Play “Improvised Story #0 – Release 0, First Draft” now!

What Went Right

• The “call to action” was on Twitter, but I have my accounts set up so that most things I post on Twitter also show up on my Facebook page.  All the ideas came from Facebook.  Nobody on Twitter seemed interested.
• Reusing old code from previous projects.  I’ve built up quite the repertoire of IF objects to play with.
• Evocative suggestions.  A couple of these were great for sparking the imagination.
• Creating a framework to fit everything together.  I’m starting to think that what I’m really best at is creating systems to help things (or people) work together.
• Hacking at Parchment, the tool I’m using to let people play the game over the web.  Now that I’ve gained some experience with it, I can do even more cool things.

What Went Wrong

• Overly ambitious ideas.  Seriously, a time machine?  Not in the “First Draft”, I’m afraid.  (I made sure, however, to include at least one idea from each contributor in the first draft.)
• Characters.  They’re the most complicated IF objects to create.  (I only created one; another will come in a later release.)
• A dearth of puzzles.  Puzzles are hard to think up; I had to brainstorm some based on the contributed objects and characters.  That was the part of the project where I just kind of sat there grimacing; testing and debugging is annoying, but at least I felt like I was doing something.

What’s Next

More ideas can be implemented.  Of course, the project will be even more interesting if more people contribute…

I was certainly inspired by another blog, Lost Garden; it’s also a number of essays and meditations on game design by someone named Danc.  I don’t agree with everything he says, but it’s always thought-provoking.

I don’t mean any disrespect to Danc in using such a similar name.  It’s just that it really is perfect for this blog.  My main site is Chaoseed; the name refers to chaos, seeds, creativity, possibility, development.  Therefore, a “garden” is exactly the right place to find seeds of possibility.

A lot of times in games you work with sets of data.  Data is just information, 1s and 0s, the contents of variables; it doesn’t have any meaning in itself.  For data to mean something, it has to have context.  You “view” the model in a certain context.

When I talk about “leveraging” content, all I’m really talking about is switching the context.  A classic example (one example where software actually does leverage user-created content) is Streets of SimCity.  This was a racing/combat game published by Electronic Arts; the player went on missions involving driving around a city.  The really interesting thing was that the player could import city maps from SimCity 2000, and these cities would be rendered in full 3D to create custom driving environments for the player.  (SimCopter had a similar feature; the player could fly a helicopter around an imported city.)

The point here is the context switching.  In the context of SimCity 2000, a city is (roughly speaking) an arrangement of buildings and zones that have economic effects on each other.  However, in Streets of SimCity, the city is an arrangement of buildings and zones that define 3D geography.  The underlying data has not changed, it’s just that the games view it in different contexts.

With this in mind, we revisit the question: In what situations would it be appropriate and/or easy to leverage user-created content?  Now the answer is more apparent.  To leverage content in a new situation, you must view it in a different context so it has a different meaning.

Recently I’ve been playing a web-based game called Billy vs. Snakeman.  It’s a parody of various anime series, but it’s also a fun game in its own right, with some clever features.  In its most basic elements, BvS deals with developing your character over time.  You increase “your” stats and collect items; these stats and items allow you to pass challenges within the game.  The interesting point here is that you’re not just experience the game, you’re also creating a piece of content–your character.  That character exists within the database whether you’re logged in or not.

BvS has a feature called the Arena where you can “fight” other characters.  In truth, this isn’t really like a player vs. player (PvP) thing; whether you win or lose, you don’t affect the other character at all.  (There are more PvP-oriented aspects of BvS, if you’re into that.)  When you perform the “Fight in the Arena” action, a character is randomly chosen from the database to be your opponent.  That character and your character are compared to see how they perform against a random challenge; ties go to your character.  If you win, you get “Arena Reputation”, a currency that can be spent on certain items (items that can only be purchased with Arena Reputation).

