Game Mechanics and Mechanism Design
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ค. 2011
- GeekNights presented three lectures at PAX East 2011, among them "Game Mechanics and Mechanism Design." Here, Rym and Scott introduce the audience to the bare basics of Game Theory so as to be able to explain how important a field of study called "Mechanism Design" should be (but isn't) to gaming and game design.
In short summary, "Mechanism Design" is the study of games from an interested perspective. That is to say, that the game designer has a vested interest in the play and outcome of the game. In many ways, games are mind control. It is in the best interest of game players and game designers to understand how this works and what effects it can have.
This was one of the earlier PAX talks Rym and Scott gave! #gamedesign #gamemechanics #gametheory - เกม
![หมานแต่ผัวเขา - แสตมป์ โตเกียวมิวสิค [ OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/m0g1TSBJPgo/mqdefault.jpg)
Nice, this covers a lot of important topics and I'm coming away impressed. Well done.
When I first watched this video years ago it was what taught me about the game behind the game and I loved it then and still watch it now. You guys need to come to PAX Unplugged.
great video and great speakers! really fun and entertaining! :D If teachers at school would teach like those 2 guys, students would learn a lot more. Thumb up all day long!
Loved this, perfectly topped of with ethics discussion at the end.
This was really interesting. It also made me realise that Liar Game is pretty much Game Theory: The Manga.
40:39 I think, if I understand what they're saying correctly, that TBoI would be an example of using that system well. Each achievement signifies an unlocked item or mechanic, instead of just something that says 'Hey, you did it!'.
This is the nerdiest take on game design I've ever seen and I LOVE IT! 😍😁🥳
Finally the panels show up! awesome :D
hey at 22:50 you guys got the payoffs to the prisoners dilemma backward... the 1st number is the row players payoffs and the 2nd number is the column players payoffs... you've written for defecting against co-operate player 1 gets lose big
11 years in the future to say we still haven’t found the end of chesd
45:19 Probably the funniest moment in a GeekNights panel
Guys, this is brilliant!
Would you mind giving some titles for books on game theory? You've sparked my interest with this video, and I want to learn more.
That's what I thought at first, not in a "oh these guys don't know what they're talking about" sort of way but in more a "whoops, this isn't what I'm looking for better watch something else" kind of thing but the talk turned out to be very interesting and enlighting for me I think. Great speakers too ;D
@Zahnhauser Also, at 46:07, which game is the image that has a person holding a rifle standing back-to-back with a person holding a bible from?
@a1024s The audio for the last 10 or so minutes cut out due to the battery dying in our Marantz on stage. I have the backup audio from the camera itself, but it's barely listenable. I've been working on mastering that last bit as best I can. This is the entirety of the delay for How to Win at Games!
@42Forty2 Coming as soon as I have time to put it together and remaster the audio.
there is totally more than one strategy to running. the "best" running style (position, etc) is a subject of debate. Jumping, too, if you see things like the long jump or pole vault.
A trick: you can watch series on flixzone. Been using them for watching loads of movies these days.
@Anthony Thomas Yea, been using flixzone} for months myself :)
@Zahnhauser That game is "Dogs in the Vineyard."
good video thanks
nice info!
@Zahnhauser I too would like to see some good book titles.
Also, not that we forgot about The Ponies, but where's your other panel? You said it would be up 2 Sundays ago.
I just wanted to drop a thank you for the free course on game design. Ive watched many videos and read many books at this point but your presentations have given more consistent insight for an aspiring developer than any of them.
good information.
11:40 I like how that one guy got up to see if anyone put their hand up
55:18 LOL this was recorded just as shopping malls were collapsing for that exact reason.
What happened to Radio Free Equestria? Wasn't that a weekly thing that only had two episodes? Don't get me wrong, I love your other videos, but I've watched all your videos over and over because I love hearing you talk about something. I'm helping with a MLP game and your videos about that show really helped us make some important decisions. Please make more videos! All of us on the team support you guys!
But were there any file uploads? D:
The act? As in GeekNights? Or our lectures in general? Us? ^_~
"Game Mechanics" and "Game Theory" have almost nothing to do with eachother, and "Mechanism Design" is a subset of Game Theory. Check out our "Mastering Game Mechanics" lecture from PAX East 2013 instead: that's more what you seem to be looking for!
Is that Roo from Clan of the Gray Wolf in the bottom right corner at 4:40? He stretches his neck.
Show us more of your seminars! I don't care if it is you guys standing up in your living room again. (by the way, is that living room CG?, no way it is that clean)
would this kinda stuff be in a computer science degree because thats what i want to do and this is interesting
I'm wondering if the devs of games like mtg pokemon tcg and boardgames and such in digital form would be some people to look at with that kind of question. Maybe even mobile app mechanics programming. Idk. This question is interesting.
Hello, my name is Raul.
