A year has passed

Greetings again! It’s been a while. First, let me recap what has happened.

In January 2015 I enrolled in the Oulu Game Lab program. For those who don’t know what it is, basically you get a group of people in pairs working on a game concept. At three points you cull half of the projects and move the culled personnel to the remaining ones, until you have a solid game demo and a team that you can transform into a game and a company, respectively. The program had two halves: The Demo Path and Game Path. During demo path we made a demo, and during the game path we expanded it into a game. Both halves took about 5 months (actually six, because I didn’t take any vacations.)

I have now walked both paths and the end result was a company of like-minded game developers, now under the banner of Happy Hobgoblin and a game called Nyheim. If you are interested in the game itself, go check out its Indiegogo page over yonder.

Actually, the page is the reason I’m writing this post. As stated previously, I have been quiet in this blog because I have had other forums where I could discuss my craft, like the guys at the office and CRYO. I’ll see if I have the time and energy to remedy that (the quiet, not the existence of forums), but for now I’ll probably be focusing on the campaign. Of which I want to talk to you.

The game business is staggeringly difficult. First of all, you need time to develop and nurture the project into a good one. Time is expensive. Every hour put into a game project is an hour away from a job that brings in money to put a roof over your head and bread into your gullet. I have been extremely fortunate with my own life: I live alone in a small flat, don’t own a car, don’t drink or smoke. My meager, dancing-on-the-poverty-line “income” (unemployment support) is enough for me, and I typically can toss a couple of dozen € to my savings account each month. But the others in the company, our company, have different lives. They have significant others, families, children. For them, the long days at the office with only a promise of payment down the line is undoubtedly straining and difficult. It is not my situation that I worry about; It is theirs.

So I would like to ask you to help us. Help us prove that you don’t need a wealthy benefactor or a devil’s contract with a publisher to create games. Your contribution isn’t just support towards Nyheim: It is an investment in us: A group of talented and happy people who like to give other people experiences. Fun. Intrigue. Thoughts. With the crowdfunding support we can build Nyheim into an even greater game and hopefully it will aid in our future projects. So if you are at least remotely interested in our game project, with a price of a pint (or a lotto ticket) you can give support to a group of fantastic people.

And if you don’t like Nyheim, I understand. A single-player die rolling strategy game with board game aesthetic? It’s not for everyone. But the smallest, yet maybe the most important contribution you can make is spread the word. Share a link to the campaign or maybe to this post. Not only will you help us reach more people, you might give your friend a chance to play a game they might fall in love with.

So yeah, this is what I’ve been doing. I’ll try to post some more thoughts here every now and then.

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Supposed to be anything

I was recently in a week-long trip in Tallinn, on a Tallinn Summer School course called Serious Games. The course was a letdown, mostly due to mismanaged time and ridiculous expectations for getting a software game done. But the most infuriating part of the ordeal were the attitudes of some of the attendees.

Since we were instructed to make our own game for a serious purpose, I took this opportunity to flesh out a bit a game idea that I had brewing around: A card game where you slowly drown in bureacracy and try to be the last man standing. The mechanics were pretty simple (if a tad math-heavy), but the feeling was entirely on-spot: Every new law and regulation meant you were losing money and at some points it became cheaper to just fire people. It was oppressive and depressive, just the way it was supposed to be.

But the people in my group complained that it was not fun. Games are supposed to be fun.

That statement has always boiled my blood. Games are a media. Games are not supposed to be fun. Games are supposed to be anything they want. Saying that games are supposed to be fun is like saying candy is supposed to be sweet. While it sounds reasonable, that statement ignores sour candies, salmiakki candies and all other weird regional things. If that statement were true, our culinary range would be depressingly narrow.

One example from another media: Schindler’s List. It’s a movie about a holocaust. I doubt it would be appropriate to have a fun and entertaining movie about an unfortunate event that killed an insane amount of people. Why do movies get to have all sorts of experiences, but games are narrowed to just fun jumping and shooting around? It’s because games still bear the remnants of the stigma of being entertainment for kids, and as such they should be easy and friendly. But that is not the case. Games are a powerful tool for experience that can make you feel, impart knowledge and tell messages. And we probably still haven’t figured out a lot of stuff games can be utilized for.

Besides that, fun is a nebulous concept. Even if games were just toys, the statement would be useless. It would be like saying food is supposed to be delicious. The statement is A) obvious and B) does not acknowledge the fact that a delicious lobster is a very different beast from delicious wok. Someone who does not like lobster will always say that this lobster meal was not good.

So I implore you, dear reader, to stop telling and expecting games to be fun. Most games are just easygoing and lighthearted enjoyment and that is fine. That is what a lot of people like. But if there are some games that are not created to bring laughter and smile to the player, that is fine too. Let creativity flow.

