the dreamlords gameplay tutorial film here and tell me this is a 17% score game. If you honestly think that, so be it.


Over and out.

Esthetics

Fellow game designer Andreas Roman commented on my MFD post and said he thought appearences had much more importance then I gave it credit for and he is right.

I fully appretiate the importance of an attractive interface, relly, I actually think that the interface is an important visual signature of a game. However, I am 100% uncapable of conceiving a "beautiful" interface my self and gladly leave the esthetics to artists even though I have my fair share of oppinions.

A great example of an attractive visual "interface" (although this is news design) is this one. It's an illustration/fact sheet about death. I find this very attractive in terms of appearance although I would never have been able to come up with this myself.


So my point is, combine my skills as an interaction specialist with this guy (Stefan Rothmaier, DN) and we could perhaps be able to break some new ground.

MFD!

MFD or multi functional displays, are common knowledge in the aviation industry. HUD or head up display has its roots in the aviation industry.

Are we aware of this relationship these days? Do we care? Is it relevant?

I'm not sure, but I do know that the MFD concept is very interesting.

An MFD basically allows for almost limitless information to be accessed on a fixed size display. It is achived by creating X screens of information and Y ways to alter the information on each screen. It's nothing fancy and in HCI terms it would even be called obsolete. But still... I am intrigued. Perhaps there is a revolution in game interface design within reach? perhaps we could let go of the conceptual models that we cling on to. That is the strenght of the MFD in my mind, it doesn't try to look like something. Its just an MFD. 100% function 0% concept.

Herein lies the problem, it's usually regarded as a strenght to have a conceptual model for interaction, like "click on the turtle to go slower and the rabbit to go faster" and all that. I think conceptual models are a great tool. And yet I am intrigued...

Perhaps, or even likely, the perfect game interface has no concept but rather: Function.

Perhaps the perfect game interface is an MFD somehow, somewhere, someday.

Dreamlords reviews

Dreamlords has been out more then a month and the reviews are coming in. We have been getting great reviews between 70 and 80 % but the real big fish have yet to cast their vote.

Dreamlords released

So dreamlords released february 15:th 2007.

Great!

So far so good, we have had some great reviews even though there are some issues we must attend asap.

Reviewers seem to appritiate the depth of dreamlords in a way some players miss unfortunatly. However, we are working on several features that will help the players land in the game more smoothly.

We'll see how it works out but I am confident it'll be great!

You can see some of the interesting developments here

Back!

My blog died...


And now it lives again!

Independent?

Who is independent? What developers are really independent?

Some people think of it as a sign of strenght, others as a sign of weakness, a third person think of it as a sort of creative but immature pool of wannabes. How is it, what is independence, who is independent?


In my little quest I begin with a visit to the dictionary.com

Independent:
1. not influenced or controlled by others in matters of opinion, conduct, etc.; thinking or acting for oneself

2. not subject to another's authority or jurisdiction

The word itself suggests that you cannot be controlled by other in matter of opinion nor can you be subject to another’s authority or jurisdiction.

By this definition the easiest way to be independent would be to go hobby and have no obligations, unfortunately this also brings rather small prospects of delivering a competitive game.

Another attempt on independence would be to have your own game idea but seek financing elsewhere, at which point you fall victim for the second item, “not subject to another’s authority”.

If neither approach is truly independent, then what is left?
Money is, money is the source of independence. When you have your own money you can choose not to be influenced or controlled by others and you are not subject to another’s authority.

Further more you fulfil an additional definition of the word independent:
6. rejecting others' aid or support; refusing to be under obligation to others.

You can afford to reject offers, you are free to choose your partners and you can choose to ignore them.


A great example of independence in my book is BioWare. A privately financed company that have over the years earned its own money. No one can tell a company like BioWare what to do because they don’t need your opinion. That to me, is independence.

Rewards

My adventures in DS-land are over for now. I played Advance Wars aswell but was left without impressions.

No doubt I'll come back to the DS but I'll give it a rest for now.

Lately I have been thinking about rewards in games. Some games are generous and others aren't. The latest edition of Sid Meier's Pirates! is.

The game is so easy in a satisfying way. My favourite example of this is the Tavern, it is basically an interface with four buttons.
1. Give me free crew (the crew)
2. Tell me where to go (The bartender)
3. Buy cool item (the shady pirate)
4. Give me profitable tip (the bar maid)

As I play Pirates! and other games with lots of rewards I begin to align myself with this philosophy more and more. Games should really be about making the player feel things, positive things. The danger with this approach is depth...

Then again, this only applies for single player games, multiplayer is a hard school of formulas, fairness and anti-cheat.

Play Pirates! if you haven't.

Aha!

After playing the Brain Training Game for a while I began to notice some key elements holding it together.

The brain training game features no conventional gameplay and it does not set to entertain the player per say. Still it is very popular and selling like mad, simply, people love it.

Obviously there is something else then gameplay at work here.

The game isn't "actually" entertaining (besides perhaps the soduku).

No, the gameplay is not fun. Instead the overall greatness of the game is held together by several key features in unison.

I works like this:

The game is presented to be a serious product based on research of a famous brain researcher.
The game is designed, based on his reseach, to improve your brain.

After the introduction where the evidence is presented you are asked to take a brain age test which you do and to your horror your brain age is 40 some years older then your real age. The horror!

The motivation is now established that you, since this is for real, are in some trouble and this software can help you. It does help that the Dr. Kawashima avatar is very charismatic and friendly.

Lastly, all data is presented in graph form, along with your "level" (brain age). So now, when your stats are determined who could stop you from levelling up?

Introduction -> Evidence is presented, eliminate doubdt -> Perform poorly in test -> Present the solution, brain training -> Present data as "levels", visualize progress (numerical rating of the self).

This is just an observation, I like the game and I do believe it does have positive effect on the brain.

Key findings today:
"calculating" the skill/stat of the physical player and presenting it in the game.

Adventures in a strange land: Mario Cart

My expedition continues and today I had the oppurtunity to play Mario Cart via the Wi-Fi download and play functionality. I must mention that I think the non-permanent friend to friend distribution is a great leap forward for the game industry. PC next perhaps?

Anyhow; I was playing Mario Cart and stumbled on yet another distinguished DS feature, the microphone and in particular: blowing!

The Balloon fight in Mario Cart require you to fill your ballons with air by blowing in the microphone. The scary thing was that blowing firmly worked much better then making loud noises... I actually felt like I was blowing air into the balloon.

Key findings for today:
"blowing" as a method for interaction

I am well aware that the DS isn't the first device to use a microphone or for that matter blowing but it IS the first time that I am discovering it first hand.


I have ordered Trauma Centre: Under the knife, because I think it will complemet my other two games on highlighting different aspects of the DS.

My game list:
Catslevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Dr. Kawashima´s Brain Training
(coming soon) Trauma Centre: Under the Knife