I’m currently quite busy. I decided to take two weeks off to finally publish TRAUMA. Things are going well.

Meanwhile, this weird game is making the rounds.

The game is called Terraria. It’s pretty much Minecraft in 2D. I must admit that I never got into Minecraft. From what I heard it is supposed to be quite addictive. Considering my lack of time, I wasn’t too curious to find out. Terraria seems to deliver a similar experience in a more manageable form.

And there are some subtle differences, too. Minecraft delivers little actual tasks for the players to do. Instead, it offers an awesome toolbox to let players experiment. Terraria has a more limited toolbox but more embedded content. So for example, you won’t be able to build computers or complicated mine cart systems in Terraria. But on the other hand, there are dungeons to explore and huge bosses to fight.

I’m a little bit torn about this different approach. On the one hand, having actual things to do in the world is pretty much what I was missing in Minecraft. I thought that the fact that you are actually forced to build a shelter and collect resources is what made Minecraft so much more interesting than a wide open level editor. I was waiting for more of such restrictions. On the other hand, when I actually started playing Terraria, I was much more interested in building structures than actually going after the bosses and treasures.

But after a couple of short sessions with my podcast colleagues, I’m beginning to understand the satisfaction of multi-player Minecraft much better. In one of our worlds I started building a house and logged off before I was done. Hours later, when I logged back in I found myself in an awesome fortress. Random players picked up where I left and expanded the small house into a beautiful, thriving installation.

But there are downsides to that form of multi-player as well. The same house was partially destroyed by a griefing player soon afterwards.

Still, it’s an interesting game to try out, if you are looking for a different execution of the Minecraft model. And from what I heard, the game is far from being complete yet. So we can expect a lot more to come.

We had a lovely day at Cologne Game Lab with Chris Crawford. He held two talks. The first one was only for our students. It was a talk about the strengths of the medium and importance of exploring it. Some of the talk was material from his webinar on interactivity. But that was only a starting point for a few very interesting observations. Two stuck me in particular.

Wow, I never saw it this way!

Chris made an analogy between the discovery of written language and the discovery of digital interactivity. In ancient Greece, written language was responsible for a huge economical and cultural boost. But it was also seen by many as problematic. Socrates in particular was highly critical of the written word. His main argument was that it was not possible to argue with a text. It’s funny how the lack of interactivity was the troublesome aspect for him. But written word had other advantages over the spoken word and eventually led to the scientific method – of written, linear arguments towards a certain point. Chris suggested that interactive media may trigger a second revolution – one of non-linear, branching arguments that are able to tackle complex problems with a lot of variables.

His second argument was that we are experiencing a huge split between Science and the Humanities. He was of the opinion that the gap was especially wide in the US. It was evident how the games industry was dominated by computer science thinking. He observed that the gap wasn’t that wide in Europe. He warned our students not to try making American games – they would always be second-class Americans. Instead, he suggested to develop a distinct European approach to Game Design. He was confident that an approach that unifies Humanties and Science would prove superior to utilize the medium to it’s full potential and perhaps even stop the bifurcation of our culture.

His second talk was public and was called “The Phylogeny of Play”. All the slides and major points are actually on his website so I won’t waste any time re-telling that one. Of course, you have to imagine the talk being at least 10 times as insightful when Chris Crawford is actually presenting it.

Finally, we had an hour or so to just hang around with him and chat. It was a wonderful discussion. Chris is still a bright, energetic dude with plenty of amazing ideas and the experience to back them up. In his talks he often comes across brash and perhaps even a bit arrogant. Up close and personal he is actually incredibly polite and kind. He makes quite a transformation when he goes on stage.

It was quite an experience to meet him in person. It was also good to hear so many points that echo strongly with my own beliefs. I hope we will have more opportunities to hear from Chris at Cologne Game Lab. And of course, I hope his newest project will finally have the kind of success it deserved. The things he hinted at sound like it’s going in exactly the right direction.

For some reason I decided to dig out Leviathan: The Tone Rebellion. I realized that nobody posted even one video of gameplay for this game on YouTube. The only videos I found were of the soundrack and the intro. The game has no tutorials and there are no FAQs on gamefaqs.com. So it took me quite a while to re-learn how to play the game. This awesome document helped me a lot. So after refreshing my memory, I decided to do a short tutorial on how to play the game.

My YouTube account is still limited to 15 Minutes so I had only the time for the basics. I think I will do a follow-up with some advanced topics. I was even considering doing a Let’s Play. There is a 4 player co-op mode I never tried. Might be a interesting thing to try. What do you think?

By the way, I also found out that The Logic Factory – the studio that made the game – still exists today. They recently re-released their old hit Ascendancy for the iPhone and iPad! The best thing about it is that by watching the trailer, I can finally tell how to pronounce that name properly. I remember having quite a few arguments about this back in the days.

I was thinking about Free to Play models recently. I have been carrying an idea with me for some time. It’s about how to implement a Free to Play model more naturally into a game.

Status Quo: Gold and Silver coins. Silver Coins can be earned in-game. Gold coins can be bought. The rest is a shop. I think game designers can do more.

