This post was made while on an airplane trip for work and contains very little editing. You’ve been warned! -Nick

This past week I began playing Final Fantasy IV for the Nintendo DS and found myself realizing that I’ve played through the game literally dozens of times on the SNES, Playstation, GBA, and now on the DS. So this got me thinking…

What about this game is driving my inclination to revisit it again and again every time it’s released? Why is nostalgia so powerful? How does nostalgia play a key role in much of the games market today? Well, I’ll tell you my opinion at least.

Continuing to use Final Fantasy IV as an example, I think the answer lies once again in patterns and also with the time period in which the game was originally released. Back then, we had already seen the mighty hero tasked with a great quest to save the world in a variety of RPGs. While initially a challenge and therefore interesting to our brains, after a few variations on the same themes and mostly similar play mechanics (walk around, get randomly attacked, menu driven action selection with common options like ATTACK, CAST, ITEM, DEFEND, etc.) we began to find the pattern boring.. or at least less exciting then it once was.

So along comes Final Fantasy IV (masked as Final Fantasy II in the US) with a new iteration on the same familiar pattern. This time the story is much more in depth. There’s a more intricate plot, actual character development, and a fantastic musical score to drive it all home. It was the introduction of EMOTION into the video game experience, and it grabbed our attention.

Beyond that, there were additional additions to the standard RPG mechanics that allowed the brain new information to grok. Millions of gamer’s brains suddenly realized, “Hey, I know this pattern.. but yet.. it’s DIFFERENT! I’m INTRIGUED!”, and for that moment, all was right with the world.

That euphoric feeling when your brain finds a new pattern to learn that’s “familiar yet different” (assuming the pattern was one which it enjoyed the first time around), is what drives the power of nostalgia. It seems that we like to hang onto stuff (thoughts, memories, and patterns) and when we find something familiar to a positive experience, we are naturally drawn to it.

Sadly, the experience of the same game.. the same patterns.. gets repetitive, with each new visit generally not as satisfying as the first. The most successful dips into the realm of nostalgia in terms of games are those that CHANGE or ADD to the original patterns. FF4 on the GBA added new dungeons, somewhat improved graphics (but mostly the same), and some different challenges. FF4 on the DS added not only 3D graphics, but the addition of the original un-cut plotline never before seen as well as more strategic gameplay and increased difficulty.

Consider every game that’s part of a genre. Aren’t most within that genre essentially some iteration upon a previously used pattern, if not direct rip-offs? Why do you think MMOs are as successful as they are? They keep changing the patterns! (though admittedly in some ways, not nearly as much as they should… depending on which game we’re talking about).

So if you’re considering making a game and want it to have great potential.. Remember these mantras…

* Familiar… but different!
* Easy to learn, difficult to master

….and just for fun….

* Test driven development and continuous integration! The concept of crunch time MUST END! This is not a joke but a push to greater effectiveness of your development teams!
* A little scrum never hurts, as long as the entire executive team as well as the publisher is on board. For MMOG’s in particular I don’t believe there is a good excuse for NOT doing this (though I remain open to convincing if you think I’m wrong)

Ok, I love Nintendo just as much as the next old-school gamer, but I’m not afraid to give the verbal lashing where it is due. Iwata-san, I’m afraid you’ve made a nasty mistake when you agreed that using shared Friend codes in each individual game were a good idea. I’ve tried to understand the rationale, and there are certainly some benefits particularly in the realm of security for the younger players and their parents, but let’s face it.. the system as it is currently implemented burdens the player to a point beyond tedium.

My 11-year-old son and I spent over an hour on the phone today, agonizing over the fact that we had both entered our respective friend codes, yet Mario Kart Wii continued to report a giant “?” on the friends screen, disappointing us with a cold and useless “You’re not friends yet.” I hope that you can easily see how this is a fundamental UI design flaw.

“But wait Nick, you should’ve send an invite from in-game direct to your son’s Wii. That would have worked much easier!” Right, actually, we tried that first. 24-hours later, the end result? My kiddo’s Wii showed my Mii just fine, ready for play, but MY side showed the big “?” yet again, leading us into the whole hour-long conversation in the first place.

This whole frustration could easily have been eliminated with a few basic modifications:

1. Add a message indicating that once the Wii Codes are added on both sides, it might be several hours before your new friend(s) will be available in-game to play.(Though really the ultimate fix is to remove or drastically reduce this latency to a more acceptable few minutes.)
2. If you invite a friend from your Wii Address Book, and they accept, automatically add them to the inviting player’s Friend’s list immediately. Currently, you get a message when you log into the game saying that JoeFriend has accepted and has been added to your friends list, but then if you go straight to the friends list, it shows his Friend Code but indicates that you’re still not friends yet!
3. Speaking of those invites. When you RECEIVE an invite from a friend to be added to their friends list, do you really have to log into the game each time you get an invite, just to add them to your list? Instead, you should add a simple in-game UI window at login showing the list of invites with individual ACCEPT and DENY buttons, naturally only appearing when you have an outstanding queue of incoming invitations.

