game#10 - Getting Over It with Clumsy Bird Person

edit:: oh, right! The theme was EMOTION. When I figured out the emotion I wanted the rest of the game fell together effortlessly. I can't really put it into words, but sort of like, trepidation/uncertainty/fear? "I don't want to jump" + "I have to jump" + Whatever feelings you get after jumping.

I was playing Beast Breaker and I was having some trouble. The game itself was interesting. Flawed, but interesting. And yet, I found myself playing it and hating it. I was dragging myself across hot coals for something, but for what?


In Beast Breaker, you play the game awhile and the game provides you with new items: a new cloak with better stats, a new sword with weird new abilities, a brand new weapon type. That's all well and good, and I wanted to check out these new items! I wanted to see what it was like to play with them. So I kept playing. Yeah, there's some randomness in the game, but the real randomness that got me was this discrete, staid randomess: each freshly-unlocked item could theoretically make me love the game even more.

I kept playing because I had to play to unlock new stuff, but I couldn't know ahead of time whether the new stuff was going to be good; when I had stopped enjoying the game, I still compelled myself to keep playing because unlocking new stuff, as based on my past experience, could make the game suddenly better! It depends on whether the new stuff was really cool, whether it aligned with my tastes.

HOW TO PLAY: Determine whether I love the game as it is, now. If I don't, I can safely stop playing?

Maybe this isn't even a skinner box thing. the idea falls apart. well, it's not the primordial soup for nothin'.

HOW TO DESIGN: I dunno! I don't think this is a designer problem. Is it? IS IT???A arggghhh

Quote from: droqen, paradisei figured it out. the thing they all have in common is that they're all games i think are sort of compelling/entertaining but not great, but i keep playing them because if i play for another [duration] i will get another tiny unlock that might make the game way better! a skinner box, but not of extrinsic rewards -- a skinner box of intrinsic rewards.

this is huge.

There's something interesting, but also frustrating, about building up combos that might go to waste because of a bad pool shot.

"So what is my taste?" - Stories, characters

I like villains.

I like characters who learn and change.

BB's NPCs seem constantly engaged in smalltalk. In contrast to "I like villains" which still isn't really the whole story, I find BB's characters... maybe I should indicate them separately... to be attempts to portray "characters who have some minor quirks but who are ultimately good". Is that really the problem? I have to think about this more. What kind of characters do I love? Is it more about their place in the story?

Characters in BB don't make mistakes that matter. There's a little scene where the bird guy is freaking out because he's done something that will upset grandma, but... why do I care? It will never come up again. It doesn't matter. It's a detour. All the writing is just filler!!!

Everything that surrounds the core gameplay is kind of... I think it's just not to my taste. I've already written this but revisiting is important, right? I don't dislike a grind-and-unlock treadmill, I'm just picky*. Grinding and unlocking is GREAT when I LIKE it. Same with prose (those, man, that's hard to find), and story. The stories that games are telling are often not to my taste.

So what is?

* Right, the answer to "So what is?" will not be found through vague dismissals of my taste! So let's get into it. That's what this subforum is for!

1. Unlocking is slow. Yeah, we know that one.

2. The interface for unlocking is unclear. I DO NOT FEEL AS THOUGH I HAVE AGENCY. There isn't much for me to look forward to, since all I can see is the next quest. I can look at the UI and suppose that I will be able to

3. There is not much 'play' in the unlocking, though I have started to discover that the weapons have depths. I really like Electric Pulse or whatever it's called! But... hmm... I need to think about Beast Breaker vs. Into the Breach. I have similar reservations about ItB. I also don't really like unlock schemes such as SNKRX's or Roguelite ones, where you're struggling to cobble together a build from nothing. Do I ever like an unlock scheme? I liked System Shock 2...

4. It's turn based. That's a negative for me? I'm still trying to figure out why. It's quite random, and I don't really feel 'in control'. But think about Etrian Odyssey: that game was great! (Was EO great because of its more 'real-time' drawing minigame though? Hmmmm)

So far the characters don't seem like they're going to change.

Going back to the beginning of a game is not like going back to the beginning of a book; the characters in a game often can't, or don't, grow. Meaningful change is strangled by the need to support the rest of the loop. Characters are texture, not people.

Scores are communication. They're there for the developer to indicate to a player that their efforts are noticed, that striving for more is possible, and encouraged.

What's that relationship look like? Mark Brown's video indicates three core messages:

Scores can provide an additional level of difficulty
Hey, you should try doing that faster/more precisely/etc.
You should try avoiding making these types of errors.
I feel like scores make the easiest difficulty the default, and in order to play harder difficulties, you must submit to the Score System... not sure my thoughts here make any sense.

Scores can reveal completely new way to play
Hey, what can you do to make your score go up?
Maybe you haven't exhausted all the possibilities.
Hey, what if you tried that thing that seems impossible and impractical?

Scores can encourage you to see the intended experience
Hey, what if you did X more often?
It's a simple reward... this thing gives you more points/more rank.
Communication.

~

As a player you can choose to disengage with a score system in a way that you cannot disengage with other rules of the world: physics, death, resources.

I like the idea of a score system because as a channel of communication from game design to player.

