game-design
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Dedicated dual wield tree for Death Knights a possibility
A few days ago, Bornakk responded to yet another thread regarding dual wielding for Death Knights. I read it, shrugged, moved on with life, but I found myself digging up the thread again because I started to warm up to the idea Bornakk put forth: They're considering (that's the key word here) "something like making the frost tree the dual-wield tree" and letting the strikes hit with both weapons like Mutilate and Stormstrike.Bornakk says balancing both Dual Wielding and 2Handers in each talent tree has been exceptionally challenging, and I think we've seen that firsthand. Talents aimed for one build make their way into another, and things quickly get out of hand. Turning one of the trees specifically into the Dual Wielding tree (whether it be Frost or Unholy or whatever) is something I can get behind, even if it runs counter to what they've been trying to do with the talent trees since the Wrath beta.
Fallen Earth dev diary focuses on introducing new players to PvP
Fallen Earth is one of three post-apocalyptic massively muliplayer online games currently in development that are a far cry from the fantasy titles which have proven most popular in the MMO world. IGN scored an exclusive two part developer diary from Fallen Earth writer and content developer Wes Platt who discusses creating the PvP starter town of Terance. Namely, he explains how and why the Fallen Earth team has been putting so much work into Terance and the challenges and pitfalls faced in differentiating the PvP-centric area from other more standard towns in the game. The first part is "Building the Town of Terance". It paints a picture of a post-apocalyptic aftermath setting where a psychotic artificial intelligence, long since sealed away underground by its corporate progenitors and forced into a century of dormancy, is woken with dire consequences. Now powered up, the AI -- TETRAX -- prepares once again to work towards the extermination all human beings in its vicinity. Human beings in Terance may find themselves on the run, hunted by AI-directed zombies called Diggers, as well as mutants and vermin.
GDC09: Spending time with the cruise director of Azeroth
At GDC09, we got to talk with many people and listened to a variety of panels on all aspects of game design. But there was little doubt as to which panel attracted loads of attention -- the Jeff Kaplan panel on quest design in World of Warcraft.Warcraft has come extremely far in terms of their UI design and quest implementation since the game launched back in 2004. Just between 2007 and 2009, Kaplan revealed that over 8,570,222,436 quests have been completed, while the daily average was 16,641,409. With those numbers in place, it's safe to say that World of Warcraft players are driven by their questing.Kaplan's panel revealed a few tricks of the trade, as well as his beliefs regarding questing, so without further adieu let's get into the meat of his panel.%Gallery-49071%
GDC09: How HeroEngine revolutionizes MMORPG game design
Let's be frank, MMOs are a pain in the rear to design. You have large teams working collaboratively to build huge expanses of terrain, hundreds upon thousands of objects in the world that players can interact with, server architecture to worry about, and even more in-depth things that the standard player may not even notice or consider.But if you've been on the site recently and have been checking out our coverage of the GDC, then you may have heard us and developers talking excitedly about HeroEngine, the new MMO developing tool from Simutronics. HeroEngine is powering games like The World of Gatheryn and this funny Star Wars game from those BioWare people, as well as other companies that haven't announced their new projects as of yet.So why is HeroEngine so amazing? Well, we got the inside scoop straight from Simutronics as we visited their booth at the GDC.
GDC09: Disneyland's 'The Haunted Mansion' is a first-person shooter
Scott Rogers is a creative manager at THQ, and a former game designer who worked on titled ranging from God of War to Maximo, and he held a panel at GDC called Everything I Learned About Level Design I Learned From Disneyland, and one of our favorite quotes was "Well, the Haunted Mansion is basically a first-person shooter if you think about it. You're directing what the guest sees and has access to, and that's what we're doing with level design." If Walt only knew! Although not apparent at first glance, once you look at amusement park design and game level design, there are a ton of similarities. We have a lot of goodies coming to you from Rogers' talk which we'll be bringing to you next week. In the meantime, you can reimagine your favorite rides turned into FPS titles. Or you could take the obvious route and just combine a ride and shooter, like Disney already did with Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters.
