Contents
Editorial
Chris Crawford
Letters
Dav Holle, Greg Costikyan
Computer Game Design — The Write Stuff
David Mullich
Principles of Playtesting
Dave Menconi
A Celebration of Geeks
Eric Goldberg
The BBS is Up!
Chris Crawford
Editor Chris Crawford
Subscriptions The Journal of Computer Game Design is published six times a year. To subscribe to The Journal, send a check or money order for $30 to:
The Journal of Computer Game Design
5251 Sierra Road
San Jose, CA 95132
Submissions Material for this Journal is solicited from the readership. Articles should address artistic or technical aspects of computer game design at a level suitable for professionals in the industry. Reviews of games are not published by this Journal. All articles must be submitted electronically, either on Macintosh disk , through MCI Mail (my username is CCRAWFORD), through the JCGD BBS, or via direct modem. No payments are made for articles. Authors are hereby notified that their submissions may be reprinted in Computer Gaming World.
Back Issues Back issues of the Journal are available. Volume 1 may be purchased only in its entirety; the price is $30. Individual numbers from Volume 2 cost $5 apiece.
Copyright The contents of this Journal are copyright © Chris Crawford 1988.
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Editorial: Are We Ready for a Formal Association?
Chris Crawford
One of the trickier issues to arise during the Computer Game Developer’s Conference was the desirability of forming a professional association for computer game designers. There were good arguements on both sides of the issue.
A professional association could write a sample contract for game designers. A fair-minded sample contract could serve as a standard by which publishers’ contracts are measured, and might goad publishers into removing the most objectionable clauses. A professional organization could also provide an auditing service to individuals who doubt their royalty statements. Science Fiction Writers of America provides such a service to its members.
The need for a more collective approach from computer game designers is undeniable. The sad truth is that we game designers have consistently gotten the short end of the stick. Artistic credit is still given only grudgingly and in minimal doses. The financial pie is still divided by the publishers, and they wield the knife with understandable bias.
Most people I spoke with are unwilling to support a confrontational organization; they would rather see a professional association that improves their lot through constructive measures, primarily vehicles for sharing information. For example, I would like to see us prepare a master directory of entertainment software talent. This would include not only such obvious things as the person’s name, address, and telephone number, but also areas of interest or expertise, hardware preferences, some sort of self-categorization or description, and perhaps even a photo. Another nice idea (from Brenda Laurel) has the association compiling a library of hard-to-find special-interest documents.
An association would allow us to legitimatize whatever leadership we select. Right now, I am the closest thing we have to a leader. A properly elected leader would be more effective than I could be. Moreover, an association could set up its own finances, a cleaner arrangement than we have now.
But there are good arguements against the idea of forming an association just yet. First and foremost is the sad fact that we are not socially ready to form an association. An association is a formal expression of a community. Whenever any social group crystallizes out of the larger social milieu, it eventually creates a formal expression of its existence. We, the community of computer game designers, are just now in the process of realizing that we are a community. Our sense of community may be too weak to get us through the difficult act of creating an association. Any association will represent a series of painful compromises that will leave each and every one of us grumbling. To create a successful organization, we must all have such a strong sense of community that we are all willing to accept the idiotic compromises necessary to get along together.
There is another arguement against the formation of a professional association: it may not be necessary. The fact is, we can use other means to accomplish many of the goals traditionally tackled by a professional organization. We already have the JCGD as a forum for public discussion of business and design issues. We are just now instituting the bulletin board system for JCGD subscribers. That will permit direct discourse between members of the community. We have already had a very successful conference for computer game developers, and have begun planning work on the next conference. Certainly there are other things that we could do if we had a formal association, but it is important to note that what we have right now can accomplish a great deal. Why should we add all the overhead of a formal association to obtain what might be only a marginal increase in benefits?
I used to think that the formation of a professional association for computer game developers was inevitable. Now I’m not so sure. It may be that we could carry on many of the functions of such an association through the medium of the BBS. After all, we all possess the hardware necessary to do it, and the costs of telecommunicating are still less than travel costs. I don’t know that the BBS really can replace a traditional association, but I do think that it’s worth a try. At the very least, the BBS gives us an excellent place to hold an extended Constitutional Convention.
So there you have the three possibilities: we form an association sooner; we form one later; or we use the existing media and never formalize an association. What should we do? Write up your ideas and send them to me — I’ll publish the best submissions.
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Letters
Your salary survey shows that computer game designers can be had for little or nothing. Let’s not make it any worse. JCGD is probably not doing computer game designers a lot of good by advertising how cheaply CG designers can be had. But of course, perhaps the publishers already know that.
