Liquid Crystal

A trailer has appeared for Fumito Ueda and Team Ico’s next project.  The third game developed by the team is now known as “The Last Guardian” and looks to continue the companionship theme seen in their earlier projects.

Ico

Ico, their first game, presented players with the task of protecting and escaping with a young, often defenseless girl named Yorda.  She hindered the player, yet was necessary to progress.  A complicated set of emotions emerged from the frustration of keeping her safe while going on the treacherous journey together.  It was character development at a minimalistic level.  Not many stories feature deep character development without the use of spoken dialogue.

Shadow of the Colossus continued the theme with a horse named Agro, the hero’s sole ally.  Staying in line with the frustration (and depth) that comes with a realistic ally, Ueda noted that, “a real horse … doesn’t always obey. It’s not like a car or a motorcycle, it won’t always turn when you say ‘turn!’” Yet, Agro is essential in taking down some of the faster moving colossi.  After the fall of these titans, there’s a feeling of accomplishment and joy from working together with Agro, crushing any previous resentments towards the horse.

The Last Guardian, at this point, looks to blend Agro’s functionality with Yorda’s fragility.  The creature gently lifts the boy back to safety and transports him to a range of different areas.  Arrows can be seen sticking out of the creature’s side, implying there will be some sort of conflict.  I can only imagine the feeling of watching this creature become gravely injured after bonding with it.  Is Ueda developing a tragedy?

There’s an intangible quality about writing on paper.  It conforms to whatever dimension the mind is thinking in. The pressure and stroke of the pen add a layer of depth to various thoughts, while playful tracing and dotting help link ideas together.  It’s less about communicating ideas with others and more about creating a visual playground for your thoughts.  After all, not all thoughts are as clear as we’d like to believe.

I’ve been developing these ideas through the aid of many spiral notebooks. Each one is packed with a stream of thoughts in tangible form, yet the information they contain is next to useless.  The contents include formulas, matrices, ideas, and basic illustrations; most are scribbled upon to work out solutions.  The development journal also serves as a second display and allows me to escape the digitalized realm of the computer for one with more finesse.

How do you develop your thoughts? I’ve read stories similar to mine, while I see others working their thoughts out with Lego blocks or by letting their minds go while gazing at stars or tiles.

There’s been a lot of talk about simplifying gameplay.  Taking away features or buttons doesn’t necessarily lead to a simpler design, so what does?

Focused Design
Know exactly what the game is about.  What words can describe the design?  Virtua Fighter can be reduced to: fighting, attack, throw, block, and balance (in this case, rock-paper-scissors with unequal rewards).  The series has stayed true to these basic words throughout its many renditions.  Keep the number of words short; the fewer words, the more focused the design will end up.  If working on a team, this is especially important as it will help everyone understand the exact goal of the design.

Shadow of the Colossus is another example of a focused design which consists of exploration, boss battles, and puzzles.  The world is barren and void of life, constraining (in a good way) and directing the player into hunting down and defeating these giant creatures.  It’s a game that’s exclusively a series of boss battles and there’s no doubt that the entire design was based around these astounding colossi.

The Mega-Buster is a trick.

Minimalism
Mega Man 9 did something brave; it stripped most of the baggage that built up over the years.  It was pleasing to finally see the nonsensical mega-buster removed.  It was a gimmicky element that gave the player a false sense of building up strength.  In the end, it was still a shot, only slightly annoying due to having to hold a button down in anticipation of the next target.  With or without the mega-buster, it’s the same game!

When there are added abilities that are integral to the design, a stacking system can keep things simple by eliminating the needless input of switching through menu selections.  Metroid: Zero Mission continuously adds abilities, without needing to resort to a menu to switch them.  A simple, short ranged beam eventually becomes long ranged, gains the ability to freeze targets, can shoot through walls, and multiplies in strength throughout the game.  All of these abilities stack and negate the need to go through a menu, keeping the game’s flow going without pause.

Make the game work, not the player
David Sirlin made an excellent point in his critique of Street Fighter 4; despite trying to simplify the game, there’s still a “wall of execution” between the player and controls which prevents total engagement of the actual fighting.  It feels amazing to pull off a special move just in the brink of time.  Often though, it’s less about thinking about the special move, and more about getting the controls to trigger it.  The same goes with throws and counter-throws.  The window of input is less about fighting and more about some ridiculous exercise in precision.  When it comes down to it, Street Fighter 4 is more of the same: still fun, yet still with its barriers.  Consider this: where is the player’s mind when playing a game in a crucial situation?  Are they knowing what they want, but fighting to perform the said action? Or maybe they are flabbergasted and overwhelmed with the possible moves laid before them?  The human mind often works in threes.  Again, remember the value of rock-paper-scissors.