LITTLE LITTLE ESSAY ON RPGs
Morrowind, Skyrim, Gothic II, Dark Souls 2, Fallout 3, Daggerfall, Baldur's Gate 2, Vampire the Masquerade:Bloodlines, Planescape Torment, Deus Ex and many more...(please tell me your favorite one and I will add it to the list).
All of them are fantastic games, some of them masterpieces.
What makes these games great games?
I believe that the great games and in particular masterpieces have the power to go inside our mind changing us forever, not just as individuals, but us all.
My thoughts are just ideas freely written (I'm sorry if they are repeated, it's because I need to explain them again and better or with different nuances). Some thoughts are also poorly written, but try to grasp the core of the idea and develop it from here.
1) A beautiful and original story can go inside us much more then great graphic or gameplay mechanics.
2) The sound and music can give life to the game and enhance the experience to higher levels, put a lot of thoughts an efforts in this part;
there are still a lot of developers that don't understand the importance of sound.
3) A face that speaks but does not show emotions it does not work, is better in this case don't show the animated face at all.
4) If the acting voice is inconsistent, is far more better just use the written dialog.
5) A less detailed world in terms of graphic allows to make it much more bigger.
6) More realism does not mean more immersion, I actually think that is less interesting.
7) A game is not a book, so I think that the dialogs and written words should be kept at a minimum.
8) A realistic sky is beautiful, but not interesting. Is far more better to give some character to the sky with original clouds shapes.
9) Bidimensional sprites sometime can have more character then 3d models, why not for example, animate a face with a sprite animation on a 3D model or use full characters sprites even in modern games?
10) A world with a interesting architecture is far more memorable.
11) Sometimes low quality sample sounds can have more charm then high quality samples.
12) I suggest to developers to simplify the world so to be able and dedicated resources to make it more interesting.
13) I suggest to developers to use an old engine for concentrating on gameplay, story and characters.
14) A memorable character will never be forgotten.
15) Even the most sophisticated AI will repeat itself, so use simple scripted technology to create unexpected situation and behavior.
16) Surprise the player is one of the most important thing in a Game.
17) Scripting is time consuming but worthy as just the fantasy of a person can create beautiful unrepeatable things, events, stories, characters; this is why simplify the world can be a smart thing to do. Developers now have huge resources that can dedicate over this task instead of realistic graphics or realistic physics.
18) I think multiple choices are a non-sense, or at least not powerful. The feeling of fake options dispels the sense of immersion; the feeling is that someone wants to tell me where I'm going.
19) Steer away from realism, it drains a lot of energy and does not serve the purpose to immerse the player in something magical.
20) The world is always in the mind of the player not inside the monitor, leave the space to his imagination, in this way it is more powerful.
21) Mods are fantastic and one of the biggest reality of gaming, congratulation to all the modders that put their love in this new reality;
all modders can use freely my music, just contact me if you like it and want to use it.
22) Instead of using expensive full orchestra music, hire few different unknown composers/players that can produce a lot of different music, or even more simple use very old music out of copyright and then transform it by changing the pitch, instruments, speed, scale or isolating just few parts and repeat them; few notes from Bach repeated over and over can be surprisingly wonderful.
23) The faces of NPCs are very important, give them a lot of charisma, make them memorable.
24) It is not necessary put the voice to all the dialogs, just few memorable voiced sentence are enough to give the presence to a character.
25) Usually developers make something happen in every location, I think is a mistake; I prefer to have plenty of places where nothing happen and then when I found a place with some kind of event, it will be far more enjoyable.
26) Use a voice or writing that sometimes describes and add details to the scene, a character a place, a situation: this is a powerful tool for immersion; for example we cannot have smells or odors in a games, so the developers can add this perceptions with a txt or voice descriptions.
27) Stanley Kubrick used the enviroment, the architecture of a building, the layout of a room, objects as a way to communicate; it is really a powerful way to express emotions, thought, feelings with shapes, colours and objects.
28) The presence of an NPC is much more important then his/her animation, there is no need of lip-sink or fancy movements because just the appearance can give strong feelings.
29) What an NPC says is very important, he/she has to say something that will be remembered, so use little txt or voice, but it has to be always memorable.
30) Create unique NPCs, never clone a NPC, make them simple using sprites with just few frames and few sounds.
NPCs created with editors are all similar, apparently different but actually very similar, while hand-drawn NPCs are always different, and having different people drawings them, will create really different and striking NPCs.
31) Pointing the direction to find someone or something with an arrow or highlighting it in the map is a non-sense and shatters the feeling of free exploration; the players are not babies and if the developers are using these tricks to help the player in finding the way, is an utterly failure and they do not understand the concept of free world.
32) Real time maps are not good, the pleasure to use a virtual paper map is much greater.
33) A beautiful and engaging combat mechanic gives a strong satisfaction, but is a short taste, what remains in the player's mind is the feeling of the place, the story, the NPC characters.