There is more here, and if you're interested, follow this golden thread up, to wherever it leads.

At its peak, there is often an unintended or unknown way to play. This fascinates me, but it's not design, it's just appreciation.

More from Are Score Systems Still Relevant? -

Assault Android Cactus

- the 'novice player' get batteries from dead enemies experience mirrors the 'veteran player' full-chain combo experience, so that if you don't pursue high scores, you still get the same 'intended experience'.

- there is an S+ rank that you can achieve by fully chaining a combo, but the game doesn't suggest this as a bonus until you actually do it yourself

QuoteHiding this away until players prove their worth is a neat way to stop players becoming demoralized when they're hit with crappy medals at the very start of their experience.

"NEW GAME+", but based on proving your skill in any single level rather than after completing the whole game. I like it!

(Unlocking difficulty modes?)

Gunpoint, and Ladderdots

Sometimes a game will reward you - with points, or anything - for playing the game in a way that you as a player find less interesting. What's to be done in a situation like this?

A specific personal example: Gunpoint rewards you for perfect stealth, which I didn't enjoy as much as I would have enjoyed tinkering with everything and screwing it up. The suggestion of the existence of a perfect run... I don't think there's anything wrong with that conceptually. But, it felt like a much more restricted way to play that didn't let me fool around as much. Did it put the right tools on display? I guess I couldn't say. I didn't give myself

Ladderdots did the same for [..] in the paradise discord. Maybe the game didn't have enough depth; the score system indicated a deep system which ended up being quite trivial.

CONCLUSION: Not all games benefit from score systems. Score systems indicate "There is a better way to play this." Score systems belong in a game where you think the best gameplay exists at the edge of the score system -- improving and playing as perfectly as possible should be the desired experience, the cutting edge of what you love about playing the game.

Well, that was short.

Are Score Systems Still Relevant? - watching this today

QuoteBut as gaming moved over to home consoles, the focus shifted over to games that could be finished. Games like Megaman and Castlevania did hold onto high scores for a time, but players were more interested in fighting the end boss, saving the princess, and seeing the end of the story. And as for competition, real-time multiplayer became more interesting than leaderboards. The glory days of points, high scores, and personal bests, was over.

QuoteIs there still a place for high scores in 2018?

Is this the right question? That is, it had never really occurred to me that maybe the only purpose of a score system is high scores.

Quote from: 1:491. Scores can provide an additional level of difficulty

Quote from: 4:162. Scores can reveal completely new ways to play

Quote from: 6:113. Scores can encourage you to see the intended experience

I won't do separate posts for all 'close readings' relevant to this topic. Maybe I need a new forum category? For now, this will do - I'll put this topic in 'primordial soup' and hopefully revisit it a few times.

i always make this, its always amazing

ingredients:
1 cup rice
5-6 cups broth/stock (i use water + some kinda bouillon, often watered down)
1-2 dry chilies
1-2 garlic cloves (whole)
a chunk of ginger
chicken bones (w scraps of raw meat)
msg (optional, but it makes things taste good) (to taste. try <1tsp)

put it all in instant pot on "porridge". should take like 30 mins. eat it immediately or later or whenever.

always serve with yo tiao (chinese donut) if you got it! (you can buy these frozen.)

P.S. If you're reading this and you worked on Beast Breaker, please don't take it personally. This is my personal notebook for gushing about things that bugged me while I was playing the game, which means this is me unburdening myself of VIDEOGAME PROBLEMS IN GENERAL, not indicative of qualities problematic about BB specifically



Beast Breaker (played on Epic, Mac; it didn't work right with my tablet; i submitted a bug report. kinda hoping it gets fixed.)

The basic gameplay is kinda neat. You bounce off stuff and deal damage. I liked unlocking the bow - it's a very different weapon! I'm excited to see if there are other types of weapons. (I'm also not a very patient person; I prefer Monster Hunter's approach even though it's TOTALLY OVERWHELMING.)

I don't like the world or its characters at all, really. Part of that is: I don't like the experience of plodding my way through the UI, and part of that is: I wish the game supported my tablet. :/

Okay, concrete conclusions?

Beast Breaker has a wholesome-cutesy story. There is a bit of darkness going on at the edges, hinting at a darker backstory, but on the whole the vibe is very cartoony, sweet, nice. Nothing wrong with that, but I'm not really enjoying any of the story elements.

Another feather in the hat of me not enjoying prose in games, though I will say I don't think the issue is just my hangup with text, it's also just tonally not what I'm looking for, and it so far is only dancing delicately around the idea of there being deeper themes. I dunno. I don't know what I'm expecting, but it is not for me.

It has a grind and unlock treadmill, and I'm not about that. The things I'm unlocking seem like they could be cool, but so far they really aren't. I had a similar issue with Card of Darkness... the stuff that I'm getting dealt up front is just too tame to grab me. Maybe later there will be cool stuff for 'expert players,' but I don't have the patience to get through the tame stuff to get there.

The gameplay is pretty low-key, minimal, undemanding and unrewarding. Related to the above, but while I do feel like my actions make a difference, I do feel like there's a heavy heaping of luck and just... hmm... I dunno, inevitability? Like, there's a strict ceiling on how much I can accomplish.