Game Design Advance

Not all that.

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As many of you know, I created a game called Political Capital to serve as my thesis at ITP. It’s a game about running for President — or more specifically, the game expresses the electoral system and the political election process at a surface level and plays something like Risk. Lately, because I will be presenting my thesis soon (May 6 at 12:20pm) and also because of the topsy-turvy nomination process the Democrats are serving up, I’ve been thinking a lot about our political election systems. I figured it was time to dedicate a post to them and begin a conversation among game designers of how we can improve what we’ve got. Lord knows there’s plenty of room for improvement.

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I generally consider Tim Rogers to be the poor man’s Erik Wolpaw, but this is good:

The Blue Shell: . . . well.

The Blue Shell is a sign of the times; it’s the first nail in the coffin of game design. Know that I come from a proud heritage of people who play Virtua Fighter 5 and genuinely enjoy losing because it teaches you something.

If you’re in a losing position and have been for a good amount of time, an algorithm behind the scenes kicks in and awards you a Blue Shell. Use it, and it rushes to the head of the pack and crashes into the person in first place with absolute certainty. Other drivers in the general area will also be decimated.

I’m sure that the general idea of the Blue Shell when it first appeared, in Super Mario Kart 64, was that a person in last place would obtain it, shudder with joy, and then be filled with the turgid urge to claw their way to the head of the pack and use it when within strategic range of the leaders.

In the current “videogame industry”, though, things like the Blue Shell are communistic concessions thrown to the people who Aren’t Getting Better. If my little brother, say, spent twenty hours a day doing something other than playing videogames — that is to say, if he sucked at videogames — the Blue Shell would be his “Best Thing Ever”: something to use when bitter and bored, to ruin the chances of the person who’s just so happening to win. The Blue Shell, simply described, is an easy way to strike back at the person who’s beating everyone, when you are the one losing to everyone. If that’s not heady, frothy communism in action, I really don’t know what the hell is. How is this a more family-friendly experience than killing hookers in Grand Theft Auto? If anything, the sugar-coating just makes the arsenic more dangerous, and it can’t be too hard to prove, from here, that Nintendo fanboys — big, sweaty, mouth-breathing — are actually individuals of scarier morals than most self-mutilating suicide-bombing terrorists.

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We previously posted that Jason Rohrer would be coming to speak at NYU tomorrow, Friday, April 11th. However, we have been informed that due to illness that talk has been postponed until a later date. When we find out when this later date is we’ll be sure to let you all know!

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From the NYTimes:

And Behind Door #1, A Fatal Flaw

Basically when you are presented 3 blind choices (where one offers a reward) and you randomly pick one (door A) — but are then shown one of the duds (door C) now leaving only 2 choices (door A or B) and are given a chance to rethink your selection — you should ALWAYS change your pick (door B).

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So I’m in a bit of an interesting quagmire: remember my post a few weeks back about the NCAA tourney pools? Well, low and behold, I’m in 4th place in a 250 person pool with quite a bit of *cough* pride on the line (enough for the IRS to be interested, let’s say). It’s an interesting dilemma that might be best phrased in this way: if someone walked up to you on the street and offered you a month’s rent but you had to flip of a coin to get it, would you risk that OR take half of a month’s rent guaranteed without having to flip the coin? This is basically what hedging a bet is all about, because only fools would flip the coin.

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I know I have been MIA for the past couple of months, but I have been extremely busy.

Anyways, I thought I would let everyone know about the upcoming Gaming Seminar, tomorrow April 4th. This time I will be speaking, which I hope will be as interesting as Charles. I plan on talking about Games at NYU, along with my first attempt at the definition of games. I am not done making the presentation, so things may change in the next 20 hours, but for the most part, it looks like it will be lots of fun.

For more information, check out the blog @ http://itp.nyu.edu/gaming/ I should be going on first at 1.
I hope to see everyone there.

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There are a lot of rhythm games out there, Guitar Hero, PaRappa the Rapper, and most of them are fun. Having all the combinatorial depth of Simon Says they are nonetheless incredibly compulsive. They are also though, very much rhythm games, and for anyone who has actually played an instrument they have about as much to do with music as a lightgun game has to do with firing a pistol. The motions are right, but the feeling isn’t quite there.

With all the grinding and equipping and sorting units Patapon doesn’t feel like a rhythm game. That’s because for the most part it’s a strategy game, with another game in place of clicking. Your army moves along a 2D, side-scrolling plane not because you’ve pressed a certain button but because you’ve tapped out the correct sequence of buttons along with a set beat. One sequence will move them forward, another will make them attack, etc. As you encounter enemies you have to string together these different sequences in order to repel and counter their attacks. You then go back to camp, create units, equip units, and maybe play a rhythm-based minigame for extra resources.

Patapon is a step in the right direction towards real music games. While you’re still limited to the game’s internal metronome you’re given some leeway in the notes, and at its best moments it’s your ability to improvise that allows you to succeed. Though the game eventually leans on boss fights that require nothing more that rote memorization, you can see in the core mechanic of Patapon another game where each battle would require more interesting and complicated improvisation. If any of the unique tunes created had a tenth of the personality of a StarCraft match, then that would start to feel right.

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