The interesting thing here is that the second character is simply a piece of content that exists in the database.  The other player is not notified and is not affected in any way.  However, that player has spent time building up the character’s stats and items, as well as creating a customized name and possibly an avatar image to represent that character.  So each character is an interesting piece of content, and the characters are leveraged to create an interesting experience for this particular feature in the game.

Now for the more complex example–Spore.  Spore consists of five phases, but in terms of this post they each have the same game flow.  When you play Spore, you are creating something–a cell, a creature, a building, a spaceship.  Usually these bits of content have restrictions on them having to do with gameplay; for example, creatures need legs and feet to move around, so all created creatures have legs and feet (unless the player specifically tried for a pathologically strange one).  With that in mind, and the social and technical design of the “creator” subprograms, most of the content looks appropriate; that is to say, creatures look like creatures that can walk around, buildings look like dwellings where creatures could live and work.  (Whether the content is socially appropriate is another question entirely!)

Once content is created, it usually gets shared to the Spore servers (user settings can change this).  What this means is that your creature gets uploaded to the server, then it can be downloaded into someone else’s game.  Then when they wander their galaxy and explore alien worlds, they might find your creatures living on those worlds.  Similarly, when you wander your galaxy, you find it populated with creatures created by other players the world over.

As we can see by now, Spore was built around the idea of leveraging content created by users.  User-created content is shared to make other users’ games more interesting.  The content is used in a “faux-multiplayer” way.  You meet other users’ creations as if they were other players playing the same game that you’re playing.  They answer the challenges of the game in their own ways, and you get to see the result and compare it to your own strategy.

The faux-multiplayer idea has one big advantage–it’s easy to design.  You can take one user’s data and treat it as if it existed in another user’s game world.  You can have both sets of data following the same game rules.  This is fun because it can inject more interesting variety into the games; the assumption is that the process of play guides the players to create interesting content.  One pitfall is that players might arrive at the same answers to the game’s challenges, resulting in everyone’s data looking the same.  This is an issue worthy of its own post, but let me say that Magic: the Gathering has addressed this problem better than anything else I’ve seen.  Magic is solely a multiplayer game where each player plays with a customized deck of cards; there are well-nigh unlimited combinations of cards that would stand a chance of winning, each with their own strategies.  Therefore creating a deck is itself a piece of creative expression that gets pitted against an opponent.

Now that I’ve gone over the basics, I’d like to speculate about new directions.  The way I see it, content leveraging can be divided into two segments; you encourage users to create interesting content, then you adapt that content in such a way as to improve the experience for someone else.

At this point I’d like to talk about a couple of web-based games I’ve created.  First is Phantasma; in this game, players portray wizards inhabiting a magical castle.  The emphasis is on developing your stats through “research”, learning spells and creating enchanted items.  Next is Chaostorm, a more abstract sort of game focused on creating items with procedurally-generated “recipes”.  Players can ultimately create “Scopes”, which assist them in finding items they need, and “Battle Items”, which boost their stats for PvP-ish contests.  Of course, because I’ve created both these games, I have access to all the content for both of them.  In Phantasma is a location entitled the “Kipatsu Shop”, known for selling items from “other worlds”.  In this case, the shop sells items from Chaostorm!  Randomly selected Chaostorm items are used as templates to create Phantasma items with appropriate power levels and prices.  Chaostorm Scopes are sold in Phantasma as “Elemental Scrutinizers” that assist a wizard’s research into the magical discipline of Elementalism, and Chaostorm Battle Items are sold as “Elemental Projectors” that increase a wizard’s spellcasting ability in that same realm.  The name and description of the item are imported directly from Chaostorm (with “Elemental Scrutinizer/Projector” prepended to the item’s name).  In this way, the content from Chaostorm is used to create interesting new items for Phantasma, in a carefully controlled process.