The Liberty of Vigilance

A long time ago, people played roleplaying games. The standard was that a party full of different fantasy versions of yourself, like elves, bards and wizards, entered a dungeon and tried to gather as much treasure as possible. Then there was the DM, who opposed these dungeoneers’ efforts by designing the dungeon to be as difficult as possible. But the system allowed the players to have tools with which to navigate these traps and difficulties. When faced with a mysterious door, a statue or perhaps a trap door, having or not having a 10-foot pole was all the difference in the world.

This created this need for preparedness for the players. When you had the possibility to stock up on supplies, you needed to think of everything and carry everything. If you didn’t, then the GM’s death traps would get you. This sense has carried over in the culture of roleplaying. Meticulous inventory gathering, encumberance and looting everything that might even remotely be useful.

As a person who likes to focus on the narrative, the characters and the themes, rather than the actual simulation, I feel that this instinct to log and define what you are carrying at any given time interferes with roleplaying a lot. When people open the gear tables and see what they can buy, it slows down the game.

That is why I am immensely grateful for a single skill in the FFG Star Wars roleplaying game system (which really needs a proper name for itself): Vigilance. Vigilance has several uses: Determining initiative when the character has prepared for combat, resisting sneakiness when the character is not actively searching for it, and determining whether the character is carrying some piece of equipment.

The last part is incredibly liberating, since no longer will the players have to lug around a convenience store’s worth of stuff. Whenever a situation arises for which the players have prepared for, but did not remember to mention taking the equipment with them, you can just roll Vigilance. With a success you remembered to pack the binoculars, or climbing gear or something. If it is very unlikely that the character would have prepared for the problem, just increase the difficulty.

It also makes money useful mid-action. I was planning on allowing the players to retroactively purchase stuff that would be perfect for the situation with a Vigilance check, assuming that they have the necessary encumberance for having been carrying it. This way I would encourage the players to just keep a pool of possessions from which they can draw it as the need arises. It removes a lot of unnecessary bookkeeping, which is always wonderful.

I Will Be Judging

All right, I encountered a game that frustrates me to no end. A game whose introduction and promised playing experience conflicted with the actual reality so much that I haven’t been able to even start it again, even though I want to. So much.

The game in question is Gods Will Be Watching, by Deconstructeam. I first encountered it from my Steam News, and was immediately intrigued. A) It had well-animated pixel art, B) It was about making hard choices and sacrifices, and C) It was cheap. It promised an emotional journey akin to The Walking Dead. Sold.

The first hairline fracture appeared when I checked the top reviews. The first comment was about it being hard as hell, “…even after the mercy update…”. When pixel art and difficulty collide, the result is usually me ejecting away, furious and frustrated. But I still had hope. I opened the game.

Title screen was minimal and very atmospheric. I chose new game. Then the game asks me to choose the difficulty and presents to me a staggering amount of options with descriptions. There’s the Original difficulty, “how the game was designed to be played”, a lighter version of the original difficulty, a puzzle version and a lighter puzzle version (?) and a narrative version. The descriptions felt a bit smug and condescending after reading the comment and suddenly I was a bit apprehensive. But since I believe in designer vision, I chose the original (plus there are achievements for playing on it).

I began the game, which was very light on detail and characterization, but I was forgiving since it would probably come during play. Then gameplay began, without almost any tutorials. I was tasked with keeping a bunch of hostages calm. I panicked. Is this real time? Turn-based? What are my options? Soon I figured that it was a point-and-click interface and turn-based: Time would progress after each of my actions. But I was a bit uncertain which actions would progress time. And then I lost to some effect. At this point I realized that it was a rapid retry game.

After several more explorational tries, I figured the game out and was disappointed as hell. It was a juggling game. I had to keep the security from making an entry, figure out the behavior of each hostage on the fly, progress a hack (which is the goal) and keep network security away. There were no difficult choices of sacrifice and morality. It was just optimization and cold calculation. It was brutal in addition of random chance arbitrarily negating my progress. In an instant I lost all interest in the characters, hostages and the story. I was just concentrating on how to get to the next chapter of the game.

Then I ejected from the game, furious and frustrated. I checked whether someone had made an online guide that would open the mechanics a bit more and found out that it was an expanded Ludum Dare project. After trying the original free version, I closed the browser and have not still returned.

But to be honest, I’m being unfair on the game and its creators. It is nothing but commendable that they included a lot of options for different kinds of people to enjoy the game. I also read too much to the difficulty descriptions, which are encouraging and nicely written. The mechanics and the game has nothing wrong in it, as far as I could tell. The vitriol that I managed to generate was because of the conflict of expectations, which poisoned the rest of my opinions.

