game-design
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City of Heroes interviews discuss content development and Incarnate raids
At the start of the month, City of Heroes released the massive and potentially game-changing Issue 20 update. Codenamed Incarnates, the update introduced a series of large raids designed to continue the story established in Going Rogue in a new way. In an interview with PC Gamer, lead producer Nate Birkholz discussed how the new group instances have been received. Issues touched on include difficulty scaling, the new Incarnate powers that can be earned and lessons learned from developing the new system. In a contrasting interview over at Gaming Angels, lead designer Melissa Bianco discussed content development and her career at Paragon Studios. The interview covers some important issues, asking why City of Heroes has enjoyed the ongoing success it has and what exactly goes into zone and instance design. Melissa also has some tips for anyone looking for a job in the games industry and provides a little insight into the development process.
EVE Spotlight: An interview with CCP Zulu
EVE Spotlight is a new bi-weekly feature in which we interview prominent members of EVE Online's player community or development team. Twice each month, we'll be shining the spotlight on a player or developer who has a significant impact on EVE to highlight the efforts of EVE's most influential people. It's almost an unwritten rule of game development that someone from quality assurance should never be promoted into a game design role. Game testing and QA are said to be so fundamentally different to design that it's argued the roles require incompatible skillsets. Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason has definitely proven that this isn't the case, successfully migrating from QA to game design and finally being promoted to senior producer on EVE Online. Taking over from CCP T0rfifrans, Arnar has become a very public figure for CCP in the EVE community. Older players will remember Arnar as CCP Zulupark, that horrible guy who nerfed their carriers back in 2007. Alternatively, you may remember a fantastic forum thread from 2008 in which he personally answered countless player questions on game design and balance issues. Since becoming senior producer on EVE, Arnar has been a strong advocate of this kind of heavy communication with players. Through devblogs, interviews and interactions with the Council of Stellar Management, he's helped to fill the information vacuum players have become accustomed to. We caught up with EVE senior producer Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason several weeks ago at the EVE Fanfest. In this EVE Spotlight, I ask him about communication with players, the role of live events in future expansions, and other topics.
Lock and load: Undead Labs talks guns
If you're going to include zombies in your game, they're there to be shot. That's a simple fact of life, a fact that Undead Labs seems to be fully cognizant about. The company's most recent developer blog talked about firearms for its upcoming zombie outbreak games, and the topic proved so irresistible to potential players that a second question-and-answer session has been posted talking more about guns. Whether it's in the console version or the full-scale MMO, who doesn't want to be sure of the highest-caliber destruction one can wreak upon the undead? The original developer blog talks in depth about trying to balance a realistic feeling with what players will expect from guns, but the follow-up goes into more detail. Gunfire and sounds will indeed attract zombies to players, but the team doesn't seem interested in burying players under mountains of different ammunition types. The guns in question will most likely not be licensed brands, although some licenses are being sought for some more iconic weapons. There also won't be a full spread of exotic firearms in the console game, Class 3, although the MMO version will likely have a wider variety. Take a look at the full set of answers for more details on the best part of zombie invasions -- sweet, sweet hails of bullets.
Massively's EVE Online CSM 6 candidate roundup
Starting life as a humble indie MMO development studio, CCP Games was always noted for its close relationship to the players of its flagship game EVE Online. That relationship diminished a lot over time as both the size of the playerbase and the scale of EVE's development grew to immense proportions. Today CCP relies on players to guide development more than ever, but it needs a lens through which to focus feedback from such a large community of players into a form that the team can use. The democratically elected Council of Stellar Management (CSM) is that lens. Fifty-seven players submitted their applications to join EVE's elected player council this year, and all this week, players have been voting to decide who will represent them in discussions with CCP. With so many candidates in the running and only four more days to make up your mind, it can be hard to pick one individual from the list. To help you decide, Massively has compiled a full list of every applicant in the running along with a short message about his or her campaign and handy links to available campaign resources. When you're ready to vote, follow this link to the voting page, log in, and click the vote button to the right of your chosen candidate. Remember to get your vote in before March 23rd when polls close! The results will be published on March 30th, and we'll find out who will be representing the EVE playerbase to CCP for the coming year.
Microsoft holds Kodu game design competition for kiddos
Microsoft released the full version of game creation utility Kodu Game Lab on PC today, and to celebrate the release of the free software suite, it's hosting a game design competition. Slow down, David Crane -- it's for kids. The Kodu Cup 2011 is a competition for students aged 9-17 (divided up into two age groups), in which kids use the software to design their own game, for submission by May 10. Prizes include $5,000 awards for both individuals and schools, along a trip to NYC, laptops, Kinect bundles, and a Zune HD out of the warehouse.