Chaostorm is a game designed to encourage users to create interesting content.  However, even less “experimental” games can yield intriguing bits of content.  As we saw with BvS, a player character itself is the sum of the player’s choices, their answers to the game’s challenges.  A long-time player of BvS has created an elaborately customized piece of data that represents a personality within that world.  This would hold for all sorts of games classified as “RPGs”, whether multiplayer or not.  Other games yield different types of content; SimCity is an obvious example.  (Will Wright came up with the idea for SimCity while designing maps for the background of a helicopter game; he liked designing cities so much he made a game out of it.)  With SimCity the player is tasked with creating a city.  There are a slew of city-building games that imitate this design; Caesar, Cleopatra, Stronghold, et al..  However, strategy games such as StarCraft have city-building elements as well, even if they’d be more likely to call it base-building.  There are any number of space-trading games that feature customizing one’s starships.  Oblivion allows one to purchase dwellings and fill them with furniture, although there isn’t much in-game encouragement to customize your home exactly how you wish.  As I see it, there are two ingredients for interesting content creation; there must be restrictions to guide your users into creating content that makes sense, and there should be enough possibilities that not all content is identical.

The second part of the process is adapting the content for new purposes.  I believe this is the part where there are still great possibilities for advancement.  Once you have a city, for example, you can have the character walk through it–but that’s easy.  What if there was a game where the player bought a city in a bottle?  SimCity Societies allows the player to create cities that have different “stats”, such as Spirituality or Industry.  Perhaps the city in a bottle is an item–the character could wear it around their neck in the “necklace slot”.  And cities with high Spirituality would provide bonuses to MP or Magic stats, while cities with high Industry could increase Strength.  Or, you could have an item that represented another character–made into a voodoo doll, or maybe an item that provides a link to their strength.  And that would provide some customized bonuses depending on the other character’s stats.  The point is that there are many different types of content that games require, and many of them can be “filled” with data provided by other games.

(EDIT: I wrote a little more on this subject for Part 2 of this article.)

Some games are simply fun.  They provide some sort of pleasure from manipulating the components or developing skill.  One of my favorite games of this type is Time Pilot (it’s available on XBox Live Arcade if you’re interested).  In Time Pilot, you pilot a futuristic plane that flies around shooting enemies; once you shoot enough enemies the “boss” appears, and when you defeat that you get to the next level.  That’s it.  Oh, there are a couple of wrinkles like point bonuses if you defeat all the enemies in a “wing”, but really that’s all it is.  And it’s quite fun.

Games like this I consider “junk food”.  They sate your desires, they provide enjoyment, but they don’t encourage you to “grow” at all.

This begs the question, what do I mean by “grow”, and what games would I consider “important”?  Of course this is all subjective, but this is my blog, so here goes.  I consider games to be “important” if they provide you with new information and new ways of thinking about things, if they encourage your mind to grow in some way.

For example, consider Portal.  Portal’s portals prompt players to think in new ways about space and motion.  Also, its story provides a new twist on the classic “enemy computer” trope, and its setting evokes a particular “research gone wrong” sort of horror.  These are things that guide the player to new thoughts and new information.

Now, some people will say that once you get all the “nutrition” from a game, playing it ceases to give you any new information.  That’s true.  Games aren’t infinitely “nutritive” (although some, like Master of Magic, feature so many emergent strategies that you can “profitably” play them for years).  After playing Portal for 10 hours you’ve probably gotten all the information you can from it, and now you’re just developing your portal-flipping skills.  At this point the game is “junk food”.  Also, some would argue that even a game as simple as Time Pilot has valuable information; there’s the interesting, if sparse, time travel premise, and there are various skill atoms you come across as you learn to play the game.  As no game is infinitely nutritive, no game is entirely junk either…Unless it’s merely a rehash of things the player has seen before.

Let me say that I don’t think “junk food” is bad.  If you want nothing more than fun from a game–there’s nothing wrong with that.  I’m certainly not going to tell you which games you can play.

But just think…If you want to grow, you can’t do it with junk food alone.

