Odd Game Design Story

(Warning: The following post contains descriptions of biological functions. If you believe that anything that is emitted from your body is pure, concentrated evil, then you might want to skip this post.)

I own a lot of games. By a lot, I don’t mean 100 or 200 games. By a lot, I mean over 1,900 games across multiple platforms going all the way back to the Atari 2600. (Storage is a bit of a problem, as you can imagine, but that’s a story for another day.)

My collection has been growing fairly significantly recently, with “We ♥ Katamari,” “Final Fantasy Chronicles,” “Still Life,” “Fable: The Lost Chapters,” and others joining the ranks recently. (What’s scary is that I still have my “Final Fantasy II” Super Nintendo cartridge, bought “FFC” so I could have it for the PS2, and I’ll probably buy it again when it comes out for the GBA this December…)

Anyway, my point is that I own a lot of games. Like most people, I keep gravitating back to a few core titles. What’s really interesting is that the titles I go back to seem to be grouped by their nation of origin.

I play games from America when I feel the urge to decimate my opponents, or feel like a total badass. Games like “Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings” give me that visceral feeling of domination. Games like “Halo” give me that heroic basis that make my experience expand by allowing me to envision life as the savior to Humanity.

I play games from Europe when I want quirky humor, a deeper viewpoint or a skewed viewpoint of life in the United States. “Worms” and “Fable” have a nice, subtle humor to them. “Incubation,” while it possesses an amazing storyline and kickass gameplay, draws me back with the small touches that delve deeper into the characters that I’m assisting. The “Grand Theft Auto” series is the epitome of a skewed viewpoint of how America truly is. “GTA” is to America what Hugh Grant movies are to the U.K. There’s enough of a similarity that you can tell where it’s supposed to be because of the blanket stereotypes, but the natives can tell the difference.

I play Japanese games when I want to do one simple thing better than anything else. “We ♥ Katamari” and “Katamari Damacy” are perfect examples of a simple concept honed to perfection: collect items. “ICO” is a perfect example of the “protect” gameplay mechanic. The “Silent Hill” series is a perfect example of how to instill dread in a player. The “Mario” series is the perfect example of the “run & jump platformer” school, while “Metroid” and “Castlevania” are definition of “exploratory platformer.”

When I play Japanese games, I don’t feel as heroic as I do with games from America, but I do feel more human because I feel like I’m doing something a human would do. The Japanese way of designing games seems to be finding one thing that you enjoy doing, find the fun in it, and design a game around that fun. For example, “Dance Dance Revolution” is designed around the fun associated with dancing. “Metal Gear Solid” is designed around the fun associated with sneaking around.

So I thought I’d give it a try and see if I could design a game the Japanese way. I said to myself that the next time I found myself playing a game in the real world without there really being a game there, I’d design a game around what I was doing at the time.

Flash to two weeks ago when I went out to dinner with my wife. I had to use the restroom, and while I was using the restroom, I noticed a fly on the back of the toilet. So I did what any male would do…I aimed at it, hit it, and felt superior for a moment…and then I realized that not only was the fly painted on the back of the toilet, but I had made a game for myself. So I’m designing a game based off the concept that it’s fun to urinate on things.

It’s actually pretty funny. The psychology of male urination is pretty well known. The restaurant I was in painted the fly on the back of the toilet to encourage people to pee on it. During the winter, men will often go out with their sons and write their names in the snow. Urinal cake holders are made in the shape of targets, or have small targets on them. Some men actually throw cigarette butts or pennies into the urinals so they’ll have a target to aim for.

So, we have our core mechanic: aim and “shoot.” A training level could be a snow bank. Have the player “write their name” to try to accustom themselves to the control. Resource management is already a part of the game. After all, we only have finite size bladders.

Challenges could be as simple as “hit the stationary target,” progress to “hit multiple moving targets,” progress to “don’t cross the streams in the stadium trench toilet,” progress to “put out the fire completely,” and others.

You can add additional challenges to the above by modifying the players abilities based on extenuating circumstances. “You are drunk: your trajectory will wander.” “You are dehydrated: ‘ammunition’ cut in half.” “You are supersaturated: Double ‘ammunition’ but two second max ‘no fire’ time.”