As for myself, I’ve left Origin Systems and I’m out of the computer games biz, so I’m debating whether or not to renew. Perhaps it’s worth the price of the subscription to see articles like your editorial on Incompetence, so I can pound my fist on the table and say “YEA! THAT’S why I got out!!”
Dav Holle
You put your finger on the key fact: the publishers already know what designers get. After all, they write the checks. We’re the only ones in the dark. -Ed
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As you may or may not know, any of us who receive royalties are subject to a provision of the Tax Reform Act known as Uniform Capitalization Rules. These rules, largely formulated to deal with business investment, apply to copyrighted works including painting, fiction, and also games. Essentially, they require you to allocate your business expenses to your various “properties” (i.e., works), and depreciate those expenses over the useful life of the property. This is a potential bookkeeping nightmare. For instance, how does one allocate the expense of a new computer over the three games one is working on at the time? And how does one estimate the “useful life” of a game, when it could become a best-seller and remain in print for the life of the copyright, or could sell fifty copies and be remaindered within a year?
The IRS has promulgated a “Safe Harbor” plan (alternative compliance plan 88-62) which eases the problem somewhat. Essentially, it allows you to take half your business expenses in the year that you incur them, and the other half in the following year. This still greatly reduces business deductions.
Freelancers already bear a much heavier burden of taxation than employees, since the whole of our income is subject to self-employment tax. The one offsetting advantage has been the ability to offset business expenses against that income. The Uniform Capitalization Rules greatly reduce this ability.
The House Ways and Means Committee has included language exempting authors and artists from Uniform Capitalization Rules in a bill currently on the House floor (HR 4473 — Technical Corrections Bill). The Technical Corrections Billis an omnibus act designed to rectify some of the sillier aspects of the Tax Reform Act. Unfortunately, the version of the Technical Corrections Bill currently being considered by the Senate does not include this exemption. Consequently, it is important to get the House to pass their version of the bill, and to persuade the Senate to modify its version of the bill.
You can write your congressman at:
The Honorable ______________
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
and any senator at:
The Honorable ______________
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
For a trivial investment in time and postage, you may wind up saving yourself a good deal of money. You should certainly write your own senators and congressman (letters from constituents generally receive more attention than those from other people), but you might also consider writing the members of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee (who are responsible for considering bills such as these).
Finally, if you feel like contributing money to the cause, the Society of Illustrators (a large organization of commercial artists, who are also affected by these rules) has hired lobbyists. You can help them by sending a check to the Society of Illustrators (with a note that says “for tax legislation”) to Artists for Tax Equity, c/o Carol Donner, Society of Illustrators, 830 Broadway #10, New York, NY 10003.
Thanks,
Greg Costikyan
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Computer Game Design —The Write Stuff
David Mullich
[David started as a freelancer in 1979, working on the Apple II. Among other titles, he wrote The Prisoner, Empire I: World Builders, and Wilderness: The Survival Adventure. David served as Vice President of Software Development for Eduware, and is now employed with a large entertainment software development firm.]
During the final days of the Writer’s Guild strike I had lunch with a motion picture studio executive who follows the computer entertainment industry. The conversation inevitably came around to a comparison of writers and game designers.
“Computer game designers are a much brighter bunch than screenplay writers,” he told me. “Unfortunately, most of you computer people don’t know the first thing about composing a story.”
I had to agree with him. Cliff Johnson verifies in his “Report on the April Computer Game Designers Symposium” [The Journal of Computer Game Design, June/July 1988] that many game designers question even the necessity of a story.
This disheartens me, for I am a game designer to whom the story is the most important element of game design. The concept of interactive storytelling, enabling the audience to participate in and affect the outcome of a story, has always been what excited me most about our genre. Without having a story to share with an audience via the computer, I would have no desire to spend my career interacting with a machine that has the IQ of a gnat.
Now, the objective of this article is not to convince you that story should be important to you, too. If you do not share my excitement about the computer’s potential for interactive storytelling, then this article is simply not for you.
However, allow me to share with the rest of you how the principles of writing can be applied to computer game design, making it as valid a medium for storytelling as is film, theater or even literature. True, there are differences in form between these media, but they all share the basic elements of drama.
The Concept
Why do you want to design a game? Do you have a universe to create, a topic to explore, a whiz-bang routine to show off? All of these are excellent reasons for designing a game, but only in terms of satisfying your own creative drives. None of these reasons comprise the foundation that a well-constructed story is built upon nor are they sufficient for entertaining the player once the initial novelty of the game wears off.