34) Everything and everyone the player will see during the game, has to be special, everything and everyone has to remain in the memory of the player, otherwise there is no point.
35) The game will succeed if the player will be not able to understand what comes next, not even a bit; it has to be a journey of surprises.
36) A masterpiece needs inside multiple layers of meanings.
37) Draw mountains with a structure that suggests meanings, emotions.
38) When the player approaches an enemy or NPC, it has to be a fresh encounter every time; AI will never (for the moment) be able to recreate the imagination of a real person. AI even if sophisticated, will recreate the same patterns that will bore the player; at the opposite, scripting the behavior will always create something new and fresh; scripting is an old but simple technology and it is also time consuming but the resources of the developers could be diverted in this direction, instead of complicated graphics or AI; an old engine like for example the ones used in Morrowind or Daggerfall are very simple and fast to use by nowadays standard, all the resources could be diverted to create unique behaviors;
I imagine the developers of Skyrim, using the engine of Daggerfall to create a more deep gameplay...10 people could create the whole graphic world and the other 90 dedicated their effort scripting unique behaviors; in Skyrim the combat is very funny and effective but after a while it is repetitive, the monsters behave always with same patterns....I imagine a programmer dedicating 1 day of work just to create a monster and his behavior, now imagine 90 programmers doing the same the same for 1 whole year....they will create a world full of original and unique NPCs.
39) What is important is the feeling of something is happening and it has to happen just in our mind, this is the secret of a masterpiece.
40) Stories in games are rather basic but there is no reason why they couldn't reach deeper levels; the same is for the characters, the NPCs; I exhort the modders to concentrate their attention on a single NPC trying to give it exceptional deepness, to show what can be achieved in a game; a very deep NPC could bring life to the whole game.
41) Voice-acted technology does not work, even if the acting voices are well done (which is very rare) there is always the feeling that are detached from the NPCs;
I prefer much more just the writings and simple unique sounds to give presence and to the NPCs; for example, an hostile NPC could have aggressive sounds, while a friendly NPC could have some relaxing sounds; I would like to suggest to give at least one unique sound for every NPC that suggest its personality; voice-acted technology is about realism but reality is an false friend of games.
42) Most of the NPCs usually communicate informations that the player usually does not want to hear, is better silence then boring informations; keep them at a minimum and convey emotions instead of informations.
43) Older RPGs have usually more mystery and have a more immersive quality, because they were relying less on realism and more on the feeling of the story, on the deepness of the characters; don't let the technology drives and wins over the art of imaginations which is much more powerful.
44) A world with simple graphics like using sprites or very basic 3D models with maybe just few important texture can be much more complex in therms of characters, story and gameplay; I suggest to modders to use an older engine to create a more immersive world; what about Bethesda using an old engine to create a new game, I'm sure it will be a very unique experience and will challenge the team.
45) I think a game should let you create the story and characters in your mind, it has to push you to imagine.
46) I think that receiving and completing missions or quests from an NPC is a rigid way to be immersed in a game and it feels like the open world game suddenly become like a narrow experience.
47) Simple and non realistic graphics have a charm that for me is more powerful, for example, Gothic 2 has a great atmosphere that other more recent games have not.
48) Sometime the best games in terms of complexity, graphics, sounds, budget, are actually not working to create a sense of immersion and other games, more simple, less complicated, with a lower technology succeed instead to create a believable and immersive world.
49) A masterpiece is a game that constantly surprises the player with new locations, new NPCs, enemies, behaviors, stories and; I think that the more the game is simple, the more it can be deep and engaging.
50) Instead of working on creating a very detailed world, is better having a varied world; for example for the sound, instead of having hundreds of sounds inside a village, I think is more effective having just few sounds typical for each different place; I much more prefer having sounds that characterize uniquely different places instead of having the same hundreds of sounds in every village, for example.
51) If you need to use voice-acted technology, instead of using hundreds of actors, just hire a really talented single one that does all the readings;
a powerful warm voice is much more engaging and emotional effective.
52) A sprite enemy NPC with a great sound has a bigger presence then a super sophisticated 3D model with a weak sound.
All of this may have come from a place of care and desire to see games improve, and I know this post is quite old, but it's pretty bad. I decided to read through it all and was rather displeased with the lack of thought put into the points. I'm going to say some harsh words, but keep in mind this is not directed towards you, but your post, and more specifically the points that were made
.
Read this post at your own risk, it’s long as f**k, like if you read the Hunger Games instead of this you would get 1/20 of the way through it, and doesn’t have much depth, mostly just discussion points for thinking about.
1) This one isn’t bad. A generic statement that is extremely vague on how it would be implemented, but it has been proven to be true for some games.
This was quite the case for Limbo. However, Limbo's story was able to be told so well because of the graphics. The great depiction of darkness allows the player to easily tie themselves emotionally to the state that the main character is in, afraid and alone.
