Who would have thought that a blog that was
originally about games development and being a
journal (hence the "gdj" part of the url) would ever actually have a post resembling something of the sort? It has been many years since I undertook the board game development unit at QUT, one where we needed to write an online blog about its progress as well as many topics around general game design. The relics of these days can be found in the far off reaches of the infernal abyss (i.e. first few posts on this blog). How times have changed since then...
The top down side scroller (TDSS) or shoot em up
(SHMUP) as they are often referred to I am working on
is currently codenamed Retaliator. It is a simple
game, one I have been working on, slowly, in Unity 3D
for the better part of 2 months. It takes inspiration
from several games I used to play back in the day,
such as Raiden and Baryon as well as the recent (and brilliant) Jamestown. Although Jamestown is a recent addition to the genre, it unfortunately is a type of game that has also faded from the minds of today's gamers. Much like arena shooters. Hmmm ... I think I am seeing a pattern in my personal preferences here.
I have hesitated to post anything about the actual games production I randomly do, mainly because some of it falls into the 'not-creatively-owned' category of developing content for tutes at QUT. Which is a shame because I have developed many simple game assets in Blender and Unity in the last 3-4 years. Other non-work related content, such as Retaliator and its previous iterations (in Blender) I have barely mentioned either, mainly to keep it as private and secret as possible. The last thing I would want is some wanker taking my idea and developing it before I do.
The basic premise of my game is that its a traditional SHMUP, but breaks the rules in several key areas. The first is that you can aim anywhere along the 2D axis these games are usually restricted to. Obviously this will need to have a much higher difficulty then normal, as positioning enemies in your single axis beam of death was part of the challenge of traditional SHMUPS. The second feature is that you can (or at least will be able to) customise the layout and firepower of your ship, choosing multiple weapon types prior to entering a level and adjusting the spread of your primary weapon during the game itself. Unlocking weapon types and ship slots will probably use some kind of credit system, derived from your score at the end of a level. Finally, the last major change falls into the 'unique' gameplay mechanic that I actually abhor teaching in games design units at QUT. Although I am a firm believer that you don't need a unique gameplay mechanic for a game to be acceptable (shit, look at the COD series ffs), I feel the 'Link Cannon' coop weapon I am providing in the game will create some interesting ways in which players will play my game.
This Link Cannon is also the primary feature of this video diary, that being for Retaliator Alpha version 0.04. I would recommend watching it at 720p:
I probably won't make too many posts about this project in the future, mainly because the time I will get to work on it is uncertain. Also, it is something I don't want to have consume all my free time and consequently all I ever want to talk about.
A few days ago I was asked by a somewhat opinionated colleague of mine, what was in fact 'wrong' with me to still be playing Diablo 3? Apparently everyone else in the world had 'quit', so my persistence with it was seen to be unnatural.
Am I still REALLY playing Diablo 3? Well ... yes. So it seems anyway. I don't quite know what has compelled me to return to the world of endless hordes of demons to mow through (though its probably that), but I have fired up the old girl to see what has changed in the world of Diablo. Alot, it seems. In particular, the buffing of Legendary items, changing of drop rates and addition of both monster power level and the Infernal Machine. Should I ever choose to level another character (quite likely), one can now finally say "fuck you" to the default easymode difficulty and ramp the monster power level as high as they can handle. This should at least provide a more engaging and dangerous experience for newcomers ... which is unlikely to happen. While most of the super casual (i.e. non Inferno/60) players have moved on, unfortunately they have taken a large chunk of Diablo 3's reputation with it.
Many people were apparently unsatisfied with the game, partly due to conforming opinions (i.e. everyone else doesn't like it so I don't like it either). While I still think many of these people were expecting of and playing the game for entirely the wrong reasons (i.e. narrative, perfectly attuned item drops, fast/challenging leveling immediately etc), I can honestly say that I don't miss their presence. Diablo 3 has begun to turn into a gem of a game without Blizzard appealing to the squealing masses and the game is on road to becoming something I will frequent in the future.