EVE Evolved: Your vote counts -- EVE's sixth CSM
Of all the groups involved in EVE Online, the democratically elected Council of Stellar Management (CSM) may be the most significant influence in the game's development. The council was originally created as a way to reassure players that the developer corruption exposed in the T20 scandal would not be repeated. Players voted for a list of representatives from the community, who were then flown over to Iceland to review CCP's newly created internal affairs department. Since then, the CSM has taken on a more advisory role to CCP, presenting itself as a conduit through which players can focus their ideas and any issues they're having with EVE. With the fifth CSM term now coming to a close, voting has begun to choose the members of the sixth council. Players with active EVE accounts over 30 days old have until March 22nd to log in and register their votes. If last year's record 39,433 voter turnout is anything to go by, this year your votes will matter even more than ever. Competition is high for a spot on the council, and it's up to the players to determine who will best represent them in meetings with CCP. If you're having trouble deciding whom to vote for, stay tuned to Massively's EVE Online coverage this week for a breakdown of all the candidates in the running. This week's EVE Evolved is dedicated to convincing you that your vote counts. In this article, I address a few common reasons people are put off voting, explain why the CSM is a force for change in EVE, and hear a few words from ex-CSM Stephan Pirson.
Candidates announced for EVE's sixth CSM
Over the past few years, EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management has been making an increasingly large impact on the game. Every year, thousands of players vote in the CSM elections to select nine volunteers who can represent the interests of EVE's players. The council's job is to collect together details of issues players are having with the game, from bugs and balance issues to widely supported gameplay suggestions. Twice per year, the council members meet with CCP's developers in Iceland for the CSM Summit. It's here that the issues players have raised are discussed and prioritised. As CCP's advisory council on game design, the CSM has been placed in a position of significant influence over EVE Online's development. Early last month, CCP put out the call for players interested in running for election to sign up and declare their intent to join the council. The entry period is now over, and a list of the approved candidates we'll soon be voting on has been published. Of the 72 players who applied, only 57 met the role's criteria for eligibility. Among those accepted are four previous council members hoping to continue their stay in the group and two former alternates. Each candidate has prepared a short statement on his or her reasons for standing for election, and many will be running campaigns on the forum and in-game in the weeks running up to the vote.
GDC 2011: Spacetime pontificates on pocket MMOs
Although portable MMOs seem like the next logical step in enabling our online gaming addiction, remarkably few titles have graced the field as yet. Of the select few, Spacetime Studio's Pocket Legends heads the pack in style and popularity. It appeals to a wide range of players because the basic game is free; the developer charges players only for expansions and other item shop goodies. Cinco Barnes took the opportunity to speak at GDC about how Spacetime sorted out the complex issues surrounding portable MMOs, how the studio came up with the payment structure, and what the team learned as it goes forward with its next MMO, Blackstar. Pocket Legends' roots go back to 2005 when Spacetime Studios took some seed money from NCsoft and began work on a large-space sci-fi MMO for PCs. While the project went bust and NCsoft pulled funding, Spacetime came away with the technology it developed if not the deep pockets to compete in the field. By 2009, the company became enamoured with the iPhone as a gaming device and decided to take the tools it had developed to create a unique game for that platform.
The Soapbox: Respecting the IP and why developers shouldn't
Here's how it is: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. If you've never heard of Firefly, you're either afraid of things that are awesome or you've had an unfortunate gap in your viewing history for the past nine years or so. If you have heard of it, however, you're more than aware that simply referencing the show is enough to send most gamers and fanboys into paroxysms of quotations and general gushing. To say that the universe remains well-loved is an understatement. And if you play MMOs, Firefly seems like a setting that's too perfect to be true. Who knows how many moons are out there in the black, how many crews are left to explore the 'verse and make a fortune? The game never went beyond an announcement, and it still topped our list of games that have gone MIA, after all. And the best part is all of that open nature plays right into the structure of an MMO, with no need to change the wonderful IP set forth in the slightest.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Stricken pack
It's been a while since the Incarnate system went live, and we've had a little time to get used to the ideas that the Issue 19 Strike Pack brought to the table. Not a full shakedown, mind you, but enough to make it clear what the fairly minor addition actually does for the nascent endgame. Whether or not it brings anything positive to City of Heroes is still up for debate. Depending on whom you're talking to, it either nicely handles a few weaknesses of the current Incarnate design or it's a step in a bad direction. As usual, I don't think the answer is anywhere near that simple. The Strike Pack is a good thing in many ways, and not just because of the addition of the higher tiers of Incarnate abilities. I love giving people more reason to run Task Forces, definitely, but if there's a serious problem introduced by this it goes right back to the same endgame problems that City of Heroes has always had, problems that I'm not completely sure even Issue 20 will fix.
