RPG Journal: Caving

I caved hard last weekend. It reminds me of the days I spent playing WoW during High school in Michigan, when I first came to America.

Gameplay Journal

The caving happened after two weeks of hard work on various projects. (Speaking of which, check them out - Time Trooper and my Portfolio Site Template!)

Every time I finish something substantial, I would add 1 to my "Kill count" for that week. Last week, I pulled multiple all-nighters (can't remember - memory is blurry) and broke my personal record.

The burnout came. Saturday I was still working hard meeting people and talking about various things, but Sunday, and Monday, and a part of Tuesday (that is two hours before this current moment), I dove into the Legend of Korra Season 2, and World of Warcraft, among other things. I watched half of Korra Season 2 in a Marathon, and went on another Marathon of Battleground Grinding for 8 hours or so, finally going to bed at 5 in the morning. Monday I jumped back to WoW after school Monday, went to bed late again (3 p.m.), and played a bit more Tuesday. During all this time I have ~8 papers overdue for 3 different classes.

Highlights and thoughts

- Burnout sucks.
- During my first year in America I spent tons of time on WoW due to culture-shock-induced-social-anxiety. This is similar to that in symptom, in that I ignored the overdue works and procrastinate on entertainment to the point of sacrificing sleep for it. They are also similar in that they are both stress-induced. The difference is that last time was the aftermath of a bigger stressor that's also harder to solve. This time the stressor is smaller and more temporary.
- I spent most of my WoW time farming honor points from PvP - to be exact, by doing BattleGrounds. The win/lose ratio for me was approximately 1/13. It was hell of a grind, yet it was strangely relaxing. Perhaps it's because the goal (to get enough honor points to purchase an heirloom) was the main motivation, and even though i lost every round, I'm still being steadily rewarded for playing.
- Gear and skill are both very important in PvP. This also means that players are being rewarded by both being good at the game and the amount of time they spent playing.
- Planning and cooperation are the most dominant factors in Battlegrounds. The bigger the battlegrounds are, the more significant this is.

RPG Journal: Boost to 90

After going back to WoW last time, I had a ~1 month AFK, because the free 1 month subscription from coming back ran out. It was a tough decision to pre-purchase the new expansion Warlords of Draenor and go back to WoW.

Game Summary

Warlords of Draenor sets the story after Garrosh's defeat by both Alliance and the Horde. He escaped the trial with helps from the Infinity Dragon Flight, Kairoz, and Wrathion. He time-travelled back to an alternative Draenor, and over there helped free the orcs from the fate of serving the Burning Legion. instead, the orcs formed a war machine, the "Iron Horde", and reopened the Dark Portal to attack present Azeroth.

The pre-release events are already happening in the game; The Iron Horde has arrived in the Blasted Land and both Horde and Alliance are sending their best troops there to hold back the Iron Invasion.

Gameplay Journal

I boosted my lvl14 Goblin Rogue. I've always wanted to play a rogue, and Goblin just seem to be a fun race.

The boosted lvl90 character starts at the event at Blasted land. During the quests there I acquire my rogue skill sets incrementally. 

Afterwards I was free to roam the earth however I want, so I checked out some areas in Mist of Pandaria, did a transmorg run in Black Temple with my old friend, ran through couple lvl90 raids, and did some questing in MoP to learn more about the lore.

Highlights and thoughts

- Great idea to introduce the skills slowly and point out their categorization as oppose to allowing the player everything from the beginning of the boost.
- While it doesn't make a difference on goblins or pandarens, new models of other races look good and feel good.
- Running through old contents is great fun. It serves as a break from the massive difficult intense 25 man raids. It also allows you to have a smaller, closer group and do stuff.
- I GOT TO MEET SHAO HAO OMGASLKJFHKALSJBVASIUVIWEWA anyway that was quite an epic introduction to the Pandaren lore and history. It is safe to say I did not see that coming, and it is one of the in-game moments where mechanics, role-playing and narrative combine so perfectly.

