In response to a listener/reader question, Troy and Rob talk about end games that work and end games that don’t. What do we mean by the “end game”? What role do strictly defined victory conditions play in making an end game appealing? Can you avoid the late game drag?
Apologies for the duet show. That time of the year.
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It has been a chaotic year in a lot of ways, and the podcast and my writing work – as great as they’ve been – have not always helped.
As I look back through 2010, I see a couple of dozen games that I wanted to play or play more. The podcast schedule often meant that I would have to focus on other stuff or revisit games that I played a long time ago in order to know what the hell I was talking about, and writing meant that I was playing things for work in great depth than I would usually spend.
So here is a short list of things that I regret from strategy gaming in 2010:
1) Men of War: The year isn’t over yet, so I will make more time for this highly praised RTS. But for some reason, I couldn’t get past the opening few scenarios. I liked what I saw, but then something else came up and that was that. Never got back to it. This is professional malfeasance of a pretty high degree, I think.
2) Neptune’s Pride: Rob Zacny played it and, to be honest, did not make it sound very appealing. I think we could do a show on it, but I know that Rob and Julian would gang up on me, Bruce would sit in his isolationist corner, Tom wouldn’t show up and I’d be stuck looking for an ally like Bill Abner who would end up screwing me because he pressed the wrong button.
3) Conflict: Reign of Nations: Worst name ever, and a game that I played enough of to know that I would never get very good at it. I love the setting, though and it is reminiscent enough of Knights of Honor for me to want to give it another hearing.
4) Minecraft: I’m not sure if dwarf architecture and zombie killing counts as strategy, but there are enough Sim-like elements here to make me pause. I’ve resisted the siren’s song this far even though everyone I know is either playing it or thinking about it. Everyone. Why have I resisted? The fear, mostly. I think this low tech game could consume me like Dungeon Crawl does sometimes.
5) Console treats: I consider myself a platform agnostic since I really don’t think one platform is necessarily superior – I just hate gaming in my living room. It feels weird to me. But with so many good light strategy games on the XBox and XBLA, I really need to shake myself out of that feeling. Maybe get a TV for my office and move the machine. Because I am missing a lot of stuff.
I could go on. Star Ruler, Neocore DLC and expansions, more Starcraft 2 multiplayer…
Fill the comments with your own misses and regrets. Don’t let me wallow in self pity by myself.
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We were on a good run and it couldn’t last forever. A pleasant light little seasonal chat about how to cope with the gaming constraints of visiting our families went off the rails when we realized that that topic would only last us about forty minutes.
I made the mistake of pushing us forward and then things got a little weird and stupid.
I cut that bit – saving it for an outtakes show where it belongs; trust me you do not want to hear how unfocused it got until you are in the mood for it. Note to self: If you run out of things to say after 30 minutes, it is OK to stop there.
Shorter than usual, but we talk about how board games can bring families together, what games keep us sane on our own when we retreat to a quiet corner.
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Bruce’s recent post on Soldiers of Anarchy and my half-formed rant about tutorials are certainly products of our age and experience. It’s not that we are wiser – my list of follies in the past twelve months would be great fodder for Renaissance woodcarvings. It’s more a realization that time is short and games should have gotten better at not making us do what often feels like busy work.
Last night, I got a Formspring question about Field of Glory, Slitherine/Matrix/Hexwar’s great miniatures wargame. What I don’t think I really addressed in the answer is just how easy it is to sit down and play and figure things out as you go. Scenarios run from the small to the huge, the system makes an intuitive sense that you often cannot get in wargames from later periods (flanking, skirmishing, and the like are easy to understand) and there are really no barriers to eventually understanding the battle system once you get past the basics.
The strange thing about time, though, is that once you have invested it, the pay off never really stops. Take the Paradox super big strategy games – I got into them when I had more time than I will ever have again, so it takes very little for me to get a new one and pick up where I left off unless the system is especially obscure. Someone my age with no pressure to learn these games will be at a loss for a while unless they can find the time to learn them. Divine Wind will change a dozen systems in Europa Universalis 3 that I have mastered (and I dread that) but I know I will get them. Someone just making the effort of learning EU 3 in the last month will have wasted all that time and might struggle a bit with the Paradox way of doing things.