After dabbling a bit into Torchlight 2, I have decided on one simple, honest truth. Diablo 3 is a superior game. I have no bias towards either game or their parent company, but when it comes to straight up, non-skill capped game play, Diablo 3 trumps a game like Torchlight on almost every aspect. An example of this is the fact that I have found an even more powerful and interesting build than the apparently confusing one I was using before. I say this because several Barbarian friends I introduced my old build to (dubbed 'Riding the Walrus') found the build to be too complicated. I feel this is because they didn't understand the purpose of it, or realise its true potential (i.e. near complete invincibility), perhaps not having witnessed it first hand themselves. Watching someone else or a video is very different than doing something yourself. Nevertheless, the new build, which is far simpler, involves using a huge 2 hander, leaping into packs of stuff and doing enormous burst AoE and direct damage, using straight lifesteal as your main means of survival (besides defensive stats of course). While this probably means very little to anyone reading this blog and while there is obviously a bit more to it then that, I will say I have dubbed the build 'Nuking', for that is exactly what it feels like. It is also incredibly fun. Observe.
While Riding the Walrus is an incredibly strong build, it unfortunately lacks some oomph, which can make its undertaking a little underwhelming. With Nuking, the visceral and destructive power I felt as a barbarian while leveling has returned. While it is not as safe as Riding the Walrus, it is powerful enough to handle Inferno content on as high as monster power level 5, which is good enough.
Why am I back to playing Diablo 3 again? I am not entirely sure. I think it offers a satisfying game play experience that I don't think many people encountered, perhaps due to their own personal playstyles. For me, the semi-theorycrafting, bloodthirsty, honour bound lunatic, the way I play the game is enjoyable and so I enjoy playing the game. It is really as simple as that.
The genre of fighting games is the one and only genre of games I fully advocate playing on a console. While you could play it on other platforms, such as the PC, the console controller and especially the arcade stick are both superior peripherals for THAT genre type. You could argue that you can easily attach these devices to your PC, but nothing beats sitting around a large TV with a group of friends, eating pizzas and drinking terribly unhealthy soft/energy drinks (or even alcohol) while attempting to beat them bloody. Virtually, of course.
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has recently been released and a short notice 'fight night' I organised seemed to be quite successful.While no one (including myself) was particularly good at the game, it still managed to be entertaining, mostly in a rather "lolwtf" way. While I would love it if people became slightly interested to the point where they practice a bit and become somewhat competitive, I know that it is probably too demanding to ideally expect that. However, I am content and happy that people can come together and at least enjoy beating the crap out of one another. Truly we are an evolved species.
Part of the problem with becoming good at a game like Tekken is that it still, even today, rings true with that camel hump of a graph I have on my wall, both at home and uni. The general idea of the graph is that, as you become better at playing a fighting game, you actually become less successful for a period of time. At least against the people who are button mashing. I think unconsciously people know this already, even with other fighting games, and that time-sink of doing worse then when you were button mashing is not a dip in enjoyment most casual people are willing to enter. I can't say I blame them either because to get out of that camel hump requires an enormous amount of effort and dedication, something I feel I have only ever committed once to a fighting game and then only became on-par with the best (worst?) of the mashers. While fighting games will always be a genre I love and while I have a lot of respect and awe for the people who become good at them, I also know that playing casually with friends is more important. Which is what I think I will try to encourage.
On another note, the previous video was the first gameplay footage I have recorded from my PS3 using my Blackmagic Intensity Pro HDMI capture card. A ... lengthy process in figuring out everything required, but in the end I think it is worth it. I look forward to experimenting with the technology further and possibly making more console, fighting game related videos in the future.
The title of this post is a quote from the soldier in TF2. He says the line randomly whenever he kills someone. It is quite possibly my favorite quote from the game, because it says something about both the soldier and his perception of what it is he is doing.
The soldier is a veteran of wars, a scarred, blood-crazed violent lunatic who demands great performance from and has high expectations of his fellow comrades. In some ways he is a relic from the past, possibly from a better age where honor and respect were just as important as skill and tactics. He possesses one of the most difficult-to-consistently-perform abilities in the game, that being the simple act of rocket jumping. While it is not essential for a soldier to perform, it separates the good ones from the bad and makes the soldier distinct in comparison to the other classes.
In the soldier's mind, what he is doing is the reason for his existence. If flaming limbs and scorched blood are not exploding in his face, if he cannot soar through the sky, raining explosive death from above, then life is not worth living. He wishes to inform you, should your charred, splattered corpse have the ability to hear, that this pain you are feeling and this misery he is inflicting upon your person is what he does best. It is his job. His duty. His world ... and your presence in it is not one he tolerates kindly.