Is it disgusting? Yes. It is quirky? Yes. Is it fun? Not sure yet. I’ve got a base design, but I need to implement it at least at a skeletal level in order to see if it’s fun…which is exactly what I’m going to do. If you don’t like it, well, piss off.

Page Views Speak Louder Than Words

I've been trying to decide what direction to take this blog in. I've been trying a variety of different things, between talking about products I've worked on, testing techniques, Managed DirectX code, technical issues, career items, product reviews, etc.

Based off of the page views for the last few months, it looks like the readers here want:

1) More technical information and product analysis. My article on Steam's memory usage is by far the most popular article on the site right now. It's also the number one item on Google if you search for "Steam memory usage".

2) More how-to's. The next biggies are how to fix errors with Microsoft products, specifically Media Player errors, Media Center errors and Portable Media Center errors.

3) More workarounds. My Managed DirectX articles on how to get around certain problems with MDX are the next biggest draws.

4) More stories about the video game industry from the inside.

5) Finally, more humor. I still get a ton of hits on my list of ways to tell you're dating a tester...

Those five areas are going to be my focus over the next few months. You may see less content from me, but the content that you do get from me will be more focused and hopefully higher quality.

Anyway, to the 11,000 of you who visit this site each month, thanks for reading.

Test's Most Powerful Weapon

Lots of people think that they know the perfect silver bullet for testing. Some believe that automation is the savior that will reduce testing time to nothing and reduce or eliminate human error. Others believe that in-depth test plans and suites will ensure that no stone is left unturned. Still others believe that only white-box testing will allow the product to advance beyond the Stone Age.

Well, all of those are useful tools, but all are forgetting the most powerful weapon to a test department: a live tester.

True, your automation tests can glide through your product and help ensure nothing has broken, test suites ensure that nothing has been missed in the product and white-box testing helps uncover bugs that would hide for years. But the bugs that you find with these tools cannot compare to the bugs you will find with one intelligent tester just sitting back for 5 minutes and saying, "I wonder what would happen if..."

If you don't have at least a small period of ad-hoc or directed ad-hoc testing on your product per day, you're missing all sorts of wonderful bugs. It could be something as simple as a timing based bug. It could be something as major as an issue requiring a complete architectural overhaul.

In video games, ad-hoc is especially important, because we need our testers to be as abusive as regular gamers are going to be. We need to think, "I wonder what would happen if I abused the weapon physics system to get around massive chunks of the level." We need to think, "I wonder what would happen if I shot that grenade the guy tossed at me in mid-air." We need to think, "I wonder what would happen if I drop this unbreakable crate into this tram that has to move to the end of this railway, and orient it in such a way that when the tram moves forward, the crate collides with the ceiling."

In "Halo 2," you could toss a grenade on the ground, bounce yourself high into the air, and land on top of the buildings so you could run past 30% of the level. The other two are things that came from our ad-hoc testing on "SiN: Episodes."

Fact of the matter is that tools are merely that...tools. And the end result of using a tool is only as good as the craftsman using the tool.

Let your testers ad-hoc. It refines their skills so when they do more automation testing, they write deeper tests. It hones their instincts so when they run their test suites, they instinctively test into the holes in those suites. It sharpens their intellect so when they do white-box testing, they do more mental checks for invalid inputs while walking through the source.

The Great Steam-Powered Experiment, Part 3

Eight minutes. That's how long it took for the game to finish decrypting and download the appropriate files after I restarted the Steam client. Of course, it would have taken less time if it hadn't been downloading the files from Internode in Australia...

So, as for issues...

1) VALVe recycled their Half-Life 2 intro video and as a result, also recycled their copyright date in the intro video. Correct copyright date should be ©2005, since it was released today.

2) It's slightly disturbing when the first item in your main menu is "Report Bug."



3) Hitting "ESCAPE" in-game goes to the server browser instead of the main menu.

Other than that, not bad...

The Great Steam-Powered Experiment, Part 2

"Day of Defeat: Source" is now available through Steam. As you may recall, I preordered the game back on the 19th so I could experience a pure Steam-only purchase experience, just like people who buy "SiN: Episodes" will encounter later this year.

Unfortunately, I'm at work for another 90 minutes, so I'll be getting a real torture test...I'll be unlocking at the same time as 90% of the people who preordered the game.

I'll post again once that's done and over with.