The 3DS - Great 3D but what about Its potential for novel gameplays ?

Hello all,

I had the opportunity to experiment the new Nintendo 3DS and I must admit I am impressed.

• First, the 3D effect, with NO special glasses, is amazing. Most of the games I played offered a true depth of field. And when you turn off the 3D rendering, you really miss the benefit of the 3D.
• Second, the machine is powerful enough. I played Resident Evil 5 and it looks as good as the home console version.
• Third, Nintendo is offering a very interesting feature that fits very well with current design trends, the StreetPass.When this feature is on, your 3DS will exchange data with any nearby 3DS.
• Fourth, you can take good quality 3D pictures and once you have tasted 3D, it's hard to get back !

I predict a very nice commercial success for this machine but this blog is devoted to game design issues. So will it have an impact on the design of games as deep as the DS or the Wii had ? Here is my analysis:

3D makes games more immersive but I don't see new gameplays emerging from it. We'll probably see a few games whose gameplay takes some advantage of the extra depth of field but those will be highly specialized, puzzle-like, applications.

On the contrary, the StreetPass feature offers much more potential for novel gameplays. Why ? The success of Free-to-Play games largely relies on the player's interactions with his friends. In particular, F2P games give the players the tools to do two things he could not well before: Sharing and expressing himself, a.k.a showing off. The new 3DS feature expand that. You'll be now able to interact with total strangers nnd the fun will come from the surprise of what you get from them.

The 3DS will probably not impact game design the way its predecesors have done but it is a great machine built for success and I wish it good luck.

As usual, feel free to comment on my latest post. I'll do my best to answer all your comments.

Will Kinect take us beyond casual gaming ?

Kinect has just been launched along about 20 games. Nearly all of them are targeting the casual or the fitness market. There is only one title, Fighters Uncaged, that is targeting at a more gamer  public. So, what future do we see for Kinect ? Will it remain a peripheral devoted to casual applications or will it attract mainstream gamers as well  ?

In my opinion, it will be the case.Why ?  Kinect forces us to design from a blank page. We cannot simply adapt existing game mechanisms to a Kinect game because the control method is radically different. As a result, I expect entirely new game concepts to emerge. That is what happened with the DS, the Wii and the iPhone. The apparition on those platforms of new control mechanisms led to new game concepts with the success we know.

Kinect offers also a new gameplay dimension to explore: The physical abilities of the players. We all have different ways to execute a given movement, depending on the speed, trajectory and amplitude we give them.  There is room for design innovations and the development of new players experiences.

Last, but not least, Kinect also features vocal command. By combining motion and vocal commands, new gameplays will emerge for sure. Maybe Kinect is the key to develop strategy games on consoles ?

A last word, I had the chance to work as lead game designer on Fighters Uncaged, the first combat game for Kinect. We did a lot of playtest with all sort of players, casual, mainstream, even hardcore gamers and non-gamers.  Nearly all of them enjoyed the game. Why ? Because it offered them a new experience. Players exhausted themselves and they enjoyed that because they were doing gratifying actions; we offered them the experience of being martial arts champions.

Designing for Kinect requires an open mind and the will to explore new paths. Games for Kinect WILL be different from what we are used to.

Let's open the debate. What future do you see for Kinect ?

1378 - A game among others or a preview of what gaming can bring to the society ?

My attention has been caught by the controversy surrounding this upcoming title.

1378 is about the Berlin Wall (1378 refers to its length in kms). In that game you can either play as a candidate to exile, attempting to cross the wall at the peril of your life, or a border guard whose objective is the opposite: Preventing refugees from fleeing, even if it means shooting at them. The game shocked some people in Germany for two reasons:

- 200 people were killed while attemting to flee East Germany, German folks were shot by other Germans. Making a game on such a painful event is seen, by certain people, as immoral.
- Letting a gamer shoot at innocent and unharmed people is seen by others as flattering the basest of human instincts.

Are there good reasons for people to feel offended ?

On the first count, I say no. Nobody feels offended by movies or books talking about painful historical events. Why would a game desserve a different treatment ?

On the second count, possibly. However, in my opinion, it all depends on the way the game is designed. If you play a guard and end up feeling disgusted by what you have to do, then the game will have become a new way to develop our civic values, a tool to show people how easy it is for a political regim to ask his own citizens to do non-ethical things. A video game would have contributed to our societes by making us better-informed citizens.

I have not played the game yet but I am curious to see how it will play. It is scheduled to be released in December.

The expected price increase of the Xbox Live annual subscription : The tip of the iceberg

Hello all,

After a (too) long pause due to a heavy workload, I resume writing in my blog. Some friends told me I should post more and worry less about my writing style and that is exactly what I intend to do.

Last month, a well-informed source inside Microsoft hinted that the 12-month Xbox Live Gold subscription will increase from $50 to $60 in the US. A similar price hike would also be planned for the UK.

