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Thought | Monday, August 5, 2019

In some games, you get a dog companion who...

In some games, you get a dog companion who follows you around and sniffs out treasure. I think I first experienced this in Secret of Evermore and most recently in Dragon Quest Builders 2.

Now that I’ve spent a lot of time walking a dog in real life, I want to make a game with a dog companion who sniffs out treasure - but half the time, instead of finding treasure, they eat something off the ground. You can’t see what it is, but it has a 25% chance of inflicting a random status ailment.

Shared Link | Sunday, August 4, 2019

Achievement Design 101

A guide about how to stop putting terrible achievements in games.

It’s nearly ten years old, but this fourteen-point guide by Greg McClanahan of Kongregate is still by far the best resource I’ve ever seen for learning how to design good achievements and avoid common pitfalls. I still say it should be required reading for anyone designing achievements.

Shared Link | Saturday, August 3, 2019

The time I tried to ruin Halo 2

A former Microsoft user researcher writes about how you can’t always trust the data in front of you

John Hopson, former Microsoft user experience researcher, tells a story from the development of Halo 2. I’d love to get more insights like this into how UX research has shaped game design and what lessons have been learned from it.

This particular case is a reminder that people are often incorrect about what they’ll enjoy, but also and more pointedly a reminder that it’s easy to misconstrue your own data. Research telling you that users expect to dislike a design choice doesn’t tell you that they actually will dislike it. It’s important to design user tests carefully and understand what they actually teach you, lest you confidently lead yourself astray.

Review | Friday, August 2, 2019

★★★★☆

Capsule Review: Dragon Quest Heroes II

An action role-playing game set in a crossover Dragon Quest world featuring some original characters as well as some fan favorites from previous games. Despite being the direct sequel to a Musou game, Dragon Quest Heroes II takes several steps away from that formula. The large-scale hack-and-slash battles with multiple simultaneous threats to manage are mostly gone and the emphasis is on individual combat encounters between a four-character party and small groups of monsters in an interconnected and semi-open world.

Expectation... Dragonment?

I think that Dragon Quest Heroes II hurt its marketing and reception by titling itself in a misleading way (much like Bubsy: Paws on Fire! did).

Dragon Quest Heroes (the first one) is one of several Musou crossover games (see also One Piece: Pirate Warriors, Hyrule Warriors, Fire Emblem Warriors, etc. etc.). These games feature Dynasty Warriors-like (a.k.a. Musou) gameplay flavored with a few mechanics inspired by the particular crossover franchise, set in the world of and starring the characters of that franchise. These games tend to be loaded with fan service for the crossover franchise, but it’s hard to imagine anyone who doesn’t enjoy Musou gameplay could enjoy these games.

The first Dragon Quest Heroes was absolutely one of these games, but Dragon Quest Heroes II is not. As I’ve mentioned briefly, Dragon Quest Heroes II pushes things much farther in the Dragon Heroes direction, and while it still has clear Musou influences the result is really an action RPG. Large-scale battles do happen but they are the exception rather than the rule, and there’s almost no tactical management of multiple simultaneous threats. The emphasis is much more on individual combat encounters between your party and small groups of enemies in an interconnected and semi-open world. I really enjoyed this (though there’s clear room for improvement in a sequel) but it’s definitely not Musou.

So, we have a sequel that’s in a different genre from its predecessor. And as much as I might wish otherwise, Musou is niche. Plenty of people are uninterested in Dynasty Warriors and its crossovers. Those people, even if they were Dragon Quest fans, would likely have ignored Dragon Quest Heroes and paid even less attention to its sequel - they never would have learned it’s not a Musou game, even if they like action RPGs.