GDC09: Applied RMT Design with GoPets and Live Gamer
Massively sat in on a GDC 2009 session this week titled Applied RMT Design which was part of the Worlds in Motion Summit. Andrew Schneider, Founder and President of Live Gamer and Erik Bethke, CEO of GoPets, Ltd. presented a case study on balancing a game's primary and secondary markets, using GoPets as an example of how it can be done. The market for virtual goods in massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds is worth billions. Not all of this is grey market, and more games are now being designed with microtransactions in mind. Live Gamer aims to bring greater legitimacy to microtransactions through a regulated secondary market providing benefits to companies as well as the players themselves. Thus far they've worked with EverQuest II, Vanguard, and GoPets, with Acclaim's 9 Dragons on the way. Bethke and Schneider kick off their talk by explaining the fact that RMT in MMOs is inevitable, explaining how developers can be proactive about incorporating RMT into their titles rather than having it exist outside of the game. Live Gamer works with developers to create a legitimate system for trading virtual items for real money, one that's safe and secure. Of course, legitimizing RMT can also stir up controversy. %Gallery-48454%
Kaplan on being the "Cruise Director of Azeroth" at GDC '09
Jeffrey "Tigole" Kaplan, former WoW Lead Designer who just recently headed off to work on Blizzard's new MMO, held a panel at the Game Developer's Conference earlier this week in San Fransisco called "Cruise Directior of Azeroth," in which he talked about some of the design decisions behind World of Warcraft, where Blizzard got their inspiration for a lot of the gameplay now made famous by the game, and even some of the mistakes they made in putting the world's most popular MMO together.WoW Insider had correspondents there on the site, and they sent back audio of Kaplan's speech. We've paraphrased the salient points, and you can find them all after the break. There's some really interesting stuff in there, including the fact that in the past two years, 80 billion quests have been completed in North America's Azeroth alone, and just who is behind the frustration that is The Green Hills of Stranglethorn (hint: it's Kaplan himself).Hit the link below to see what Kaplan told the crowd at GDC.%Gallery-48658%
GDC09: User generated stories in shardless worlds
Massively checked out an interesting session at GDC 2009 titled "User Generated Story: The Promise of Unsharded Worlds" by James Portnow, CEO and Creative Director of Divide by Zero. His talk was part of the Worlds in Motion Summit, and focused on how single worlds and their shared space can also give rise to shared stories. Portnow discussed ways that game designers can encourage and enable players to tell their own stories within the virtual space. *** The storylines we've seen thus far in MMOs aren't yet tapping the potential of massively multiplayer online games, Portnow relates, largely because they're not capitalizing on an MMOs greatest asset -- its players. Portnow says, "We haven't achieved stories that really rely upon the core of our media, the playerbase that a MMO environment environment gives us. We haven't achieved player-driven stories really directed by players themselves. And lastly we haven't achieved meaningful stories."Why do people skip the quest text? It's because they have no stake in it. Unlike the experience they get from single player games, their actions don't affect the the world they play in. Story, then, doesn't add to immersion and thus players don't feel engaged by quests. The solution then is to unshard worlds and give agency back to the players, with real choices, real consequences, and less restrictions. %Gallery-48460%
SXSW 2009: Game Design Competition rewards elite game designs with Elite Xbox 360s
This year's SXSW ScreenBurn Festival was the first to hold a game design competition for amateur developers. The finals in the two categories, Casual and AAA, were held back-to-back, with the four finalists in each category presenting their designs to an audience whose applause would determine their fate, and a panel of judges who would ask questions about the concepts and the possible execution of the games.
Video interviews present the life and times of Richard Garriott
The online broadcast network VBS is showing a three-part video series on the life and times of (computer) RPG pioneer Richard Garriott. The footage explores his first steps into the world of video game design, explaining how the moniker "Lord British" became synonymous with Garriott. The videos also give a look into what someone can do once they can afford any toy their heart desires, and chronicles a bit of the latest direction Garriott is taking his life -- into space. The short series is a revealing peek into the life of a significant figure in the games industry. We've got the video embeds for you below the cut, but for more background you might want to check out the accompanying info over at VBS.TV.