- Lorewalker Cho serves as a good NPC to walk you through the lores. See What i did there?
- New Talent system is great. Previously the talent system is very hard to change around, and serves more as a theorycrafting game. Once a patch comes out, there will be a period of time when everyone is trying out new talents. But once some optimized talents come out, there's no game, only research. In this new talent system, changing talents only require a simple item, and there's no more "optimal" talent system, since talents are more about specialization and uniqueness rather than "raising attack by another 3 percent". Now that talents are not interdependent on each other anymore, it's also easier to make these decisions solely depending on the playstyle rather than calculation.
- Scenarios are very enjoyable story-wise, although they still run into the problem of conflicting interest of players who want to experience the story/immersion v.s. players who just want to be the very best, the first that ever was.

RPG Journal: Going back to WoW

So, after 4 years of AFK, I went back to WoW!

Game Summary

Well, I'm sure everyone know what World of Warcraft is about.
I was playing it casually in high school. The expansion back then was Wrath of the Lich King. Much has changed since then, both story and mechanics. Cataclysm, and Mist of Pandaria, came after these.

Sadly I lost the original accounts and its characters (an lvl 80 Tauren Shaman).

Gameplay Journal

I tried out two new characters. A Pandaren monk and a Goblin Rogue. Both Horde because I swore my loyalty to the Horde in my past incarnations.

I leveled the monk to ~ level 40 and the rogue to ~ level 15.

For the pandaren monk, after the initial sequences of quests in the starting zone, I ventured into Ogrimmar, then Azshara, then Ashenvale, then Stonetalon Mountain, then Southern Barren, then Dustwallow Marsh, and then the Thousand Needles, where I stopped my journey.

For the rogue, I didn't go much beyond the initial quests. But!!! His adventure will continue in the next blogpost.

Highlights and thoughts

The Biggest change they put into cataclysm is the changes in the old regions, and that's what I want to experience the most.

In WotLK, I reached a point at level 60  when i just want to stay at that level and enjoy the end-game contents in WoW classic. The end game and its stories felt very separate at that point, because while WoW kept pushing in new expansions, they all happened in new collections of zones (Northrend, Outland). The regions from 1 - 60 only builds up to the end-game contents of level 60, so it's only natural for me to prefer to experience all the excitements there rather than going to Outland.

Cataclysm, however, changed the classic world and revamped all the stories and quests. The new storyline focused around the conflicts between the Horde and the Alliance, particularly around the leadership of Garrosh Hellscream.

Even the new contents from Mist of Pandaria, for example, the discovery of the Wandering Isles by the horde and the Alliance, fit beautifully into the new contents from Cataclysm. The Horde and the Alliance is still at war, and pandaren's starting zone introduced that conflict just at the right time.

Not to mention the large storyline that routed across Azshara, Ashenvale, and Stonetalon mountain. The events surrounding the bomb defined many aspects of Garrosh, the new horde under him, and the new world situation.

There are also more varieties of quests. These designs seem highly influenced by WotLK. I got to man siege engines, shoot down planes, ride on a cart to travel in the Starting Zone as oppose to having to walk endlessly. I haven't got into the game mechanics changes yet in this post, but overall it's been a much more exciting RP experience.

RPG Journal: Everquest Landmark

So, I tried out Everquest Landmark!

Game Summary

Everquest Landmark = Minecraft, but more realistic graphics AND MECHANICS.

In this game, you gather resources, mining from the very earth you stand on, and use them to construct any structure you wish to make.

Gameplay Journal

I used my friend's account to enter the game. After fighting through all the control methods and rules, I headed out for an adventure. I decided to build my base at the top of this peak that is the highest point of the island i spawned on.

When running to that place, I stumbled on many buildings by other players. Unfortunately I did not see any other players. 

I also stumbled into a cave, much like the one in Minecraft, except a lack of monsters and life-threatening agents. The grappling hook shines here, for I can use it to move around inner walls of the cavern and mine easily. After messing around in there for much longer than I thought I would, I headed out for the peak.

I tried to build some decent structures, but the learning curve of building tools was higher than I thought. I gave up after successfully erecting a platform for my stillbirth headquarter.