Now, as a relatively inexperienced game designer (compared to some out there, at least), I don’t feel as though my games are better than junk.  I don’t claim to be producing worthwhile games, yet…However, I do always try to include some “nutrition” in them, something new, something that makes people think, something that nudges the craft of game design just a little bit forward.  Phantasma, for example, has a somewhat original system of modeling spellcasting wizards, and it also has player-created “sculptures” and player-written books.  Chaostorm is a neat Web 2.0-ish game mechanic developed into a (simple, admittely) browser-based game.  And Aching Dreams takes resource management down to first principles to create a simple but flexible game framework…and, of course, it has sex.

Of course, this model informs the games I make, but perhaps more importantly it informs the games I play.  I’ve played a bunch of match-3 games, of course, for about five minutes each; they’re junk food.  However, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is a game I’ve devoted lots of time to–it illustrates how you can replace “standard” RPG gameplay with other mechanics, it explores the match-3 mechanic in a couple new directions, it allows you to develop your character in ways that influence the match-3 gameplay.  And it’s pretty fun too.  Conversely, I downloaded and played the demo for Castle Crashers, but I didn’t spend more than a few minutes on it.  Sure, it seemed well polished, but it was a four-player beat-’em-up like Final Fight or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…And sure, the animation is great, but game design isn’t about animation, it’s about information.

So, if you design games, are you creating junk food or a healthy snack?  If you play games (and, nowadays, who doesn’t)–How much time do you spend with junk food, and how much with stuff that actually helps your mind grow?  (I’ll admit that my “junk food time” is, well, let’s just say greater than zero!)

I was thinking about the question, how does an indie game developer make money?  People have tried all sorts of things.  It seems to me that the best way is selling a product, or perhaps a subscription.  Some people sell advertising on their websites.  Kingdom of Loathing sells in-game items (well, they call it “donations” but it’s basically selling).  They also sell T-shirts.

Some folks take in donations and call them donations, not promising anything in return, except that they often offer a sort of lagniappe upon receipt.  An omake; a bonus, in other words.  For example, Andrew Hussie is a comic artist and not a game developer (well, that can be debated but let’s leave it for now)…If you donate to him, he draws a non-canon comic panel (or strip!) inspired by whatever “prompt” you give him.  And Tarn Adams (“the Dwarf Fortress guy”) will send you a crayon drawing if you donate…plus add your name to the Bay 12 Games Champions List.

Now that, that is intriguing.  It got me thinking of something I could do.  Something I might call…The Roll of Heroes.  (Or something better if it occurs to me.)

The idea is simple: If you donate some money to me (that is, to Chaoseed Software), your name will be added to “The Roll of Heroes”.  This will be a list somewhere with your name on it; probably a webpage listing everyone who’s donated to me.  (Unless you want to stay anonymous–since you’re the one giving me money, I’m more than willing to accomodate!)

The webpage listing is the only reward that is guaranteed.  However…If you have donated, your name is forever recorded as someone who supported me in a very real way.  And I’m bound to remember that.  So just as an example, let’s say your name is “Catherine”.  Completely random, off the top of my head name.  If I’m writing some fantasy world background and I want the name of a revolutionary heroine…I might just take a look at my Roll of Heroes and say “Oh, I can name her Catherine!”.  Or perhaps I might name a city “Catherine-on-the-River”.  The point is, your name has a chance of being immortalized in one of my games.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a name.  Let’s say you love the number 57 and you give me some money–the 57th Legion repels an invading army.  Or you’re overly enamored of the phrase “Now we’re getting somewhere!”.  If the Roll of Heroes says “Now we’re getting somewhere! — $20″ then I’m going to have characters say it if I can possibly sneak it in.  Or you have a trailhead leading to a website…well, if you have a trailhead, contact me directly and we may be able to work something out even without money.

I should mention that this whole idea is just that, an idea.  I haven’t implemented it yet, and I have to give it some more thought before I actually do it.  I’d welcome criticism, though, so feel free to tell me what you think!

This coming weekend I’m going to ARG-Fest-o-Con 2008 in Boston. Whee!

Working hard on Special Project 2, with a bit of 1 thrown in if I can manage it.