Attract vs alienate

So here's something to consider.

For each decision you make, how many potential customers do you gain vs alienate?

It's kind of obvious, that you want many people to play your game, so start thinking about how many players you think you may alienate with your choice rather then speculate what people want. It's a bit scary but very useful. Many ideas suddenly seem less awesome...

An example could be deciding art style: Everyone will be nude vs everyone will not be nude. Alienate vs attract - A lot of guys would be attracted but shitloads of people would instantly be alienated and would never go near the product. We'd better go with not nude. (I'm not trying to make a statement - just proving a point)

When in doubt you can try this as it often points you in the "right" direction.

A really good game

This is as simple as a tip. A game you should play if you haven't already. It's called Mount&Blade and I've been playing it for 3 days straight. Why is it cool? it has mounted combat, and it's damn good!

Observe how the horse's head respond to player input much faster then the body. Major discovery.
http://www.taleworlds.com/

Comments

I've changed so that anyone can post a comment. We'll see how it works out.

I'm touched - this is so fantastic somehow

http://www.mazapan.se/games/BurnTheRope.php

You need to hear the entire song when you complete the game.

The ancient gamer - Life

He who think of games as merely pressing buttons, might think of life as placing one foot infront of the other.

Africa!

How har can it be? Our beloved earth has a limited amount of climates, 90% of all games feature a climate of some sort, a setting with some terrain so we should have seen all climates and settings a fair amount of times, yes?

NO

We have forgotten that little something called AFRICA. I can't remember playing any game with an african setting. So why is this then? My first thought was that the general market for video games wouldn't identify with an African setting. But then I thought, countless movies takes place in Africa, we see it on nature shows on TV and see it on the news. In the end I can't help thinking we discriminate Africa not out of racism but out of fear. How do we portrait their daily life, coulture and habits without being prejudiced and ignorant, how do we write story and dialogue to reflect a continent of which we know so little? And perhaps the most difficult question, how do we shoot African charachters dead without it tearing up emotional wounds? And by all means, the game doesn't have to be about shooting anybody anyways.

Well, I imagen the only way to show the proper respect is to bring Africa in to the game on the same terms as everybody else.

Kudos Far Cry 2 for taking the leap!


How's this for a setting?

Battlefield: Heroes!

So time for one of those rare occasions when I can reveal what I am involved in.





I've been working on the vehicle gameplay on Battlefield : Heroes. Since it will be free there is no excuse not to try it out when it's going live later this year!

"Battlefield Heroes will be released for the PC as a free download in summer 2008."

As the game releases I'll write much more about this very fun-loving game!
Cheers!

check the heroes site: Battlefield: Heroes

Sketching your mind

I have always sketched alot when I work and I have decided to show some of the stuff. For obvious reasons I can't show the stuff I am working on yet so I'll put some random stuff up that I made recently.

This picture is made on my new wacom so it's not my actual style. Later I'll scan some of my inc stuff.

Holistic...

I have been described as a "holistic game designer" meaning I tend to look at the whole product, creating systems rather then single features.

Well wouldn't it be nice if I could just do a simple f*****g task every once and a while?

*delves back into the behemoth system of doom that started out as a simple task... again*

Envy

My last post highlighted the importance of making players actually like your game, which in return generate sales and a certain place in the hall of fame.

However, do not misunderstand me, I am very bitter with Halo 3 and bungie in general for making such avrage games coming out as "perfect". I fully realize that there is no denying their greatness, but the success of halo does imply that innovation has little to no importance for success which really turns me down.

To sum it up. I envy the success of Halo. Therefore I am bitter and need to express my dislike.
Fortunatly I don't have to do anything since it's already been done.

I present the Zero punctuation review of Halo 3!

Who is your customer?

Game design... I used to think it was a dark art, almost magic... The one "wizard" with the most delicate solutions won...

That still applies, a game designer has to be able to create very complex and advaced systems if need be, but he also need to ask himself; who is my customer?

If you are into game design as an art form, this may very well not apply, but if you want as many people as possible to play and enjoy your game, this is it.

Who is your customer?

The best designer is indeed he (or she) that can provide what people want. The most painful example of this is Halo 2 and 3. Halo 1 was just brilliant in many ways and deserves all credit and success... but what about Halo 2 and 3?

Halo 3 got 10/10 in EDGE... I mean edge is tough and they usually demand sequels to be extremely good to give a high score.

The thing with Halo is; they provide what the customer’s desire and the skill to do this is almost unfathomable. It is the real design magic. Ask a halo player why he/she enjoys halo and you will not get the answers you need to replicate the success, the only ones who know, are the fellas at bungie.

This is something I am just beginning to learn, when I worked at Lockpick we did ask the question, the problem was, we only fabricated some bullcrap answer that worked well with what we wanted to do. (This I can only say is certain for myself, the others might have actually tried their best)

The question is as blatantly simple as the answer and there is no escape. Who is your customer?

It's often taught that you need to specify your target audience, well this is true in a way, the more you specify the easier it will be for you to get away with stupid things.

My audience is NASA scientists with 2 brains = Ok, go ahead and do the game uber advanced
My audience are players that like Civ 3 and Warcraft 3 and some web games like Utopia and... = Well go ahead and make a fantastic game but don't expect many to play

Try this instead; My audience is every PC gamer. Period. Done.
Now you have your customer and your work cut out and you will also find yourself operating at the master level of game design. High Sales. Like Bungie the true wizards of design.

An era ends and a new one begins

So after co-founding lockpick entertainment and being with it during development and release of Dreamlords, I have moved on.

My new employer is EA DICE. It was a fantastic journey to develop dreamlords but I came to understand one thing. I wasn't experienced enough to fully commit to my own company, that would mean I would always be at the very top of the hierarchy, never having to listen to anyone and never learning from anyone in the same sense as when you work your way up in a huge organization in which many masterminds reside.

It was a huge honor to work at Lockpick entertainment and to work with the creative talents there. I see only good things on the horizon for Lockpick.

MPOGD review

Mpogd.com cast their review on dreamlords. Thay also have some new screenshots.

8 / 10

Making an MMORPRTS? Piece of cake!

This is an article about the development of Dreamlords that I wrote some weeks ago for IGN.

If you are at all interested in the development of Dreamlords I recommend it.

You can read it over at IGN RPG Vault.
To add further spice, the article is illustrated by Dreamlords lead artist, Daniel Ribera Olsen.

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.