Highlights and thoughts

- Their territory system is weird + monitization point. You can either build things in the wild, or pay some points to establish a private sandbox area. You either dig up bunch of copper to pay for that, or pay actual money.

- Maybe because of the level of skill required to build a good structure, the player contents are mostly ugly and not fitting to the world.

Essentially, while I was hoping to see this...

... instead I got this.

Some of them aren't bad - they actually are quite humorous. Still, I can see a problem when in this game you are living out epic stories, but turn your head and you see some broken architectures in the air.

The difficulty and building methods in Minecraft is a lot simpler, and theme of Minecraft is a lot lot open-ended. These are probably the reasons why it's more enjoyable to play minecraft which uses simple voxel building, rather than Landmark, which has a set of more powerful tools, but not as easy and fun to get in. The realism also limits the humor aspect.

Production Studio Week 11: Moar Playtest

We decided to have a board that's used to track player's movements, because counting movement cards was proved to be very confusing, especially after having the "discard cures for movement" rule, and having a board just helps with visualizing player's progress and comparison so much. Movements are now mapped to steps on the board.

Different number of players have different number of steps till goal. It'll be similar to Quarriors' board.

We also reduced the number of cures, as well as malaria. We felt that having too many cures lead to having a full hand of useless cures, and constantly discarding to move forward, which is boring and slow. Malaria is very strong, so it's better to have less of them.

Tracy Fullerton at RIT

I had the luck of enjoying a talk from Tracy Fullerton, from USC, about play-centric game design. It was such an inspirational talk and Tracy is a great story teller.
Plus we moved the fruits and cookies outside to Game Design Lab for the late night worker bees to enjoy.

Less is more when it comes to narrative( too!).

One thing she talked about is the benefit of having the narrative less detailed, making it simple and giving it many holes. As the player interacts with the loose framework, they fill the missing parts with their own interpretation and stories, thus making the experience personal. It's just like reading a book, where the readers conjure their own images. Tracy thinks it's paying respect to the player's intelligence.
In The Night Journey, there's no linear narrative. The death is a slow darkness that always unfold upon you. "Reflecting" would slow it down, but it's inevitable in the end. It's different from typical fast death in the games, but it conveys the feeling that it's a magnificent thing.

The importance of first impression and tutorial

"First moment": These games are minimal, and their tutorials are designed so it doesn't throw player out from the experience.
In The Night Journey, the big tree is right next to the player, and the game teaches the player to reflect on it, which is the major mechanic in the game. The teaching is a scripted event, but player deciding to look at and reflect on the big tree is self motivated.
Another example is that the graphic becomes blurry and disturbing when player moves too fast, making the players want to slow down, thus leading them to examine and reflect the surrounding.

Tracy's current project, Walden

Walden has you play as Henry David Thoreau who lived in the wood and wrote Walden about that period of his life. Everything in the game is there because Thoreau wrote about it. Player starts at the sweet and easy summer, collecting foods and fuels. As seasons progress, life in the world turns more challenging and stressful. There's no death in the game. When player failed to achieve his basic needs, gameplay turns into a grind; conversely, when player succeeded in planning ahead, the world becomes more lively. Finding interesting natural events pushes the player to be more curious. The positive feedback loop here is one that increases inspiration and curiosity.
This technique of having the experience as the end goal is quite valuable, for it can be used not only for games, but almost any product that is about creating experiences. The interaction side of game surely amplifies it, for it gives player the power to construct this experience themselves. Games can be lenses that reflects on personal experiences, and that's what Tracy wants to bring to the world.

Tracy's recommandation: The movie La Jetée.
Tracy's work: Cloud (with Jenova Chen), The Night Journey, Walden, A Game.

Production Studio Week 7 ~ 10: Digital Game

We had started brainstorming ideas for the digital game around week 7, but we really started after the break. Here's a few ideas we came up with:

• A platformer game where you dodge things, jump around, and reach safely the other side. (It's like, an obstacle course or something.)
• Mario Kart! Where players throw diarrhea at each other!
• Oregon Trail, where players play as the worm and tries to travel to feet.
• Gerry the Germ, but players can choose to be worm, germ or mosquito.
• Air hockey, but players exchange illnesses instead of puck, and when player's hit they puke.
• Bullet hell dodging game, where you try to survive by dodging illnesses bouncing around the stage.