DICE 2009: Todd Howard on Bethesda's 3 rules of game development
Some of us had only just recovered from turning back the Daedric scourge in Tamriel before Bethesda took it upon itself to obliterate the countryside altogether in Fallout 3. Destruction of this magnitude takes planning, and speaking during last week's DICE summit in Las Vegas studio director Todd Howard laid out Bethesda's three simple rules for "making excellent games." According to MTV Multiplayer, Howard's vision for great game design can be distilled down into the following principles: 1) A dev's ability to leave even their favorite ideas on the cutting room floor, 2) the capability to think smaller and keep things simple and 3) being able to define a project "by the experience you want people to have," rather than just a laundry list of features. During his time on stage, the outspoken director also took issue with the importance of the Wii's overwhelming dominance of the console market, with Gamasutra reporting that Howard said "if install base really mattered, we'd all make board games, because there are a lot of tables." True, but we'd still be hard pressed to trade away our railway rifle and head shots for a pricey monopoly built on the smoldering ruins of Boardwalk and Park Place.Source -- The Following Colorful Wisdom Is From Todd HowardSource -- Bethesda's Howard On Supreme Playability
If it's broken, then fix it!
Last week, you may recall our coverage on Tom Chick's "5 Ways MMOs are broken" and Scott Jenning's rebuttal article. This week brings a new story to the table of rebuttal with Trembling Hand's author Tim writing a post on his 10 ways to fix the problems with MMOs.Tim is in full agreement with Chick on how broken MMOs are these days, as he too has felt the wear and tear of the genre. Tim's newest post, however, points to the many areas where MMOs could improve, such as added AI to monsters, removal of classes and levels and moving towards skill based systems, and even something as simple as encouraging grouping through experience bonuses and the reduction of chain quests.Tim's full article is a lengthy read, but includes many great points and is worth checking out.
Five big failings of the MMO genre (and a rebuttal to same)
Tom Chick is a well known and (generally) respected games journalist probably best known for his contentious reviews and championing of the New Games Journalism movement. He also isn't a big fan of the MMO genre. At least he isn't today, in a writeup on his Sci-Fi Channel co-branded site Fidget. The article is entitled Five Reasons MMOs Are Broken, and follows up that contentious beginning with a breakdown of the MMO genre. His primary issues seem to revolve around the established contrivances of the genre itself, such as the concept of aggro or respawning enemies. He's also very frustrated by the innumerable barriers put up between players, the levels/classes/dungeons/servers/gear restrictions that stop us from playing with our friends.As blogger Scott Jennings points out, more than the genre he's specifically breaking down World of Warcraft. He's effectively using WoW as a synonym for MMO, and as a result Jennings (and us) can point out that some of his failings have already been addressed. Read into Scott's dissection of Chick's writing for more analysis and insight on this issue and the supposed failings of the genre. Then, let us know what you think below. Is the MMO genre really that flawed ... or is it just the standard Diku-style successor that's old hat?
Don't pay in gold, barter instead!
Of the many things that developers have to balance in MMOs, the economy is perhaps the least understood. Where damage over time and powers can be easily tweaked to bring them in line with the rest of the game, virtual economies can bounce around more than a hyperactive kid with a super ball. Even if you think you can find a "fix" or a "tweak" to bring your virtual economy to where you think it should be, the economy can throw you a curve ball and react completely differently.Over at the Warcry Network, Jonathan "Ithelsa" Steinhauer has pitched the concept of going back to a barter economy, similar to the one that Asheron's Call accidentally stumbled upon. Instead of relying on money sinks and economic controls, the barter economy places the value onto items and craftable materials -- thus providing wealth that can easily increase or decrease over time and naturally sink out of the system as they are incorporated into other items.The full article is worth a read, especially if you're interested in the tricky issue of virtual economies, or just general game design of virtual worlds.
Learning from the newbies
Playing over someone's shoulder is always an interesting experience. You get to learn from what they do and interpret their experience from an outside perspective. But what's really interesting is not what the experienced player does -- rather it's what the inexperienced player does.Psychochild just tackled this very topic over on his blog as he watched his better half get addicted to playing Lord of the Rings Online. While she avoided the temptations of Meridian 59 and World of Warcraft, Psychochild notes that it was a familiar setting that got her into the game.