Yet I still think that difficult choices should be differentiated from game progress. The hostage situation is a good example. I think the designers intended the sacrifice and hard choices to be whether you kill one of the hostages to dissuade the others from trying anything. (And in later in the game, to whether sacrifice one of the partymembers to save the others) But the weight of the choice is watered down by the fact that if you had just played better, you could have avoided the choice altogether. I might be talking out of my posterior since I haven’t still reopened the game, but there is an achievement for keeping everyone alive. That’s where I’m basing all of this.

The Walking Dead did difficult choices well. First of all, it set them up for a long time. It characterized and established both characters whose survival I would have to choose later on. Then it presents that situation quite suddenly and without warning. And it gives you a short timer to make the choice. In the frantic seconds in which I would have to choose between the character I liked or the character that was a better choice for the group I felt desperation set in. And after the choice it takes a long time before a situation where you can die happens in order to seal the deal. You can’t go back. You are stuck with what you’ve done. Sure, this is not organic, but it does not need to be.

And that is why I resent Gods Will Be Watching. It gave a wrong impression of itself to me. I don’t know whether this was a mistake of the game’s marketing or whether it was just because of my recent experiences with games with similar themes. But I resolved to play it, if not the way the designers intended. And I also resolved to like it.

Flaw of the Empire

Some of you might remember my high opinion of the then-new Star Wars roleplaying game, Edge of the Empire. Now, after one campaign and a lot of reflection, I can state that the system is flawed. And not in the way that Storyteller is flawed (if you ignore everything but the character sheet, then it is playable), but flawed in the way that even considering playing the system is a daunting task.

The sole culprit is the combat. Edge’s dice mechanics are still brilliant and the best for narrative play. They give a lot of information which the players can use to narrate the situation and are best suited for very light and narrative play. The combat, however, is very detailed and rules-heavy. Every shot or strike is rolled. Damage is recorded, critical hits are rolled, advantages and threat generated and rolls modified. It is a slog similar to D&D, which slows down the flow of the game.

Even worse, it cannot be ignored, for about half of the character classes in the game are combat-specific, with lot of talents that allow the character to tweak and tune their combat performance. If I were to implement a quick combat system, these characters would be essentially worthless, or a lot of their abilities would just ignore one black die or add one blue die in specific circumstances. So that is not an option.

The only remaining option for running Edge without the cumbersome combat system would be to ignore most of the content of the game, and that is a very poor option. Or you could just avoid combat altogether, but then again it is Star Wars. That would be like making a pizza without the tomato sauce.

Then there is the Obligation system. I still like it, but using it means not having any overarching plots in the game. With 50 Obligation the players will spend 50% of their time running their Obligation’s errands. My Space Station campaign suffered a bit for it, because the characters did not have time to spend on the station itself. So if you don’t have an idea for a plot for the game, Obligation is a blessing. The errands give the players something to do and when the Obligation does not trigger, I’m sure the players have accumulated some backlog to keep themselves busy. Nice.

But. As I said, I love the dice. Right now I have made a ruleset for Endless Adventure, a roleplaying game set in the galaxy of Endless Space. I tested the core with a quick Deus Ex-inspired campaign and it worked to my satisfaction. I’ll write about it later.

How to win at Magic 2014 4-way FFA

Here is my very subjective guide on a very limited subject: How to get good at Magic 2014 multiplayer. I actually do not have any stats, but I’d like to think that I’ve enjoyed a higher-than-average win-loss ratio with these lessons. I’ll leave it to you to determine whether it can be applied to other games or not.

Know the game

This is a fairly obvious one. Understand how triggers, timing and the stack works.

Know the opposition

One of the most important things is to know all the decks and their capabilities. This is because you need to understand their potential threat in the game itself. Is this deck fast? Does it have sweeps? Creatures that are hard to remove? Game-changing enchantments? You need to have accurate information in order to gain maximum use out of it.

Make yourself known

First of all, open the chat and say hello. Make friendly comments about people’s nicknames, their avatars and other non-game related stuff. Develop a personality. When I’m gaming, I am constantly cracking jokes, mostly at the expense of myself. Try to get people to like you, or at least make them intrigued. This will hopefully lead to the point that when you and another player are in an equally vulnerable situation, the others will not target you first.

Share information

At any given moment, give fair and accurate assessment of the table situation. If someone can barge through any player’s defenses, comment on that. If someone seems to be saving mana, comment. This is where you establish yourself as a good and observational player to your opponents. Comment even on your own weaknesses, strengths and so-on. Give rope to players who seem to be new. You want to seem like the wise, fair and funny grandmaster.

Identify the tipping point

The tipping point is when a single player gets too much power to be shot down. The Guardians of Light is a good example. When its Kor Spiritdancer gets Daybreak Coronet, the pool of reliable answers gets very small, and lifelink ensures that the player gets harder and harder to kill. So you want to identify when a player is getting close to the tipping point. When that happens, you should be very vocal about it. This is where your knowledge and the respect of other players pays off: You should be able to turn the other players against the one getting close to winning.