A reoccurring theme in this post is this preconceived notion that the elements that make up a game are all independent of each other. Each one on their own island and players only seeking to experience that one element from a game. I do not like this. It is nonsensical. Games more than any medium have the ability to combine elements into one experience.
2) This may be the best point. The second part is kind of pretentious, but yes I agree that some games do indeed fail to use sound and music to its greatest potential. Peggle does an incredible job at rewarding the player almost entirely from the sound. The player has struggled very little to complete the level, but yet it's hard to not feel accomplished at the end of every level. Personally, I find this disturbing, but I do not know enough to claim its wrong for them to do.
Skyrim also does a great job at using music to set a mood for the player. This is most impressive because the music is not scripted beforehand in the traditional sense. In Halo, an epic soundtrack might start once you hit a certain stage in the level. And for Halo, it works great, but Skyrim is built largely around the player creating their own experiences. Which meant Bethesda had to create some form of AI that could detect the right time to play. Adding to the intensity of random encounters.
As far as actual audio goes, and Foley, I can't say much. AGC does some great videos in his Walking the Walk series where he mentions a lot about sound and how the environment should be effecting the sounds he is hearing while exploring open worlds.
3) I get the sentiment. I think this is very specific and quite a lot to ask for, but yeah I get it. Although I think it's about showing the correct emotion, more preciously. For basic NPCs usually lacking emotion while talking doesn't break the immersion for me. Also, it seems it is more about the emotion coming through the voice than the face. It is quite hard to pin down what emotion is being expressed visually compared to audibly. At least that has been my experience. In all fairness, I did grow up with poor vision so maybe I am unreliable on this subject.
4) This is a toughy. A big part of a game is ensuring that once a rule is established it is never broke. Jonathon Blow has talked about this a lot. I believe that Gamers Toolkit covers this in their short video about Jonathon's Blow take on design.
So for a game like Oblivion, which has some very poor, and quite laughable, vocal performances, they can not have a line of dialogue without a person voicing it. That is a rule that is established and carried out. It would break its own rules, which breaking those rules has a chance at giving the player an unsettling feeling.
On the other hand, there are games like Fallout 1and 2 that have some truly spectacular voice acting lines, even though there is not always characters that have a dedicated vocal performance. And even if they do, it's only for a portion of their dialogue. That is their games fantasy, and it works. They can afford to not have ever line voiced and not have a jarring experience for the player because the player is already aware that they are playing a game. The line of voice dialogue is there largely just as a way to paint a fuller picture of what kind of character they are interacting with.
5) Um, ahh, uhh, well, kind of. That's not even a complete thought. Which is okay if it didn't send the message that less detailed worlds are always bigger than more detailed worlds. It's more of the idea that there are only so many hours of labor that can be put into a world. The more detailed world the more man hours. And I guess there is the whole storage argument, but that's not relative anymore for most games. A great example of this is the world that Rockstar created in GTA V. The Xbox 360 had to have two-disc to install it due to the storage cap on a single disk. However, they still were able to get the game fully functional and stretching the console's hardware more than any other game that I played.
Also, this is statement is working from the notion that how much detail that is in a world does not affect the quality of the game. Which I believe is because you have tied the words realistic and detailed into one word. And on top of that stating, later, and hinting at here, that realistic worlds are bad. More on realistic worlds later, for now, the importance of detail.
The value of detail in its world entirely set by the game. Now the year that it is released may affect the level of detail players expect, and their expectations may influence the design of the game, but in the end its the game itself that decides. Minecraft proves this notion that sometimes your world does not need to have detail in the traditional sense, with the world being made up of blocks that are nearly as massive as the player. However, it still has a great amount of detail to its worlds. If you want to find diamonds, a valuable resource that most players will gravitate towards, then you dig down and start mining. Every block in the world has already been set and has a value to the player. That degree of attention to detail is amazing and Minecraft would be a lesser game without it.
If I am going to be spending a lot of time in a game than I do wish that they have a wealth of detail in the world. And in all aspects.
( little derailed there, AGC does incredible in talking about this, time to move on )
6) Already talked about this with what’s been mentioned above. For some games realism does add a lot to the experience, because that is the goal. I will admit that most AAA games that are coming out are now tending to put out only realistic titles. However this is not entirely the case. And really the main issue to be talked about here is believability, which needs to be had even in the most fantastical worlds.
No one expects Frodo to be able to fight an Orc and come out alive. Even though it is fantasy it has rules. In Game of Thrones, George Martin went a step further and decided that a story could not be believable if main characters where impervious to death. And the success of his books and the subsequent T.V. show, does well to prove that his argument holds water.