You may question why ... why does the soldier not enjoy your presence in his world? Why indeed ...
Anyways, I have eventually managed to get my colleagues and I to play a single match of a competitive FPS game. Now, my colleagues are all experienced gamers and have some very interesting opinions on game design and skill in games. When it comes to FPS games, they have experience in the likes of Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield and even TF2. They are also familiar with games such as Gears of War and other 3rd person combat shooters.
I on the other hand tend to lean towards more arcade-like FPS games, that of which I dub 'arena shooters'. Most of my experience with FPS games has come from these kind of games, which I have some very strong opinions on in contrast to the games my colleagues play. Games that fall into this category are games like Painkiller, Serious Sam, Quake and the original Unreal Tournament. This is not news, but it is important.
When I found out we were going to play a competitive FPS deathmatch game together, and that this game was going to be Unreal Tournament 3, I was quite thrilled! UT3 is a game I would consider about 1/2 way between the hardest-of-core arena shooter (something like Quakeworld or the non-commercial Nexuiz) and your average modern day shooter (something like Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield 3), so it would be an excellent test-bed for examining the performance and play styles from players of both genres. While arena shooters are mostly dead in this day and age, it was expected that most of the people who participated were more familiar with modern day shooters. Which seemed to be the case.
The following video shows the result of the match from my (Tinman's) point of view. Apologies for the jerkiness and inaccuracy (turning angles, audio etc) of the UT3 demo recording playback. It never did have good replay functionality. I recommend watching it in 720p so you can actually make out some of the details the engine likes shrouding:
While I don't think I actually played that well (only a 23 frag killing spree after all), I am still quite pleased with the overall result. However, I will say that I am not surprised in the slightest. I am unsure whether my colleagues felt the same way, but I do hope that even for a brief moment in time they may have realised that shooters of yore are not quite what they think them to be, that being mindless, shoot fests more about luck than they are about skill. Even if it were just for half a second.
But, more importantly, in that half a second, I hope they realised something else as well. You see this virtual environment we were just in. These rules, unbounded by restrictive controls and unwavering in non-casual/hardmode mechanics (e.g. non-regenerating health) form something that may not be obvious. They form a matrix of flexible rules and the boundaries that push them. They form a place where freedom and skill is limitless. They form a ... world ... one that I am well acquainted with ...
It has been awhile, but returning to Skyrim for the mini-expansion that is Dawnguard has brought back some fond memories. Fond memories of roaming the countryside, hunting 'bad guys' and murdering entire encampments of humanoid creatures. Cleaving through the masses, it is undeniable that there is a certain satisfaction, one of savage glee, that I possess when playing this game. If there is one thing I will remember about Skyrim, or in fact all three Elder Scrolls games I've played (Oblivion and Morrowind too), it's that swinging an enormous two-handed weapon into things makes you feel like a freaking god. Well, sometimes.
The release of Dawnguard has also given me an excuse to return to the drawing board, fine tuning my equipment once again to make the ultimate weapons and armor. With such overpowering gear comes the need for overpowering difficulty and running a mod with up to 32x harder master level enemies makes for some interesting fights. I usually run it between 2-4x though, otherwise you get splattered by simply tripping on your own shoelaces. Running another mod called Warzones (increases number of enemy encounters) ensures that, no matter where you go, there is an entire world full of enemies. It is a world that I intend to destroy.
Anyone who knows me at all probably knows I don't play that many single player games. At least in the last couple of years anyway. I just cannot find the reasons to justify spending $40+ dollars on a game that will more than likely disappoint me, especially after the likes of Rage, Bulletstorm and Crysis 2. While Skyrim was the latest single player game I actively looked forward to, played (extensively) and actually enjoyed, occurrences like this are more the exception than the rule. Maybe I'm just a fussy bastard.