I understand that Nintendo tries very hard to think differently than it’s competitors, usually to great success, but there’s no good excuse for poor design in this new social-networking society. Not when they generally raise the bar very high for the development world.

I will happily pay full purchase price for any game that makes it to the PSN entirely developed by one person. Not only did Jonathan Mak release a fine quality original game with Everyday Shooter, but he also ported it on his own to the PS3. Of course, there’s a lot more to this story, such as SCEA discovering the game at the Indie Games Festival and deciding to fund a port to PS3 (those dev kits aren’t cheap nor easy to come by). Still, stories of solo-efforts making it to console end-users are a rarity, and this would be a first for the PS3.. so this makes me happy =)

Few words really get me as excited about MMOs as the following: OPEN and EXTENSIBLE. Today, the team at Areae announced the long awaited brainchild of Raph Koster and crew, a new virtual world *platform* called Metaplace.

At first glance, you might think, “oh great, is this just another Habbo?”, but consider the possibilities a bit further. Sure, you could probably create another Habbo-style game to run within Metaplace, but you’re not restricted to that. There’s already clients for 2D of various sorts, including grid and isometric, and 2.5D heightfields. A 3D client is also in the works. So if you wanted to create Burger-Time for your website, had rudamentary graphic skill and working knowledge of LUA, you could make it happen. What if you wanted to create multiplayer Burger-Time that is part game, part world where you explore various burger joints for different challenges of skill, earning golden arch medals and coupons for bonus items like french fries for completing them? CHECK! Ok, I’m not 100% positive yet, having not actually toyed with this platform myself, but I’m willing to bet it could be possible.

Taking it a step further, what if some of these games depended on the device you were using to connect (cell, PDA, PC, Mac, Wii, PS3, etc.)? You could take advantage of the various interfaces to create all new game experiences!

This is just a wacky off-the-cuff example, but it seems to me that you don’t even need to have a game at all. It could just be a world (though you might want to make sure you consider some sort of hook in your design else people might look for the EXIT door very quickly)

Anyways, I’m pretty stoked and am looking forward to taking a crack at this beastie! The potential is high and I’ve got a great deal of faith in Raph and crew. I’m actually quite interested in what they’re able to put together for their own MMORPG built within Metaplace. Will this overthrow WoW, EQ2, and the other major MMORPG players? Probably not, but I think this is aiming to be something fresh and different. A new way to play, to explore, to develop, and to interact. This could be very revolutionary, and I think Metaplace is one to watch in the next year!

Original characters with style and humor, combined with fantastic art direction. If the gameplay is half as fun as watching the preview videos is, then VALVe has another hit on their hands.

This is the latest in a plethora of new titles clearly focusing on raising the bar in regards to character and story. Make every game epic, seems to be the rule of thumb. Get the player feel like they’re participating in something monumentally huge. Huge in ever so many different ways..

Huge creatures.. (Shadow of the Colossus, Metroid Prime 3, God of War, various MMOG high-tier quest NPCs).. There’s nothing more epic feeling, or making you feel like more of a hero than when you’re playing an itty-bitty sized character and your objective is to defeat the monster-equivalent of the Empire State Building in terms of scale!

Huge environments.. (Heavenly Sword, again various MMOGs, Vanguard would be a good example with its far viewing plane of actual explorable areas) Pretty self-explanatory.. sheer scope of the world in which you are fighting. More importantly this ties into the next note of HUGE….

Huge IMPACT.. (Heavenly Sword) Everyone wants to change the world. In a game, being able to have a perceptible impact upon the world or it’s inhabitants is a big deal. While I’ll admit that I have yet to play the full game of Heavenly Sword to know how this continues, but in the demo on PSN there’s a point where the main character is running down gigantic pillars of awesome as they slowly fall to the earth below.. in an area where you can clearly SEE that the earth is so very FAR below.. While this is not an example of the PLAYER impacting the world, it shows other inhabitants impacting the world in great ways trying to kill the main character, which certainly has it’s uses.

It’s a very exciting point in the history of games right now! With technology allowing for scope and scale to become dramatically higher than ever before, and new interfaces like the Wii-mote and Six-axis controller, I’m really looking forward to seeing what the next few years will bring.

.. and food for thought, how could some of these new capabilities be applyed to the MMOG? =)

It’s been a while, since starting my new job sucked away much of my time, and Oblivion recently finishing it off.. Alas, tonight, many months from my last post, I felt the need to offer my two copper. This time my inspiration comes from Coltrane and this post by Moorgard.