In my experience, I have found that often in worlds that are not believable they have to focus more on creating believable characters. They are not so different from you or I, if we were to be put into their situation. In Star Trek The Next Generation I thoroughly enjoy the characters because I find their dialogue and feelings to accurately reflect how they should be feeling based on how they have represented themselves thus far.
This all ties back to ensuring that a game never breaks its own rules.
7) This makes no sense. Its one of the worst points that you have on here, and that is title that it had to fight for. Another theme that is apparent is that you are grouping all games into this nice little definition and you are limiting any other game from having different elements based on, uh, hmm, I think nothing. I see no logical deduction taking place.
These are just different experiences to be had. And I have to say if a game is stripping itself of all dialogue and words, then all story will have to be told some other way. And that sounds interesting, but extremely difficult. And not only for the creators, but also for the player to understand.
For me WoW quest really sucked because it wasn’t about giving the player engaging dialogue. You just went off and grinded. I didn’t enjoy my time spent, I simply played because of addiction.
8) I was playing Overwatch, and waiting for the match begin. I looked up at the night sky and saw the Moon. Expect the Moon was brighter than I thought it should be and it was lit up in a weird manner. As if Blizzard didn’t know what the moon looked like. Then I found out that in the Overwatch world the moon was actually colonized. And what I was seeing was city lights, on the Moon. I was in awe. There is definitely more room for innovation here for a lot of games.
That does not mean that a realistic night sky is a bad thing. When I was playing Ark the night was scary. It was dark and most of the creatures could kill me if I got too close. And death set you back far. So when I looked up into the night sky I was temporarily calmed by the beauty of it. And I praised it for the little light that it did give. I don’t think that a heavily stylized night sky would be better for that game.
9) YOU ARE JOKING, RIGHT? This isn’t even a game design related thing really. I mean it’s just not. To me this comes off as a dick measuring contest. From my experience doing this is impossible for most games, given that 2d sprites in a 3d world always has to be facing the character to be seen. And that would mean that the other character would have to be looking at them. Like the original Doom. It just doesn’t make sense to go back to this.
Now if this was like a one off easter egg or artistic style that was implemented in a certain way then possibly. Wolfenstein’s trailer had a 2d animated colorful slug to show how someone was tripping on acid, but that’s not what you were really talking about.
10) Dishonored had an amazing lead art designer that did a phenomenal job with the architecture and making the whole world fit together, even through a heavily stylized approach. Killzone also had some well done architecture, but it just doesn’t really make me feel the same way. Because Killzone only used those places as a way to flex its muscles about how awesome it was and try to setup the next *intense* fight.
Which brings me to the conclusion that its not really about the architecture. Of course some of it is, like how in Witcher 3 the buildings in the city were on an angle, which was realistic and showed how poor people were. But really, its about what you interact with. In Dishonored I got to climb around this very vertical city, which worked well with the teleport spell, and I began to remember the paths I was taking. In some way I had ownership of those air vents. They were mine to jump across.
So yah, it can be, but its not black and white.
11) I really don’t have much to say on that. I guess you might be referring the fact that many games have more generic sounds now. Like how most old games had very rememberable sounds and music. Thumbs up. Pretty okay point.
12) Simplify to make more interesting. Hmm. This just seems to go against what you want from games. Also why are you telling game developers what they should be doing. That takes a lot of moxie to tell people who have more success in that area what they should be doing.
13) Terrible. Irrational. I see the logic you used: New games have bad story and characters, old games have good story and characters, thus old game engines must be the source of all this awesome goodness. That’s terrible. And again with telling people in a field that you have never worked in what to do, tsk. Really starting to question your ability to think critically.
The game engine that a game is made in does not effect the game as much as you may be thinking. For you it might make the game feel more like games that you played in the past and therefor better, but outside of feeling more like older games, it wouldn’t default in a better game.
The largest point being that the game would have unnecessary restraints from what it could do. Thanks to newer game engines there are games like Rocket League and Chivalry. Both of these games allow for the player to have a unique experience involving mechanics not possible on older game engines.
14) They could be. Anyways just um, what. This point adds no value. The real value is deducing what makes a character memorable. And sadly, all it takes is just enough encounters with them to be memorable. For proof: “Do you get to the cloud district often, oh what am I saying of course you don’t.” Would not say that is a good character. So the next major point that is probably what you wanted to say is that it is important for there to be a character in the game that has an emotional impact on us and are able to create a charactercher of who they were in our mind.
15) As far as enemy AI go, Game Makers toolkit does a fabulous job talking about this.
If instead you are talking about scripted AI for a different reason than fighting then yes, that can lead to interesting feelings in the game. But an advance enough AI would not repeat itself. It would be human.
The importance of NPCs in the game and how they act is again entirely up to the game, a scripted moment in Minecraft does not make sense. It is not wanted.
16) IF THAT’S THE EXPEIRENCE YOU WANT. Also surprise is too vague. I was surprised in Skyrim when Lydia got hit by a Giant and then was glitched horizontally in the ground, while continuing to follow me. Dues Ex’s surprises are story driven. Which could really be more of a twist then anything.