Meanwhile, the people drawn to Dragon Quest Heroes specifically because it is Musou have a high chance of feeling disappointed or outright betrayed by the sequel not being Musou. I’m saddened by this Steam review of the game, which starts by acknowledging the game is not really Musou and proceeds to list many of the game’s “mistakes,” the supposed-worst of which are just consequences of the game not being Musou - such as enemy groups being smaller and enemies having more health than you’d expect in a Musou game. (While I’m not going to accuse the reviewer of being biased against the game, I will note that most other listed “mistakes” didn’t match my experience or were misleading/exaggerated/inaccurate. Though I do agree that it’s crap that enemy aggro causes your character to stop running to draw their weapons and walk more slowly.)

The review closes with the question, “When a musou fails to meet the requirements to even be a good musou, what’s the ♥♥♥♥ing point?” Of course the response is that this game isn’t a Musou because it’s an action RPG - but can you blame the reviewer for expecting a numbered sequel to a Musou game to be a Musou game?

By titling itself as the direct numbered sequel to a Musou crossover and then not being a Musou crossover, Dragon Quest Heroes II made itself harder to find for the people who’d like it and set up the people who did play it to be disappointed. It’s a shame, because I actually think the game is quite good at being what it is - but even I came very close to never playing it and was surprised by what it turned out to be.

Review | Wednesday, July 31, 2019

★★★☆☆

Capsule Review: Muse Dash

A deceptively-simple Japanese-style rhythm game with a two-button control scheme, energetic soundtrack, smooth (if cheesecake-laden) visuals, and flow-inducing gameplay for a range of skill levels. As with BIT.TRIP RUNNER or Bubsy: Paws on Fire!, the game is framed as a side-scroller with the player character constantly running to the right, but the player doesn’t have the freedom of an actual rhythm platformer.

Score Forth and Multiply

Many games use numeric scores to rate your performance. In some, the same performance will always earn the same score; in others, there are permanent or equippable bonuses acquired over time that apply a multiplier to increase your score and the same performance will earn different scores depending on what multipliers are in effect.

I think the persistent score multipliers are almost always a bad idea as they decouple performance and feedback. I’ll explain.

Shared Link | Sunday, July 28, 2019

Brendan Greene: "It's crazy, the hate I receive. I just have to ignore it"

At Gamelab 2019, Vlambeer's Rami Ismail talked to PUBG's creator about the darker side of making a global phenomenon

Rami Ismail of Vlambeer and Brendan Greene of PUBG discuss some of their experiences with online threats and harassment they’ve received from people who play their games.

It is completely insane that we’ve reached the point where having a successful game means people who are frustrated with bugs or slow updates or design choices will sometimes respond with intimidation or violence and this is just normal. We call it “toxic behavior” or “fan entitlement” and just encourage developers to protect their personal details as best they can. It’s just the price of success.

Shared Link | Saturday, July 27, 2019

When We Made... Yooka-Laylee - MCV

Yooka-Laylee has the kind of story that we love to dissect here

Yooka-Laylee is an object lesson in many ways, but most of the focus has been on the customer side - the perspective of the developers is also fascinating and useful. Here, Playtonic discusses their experiences and lessons learned. To me, the key takeaways are:

Nostalgic fans may claim they want want something exactly like their old favorites, but they actually want something like how they remember their favorites (which I have said before).
Promising specific game features/modes as part of a Kickstarter campaign is incredibly risky because then you can’t revise the design later if it ends up not working very well.

Thought | Friday, July 26, 2019

The problem isn't loot boxes; it's whale hunting

I’m not very optimistic that the right regulation will come out of this whole loot box controversy. For one thing, it’s very hard to write a law that prevents evil loot boxes while not preventing similar things that aren’t evil. But even if you solve that - loot boxes aren’t the real problem.

The real problem is the reliance on “whales” to monetize games. This causes games to be designed to be bottomless money pits to exploit vulnerable users. Loot boxes are just the current favorite way to build a money pit; there are many other strategies and if we block loot boxes designers will pivot to those other strategies.

If we wanted to actually solve this through regulation, we need to start from “How do we prevent whale hunting?” rather than “How do we prevent loot boxes?” I don’t know how to write either one of these laws, but even if we figure out a really great loot box law, we’re treating a single symptom rather than curing the disease.