Ok.. I have to bite the bullet a bit here and just spout off a bit.. Yes, there’s something to be learned from studying past iterations of game design in general, or MMO-specific. It’s good to know what were good design decisions and what were bad. It’s good to know how to crawl before you walk, walk before you run, etc.

That said, you have to be very careful to not approach everything as a derivative of the previous concept or idea. Certainly you can abstract tons of meaningful psychological analysis from how people react to various mechanics to identify what is fun and why, but that doesn’t make it a mathematical algorithm that works in every case. I’m not saying that YOU believe this is so, but I felt it should be stated none the less.

As a matter of fact, it’s quite likely that the repetition of many patterns in games, MMO or otherwise, will eventually leave the player unfulfilled. New patterns must be presented to the player to prevent boredom. Derivatives of previous mechanics that remain too familiar to the old concept, or are just the old concept re-dressed in a pretty package might work in the short-term, but do not hold interest for long, unless of course the player is new and has not mastered these patterns already.

The games that find new ways to engage the player are the ones that will be remembered as great, as has always been the case. Super Mario Bros, Half-life 2, Oblivion, even EverQuest when it first arrived are all good examples.

Like Coltrane.. learn the basics for sure, but only so you can shed them entirely and begin to truly feel the music.

My two copper…

I just read a short but fantastic article on Gamasutra regarding gameplay progression that really reinforces alot of what I’ve learned about design in my studies and provides solid examples with visuals to drive each point home effectively. If you are a game designer or are aspiring to become one, such as myself, this is a must-read!

Key Elements of Gameplay Progression:

1. Game Mechanics – all controls and interactions within the game, including new weapons, abilities, powers, vehicles, and environmental states or events.
2. Experience Duration – the average time it takes to complete each stage, level, mission (including deaths if applicable) or course (using the most relevant vehicle).
3. Ancillary Rewards (visual, aural, decorative, etc.) – exciting environmental wonders, fancy visual effects, scripted events, etc. It is great to weight some of the more spectacular environmental wonders and effects up front (Medal of Honor style), but an enjoyable game needs to have all the level, course or mission experiences built so that new visual rewards are staggered at a pace that keeps the user interested (in other words with an Environmental Progression in mind).
4. Practical Rewards (gameplay relevant) – new game modes, upgrades and practical unlockable content are very useful as the carrot on the stick that entices users to continue playing the game.
5. Difficulty – not just how hard it is to pass obstacles and NPCs/bosses, but also how much risk is taken with respect to player injury/death, weapon depletion, or vehicle/equipment damage or loss.

Read the rest of this great article @ Gamasutra by following THIS LINK!

A whole lot of heartburn and 9 hours of driving later, I have returned home from visiting my girlfriend’s parents over the Thanksgiving holiday. Per usual, it was great to visit family and be away in a different neighborhood for a few days, but I really didn’t have any time to blog a darn thing.. It would seem that most of the other regular bloggers did manage to find time to jot down their own two copper on the continuing discussion of Real Money Transaction and Intellectual Property (IP) ownership, or lack thereof. Here’s a few links for that:

• Moorgard - “The Truth About IP Ownership”
• Raph Koster - “Are Microtransactions Actually the Future?” ** You are warned. This is more like FIVE copper vs. two.. but though it is long, it remains insightful and worth the read.. just get a coffee first
• Nerfbat - “IP Freely” * Note: I promise this isn’t an article on Ryan’s mens room habits! =P
• Psychochild - “Weekend Design Challenge - All About RMT”

Ok, with that out of the way, I do have something to talk about today.. the Nintendo Wii. (more…)

Looks like Lum has set off the fire of the blogosphere once again with his recent post regarding EA and their implementation of RMT, selling what essentially amounts to “cheat codes” for extra profit.. off of games you’ve already purchased!

Now, I have a few comments on some of these individual blogs, listed below that you may feel free to read, but just to summarize my overall feeling on this issue. I’ll state the following..
(more…)

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…
All work and no play make… aww screw it!

In response to: Psychochild’s recent post about playing games as a designer.

You’ve got work to be able to play, and if you work or want to work in game design, you HAVE to play or at least keep a working knowledge of various game play elements to be able to keep your own ideas fresh. That said, it’s a definite balance, but an important one to maintain. I kind of like Moorgard’s idea of convincing somebody else you trust to play through games FOR you that you don’t have time to play then report back.

I know that I myself struggle with the lack of time-per-day constantly, for both work AND play! I love EverQuest II, but can’t play very often, or for very long when I get to play.. thus, my handy portable Nintendo DS Lite (or PSP if that’s your thing) has become my best friend due to the fact that I can play it for the 15-20 minutes or so that I have on the train every day and still feel some satisfaction out of it. That’s a big reason why the market for reduced play-time / fast pay-off games has taken off and continues to grow. Cell phone games are a good example of this as well, for killing time.

This is an endless struggle that isn’t going away for sure.