Original GTA developer says game was 'almost canned'
Gary Penn was a developer at DMA Design way back when the British company was working on the very first Grand Theft Auto game -- the top-down, PC-based version, not the 3D console hit you know and love today -- and says that it was "almost canned." Not because of any Hot Coffee-style shenanigans, mind you. Just because (and we're paraphrasing here) it sucked. It was incredibly unstable and "it was awful, it was too sim-y," says Penn. It wasn't until the developer found a bit of fun by turning up the police aggressiveness that it finally landed on the gameplay that's sustained the series to this day: GTA creates a much more manic, amped-up version of the world we actually live in. Once the dev figured that out, it moved on to things like mowing down 2D Hare Khrishnas (Penn's right -- it was really satisfying, moral qualms aside) and just enjoying the world. Penn goes on to say that the series is "stagnating" for him, perhaps because of its success. "It's anything but a lazy game," he says, "but they don't have the pressure if no one else is doing it anywhere near as well as they're doing it."
Ask Massively: I am happy when I get to talk about Transformers edition
If people haven't noticed by now, I have fandoms that don't generally intersect with MMOs. So I'm happy to see that the Transformers MMO will be wide-ranging, while at the same time I understand that many of the things I want out of the game will not be happening. Then again, almost none of the things I want dovetails with more casual fans. Considering how strongly Hasbro is pushing the newly unified Transformers: Prime continuity, my vague hopes of seeing something set on Cybertron post-Reformatting are unlikely to come to fruition. (I will still be happier than those people who assume the series peaked 26 years ago.) Leaving aside my personal pet causes, we've got the usual cocktail of questions for this week's Ask Massively, complete with a discussion of the dark art of modding and the far lighter art of inventory storage. If you've got a question for us, you can leave it in the comment field or mail us at ask@massively.com.
Anti-Aliased: What happened to building worlds
I hope you guys have taken the time to check out our GDCO coverage, specifically our interview with Richard Bartle. If there's anything that has really been on my mind for these past weeks, it's been that. Dr. Bartle's approach to MMOs is very similar to my own personal approach to MMOs: these are games, but they are also worlds. And it's been that line of thinking that has lead me to today's column. What happened to creating worlds in our games? Now, I'm not saying that our games don't include vast settings for us to explore. All of our MMOs include some great settings, but they seem to fall flat anymore. Instead of focusing on how players can interact with the world and each other, many developers are focused on creating the coveted "theme park" environment. We have worlds filled with pre-planned obstacles and challenges that rarely change and evolve over time, instead of allowing players to interact with the world and vice-versa. So, with all of our new knowledge on how games work, what's stopping us from tackling the challenges we used to tackle regularly? How can we make world building and sandbox practices approachable? How can we re-ignite the creative fire?
The Soapbox: Don't hate the game, hate the copy
Disclaimer: This editorial column is 100% the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect that of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. If you ask a remarkably high number of players, World of Warcraft is a negative influence on the face of MMOs. Not necessarily for the reasons that many players, current and former, will claim; the complaints of this group have nothing to do with content or overarching design philosophy. No, World of Warcraft has ruined things just by virtue of its very existence. It's WoW's fault that we've seen a flood of games that are, essentially, the same game with a slight twist (WoW in space, WoW with more PvP, WoW in the mind of Derek Smart, and so forth). It's WoW's fault that these games have failed, and it's even more WoW's fault when other games fail. And despite everything, these claims aren't seen as ridiculous. They're often taken very seriously. But really, WoW isn't to blame for its clones or the failures of other games. The fault for those lies exactly where logic would imply.
Levine: Game industry 'star-struck' by Hollywood
You wouldn't blame Ken Levine for having a chip on his shoulder when it comes to Hollywood. After all, as Develop recounts, the respected game designer "failed spectacularly" in his first career as a scriptwriter. So, when Levine was offered an opportunity to make a game with, in his words, "a very talented film director," it's not much of a stretch to imagine he experienced more than a little satisfaction in turning down the offer. "My feeling is why?" Levine questioned. "Why would any game designer want to do that?" Aside from any personal justice he might have enjoyed, Levine answers his own question with another: "Why would I want a film director to help me make a game, any more than they would want me to help out with their films?" And he takes it further: "I think there's a sense in the entertainment fields that video games are seen as the junior varsity," he said. "There's this feeling of 'oh one day you can come up to our league.'" "In our industry there's too many people star-struck of the movie world, jumping into deals with some big movie director just because they're big film directors." No, Levine isn't taunting del Toro, he's just reflecting on the obvious clash between how great games have been made (hint: rather anonymously) and the looming cult of celebrity eager to pervade the game industry. But hey, Ken, at least they asked you to work with a movie director -- just about anything passes as a star these days. Who would you rather (make your game with): Bristol Palin or The Situation?