Starcraft is essentially Microsoft Windows in outer space.

Intuition
With Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, Blizzard takes what people already know through using Windows or Mac OS X, and ingeniously applies it to a more entertaining design.  Pointing, clicking, and dragging via the mouse are all skills people quickly get acquainted with in the interface of today’s operating systems.  These games are essentially “fun” operating systems due to their intuitive and quick to learn design.  Blizzard didn’t create anything new, they simply applied what people already knew to the structure of their game design.  Due to this, Blizzard has seen phenomenal success in drawing new players into the mix while creating games that are easy to learn.

Another Game Developers’ Conference has come and gone. It didn’t provide me with the inspiration for a new game idea, but it did help me reevaluate and adjust the development on my current project.  Here are some of my favorites:

The Kidnapping
Satoru Iwata had a couple of anecdotes of Shigeru Miyamoto’s method of making games. One involved Miyamoto picking random employees who weren’t on the development team and then watching them play the game. Now playtesting is hardly a noteworthy practice, but its what Miyamoto does (or doesn’t do) that is of particular interest. Instead of asking the player questions or interacting with them, he quietly observes what’s going on. Many of Nintendo’s games are easy to pick up and play without instruction, perhaps this is why.

Finding the Fun
The other anecdote explained the importance of prototyping. Developers at Nintendo are often split into small teams. There they begin developing an idea and are told to, “find the fun.” These prototypes can be very simplistic; this gives the team a chance to focus on the core gameplay that will be the experience. Isolating and developing this core gameplay will lay the foundation for a larger project and serve as a guiding light.

Making the “Impossible” Possible
Hideo Kojima’s keynote walked through the history of Metal Gear. During the early development of the series, he was faced with a seemingly impossible barrier. He was initially assigned to develop a combat game on the old MSX hardware. Faced with severe limitations of the hardware, the number of possible elements had to stay small. The answer? Create a stealth action game. While Kojima was faced with hardware limitations, it’s a story that can played out in a number of different scenarios.

Fez!
Finally, there was Fez. I’ll let the trailer do the talking…

FEZ TRAILER 2 from fish on Vimeo.

The original artwork for Dragon Quest

While there are many who will fight over detail, perhaps we should take a step back and look at the benefits of ambiguity.  We sometimes get too involved with painting the picture that is in our head and forget that our audiences have a tool that can build worlds out of our foundations—their imagination.

Screenshot from Dragon Warrior

In 1989, the original Dragon Quest was released into the United States amid a number of changes.  Along with a new title, Dragon Warrior, the localization team took advantage of the game’s primitive graphics and changed the art that came packaged with it. While this was done to cater to western audiences and hopefully add to sales figures, it goes to show how Dragon Quest’s ambiguous graphics allow for several points of perspective.

I don’t want to advocate the complete reversal of the show, don’t tell mantra, but I believe authors of any media should pick their battles and think about where their viewers’ imaginations can fill in the blanks.  Ambiguity adds mystery and can allow for customized settings.  In addition to these benefits, a story can be re-examined years later and infused with new elements based on the new thoughts and memories of the viewer.  The words “ball of light” could illuminate like a glow stick to a child, but shine with an indescribable brilliance to an adult.

The revised artwork for Dragon Warrior

In the coming weeks, I will continue along these lines with articles about information hiding and division.  Until then, think about this—how do we add ambiguity to our work in an age of advanced graphics and where words are sparingly used?

A description would be missing the point—this is a game about discovery.  The minimalistic design approach keeps everything very focused and raises the player’s level of sensitivity to the environment.  If you have access to a Windows XP, you have to give this a try.  It’s short, brilliant, and one of a kind.

Illegal Communication by Cactus

Exploration is less about physical travel, and more about the mind.  It is not only about discovery, but the emotions involved.  While our natural instinct is to link a scene to exploration, Shigeru Miyamoto (Super Mario, Legend of Zelda) gives an example of exploration coming from within,

“Imagine the Spirit—the state of mind—of a kid when he enters a cave alone.  Going in, he must feel the cold air around him.  He must discover a branch off to one side and decide whether to explore or not.  Sometimes he loses his way.  If you go to the cave now, as an adult, it might be silly, trivial, a small cave.  But as a child, in spite of being banned to go, you could not resist the temptation.  It was not a small moment then.  This feeling must be realized in the game.”

So as designers, we must reevaulate what we see, and learn to understand what brings out these raw emotions.  Think of words to describe the scene.  For the aforementioned cave, we could say it is forbidden, unfamiliar, cold, dangerous, dim, and isolated.  What other words does the cave description bring to mind?