Or maybe I'm not. I don't really know anymore. I know there are people out there, like myself, that have become annoyed with a lot of the game play 'features' that stain modern single player experiences. To name a select few we have frequent cut-scenes (which I don't actually mind if they are done well), unnecessary and clumsy cover systems (e.g. F3AR) and my most hated of all ... quick-time events. Features like these have a time, place and even specific genres where they can work really well, but lately developers just seem to want to cram them in to every facet of every game they make. The results, at least in my opinion, are games that become less immersive, disengaging and often just stupid to play and observe. Take this scene from Bulletstorm for example:
Anyways, I've been playing Max Payne 3. Maybe I knew what to except, that being a movie which has playable sections. Maybe it's because I actually like the character that is Mr Payne, the sarcastic, masochistic drunk who has the magical ability to slow time and jump horizontally repeatedly. Maybe it was simply because the game doesn't have stupid fucking quick time events. Whatever it was, I quite enjoyed Max Payne 3, even with its insane amount of mostly unskippable cut scenes. They were good and added to the atmosphere of the game. It is a worthy successor to the previous two games and expands on the series by taking the game into some interesting and believable locales. The ending was also rather epic and satisfying. Most importantly, the bullet time is as good as ever and still a lot of fun even after this long. It was and still is the most enjoyable part of the game, and probably the only game that did, and still is, getting it right. Observe.
So yeah. I'm still playing Diablo 3. As I have been semi-busy with uni work lately, it is about the only game I have on my radar at the moment. That is of course unless you count the random moments when I feel like watching a movie and 'play' bits of Max Payne 3.
Inferno is tough. Although it was recently nerfed slightly so that the brick wall you smash your face into isn't as high/thick, it has a different kind of difficulty attached to it. This difficulty is simply the cost of items. Because more people are trying Inferno now, the price on gear needed to get through it (all resist, vitality, armor, life on hit etc) has sky rocketed. It is amusing reading about people who cleared Inferno in the first two weeks now complaining about how they cannot progress on their alts because they have spent their 40 million gold on 5 items. The rest of us (10 million gold or less) barely make an upgrade a week without going completely broke. That's not even mentioning any decent Life on Hit weapons, which cost 20 million gold or more, or the increased repair costs.
Facing this problem was difficult for me. I don't have the patience to farm Act 1 repeatedly for 50 million+ gold, which would take weeks if not months. I have never seen Diablo as a grind (at least in the WoW sense), and turning it into one was not preferable. So I did what many people are, at least in my opinion, afraid to do: admitting that your build/playstyle is not efficient and opting to change it. Long story short, I have come across a build and a style of playing that is not only efficient but incredibly fun as well. The problem is that it is slightly difficult to pull off.
My experience of Diablo is that, at least in Inferno (when the game actually gets hard), you are simply maintaining a balanced relationship between how much damage you do and how much damage you can take. Having a high effective health pool will keep you alive considerably longer, but if you are doing bugger all damage, elite packs will enrage and rape you. If you only do a lot of damage, elite packs will just rape you full stop. Generally speaking, the act of keeping your health up is a straightforward one, though conditionally difficult depending on your class and the situation. Often you will ignore your 'resource' as its generation and use become straightforward as well. You could probably just say that the game is easy to 'play', but the enemies (i.e. elites/champion packs) are what make it hard.
The build I am running now goes a step beyond this. Without bogging you down with names of abilities that mean nothing to you, I will simply say that an intense balance between how much life you have, how much life you are gaining, how much resource (fury) you have, how much resource you are gaining needs to be maintained. If not, you die horribly. This process requires perfect conditions that you need to create and control throughout a fight through both positioning and timing of abilities. Should you stuff up for even one second, you will run out of fury or life and get fucked up very quickly. There is a high risk vs reward element to the play style and it becomes very engaging. It also requires some very specific stats that I won't go into here.
As you can see, the build is incredibly strong, almost to the point where I am going to stop stacking hard defensive gear. The build is actually stronger the more things you are fighting as they provide a larger surface area for you to sprint/whirlwind into, assuming they don't hit you too hard. The hardest part of the build is fighting small packs of elites, if not a single elite by itself. This is because your ability to gain life on hit with the tornadoes that spawn depends entirely on the distance that you travel. The tornadoes come out slowly at a controlled rate (attack speed). Essentially you need to move to stay alive, but the target you are fighting is stationary, so you need to move just the right distance to and from the target to spawn the tornadoes right on top of them.
If you can maintain this intricate balance of dps/tank stats, managing your fury, damage intake, precision of movement and timing of abilities you can essentially become immortal.