At first, I was surprised. Why would Microsoft take the risk of alienating its users when Sony is offering nearly the same service, for free, on its Playstation Network ? Then, I crossed that information with another one: The current debate on how to charge users of multiplayer games. Publishers are realizing that their players are sometimes spending far more time on the multiplayer mode of their game than the solo one ... and that does not yield a single cent. By charging more for the annual Xbox Live subscription, Microsoft might be planning to pay publishers whose titles are heavily played on the Live. That would be a smart move, probably far more acceptable to players that prohibiting the sales of used games, another hotly debated issue. Microsoft could develop thisbusiness model known as Games-on-Demand. Metaboli/Gametap is already doing it and it works.

Of course, this is only a speculation from my part but who knows ?

Adventure games are back ... are they ?

Adventure games ... remember them ? We used to play them a lot: Myst, The Curse Of Monkey Island, Syberia, Gabriel Knight, the Seventh Guest, Broken Sword, ... I am sure it brings fond memories to some of you.

Adventures games used to represent a large share of the market but over the years, they have slowly but surely faded away from our scopes. There are a few studios who make good point-and-click adventures but they are struggling to make them as cheap as possible to produce. No publisher today is ready to support ambitious adventure games.is

The reason is simple: Publishers don't make money with them anymore. There are just not enough buyers. Interest for adventure games seems to be gone ... but is it really the case ?

An adventure game delivers two promises to a player, two benefits: 1) It takes him or her along a compelling and mysterious story and 2) it challenges his brain. To summarize, a good adventure game must bring a story and puzzles.

Recent successful development has shown that there is a strong interest from the public for at least one of those two components: Puzzles. Machinarium (www.machinarium.net) is a successful well-crafted flash games that relies on very smart puzzles. The first few levels are free and once you have completed them, the urge ot buy the full game is strong. The game costs $20 or 14€. It is not cheap but it good value for your money. Another well-known example is Professor Layton on DS. More expensive to develop, this game has been hugely successful. An older example on DS is Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney.

Now, what about the other component of successful adventure games, the story ? Can we build a successful game with just that ? I see one example: The Hysteria Project on the iPhone. Developped by the french studio Bulky Pix, this game offers little puzzles but is quite immersive. It has been quite successful and follow-up episodes are in the making.

Who could say there is no money to make in adventure games ?

Hence my conclusion; The traditional format of adventure game is probably dead but there are still players out there who are looking for their specific thrills. We have to offer them in new formats and we have to brush up design concepts in order to renew their appeal.

What are your thoughts on this topic ? Do you believe, as myself, in the future of adventure games ?

Difficulty curve - Is there such a thing as the ideal curve?

The construction of a difficulty curve is one of the key tasks in level design.

If the difficulty is poorly tuned, the game can become either impossible or boring. We all have memories of difficulty peaks in game that led to the distant throw of a pad or a mouse. on the contrary, how many games have we stopped playing because there was no more challenge ?

Does that mean a difficulty curve should always be smoothly upward ? Of course not. There is no ideal difficulty curve. Recent triple-A titles have shown that totally different approaches are quite valid.

For its shooting sequences Uncharted - Drake's Fortune follows a classical approach to difficulty curve construction . It is built like a staircase. Difficulty is flat, then it increased significantly and remains flat for a while until the next step. The introduction of a new category of enemies or the total number of them in a given firefight often trigger such steps.

Gears of War 2 or FEAR 2 follow a different approach. Their difficulty curve is basically flat. There are a few difficulty peaks from time to time but those are exceptionnal. Of course, if you change the difficulty setting, the game's experience will change but the level design does not.

The designers of FEAR 2 and GoW 2 are not using the difficulty curve to "glue" the player to their game machine. Epic designers constantly renew the player's experience while Monolith's designers use storytelling to achieve the same result: Getting the player hooked to the end of the game.

I draw two lessons from my analysis:

1. There is no single approach to the construction of the difficulty curve
   
2. The profile of the difficulty curve in the game should be planned as one of the components that build a player's experience and should not be an afterthough.

Batman: Arkham Asylum - The proof that a license can be turned into a great game

Many attempts to develop a game after a movie license have yielded lukewarm results.

Some games are good but don't seem to draw heavily from their source material, except for the characters and the overall graphic style. In other words, one feels like the license's characters have been pasted onto a generic gameplay.

Other games are just too weak on gameplay.

This has resulted in the common wisdom that games based on strong licenses are just not up to the job. Therefore, any upcoming title based on a license is ususally welcomed with skepticsm.

The release of Batman: Arkham Asylum is showing us that one can develop a great game based on a license. What have they done that other developers have not ?

first, the developer, Rocksteady, did not attempt to follow the script of a movie or a comic book. They did build a real story but based on the very specific constraints of a game.

Second, they identified the elements that are most representative of the license. I am talking of the graphical style of course but also the type of actions available to the hero, the way the combats are introduced, the overall pace of the game, the combat situations, the dialogs style, etc.

Third, they build a game system and a level design that showcase those elements. They applied good old-fashion game design recipes. They probably got great support from their publisher, Eidos Interactive: The time and ressources to polish and tune the game.

Success did not lie in innovative game mechanisms but simply in the understanding of what makes a great license tick and the wisdom to do a well-crafted game.