Guest Post: Into the future with user-created content
This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. One wonders how long World of Warcraft will remain viable. It is quite possible that my warlock will still be going strong decades down the line. Of one thing, however, I am certain: I will be playing some sort of MMORPG for as long as I'm able to tweak my spec. But will that game be WoW? My friends and I muse about what it would take to switch to another game. That game would have to build upon WoW's legacy and offer something new and amazing to boot. Speaking of boots, I'd wager my Prelate's Snowshoes that the new game will be some incarnation of WoW itself, as Blizzard has proven so willing and able to adapt and grow with its fan base. What makes WoW so popular and enduring? For starters, the game is so accommodating, with plenty to offer noobs and leets alike. Players can feel a sense of accomplishment from merely questing, while others can savor the challenge of working through multiple levels of high-end raid content. I can feel the delight of one-shotting a low-health rogue sneaking around the lumber mill or experience the soul-destroying chaos of getting quickly roasted in arena. And those of us with creaking, overworked CPUs are able to take part in the fun.
Anti-Aliased: How I mine for craft
This column was bound to come sometime. We've had legions of people asking us, "Why don't you cover Minecraft? It's totally an MMO!" The email barrage was so constant that I had nightmarish fits in my sleep, where I was drowning in oddly block-shaped emails pouring out of my ceiling. Now, after I've finally played Minecraft, my nightmarish fits have turned into scenes in which I'm being attacked by giant block-shaped spiders, but that's neither here nor there. I can see why people have fallen in love with this game, and they have every reason to. Minecraft may not be an MMO by our standards, but it is an example of gaming done right. It's the purest form of everything we love about gaming, and it's a game that could teach MMO makers a lot about design, should they care to listen.
The Mog Log: Each answer is the end of a question
Welcome to this week's edition of The Mog Log, in which we answer reader questions about Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV while staying as far away from the drama of this past week as possible. Seriously, the sky is not falling here, folks. It seemed like such a nice week overall, too, with lots of great news coming out the whole week long. And for the record, there's also a special announcement at the end of the article, so by all means read through to the end in the unlikely event you normally don't. Roughly ten million people asked or said: "What the heck is the deal with the fatigue system?" I'm really hoping that by the time you're reading this, the full translation has mollified people somewhat regarding the system. But I'm going to write on the assumption that it hasn't, and believe me, it's at the top of the list for things to talk about next week. And it certainly does put a strict limit on what players can do in the game, much like guildleves and their infamous two-day turnaround.
Guest Post: The death of in-game interaction
This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. WoW's evolution has changed the course of both MMO game design and the landscape of the MMO player base in dramatic ways. By exploring the road most traveled, WoW has led the way from the roots of tabletop pen-and-paper RPGs and early MMO tabletop simulations into MMOs as virtual RPG themeparks. Despite WoW's fantastic success on many fronts, in its evolution toward catering to the most common, casual style of play, it's removed much of the human interaction that made early MMO experiences special. Today's WoW is slick, seamless and streamlined. There is nothing one player can achieve that another player cannot also relatively easily achieve. Yet while players in today's WoW maintain that this thinly clad, egalitarian experience is "best," in reality, what we see is a continuous striving for distinction free from the confines of the game design itself. The ever-present GearScore sniff test has streamlined the need for player interaction to the point that interaction is barely needed at all. In fact, it might be this very streamlining that has caused this MMO behemoth to slide away from the real magic of the early MMOs, to become a sanitized gaming experience that only barely acknowledges its need for virtual face-to-face gameplay. I miss the real interaction with my fellow players that speaks to the oldest traditions of what spawned MMOs: tabletop RPGs. I want player interactions to drive the game experience, from raiding to crafting to questing. The biggest villains and heroes of an MMO should be players, not pre-scripted heroes and playerless cut scenes. The next big MMO, I hope, can make this happen.
Anti-Aliased: Don't hate the playa, hate the developa
So I noticed something last week, in the comments section of my piece on UI design, that finally kicked me back into "endless rant" mode. It's a sentiment that I've noticed in the video game community at large for a while now, but I never really knew how to approach it until recently, thanks to my own life experiences with games. It's an idea that's pretty misinformed on how the industry works. It's the idea that the developers behind any given game are an idiots. According to commenters, they're all blind, non-gamer morons, bumbling around in the dark without the slightest sense of what game mechanics are actually fun. Why are these bumbling morons in the industry? Why don't they listen to the endless array of golden ideas that pop up on game forums? Don't they realize that these revolutionary ideas will turn every game into double-rainbow-crapping unicorns? Why haven't 15% of my readers (a totally accurate statistic, mind you) figured out how sarcastic I'm being at this point in the introduction? This week we're going after some of the common misconceptions about developers and game design, and how making a game as complex as an MMO is really never as easy as you claim it is.