Avoid being in the lead

Most of the time, however, no-one is getting near the tipping point. Usually in a four-player FFA, there are two players who have the strongest tables, one player who can defend himself somewhat and one player who suffers from mana screw or has other problems. Usually, you actually want to be the second or third most powerful player. This is because you can direct the other players against the one in the lead, who will most likely have tough time dealing with all the different sorts of threats thrown at him.

Do not overextend

The other reason you don’t want to have the lead at the start is because most decks start to activate around the 5-6 mana mark, and people have saved all their big removals and sweeps to that point. Someone is probably going to play All is Dust or Day of Judgement or something of the sort. Hopefully, your loyal vassals will have put all their resources on the table to fight the biggest threat (that you have helpfully pointed out), leaving only you and the player who got mana screw’d with hand cards.

Be desperate

Downplay your own game and situation. When the attention is elsewhere, lament your own inability to affect the game, and when the attention is on you, keep up your defenses, but avoid overextending. If someone seems to have a vendetta on you, relegate yourself to a vassal. ”I won’t probably win this one, but by my hamster, I will bring down the leader!”

Seize the moment

And finally, when the other players have exhausted themselves fighting each other and you see a chance to go over the tipping point, do it. Exterminate the greatest opposition to you, measured either in capacity or intent (meaning kill the player whose creatures and deck can torpedo your plans, or kill the player who is willing to attack you even if it’ll cost him the game).

So these are the general principles under which I operate in Magic multiplayer and in other similar free-for-all multiplayer games. I don’t know if I am con enough that these strategies really work, but at least playing the mindgame on top of the actual game is intriguing and fun to me, and that’s what really counts. To summarise, you should always play with more than one deck.

Nomen est omen

I would like to think of myself as a very open-minded individual. When faced with new things, I try to let go of my preconceptions and find a way to appreciate them. This is why prejudice and assumptions are one of the few things that truly annoy me in a profound level. But difficulties arise when things specifically rely on the preconceptions.

Duels of the Planeswalkers is a good example. The series rides on the well-established name of Magic the Gathering, but (at least at first) omits a lot of the elements that make Magic great. Deckbuilding, tapping specific lands, artifacts, etc. (Yes, almost all of these have been fixed, or will be by the next edition). The first games received harsh criticism for it, because their preconceptions did not match reality. They did not concern me, because I saw what the series wanted it to be: Baby’s First Magic. The system was solid, and the omitted features (the reason for which I suspect was technical limitations) were countered with simplicity. The decks were simple to give the players a balanced, pre-made selection. Full deckbuilding would transform the meta pretty badly. I, for one, enjoyed the chance to pit pre-made decks against each other.

The reason why this topic came to me is XCOM Declassified. The game was on sale in Steam, so I bought it for the sake of curiosity. I had heard that people did not like the game because it was not “true XCOM”. While I agreed that it probably would have been better if the game had been under some other IP, I was curious because I did not spot any criticisms for any technical faults. So I delved inside, consciously keeping an open mind.

What I learned was that the game felt a lot like Mass Effect 2. A third person shooter with tactical elements thrown in. Not bad, but nothing groundbreaking. The XCOM-elements were there, but I felt more like a grunt in an XCOM-facility rather than the ephemeral commander. But it was fine. The only things that ruffled my feathers was the long stretches of walking in the base, which broke my rule of Don’t Waste The Player’s Time.

When the game neared its end, I was ready to declare it a curiosity to play if you really want. But then, in the end, the game took on some pretty awesome twists.

Here is a courtesy Spoiler Warning for those who can appreciate them.

It turned out that the artifact at the start of the game tutorial, which was kind of glossed over, held an Ethereal alien that bonded with the main character and kind of merged with him. It manifested as an invisible entity hovering just above and behind the main character, controlling his actions, communicating with his team in an instant fashion that bordered on telepathy. It guided the main character’s choices as much as he influenced them. Kind of like… the player. I was dumbstruck.

When the player has a chance of communicating with another Ethereal, he is given a choice: To either allow humanity to perish in order to halt the alien menace (which was threatening even the Ethereals), or help and respect humanity. Pretty standard stuff, but something I did not expect from this game. I choose the latter, but the main character, (Carter. The character was so standard that I had to recheck the name) rebels, threatening to either destroy them both if the Ethereal does not leave him alone. Then the game just tosses choices at you. Do you leave or call his bluff? Which one of the supporting characters do you merge with? Which one of the supporting characters do you save later on? Do you kill Carter, who has become a liability to the project to save the Earth? Despite the bog-standardness of the whole game, the whole thing in the end was just… Far out.

I would have never seen any of this if I had just stuck with my preconceptions. So that’s my advice for pretty much anything in life. Understand preconceptions, but see beyond them.