I have been praising the Free to Play model of World of Tanks. In some ways, it’s a bold implementation. It gives paying players a clear advantage over non-paying players. It associates payments with important functions. Compared to this, most Free to Play implementations are tame. The players pay for superficial styling (customize your avatar) or to reduce nuisances which are artificially introduced by the game designers in the first place.

The reason for this careful approach is understandable. There are serious concerns with using payment to affect gameplay in a competitive context. It seems unfair if players can buy themselves an advantage. It eliminates the level playground that we seem to take for granted in a fair competition. But even in single-player games, using payments as an integral part of gameplay can be even more questionable in some regard. The Visa Crucible seems even more like a scam if instead of being used against real players, it can only slay hollow, disposable computer enemies.

It seems like a the Free to Play model is a moral dead-end. But perhaps this is only a question of framing and implementation. I was thinking that perhaps it may be a good idea to look at models outside of video games to see how they work. Trading card games like Magic: The Gathering come to mind. In this game, you need to pay for cards. You use the cards to build decks. You use the decks to battle other players. More cards don’t necessary lead to a better deck. But in order to have the right cards for your deck, having a wider selection of cards to start out with will be an indirect advantage.

I’m mentioning this because I noticed that during my short career as a Magic enthusiast, I have spent a lot of money on cards and never felt like I was cheated. I participated in frequent booster draft tournaments – events that sound like the wet dream of a Free to Play game developer. They were tournaments where you would need to buy 3 booster packs of cards in order to participate. There was a tournament every week. And we all considered it a very good deal.

So it’s worth to see how Magic worked in order to gain some lessons for digital Free to Play games. This isn’t a proper analysis so I can’t really go into details at this point. But superficially I can see 3 major points.

1. Rewards are Tangible and Permanent – Magic cards are tangible. You can hold them in your hand and sell them if you get bored of them. This is a huge advantage over all digital games indeed. Because they are tangible, they seem so much more valuable from the get go. But there is at least some aspects that may be important for digital games as well. Magic cards are not only tangible but also permanent. They don’t get used up. You can keep using the same card over and over again. Powerful cards don’t get weaker with time either. The lesson is that you don’t need to put artificial expiration dates on digital goods in order to keep players interested in buying more of them. In fact, making them permanent may very well satisfy a collector’s reflex and lead to increased interest in more.

2. Rewards are Random – You can’t buy a specific Magic card. At least not officially. There is a gray market of Magic card traders but the official way to get cards is to buy booster packs. The packs contain a random selection of cards from a current set. To ensure that players can expect to get their money’s worth, there is always a specific amount of “Rare” and “Uncommon” cards in every booster. If I was a cynic, I would call this a variable ratio reward schedule Operant Conditioning. There is certainly some of that here. But it’s also a good way to disengage the purchase of new cards from specific advantages. Players have a much harder time getting a specific card, so they can’t exploit the system quite as easily. Finally, there is always a sense of mystery with each booster pack. Which brings me to the next point….

3. Rewards are New Content – This is probably the most important aspect. Each purchase in Magic exposes the players to NEW CONTENT. In fact, that’s how you explore the world of Magic – you buy it piece by piece. Buying a new booster isn’t thrilling just because you get more cards. It’s thrilling because there is a good chance you will find new cards you have never encountered before. In Magic, the quality of that the content is substantial. The cards are beautiful and often contain some intricate mechanics. Having an opportunity to enjoy more of that content seems valuable in itself. Of course, a few experienced players would read things like “card spoilers” and know most cards by heart. But the same players would buy entire boxes of boosters anyway.

Consider how different a game like World of Tanks works compared to this. A lot of the things you get in World of Tanks expires – premium memberships, consumable goods, experience points. Even the tanks themselves get obsolete over time. They get replaced with stronger tanks. Players can buy items and tanks for money but they are buying it in a store and know exactly what they are going to get. Finally, players aren’t exposed to any new content at any point. They just gain access to content they already saw previously.

Or imagine a Trading Card game where the cards are printed with an ink that fades away over time. You don’t get the cards in boosters but you buy individual cards in a store, were you can see and read any card before you even buy anything.

Of course not all mechanics from trading cards have to necessarily work in the digital realm. I already mentioned that the tangible aspect is something that can hardly be reproduced in games. However, it’s striking how the above aspects are hardly ever utilized in digital Free to Play games. I sense that there is a lot more developers and designers can experiment with. Doing so, they might arrive at much more effective and morally less ambiguous systems. This would help establishing a healthier, more robust trust relationship between the game developers and the players.

Finally, if you are interested in more info about World of Tanks, we recently made a small podcast about it. Here is the first episode. Enjoy!

In parts 1,2, 3 of this developer diary I explained the building-blocks of our newest game. Part 4 was about how the parts should come together in our sandbox game, by giving collectable cards as rewards to the player.

(Part 5 was an intermezzo i had to write to blow of some steam about performance issues).

Today i will talk about how the game is ment to be released / developed further in the next weeks / few months, utilizing what i call a “visual achievement” system.

All characters you helped in the game, and all totem poles you build, and all task-cards you solved. Screenshotted as one long penis for you to be able to compare with others (hopefully this joke works as well in English as it does in German

Continue reading “Tuesday Developer Diary – Silent Totems #6″