Unique experience is more across the board instead of surprise. Be that discovery, accomplishment, fear, or joy.
17) USE OLD GAME ENGINE, BUT HAVE GOOD PHYSICS, BECAUSE DEVELOPER FOCUS TIME ON WORLD, I just can’t right now. Nothing to analyze here.
18) So I think you mean that giving the player multiple choices that will always lead to the same result is bad. And yes, it is if your purposely trying to deceive them to make your game seem better than it is. But sometimes just hearing a character say a different dialogue choice or going through the left side instead of the right is enough to keep me interested. As long as the game has something to keep me moving forward.
19) Not all games are going for something magical. Some games find their ‘magic’ through creating the most realistic possible worlds. As already addressed in earlier points. Which is because you already said this in earlier point
20) I actually can’t understand this sentence. If you are saying that developers should, to make their game great, remove everything from a game and make the player think of their own world while they walk through an empty white room. Cause even the notion of doing this would require there to be more dialogue in the game so that the player could build up the feeling of lore for the world which is part of why people enjoyed the older Elder Scrolls games so much. But you actually don’t want that because you said that there should be as few lines of written or spoken words in a game. So to me it sounds as if you don’t want any game at all….
Games need to put the player in the world and show them their rules to the world and then, like already mentioned, have the players use those rules in a way that is fitting to the play experience. Such as how Garret in Thief is never meant to take on anyone in a fight. And by guiding the player they can then dissolve into the game. And in the case of Thief, become a thief, that looks through the world in search of treasure and silent paths to reach it.
( Starting to break down due to this nonsense. )
21) Not all games need this. As stated before you are being very narrow sighted with what a game is. 1984 is a great book that George Orwell spent a great amount of thought on to give alter the way the reader thinks about life. Sometimes games are like this. They are made, they are played, they are remembered.
22) Skip
23) Generic statement, will translate: “game devs to better”. The faces of guards in Skyrim is not very important to the experience Bethesda Studios wanted players to have. Todd Howard has stressed how he had to cut parts of the game because they weren’t adding to the core experience of the game. And they were bringing too much attention to parts of the game that they had underdeveloped. Such as the concept of storing items on a horse. It would be very useful for the player. Except they didn’t want horses to be the most important part of Skyrim. Especially because the horses were pretty crappy, and while adding the option to store items on the horse would be easy, fleshing out the horse would not.
24) Already addressed in point 4
25) This could be one of the best points you have. Except for I don’t think you are aware of how much down time there actually is in a lot of games. They spend a great amount of effort ensuring that the pacing is right. Doom 2016 has great pacing for the experience that it wants the player to have. It’s a power fantasy. GIVE THEM HELL.
Then there is something like Uncharted that switches between different parts of the game, to ensure that the player is never doing one thing too long. The three major are, story, fighting, and platforming. And they overlap in times to amplify the experience. I think Last of Us did a good job with this too.
26) Never mind, this is the best point I have seen. If there is any one thing that I think isn’t just a generic statement in this pile of crap, it’s this. This is not something that you are going to see often. And it’s not something that most games are going to need. But what this does is show that you are actually in a world that has real effects on the people in it. Again, Last of Us. Amazing. Joseph Anderson has an amazing 1hr+ talk on this.
27) The importance of expressing ideas to players without saying anything. Mario, Super Meat Boy, Braid, Half Life, Witness, and many more have moments in them where the player just understands what to do. There aren’t any words, but somehow there is a conversation. Gamers Toolkit has a video called the invisible tutorial.
Really the key is to limit the possible options from the player and limit the possible correct solutions that the player can give. Mario, you don’t know what to do, no controls are shown, but you only have, I think four possible buttons, and there is a great big space to the right. Which is also used in cinematography as a way to hint to the viewer that that area will be important, very common with thrillers.
28) Animation gives the character life. The way they move tells you something about them. League of Legends does an amazing job at giving personality to a character just from its walking animation. There is also the importance of telegraphing, hinting at what move is coming next, that has to be done in games. Without telegraphing Dark Souls would be a terrible game, because then the player is taking damage from a mistake that he is not capable of correcting. Which might be okay for some games, such as Skyrim, but Dark Souls is all about giving the player a consequence for their actions. The player defeating a boss feels good because you defeated them with skill.
Also again AGC Walking the Walk talks a lot about animations.
29) I think enough has been said to disprove this already. But, just for fun, I suppose. Books are filled with a lot of words. Even an average adult novel is around 50-100k words. Not every word will be important. Some just help move things along. To give someone only dialogue that is extremely important is to make a god out of a man.