The irony, of course, is that I love games and systems that require study. I want to get better at games but not just master them in the first week. The exploration and experimentation that comes with a good game, be it a real time game like Starcraft 2 or a turn based game like Civ, are very important to me. One of the many reasons Disciples 3 was so terrible was that there was no payoff for sticking it out longer; the game never really got better or more interesting after I had invested hours and hours.
But then, this is my job. If I find it hard to get into a game or to make time for its crap then I am not doing it well. I sometimes wonder if one reason strategy games have fallen of the front page is that the generation that went to school with them hasn’t the time to keep up or teach their own children, who are now able to get the instant gratification.
What does this mean for games like, for example, Imperialism – the greatest slow burn in strategy gaming history? You would watch numbers change and adjust sliders and then all of a sudden dramatic things would happen. I hate to be pessimistic, since I believe the strategy genre is as rich and diverse as it has ever been, and the move to the console and mobile space has led to a lot of creativity. But I can swear that if I were not paid to play Patrician IV – another slow burn, I would not have found time for it.
Part of the reason I am trying to introduce some non-strategy gaming friends to the genre is to understand how and why the genre still works, where the appeal is for people who were not schooled in it or whose gaming experiences are more frenetic. The more I love strategy gaming, the more I want to understand why that is.
Man, I should write a book.
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I have almost certainly written about this before, and I know I ranted about it on a podcast or two, but my dear, dear friends in the strategy game development business:
DO NOT MAKE ME CLICK THROUGH A TUTORIAL THAT IS NO MORE THAN TEXT OR “CLICK HERE”.
Tutorials are hard – this I understand and accept. Players come to the game with varying levels of experience, manuals aren’t what they used to be and won’t be read, and even experienced gamers like myself don’t have the time to just muddle through picking up not so obvious stuff as we go.
Strategy games have it doubly hard since many have mechanics and math that defy the simple “move X to Y and see what happens” model. After all, I’ve also complained about the story based campaign that is no more than an extended tutorial, locking off options and alternatives if you already know what you are doing.
But the static click through tutorial is a bad idea mostly because it prevents people who might otherwise be interested in pursuing and evangelizing your game or following you as a developer because it takes them too long to get to what they want to do, which is engage the mechanics directly. Considering how many demos include a tutorial level, this is not a small thing.
My baseline rules for a good strategy game tutorial are simple:
1) Does it explain the means to achieving the game goals in a clear manner?
2) If they are a central mechanic, does it let you tinker with tax/production/research settings and then see their effects?
3) Does it let you engage in combat and understand healing, bonuses, counters, etc.?
4) Does it tell you where you can find specific types of information and when this information will be useful? (Note: Saying, “click on X to see its characteristics and attributes” is not the same)
5) Does it let you play the tutorial mission past the point where the game gives you information? This is a way to try what has been learned in a very controlled or constrained situation.
Not all of these apply to every strategy game, but it continually shocks me that I run into tutorials that are no more than either things to read or pat instructions with pre-destined outcomes.
And this is the only time I will come out against reading.
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GWJ’s Lara Crigger and JTS’s Todd Brakke join Troy and special guest Soren Johnson in a wide ranging talk about how how theme and mechanics work together or fight each other. What is Left for Dead really about? Why are themes so important to Lara? How do mechanics translate meaning? Why is Civilization so ahistorical? What about Facebook’s cookie cutter games? Do only game designers care about this stuff?
Lara loses her train of thought for the first time ever, Todd makes some sense and Soren is his usual impressive self. And more on X-Com.
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Theme is Not Meaning Part 1, Part 2
Redistricting Game (referred to as “Gerrymandering Game” on the show)
Soren’s GDC talk as summarized by Destructoid
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