The focal point of any creative work is the concept. The concept is the core about which all of the work’s elements revolve and is the spark that brings them to life. It is the very essence of the work. It is that which remains when expressing the work in the fewest possible words. Story concepts are composed of three parts: character, action and conflict.
Character, or more specifically, the main character, is the central figure of a story. There may be many characters in a story, but the main character is the one who makes the decisions. In the film Star Wars, for example, there are many characters who are more colorful and assertive than Luke Skywalker is initially, but he is the one who ultimately makes the decision to leave Tatooine and rescue Princess Leia. All of the main character’s decisions are based upon his dramatic need, the motivating force that propels him through the story.
The player assumes the role of the main character in a computer game. After all, he is the one making all of the decisions. Through the trial and error of his decision making, the player learns to succeed at and eventually master the game. This mirrors the development of the main character in a story. Characters in a well-written drama grow throughout the story, eventually acquiring a new skill, status, or insight into the human condition. Perhaps this explains the popularity of role-playing games such as Ultima and Bard’s Tale; the characters grow throughout the game just as characters in a story do.
In most popular games the player assumes the role of a character in command or otherwise in control of his own destiny: an adventurer, a submarine captain, a private detective, etc. However, interesting and novel games could be written about characters who are pawns instead of masters. The novel 1984 is one example of an excellent story about the common man overcoming authority. An example from the world of computer games, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy makes us assume the role of an Everyman who is at the mercy of very power forces rather than controlling them. Yet even these stories unfold around the decisions their main characters make as they deal with the forces around them.
These decisions are expressions of the main character’s dramatic need. In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker’s dramatic need is to rescue Princess Leia. In a computer game, the player’s dramatic need is to win the game; that is, to achieve the game’s goal. The goals of computer games cover the full spectrum of human endeavor: sinking an enemy fleet in the South Pacific, conducting interstellar trade on alien worlds, destroying the evil wizard Werdna, winning a basketball game. But what they all have in common is that they are actions.
Actions are the second component of the concept. A visit to the local video arcade will tell you how important action is to games. It is just as important to stories. Try describing a story without making any reference to action, either physical or mental. You can’t. Story is action. Action is the achievement of the main character’s dramatic need, or, in game terminology, the achievement of the player’s goal.
In a well-written story , the main character’s action or goal must be compatible with his identity. It is reasonable for a knight to have the goal of killing a dragon, but the idea of a CPA killing a dragon is less so. One way to strengthen the premise would be to send the CPA through a time warp to the Middle Ages. Under this premise, a more appropriate goal for the CPA would be to find a way of returning to his proper time era. The original goal of fighting the dragon now becomes an obstacle that prevents him from achieving his new goal of returning home —which brings us to the final element of the concept, conflict.
Conflict is the basis for all drama in all mediums. In high school English, you’ve probably heard conflict categorized as Man vs. Man, Man vs. Society, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. God, Man vs. Himself, etc. Specifically, conflict occurs when the main character is pitted against something that stands between him and the achievement of his goals.
This idea should be very familiar to the game designer, especially when we use game terminology. Conflict can be expressed in game terms as the overcoming of obstacles — opponents, gates, puzzles — that stand between the player and his goal. Whether they take the form of the Norman legions in Defender of the Crown, the surfboard-crunching waves inCalifornia Games, or Vogon poetry sessions in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, all obstacles serve to create conflict by inhibiting the player from achieving his goals.
Not every conflict need necessarily be an external one. I once designed a game called Return of the Samurai in which the player portrayed a ronin (a masterless samurai) whose goal was to regain his lost honor. Because the game took place in 17th century Japan, it required to player to role-play because he had to adhere to values that were very disimilar to those of a 20th century American. In fact, commiting seppeku (ritual suicide) was an acceptable way to regain honor, even if it meant ending the game early. The clash of values between cultures created internal conflict, which is not something that appears on the screen but something that occurs in the player’s mind. Action and conflict need not always be physical; there are many uncharted territories here for game designers to explore.
So long as your concept gives the player an action-oriented goal to achieve and obstacles to overcome while achieving that goal, you have a good basis for a game as well as a good basis for a story. “A knight rescuing a damsel from a dragon” is a solid concept in any medium. With a little imagination and the right (or “write”) perspective, any story can be basis for a computer game. The two creative media are linked at the most elemental level, the concept level, and you can build similar structures from that foundation by applying the principles of writing to game design.