( Why am I still doing this )
30) In a way there is a point to be made here. Stardew Valley is quite literally what you are asking for. But, that’s not what every game is striving for. Again linking back to 23, only so much can be done. And if it’s not part of the core experience to the game then it has to get cut. Assassins Creed can’t make 10k unique NPCs just for you to walk around a city.
31) Solid. Some games are okay to have it, but yah others don’t. Game Makers Toolkit little dotted line
32) Again it’s all about what kind of game you are making. If it is a simulator game, like Thief, then the type of map that you are allowing the player to use is very valuable, assuming you even let them have one. In order to make the player feel more like a thief they are given very little information on what they will find. This also adds to the difficulty. Overall okay point.
33) Depends. This is already answered. Each game has its own experience that is trying to give the player. And the gameplay is really an extension of the story. Its like how when you watch a Jakie Chan movie you see more of Jakie Chan in the action scenes than you do in the story. He isn’t some sharpshooter or boxer he is a man that is trained in using his environment. He always starts the fight with a disadvantage that he works into being his advantage.
Its all about matching gameplay mechanics to who the character is and the story that is being told. Skyrim’s combat is quite s**t. But its s**t so that your skill as a player doesn’t effect the game. Only your skill as a character does.
34) The point of a video game is very hard to discuss. All I am going to say about this is that its quite wrong. Because no game can be entirely unique.
35) Some of this is okay, but that’s more of a story thing. If a player can’t see what enemy is coming at them next every single point in the game then the game will probably feel unfair.
36) Is anything really a masterpiece? What is meaning? Is it just something humans make?
37) Skipping cause can’t even understand if that’s supposed to be a thought.
38) Seriously. Stop with the dick measuring contest. I get it you watched a video on how games are made once.
39) If feeling is the most important thing then why do you hate being given a choice that’s doesn’t effect anything. Because that is there to give a player a feeling.
40) Sometimes concertraiting all your focus on just making one NPC isn’t what your game needs. And that would take a lot of time. Event[0]
( Think that there is less to say now, oh well almost finished with this s**t )
41) Different strokes for different folks. However you definitely are going to struggle to make an RPG where there is no voice acting. At least not the types of RPGs that you find so great. And there is just something about playing CoD and listen to Ghost call out the enemies and what’s going to need to get done.
42) I really don’t think you know what you are asking for. There is a great wealth of ambiance to even the dumbest of dialogue by an NPC. Even though it can be quite crap its easy to forget that they are not an actual person. I call Lydia dumb sometimes, and then I remember oh yah she isn’t actually a person.
43) ‘Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?’ -Da Vinci
My point is that when you actually try to use your imagination to see something it isn’t a clear image. The best that you can get from imagination is a feeling. I don’t think that its ever fair to say that something shouldn’t exist because your imagination can do better. Even though in reality you don’t actually see clear images in your mind. Or else I would be a great artist.
44) Already addressed this. 99.9% S**t idea. Because of why you think it’s a good idea.
45) Then they aren’t making a game.
46) Phew. Finally it’s been a while since an actually genuinely good thought. I agree the way quest are handled in games can force you into a position that you didn’t want to take. Fallout 4 seems to be quite bad at this, especially in the Nuka World DLC, where you are clearing out areas for an army of bandits by yourself.
I think RuneScape is a crude way has some of the best layout of quest I have ever done in a game. It sounds silly, but none of the quest in RuneScape have you do something that feels wrong for your player to be asked to do. And due to the nature of RuneScape the quest are completely optional for you to do, you only really do them if you want some special unlock.
47) That’s fine
48) Its happened.
49) The way you use your language makes it very hard to break down meaning. Simple = Deep? Jonathon Blow, while not perfect, has a lot good thoughts on what makes a deep game.
50) Contrast. It’s a basic design element.
51) Oblivion did this. It was funny. Every game doing this, um plz at least to better at disguising that isn’t only 1 or 2 people.
52) Sound does have a strong connection to how we feel. Some say music is a drug because it can alter your state of mind and decision making just from hearing it. It’s a little harder to do that visually, but these two things are both important. And in some cases this is true, and others its not.
Finally done. Just was baffled by the lack of thought that was put into that post, yet making it longer than most post. So much so that I had to do this. Yah that sucked.
Anyways if you read this, you are a crazy person. But I hope it was valuable.
HA! Roo and Commodore from "Clan of the Grey Wolf" are in the crowd. Everyone should check their channel!
47:40 Not really. In 1e D&D, magic-users needed way more XP to get to maximum levels. I think almost twice as much.
Not to bash this video ( I'm sure some will find it helpful ) but I was personally a little disappointed with the content here. There was a lot of time spent on very basic components of game theory - I was looking for something more along the lines of "what makes a great game mechanic" vs an explanation of the prisoner's dilemma...
@mogllion Listen to their podcast, I'm pretty sure RFE episodes will come soon. :D
starts at 3:06
Kane and Lynch 2 had pretty awesome multiplayer in regards to the prisoner's dilemma.