As I expected, Diablo 3 has been as addictive as I thought it would, taking up the vast majority of my free time these days. Like Skyrim before it, it is one of those games that put me in these strange situations where I realise I have forgotten to eat both breakfast and lunch and it is currently 3pm. On weekends anyway. When at uni, I spend the few bits of downtime I get to theory craft, thinking of new builds and gear setups to both maximize my damage output and survivability. My colleagues probably look at me in bewilderment as I scribble down SCRAM calculations in meetings, instead of taking notes. Either that, or think I am taking notes on the discussion topic and pretend to write some notes too. Ah, peer pressure ...
Anyways, I was thinking of how I could write a post about Diablo 3 that wouldn't be the same as usual and was considering approaching it from a narrated, first person perspective. Something about a barbarian (me) buying a ring from a merchant in game and confusing him/her with gamer lingo. I may still do this if I get extremely bored in the future (unlikely). Not to mention that this individual already performed something like it anyway, and it is probably more entertaining than anything I could conjure. So, I will simply turn this post into a discussion on four topics: what is happening right now, what I don't like, what I don't mind and what I do like. Because I feel the topics under 'What I don't like' are actually game design flaws, I will explain them in more detail than the other sections.
What is happening right now in Diablo 3:
As of writing this post, only just a couple of days ago I hit 60 on my barbarian. For any hardcore gamer this would be described as an incredibly slow leveling rate. For most people I know this would be described as incredibly fast leveling rate. For me, it is about 50:50. I spent a lot of time trying to help people to get to my level and even got a witch doctor alt to 50 in the process. Perhaps I have played it quite a fair bit, but honestly it doesn't feel like it. I think my disregard for the story probably assisted in my ability to level two characters so 'quickly'. However, like every other barbarian in the world, I have hit a brick wall, but I will talk about that later on. During my leveling process on my barbarian I ran an incredibly bursty dps spec, running a 2-handed build that relied on building fury (barbarian resource) quickly and spending it quickly too. Running with ever increasing critical hit chance, the result was the ability to cleave through hordes of minions with relative ease, but lacking on single target dps (i.e. bosses). It worked pretty much all the way up to the end of hell, though I am slowly transitioning to a more tanky build.
My witch doctor is really just there as a character I play when I am bored or am waiting for other people to come online/catch up (i.e. singleplayer). It's primary purpose is to farm gold for the gold eating machine that is soon to become my barbarian, as well as providing the damage I need to progress through Inferno, whenever a friend and I get to clearing that.
Too sexy for my ... shield?
What I don't like:
- Normal mode was ridiculously easy. While the first act should have been easy, it unfortunately continued all the way to Diablo in the final act. You could quite literally put any spell on your toolbar, roll your face across your keyboard and end up getting to and killing Diablo (somehow). Even for casuals, the difficulty in normal was far too simplistic, especially for a game that traditionally got harder over time. Many people I know have expressed their disdain for the lack of difficulty in the default difficulty and some, I fear, were turned off by it. Although the later difficulties do propose a more suited challenge, the damage may already be done for a large amount of the casual fan base.
- A minor complaint, but bosses in later difficulties do not drop rares. They only drop rares the first time you kill them in normal mode. They are also incredibly easy, outside the latter half of Hell's bosses. This is quite a shame as boss fights should be both difficult and rewarding. Although getting 5 stacks of the Nephalem buff after hitting 60 fixes this, it does make the leveling process a little more silly.
- In my opinion, the playthrough content is rather short, both per difficulty and in total (i.e. to 60). I remember it taking ages to hit level 30 on my characters in Diablo 2. Although there is the entirety of Inferno to clear, the idea of facing the same environments again for the 4th time is a little discouraging.
- Inferno is apparently a bitch for melee. For Monks and especially Barbarians, unless you stack tank gear through the roof you will die instantly in almost any elite encounter. I managed to kill 3 elite packs in Inferno so far with no resistances but literally hit a brick wall on the 4th pack. Buying resist gear will fix the problem, but the gear is not cheap. What is annoying is that the other 3 classes don't have to spend anywhere near the amount of gold to become eligible for Inferno. While I could view this as being unfair and imbalanced, I prefer to think of it more as a challenge. Clearing Inferno as melee is a greater achievement than doing it as ranged.