Some of them (Air Hockey, Bullet Hell Survival) won't have very good control method on a small android screen, some of them would take too long to develop (Mario Kart. 3D is doubling the workload, and even for 2D we still have simpler choices), some of them just don't have a gameplay that allows much educational content in it, so we finally chose to prototype a Tower Defense game from the rest.

• Tower Defense: Could be a Plants V.S. Zombies reskin, or the classic tower defense game where the tower would have a radius, and the monsters travel in a path, and destroying monsters would reward currencies used to upgrade / build towers, and the spaces of towers are limited, and that's a lotta and.
• Some towers are for destroying specific monsters. Chlorinating water tower can deal heavy damage to "germs carried by water".
• Some towers are for having interesting effects on monsters. Water filter can stop / slow down "germs carried by water". Freezing ray tower (!!) can freeze germs and worms once in a while - germs and worms hibernate when temperature reduced to a certain point.
• When some amount of germs/worms/mosquito got to the human body, you lose!
• Levels can be procedural generated, so this can be an infinite game - Although for a demo I'm not sure if we would have time to figure out the math for it. Thoughts?

Next we will write up a design doc, and send it to our colleague David Levine, for review and advice!

GDC Quick Update

I'm attending the Game Developer Conference this year. It's been very busy and fulfilling.

I encourage anyone interested in this field to attend. It brings inspirations to the workforce, showcases good tools for the craft, makes connections between all kinds of people working on games, and can be quite relaxing sometimes.

Quick glance:

 - Expo: Many new techs. Much virtual reality / augmented reality / alternative interface. Also much services for developers / animators / artists.
 - Career center: Many big companies. Much advice. Much business card. Such internships / job opportunities. More business environments, it seems.
 - Play booth: Many smaller studios. Some cool projects. Easy to talk to, though opportunities not guaranteed. Surprising amount of "alternative" studios. Some makes more artsy games that work with music. Some makes educational games, or at least entertaining game with a splash of reality. (cough cough @decause @StephenJacobs)
 - Alt. Ctrl. GDC: My favorite place at GDC. It showcases different control methods for games, which might not sound like too much, but actually brings many more interesting games to the table. It's not just a new way of input. It's a new way of playing. People there are also very easy to talk to. I met Droqen who created Starseed Pilgrim, and he has two games with unique interfaces showcased there. I asked if he's doing well financially and what he does for a living now, he told me he just makes whatever game he wants to make now, and hopefully get another game out and be successful before the money from Starseed Pilgrim runs out. Gotta dig that rockstar life.
 - Career Theater: They host talks there and they are good, but be sure be sure be sure to arrive early for big talks.
 - Indie Megabooth: This is where indie developers hang out and show their games before they get mainstream and lose that indie hat. Can try out many games, many of them weird(ly wonderful), and all of them looking for press.

The biggest I got out of GDC, is broadening my sights for what I can do in this industry, and where I should go afterwards to reach my goal of pushing the boundaries between media, and improving Chinese Game Industry.




(Sorry about the doge type. Much sorry.)

An entertaining game design...

So, my Game Design Professor gave us a homework, "Worst Idea Ever".
Basically, we had to brainstorm as many games as possible by mashing different genres and themes together, then write a design doc for the worst idea. Ever.

I came up with so many terrible combinations! Eventually the idea I chose was "Relaxation Augmented Reality War". Well, the design turned out to be pretty good! So with no further ado, here's the paper:

Jerks Must Die!

ABSTRACT

We all have encountered some really annoying people in some point of life, admit it or not. Unfortunately, these people are often the people we would have to deal with on a daily basis. A really bad boss, a lazy co-worker, a loud neighbor, an ex that keeps coming back, a stalker living in the lab you have to go to... In this reality, we are powerless against these sources of frustration, can't do nothing about them due to the ethics of human society; and that is good, for we need to behave on our inner angel and with rationality. The feelings however cannot be released, and they linger on us, exhausting our mental energy.