But nooooo one played it.
Question: Did Rym and Scott mind-control the audience into submitting questions?
"Right"
Holy shi.... then 99% of my brain is populated by ponies
12：50 “some day, within our life time, I guess in the next decade, chess will be solved"
At this point I have to quit watching the video because next joke make kill me of laughter attack.
+Citriano Torres It's just a computation problem. Checkers was solved many years ago (both sides can force a draw). More to the point, AIs are so far beyond even the best human players that literally no human being can beat current AI systems. No one.
That's way you never see "human vs computer" chess in the news anymore. Humans have nothing more to contribute to raw play of chess: computers are 100% superior to humans even though they are far short of a mathematical solution to chess as a game.
Go probably won't be solved in this way short of a maths miracle. But chess? Chess's days are numbered.
Rym DeCoster He said, 10^50-10^60, although we don't even know the number of possible chess games. Do you really think chess will be solved in 10 years? Pleas! In the last 10 years, the Nalimov tables (solution to the game) past from 6 pieces to 7. The number of combinations grows exponentially, do you realize? Chess uses 32 pieces, so, you do the math.
It is true that humans are unable to challenge computers nowadays and the gap is increasing. But humans are too far from playing perfect. This is like saying that speed of light is close just because plains run much faster than us.
Go is more complex than chess but not so much. The reason why humans still beat computers at go is because of its nature. Go is more strategic.
+Citriano Torres It's not impossible. Unlikely within a decade of 2011, but not impossible. Maybe 20 years. The complexity of the space increases exponentially, but so does much of our ability to catch up to problems that we have a grip on the nature of.
You guys realize that the full position number of 19x19 Go was calculated recently? Even better, the newest AI is unable to be beaten by any human. The former is a step toward solution, the latter is a practical (but not mathematical) solution.
Go among humans is a fine game.
Go among computers is a fine game.
Humans and computers will never play Go together again.
Solving is not the same thing as having a strong engine. Chess complexity is 10^130 and go is 10^200+ would take a large breakthrough
Rym has great hair.
Scott looks almost tough in this video!
lol
7:25 - You can't ruin Megaman much more than Capcom already did, give me your best shot!
57:55 - "Resist Mind Control", "Use Mind Control on others (ethically)" xD
The guy on the right says "right" about every 5th word.
He's probably a leftist.
Right!
@@DemonmachinE huh?
38:27 Guy said it perfectly….and lets just say the devs have been a bit too lax on things lol 😂
Game design fuck yeah!
*intuitively grasp it
@mogllion Jesus, you kids. It'll come when it comes. The pilot was successful, so we're working to put it together at a high production value. ;^)
The bit starting at 5:02 about Blizzard guys hits different, now that we know what a lot of Blizzard guys were thinking about.
Well your chess comment didn't age well (Rym - "Chess will likely be solved by computers in 10 years."). As someone who avidly follows chess I can report that the TCEC (top chess engine championship) held each year still has wins for both white and black and draws. While engines are far ahead of humans, the many branches of the chess decision tree have not yet been fully computed.
I enjoyed the talk by the way.
There's a lot of ramble here.
They say they will spoil a few games by showing how to never lose at them and yet they dont. Not saying rhey should, or that its related to the topić, but if theyre not going to, much better not to profile what you dont want to deliver. Kinda Basic writing idea, like, chekhovs gun - related.
That spoilers part came after the talk, in a separate workshop that we did not video.
@Condor DM Lol you're on like every game design video on youtube making these same exact cynical remarks, always accusing them of mediocrity.
they interrupt each other too much
They've got tons of talks together. It's their style.
Nice presentation. Not fan of the act though.
Those guys look and move like they want to pee. I cant focus on the talk this way. They're talking but I'm thinking if there is a bathroom nearby they could attend and stop doing that
Don't look at the screen and just listen :) just look if they're demonstrating something.
Hey I'm from the future... 2020 to be exact... Blizzard doesn't make good games anymore... sorry.
I know 11yo video and such but,,, chess and go are not remotely solvable. Even checkers with 10^30 if that is a correct estimate is not solvable by exhausting strategies. Imagine for a second how many floating point operations a computer can do. 10^9/sec? 10^12? If a single boardstate could be evaluated by some miracle through a single multiplication operation that computer would take 10^18 seconds, which is 10^12 years. Longer than the age of the universe.
Really entertaining talk but math subject may be chosen incorrectly because really the math background is very lacking haha. Analyzing a continous space shooter game with game theory is impossible. It's made for 2 party negotiations with known rewards, a subbranch of decision theory. No actual 'game' game is so simple. Not even tic tac toe. What is the utility of placing cross in the middle of the board? Incalcuable without doing alpha beta search first
six months to go, no solution to chess as of yet.
Chess is 'solved' in the sense that no human will ever beat a computer ever again.