Jim Lee on his influence over DC Universe Online
When it comes to the super-hero genre in massively multiplayer online games, two new names seem to be on the lips and hearts of all man-children (and we're hoping a fair number of women, too): Champions Online and DC Universe Online. The latter title is of particular interest, given how it builds on the DC Universe comics legacy which is significantly older than your average gamer. Given how much comics legend Jim Lee is involved with fleshing out the DC setting into an online world as the title's Executive Creative Director, Gamasutra's Brandon Sheffield interviewed Lee about the extent and scope of his influence over the game. The interview is a good read, showing us a bit about Lee's approach to DC Universe Online, both in terms of his overarching view of how the game should be, and his attention to detail. It also touches upon what it's like for Lee to step away from the flexibility he's always had with 2D, and into the more concrete 3D of game design. Did you enjoy this? We've donned our capes and tights to explore SOE's DC Universe Online in-depth. Come explore more of Metropolis and Gotham with your friends at Massively!
Discover the wizardry of game design with WAR's Brian Wheeler
Gather around folks, get comfortable; we've got a tale of fantasy, kings and wizards to share with you. As seems to be the norm with our friendly neighborhood Mythic developers, Brian Wheeler has done his best to avoid bringing us a boring and straightforward Dev Diary, instead opting to explain his role of Senior Designer for Warhammer Online through a short story.It turns out that game designers are not unlike the great wizards Merlin and Gandalf (coincidentally, these two exist in the same space in Wheeler's fantasy world, and often enjoy a pint together) in that they come up with multiple ideas and solutions for a single problem, and present them all to the king to decide which will be used. They aren't necessarily ideas that the king couldn't figure out on his own, but the wizards can afford to spend all their time researching every possible strategy, giving the king the freedom to attend to other business. That's the short version -- to read Wheeler's longer and much more entertaining take, visit the latest WAR dev diary.
NYU to debut gaming degree program next fall
Students at New York University may soon study how to make games instead of simply skip class to play them. A first for any college in New York City, beginning next fall NYU will offer "long-term undergraduate and graduate degrees in the research, design and development of digital games." With around 70 different game design courses planned, the sure to be popular program will likely fill up quick, with only 10 to 12 NYU students allowed to participate in 2009, with additional Master's and certificate programs planned for an even smaller group beginning the following year. So, do you have what it takes to tighten up the graphics on level 3?[Via Wonderland]
The spirit of WoW in Resistance 2's co-op gameplay
Much has been said on the influence of World of Warcraft on the MMO industry, but comparisons between other games and WoW don't end with massively multiplayer online games. The multiplayer cooperative mode of Resistance 2, a Playstation 3 exclusive from Insomniac Games, bears some similarities in its design to the ubiquitous Blizzard fantasy title in terms of class interdependencies. Insomniac Games co-op lead designer for Resistance 2, Jake Biegel, recently gave an interview with Christian Nutt from Gamasutra on the development of multiplayer cooperative gameplay, and the games that influenced its creation. Of course, the class-based Team Fortress 2 was cited as an influence, but Insomniac Games also looked to World of Warcraft for further inspiration. "We looked at experiences like Team Fortress 2, in which there are dependencies on classes, and games like World of Warcraft, in which there are large amounts of people working in tandem, creating this kind of epic synergy to overcome these encounters that wouldn't be overcomeable as an individual," Biegel says. One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
38 Studios challenges college students to create games
College students in the United States and Canada with an interest in entering the MMO industry, this one is for you. 38 Studios -- creators of the forthcoming 'Copernicus' MMO -- are inviting aspiring game artists, designers, and programmers to enter their contest, the 2nd Annual Massachusetts Game Challenge. The contest announcement states: "If you are enrolled in college you can win thousands of dollars in prizes by developing a compelling video game featuring our company mascot, Munch. Roll solo or pool your talents into groups of two or three for ultimate game creation results." First prize in the contest brings $1500 per team member, while second prize earns $1000 per team member. Third prize winners get $500 per team member. Beyond the prize money, the 38 Studios game challenge is a chance to get your work recognized by people in the industry. See the FAQ for the 2nd Annual Massachusetts Game Challenge for more details and take a look at last year's winning submissions for a better idea of what 38 Studios is looking for. If you're interested in learning more, be sure to check out the announcement page for the 38 Studios game challenge. The submission deadline is March 2, 2009.