- Your character is basically just his/her gear. There is absolutely no reason to make another of the same class type, unless you want a sex change for some reason. While I actually like the versatility in build changing, it does destroy some of the uniqueness your character can be. If you throw on your friends gear who happens to be the same class as you, now you become them with their exact dps and survivability (assuming the same skills). It's not so much a complaint, more a ... unusual occurrence in a genre of game that traditionally offers so much character choice.
- The music. Usually I wouldn't complain about music in a game, but the music here just doesn't fit right in certain places. The main theme, for example, is nothing like it should be. Instead of a gritty, demon-inspiring orchestral score, we are treated to an over zealous, victorious, anthem like hymn of tracks that makes the game feel more holy than it should.
- Gems and stats seem a little too simplistic for my liking. With only 4 gem types and no real reason to stack any stat other than your primary and vitality, gearing and gemming your character can seem both straightforward and frustrating at times. It is an unusual, unsettling combination. Getting an insanely good new pair of boots that has a large amount of strength and intelligence make the item both good and shit for both barbarians and wizards/witch doctors. There is no reason why the stats couldn't do more than their secondary bonus, even if it is class specific. For Barbarians, dexterity giving miniscule traces of crit and intelligence giving pathetic amounts of magic find would be interesting, for example
- Weapons. A wizard using a 2 handed axe for maximum damage is just weird. I think weapon damage scaling should work differently for all classes, but I am not even going to consider how one would go about implementing it
You were defeated because you were a girl with a bad hair cut
(As I mentioned, I have paid more attention to the flaws of the game. However, this does not detract from the positives of the game which are described in less detail following)
What I don't mind:
- The visuals. They could be grittier, but overall they are fine.
- Story. I am actually ok with the story, mainly because I only half paid attention to it the first time through and find skipping it to be an art in consecutive times. I am not going to be one to rate a game on its singleplayer narrative when the game's primary focus is multiplayer game play.
- The randomness of gear. It's always been a part of Diablo and it's no different now. Sure, I don't like it when a piece of good gear has bad stats on it, but that's not the item's fault. Making different stats more useful for other classes is the key here I feel
- The 'grind' to 60. I don't see it as a grind in any shape or form. Grinding is boring. Diablo 3 is not.
- The auction house. 50:50 on this one. It is bad as it makes the game easier (farm gold->buy gear), which makes the casual appeal stronger. However I would not be running my crit build without it so I can't complain. Although, there do seem to be a large number of idiotic people making stupid buyout prices on their items.
... right
What I do like:
- It is actually quite fun to play (at least as a barb), especially in multiplayer
- There is potential for skill and strategy in harder difficulties
- Variation in builds and gear make for interesting play styles and choices
- Coop game play is a breeze. Don't need to be on same quest or act, can join friends anywhere in the world. Difficulty increases with players but so do the rewards. Encourages working together and sharing loot. This is honestly the best part of the game and it is a big factor towards enjoying it.
GIVE ME EPICS!!!
When it comes down to it though, most of my Diablo 3 experience has been playing coop with at least one friend. Basically I wouldn't be playing the game unless I had at least one other person to share the experience with. Singleplayer can be fun at times, but it is a little too easy for my liking (outside Inferno). Throw in 3 more players and all of a sudden the game becomes fantastic in that chaotic, fun-even-if-you-die sort of way. Would I recommend Diablo 3 to others? If you have friends to play the game with, most definetly. If you don't, give it a miss.
Now I go to farm demons in a distant land, to steal their clothes and riches and to sell and buy from other, demon-thieving lunatics. TIME TO DIE!!!
Below: My Barbarian farming Hell for gear, gold and fun
If I was not already doing a PhD in AI and Games Design, I think I would most likely gravitate towards something along the lines of player skill in games. It is a topic that for some reason I am quite fond of, not because I consider myself to be all that skillful in games (really only a select few), but more because I feel it is a very important topic for game designers to understand. In my opinion, making a game that tailors towards skillful play can only be done if you have at some point been a skillful player in something. I am not talking about beating your friends a few times in a random game at a LAN. I mean actually being good, and interested in being good, at a game, even if it is just from a theory-crafting or spectator point of view. When you realise that skill in a game is often more than just mastering the basic mechanics of the genre, you can begin to see that skill is often much more complicated and harder to define than previously thought. High skill in one game does not automatically mean high skill in another, and games that, to the casual observer, may seem simple, mindless or even primitive may in fact have more skill than any of the other games in the genre.