Won't it be nice to release these stresses? What if, in a fantasy world, you can act out these feelings on the people you hate, without suffering consequences?

BASIC MECHANICS / NARRATIVE CONTEXT

In Jerks Must Die! The player uses an augmented reality device to mark people as target. The device then record these jerks, create an army of digital copies, and let the player beat, stab, shoot, smash, rip apart, burn, bomb, nuclear-bomb, rickroll, run over with a truck, and Shoryugen the living *beep* out of them.

The genre is relaxation while the theme is war, and augmented reality is a major part of the technology to make this fantasy more expressive.

Obviously, this would be a digital game. With the current technology, the best way of executing it is to take the portrait picture of the “jerk”, use it as the face of a digital “doll”, then let the player beat the army of jerks on their computer screen / mobile device screen. If the augmented reality technology allows, we could generate digital copies of the exact same person on, say, a Google Glass display, while tracking the motion of player, so that players really feel like destroying them themselves. The jerks will have computer generated facial expressions reflecting their pain and fear. Oh and when they don't get attacked, they put on an annoying face.

Because the goal of the game is to let the player release their fury on the jerks, it will be negative to have a lose state; instead, each action player uses on the jerks will amount to points and the goal of player is to get as many points as possible in a time limit. The player starts with basic attacks: beating, stabbing, etc. The points upgrade them and buys new attacks. Other mechanics to help the game to be more interesting can be combo counter that increases point multiplier, achievement systems that awards 50 TRIPLE KILL! MASS MURDERER! Etc., but that would be the basic mechanics. The game also has more social components, displaying the daily / monthly high score, and allowing the user to record videos of game footage and share.

ELEMENTS OF GREATNESS / WEAKNESSES

Although it has an intense gameplay, the purpose and the result of playing this game would still be relaxation. If motion tracking can be implemented, then it would even be more effective, because physical activities increases blood calcium, which stimulates the production of dopamine. It also produces endorphin, which is one of the chemicals generated while relaxing. This game could be very successful, because it fulfills people's need of coping stress in their lives and it fulfills their power fantasies. Some may question the moral of such product, thinking that fantasizing about killing people would only strengthen the negative feelings and worsen their relationships, or even turning us into killers. Besides, what would the “jerk“ feel when they found out they have been targeted? But it is only natural for individuals to develop coping mechanism against stressors, and we only gave them a good way without hurting anyone in real life. Of course, the concerns aren't unreasonable, but there are ways to help fixing them.

In order to reduce the danger of blurring the line between fantasy and reality, urging people to become actual mass murderers, the graphics of killing had to be quite unreal and designed in a hilarious manner. Non-realistic styles – such as cartoon - are preferred, to create the feeling that players have entered the wonderland outside this real world, where they could act as themselves, while not being their self in the real world. Or put it this way: the player would need to If this was made hilarious enough, it could also be used as a joke with friends, showing them how they got beat up and laughing at it together.

As for the concern of worsening people's relationships, strengthening the negative feelings, I would actually argue the opposite. People cope with stresses with the goal of facing the stressors better. When an individual is relaxed and happy, he/she can be more productive and friendlier, and a friendly attitude is always more likely to get a friendly feedback. The game was made to help the players relax, and hopefully face their stressor, face their stressor, and remove their stressor by stopping getting stressed by them. The final goal of targeting someone is to remove them from the target list, or to play the game as a friendly joke instead of stress relief. The last concern is about the consequences of the “jerks” finding out they've been targeted. I really don't have a solution for that, but anyone with sense would not play the game right in front of their stressors unless if the player really wants to damage their relationship more. And if that's the case, hey, a game won't really make a difference.

PRODUCTION POTENTIAL

The game is definitely worth prototyping and trying out, both just as a profitable app that has the potential of going viral, and as an interesting social experiment. The augmented reality part would have to come slower and in little chunks, since technology hasn't advanced to the point where everyone has Google Glass. (But that day is coming!) For now, the previously mentioned version played with portrait photos of the target should be able to be easily prototyped. Now please hold on to the rail for the waves of controversy.

“It was the best of ideas, it was the worst of ideas.”