Lately, and usually the cause of most of my rants on this blog, I have had conversations with people I did not wholeheartedly agree with. To simplify, I felt they were somewhat wrong. Or perhaps just ignorant. It is hard to tell. My impression was that they had never been at a stage where they could comfortably describe themselves as skillful at or even knowledgeable about a game, even from a meta/external level. To me, this has skewed their perspective of what skill actually is in games. Particularly, it had deformed their idea of what a 'skill ceiling' should be in a game. I got the impression that they thought the actions you perform in one game take the same amount of skill and are used in the exact same way in another game of the same genre. This is an incredible misunderstanding and a terrible oversimplification of determining the skill ceiling of a game. Even the simple act of pressing a button in response to an event can be drastically different conditionally from one game to another. To describe something like 'aiming' in an FPS game as a generic action, unvarying in skill in all FPS games, is like saying that boxers all just throw the same weighted punches at each other. I hate to burst your bubble guys, but depending on the weight/style of boxing, certain boxers will punch harder and faster than others. The same can be said of skill in video games.
I have beaten around the bush concerning skill in video games before. Once I mentioned skill having a physical/mechanical execution process to it. That's one part of it. In this post, once and for all, and for the benefit of 'grading' possible games in the future from a 'skill ceiling' perspective, I will introduce to you the rest of my model. Academically, this model does not incorporate much, if any of the minor research I have found around this topic. There really is very little. Instead, it is more of my own opinion on the components that define skill in video games. It is therefore subject to change and open to suggestion.
The skill level capable in video games can not simply be described as any one thing. It can more correctly be viewed as a combination of interrelated, similar but separate actions/processes that players are capable of executing while playing a game. In my opinion, these action/processes are the following:
Tactical thinking - having or developing a strategy to counter your opponent Example: saving a powerup, unit or cooldown for use at a more opportune or unexpected moment
Multi-tasking - a player's ability to perform seperate but useful actions or observations that are of benefit to their current game state Example: queueing up unit production, observing your resources and moving soldiers to the front line
Mechanical Dexterity - the physical speed, precision, timing and variety of input allowed to and required by players to be sucessful Example: pulling off a tricky combination of moves in a fighting game
Threat Assessment - a player's ability to quickly assess a situation in game and respond to it in a useful or beneficial way Example: realising your opponent will defeat you for X reasons during your next encounter in an FPS, and fleeing from the encounter temporarily
Prior knowledge, memory or experience - a player's long term and short term memory regarding specifics of both the game and the ongoing events in it. Example: Details about enemy specifics or recollection of opponent traits, patterns and weaknesses all fall into this category
A skillful game may not necessarily have all 5 of these components. It is entirely possible that a game can have only a few of the components, but in a high enough concentration for it to still be viewed as a skillful game as a whole. An excellent example of this would be chess, requiring high amounts of Tactical Thinking and Prior Knowledge from players, but almost nil of anything else. What you may have noticed, and what was previously mentioned, is that many of these skill components have areas where they will undoubtedly overlap. Your Prior Knowledge will greatly affect your Tactical Thinking, as will your current assessment of threat. Your prior Knowledge will also determine your ability to perform actions, contributing to your level of Mechanical Dexterity. Both Mechanical Dexterity and Multi-tasking go hand in hand, the ability to do one assisting the ability to do another, but they are still inherently different. Maintaining a balanced economy in a strategy game (multi-tasking) is not the same as your ability to pull off a combo in a fighting game (mechanical dexterity), but the result from one will affect the other. In that regard, your ability to multi-task does affect your ability to assess threat. The faster you take into account all the variables which define your safety in a situation, the more efficiently you can make a helpful threat assessment. The relationships between these components can be seen in the figure below.
There is something missing though, and its a big one. A constant, unstoppable variable that without consideration, skill in video games would be non-existant. That variable is, quite simply, time. Unless you are playing a game with potentially unlimited time, such as a turn based game like chess, time can drastically affect how significant each of these components become, especially if left unchecked. Time defines how intense each of these components actually are, and is the most crucial element for truly understanding how high a skill ceiling a game can possess. Allow me to explain.
Three seconds. Just three seconds of game play. Imagine, for three seconds, you are playing Starcraft 2. In those 3 seconds you performed the following: queued up another worker, checked to see if your new unit was almost done, checked the mini-map for enemy dots and started selecting a group of units. In this time you applied 4/5 of the components of the prior model to a semi-intense degree. The only thing you did not do was change your existing strategy via Tactical Thinking, whatever that strategy was. Now imagine, for three seconds, you are playing Modern Warfare 3. In those 3 seconds, you reloaded your gun while crouching behind a chest high wall. In this case you probably applied at most two of the components, though to a much less degree. Both of these scenarios can be described as passive, non-action filled scenarios where you simply performed actions typically required of a player prior to engaging in combat. One, however, had a lot more skill to it than the other.
I know what you are thinking. How about when they are in combat? What happens to skill levels then? Obviously both would spike, possibly even firing components that were inactive in the described 3 seconds. It may even be possible that elements of MW3 would even exceed that of SC2, for a brief moment in time. Because of this, it is difficult, if not impossible, to measure the skill ceiling provided by games using random 3 second intervals. The only way to approach this topic is if you were to average the amount of skill that is possible by players over a period of sufficient game play time. Assigning arbitrary values in the form of a scale is also ... difficult, as a scale of numeric 'skill' is non-existant. Any scale you use may, unit for unit, not be equally 'skillful' in comparison to other skill components. But for the sake of getting this done, lets just make this simple...
Assuming a most skill based map, environment, level, song, track, weapons, gear etc, over a game play period of approximately 10 mins of continuous play with each individual skill component having a maximum value of 100 'skill' I hereby present to you what I think the skill ceilings of certain games are. They are generated from my observations of the most highly skilled play available to each game, from various sources:
Of course this is all quite subjective. Until a more in-depth analysis can be done employing methods capable of actually gathering the true values these components should represent, these ratings should be considered ... a little off. Not to mention biased. But it's a start. An attempted theory, if you will, quite subject to my own personal criticism. First of all, it is hard to define arbitrary values in the form of a scale for each component, for many reasons. One reason is that each individual component can not really be compared to the others numerically, so a 'skill value' is somewhat inappropriate to use. Really, what this skill measurement system is attempting to describe is a purely visual way of observing how much skill can be injected into the sorts of games described, and how certain games, by the very nature of their design, offer higher or lower skill ceilings than others that are similar. In this case, I would like to think that Quake 3: Arena has a higher skill ceiling that say Modern Warfare 2, even though they are (apparently) in the same genre. This is because a game like Quake 3: Arena offers higher levels of many, if not all of the 5 components in the model. In a 10 min gameplay session, a Quake 3 player will have had more interactions, more observations and assessments, more inputs and a longer history of changes to an ongoing strategy. Basically, time defines the skill ceiling of a game, and a game that is inherently faster, more diverse and offers more player freedom will inevitably have more room for skill.
Don't believe me? Watch this video of a professional Quake Live player, describing his 1v1 match against another opponent.
If you can show me a video where a professional modern day FPS gamer (i.e. Halo, MW etc) describing his/her gameplay in this detail with the same number of variables, items, controls, tactics and decisions being made, I will give you a $100. Seriously. When players are capable of doing actions similar to that in the previous video, when they have the ability to, even if the majority of people who play it do not, then a skill ceiling for a game can be drawn. Only through the analysis of the high-end players, what they do and what they are capable of in certain games, both hardcore and the professional, can a true understanding of and appreciation for a skill ceiling in a game be realised.
By no means am I saying that the people who play a more skillful game are inherently more skillful than the people who play a less skillful game. The skill ceiling of a game is simply just that. A player can play a skillful game and be nowhere near the cap, just as a player can be playing a slightly less skillful game and perceive themselves to be near the top of the possible skill ceiling. For the most part, they would probably be right. This model only focuses on the maximum skill allowed by a game and by no means suggests that it is the skill of the players who play them. Unless, of course, you are talking about the very best players of that game in the world. If I use the game Unreal Tournament from 1999, the game I feel I had the best grip on out of any other game, I can describe what I mean by this, and demonstrate another way in which this model can be used: personal mappings of one's own skill.
When it boils down to it though, the maximum skill capable in a game is demonstrated by the players. The maximum skill is, however, defined by the game. This, at least for prospective game designers, should be a very important realisation.