The Plot
Most games are poorly constructed from a dramatic standpoint. Too often they degenerate into an empty series of confrontations, with nothing to distinguish the beginning from the end save for the severity of the obstacles. Sure, it’s addictive for the player — but so is cocaine. It is not good story construction. There are no changes in the story’s direction, and in a sense, our interactive form of storytelling tends to be even more linear than the traditional forms of literature, drama and film.
We game designers need not be too embarrassed for this failing, for much of it is due to the fact that we give the player something that authors in other mediums keep to themselves. We give the player the power to make decisions for the main character. Unfortunately, there is a cost. The overhead of providing contingencies for every decision that the player might make consumes resources that might otherwise be used for enriching the story. For what it’s worth, computer people have had far greater success in pioneering hybrid forms of computer and filmed entertainment (VDI, CDI, etc.) than their film industry counterparts have. However, we can learn much from our creative colleagues, including how to properly construct a story.
All stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning presents the story’s premise, introduces the main character and initiates the action. This beginning segment is the story’s set-up. About one-quarter of the way into the story, an incident occurs to change the story’s direction. An incident that changes the story’s direction is called a plot point. The first plot point thrusts the main character into the middle story segment, the confrontation, where he confronts a series of obstacles. About three-quarters of the way into the story, a second plot point changes the story’s direction again and brings on the resol-ution. Here the main character ultimately succeeds or fails in achieving his goals, but always achieves some growth or understanding in the process.
Let’s examine the structure of Star Wars. During the set-up, we learn about the stuggle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire, are introduced to Luke Skywalker and several of the supporting characters and experience some misadventures with the droids. The first plot point occurs when Luke learns of the captured princess, which motivates him to leave home, and when his uncle and aunt are murdered, which frees him to leave. These events usher in the confrontation, where Luke and friends overcome a series of obstacles while rescuing Princess Leia: hiring a space ship, infiltrating the Death Star, fighting off the stormtroopers, etc. However, when the freed Princess reveals that R2D2 has the blueprints for the Death Star, this plot point completely changes the direction of the story from a relatively simple rescue mission to a massive military assault involving the full forces of the Rebellion and Empire. This change of events brings on the resolution in which Luke accepts his destiny to become a Jedi knight. This structure of set-up, confrontation and resolution forms Star Wars’ plot.
We game designers are great experts on the subject of confrontation, but we tend to ignore set-up and resolution. This oversight removes the plot points that would otherwise keep our stories from being too linear. By devoting more design talent to the beginnings and ends of our stories, we can improve our plots and give them a more literate — and perhaps more memorable — quality.
Let’s begin with the beginning. The purpose of the set-up is to pull the reader, audience or player into the story. It introduces him to the main character and paints the background on which the actions will take place. While the set-up may occupy as much as one-fourth of the story in most media, computer game players often receive merely one screen of game instructions and background. This method of intoducing the player to the game is equivalent to painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling with a roller; it gets the job done, but does so without the style and integrity that distinguishes a creative work.
Fortunately, games have been making great strides towards improving the artistic merits of their set-ups. Many use creatively written and produced player manuals and other value-added items to suspend the player’s disbelief of the game’s fictional universe. The clever items found in Infocom games help to whisk us into the story even before we boot the disk. But as fun as these accessories are, there is a definite psychological barrier between reading a manual and playing the game.
A far more effective approach is to incorporate the set-up into the game itself. In Ultima IV, Lord British takes us to a Rennaisance Faire and lets us set our goals before depositing us into the universe of Britannia. Early Cinemaware games have several minutes of stunning animation that give us a sneak preview of what the game holds for us. However, these introductions are done in a style that is very different from the rest of the program, resulting in a discontinuity that psychologically separates them from the game itself. They have the dramatic effect of prologues rather than set-ups.
The most effective set-ups found in computer games are those that are built into the main game system. The result is more elegant and satisfying game experience. In The Kobayashi Alternative, the player has a chance to strut around the Enterprise as Captain Kirk before the first plot point (in the form of a Klingon battle cruiser) appears. In Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the player experiences the mundane life of Arthur Dent before it takes a dramatic change for the worse when a Vogon spaceship destroys the Earth. In my own The Prisoner, the player prepares his escape from his top secret job before being kidnapped to The Island. Each of these set-ups allow the player to savor the flavor of the universe — if but for a few moments — before thrusting him into the central confrontation.
Few games have made any progress towards expanding the game’s ending, the Resolution, beyond a single screen display announcing the results of the final conflict. This may due to the binary thinking of game designers, for most games have only two possible outcomes. Either the player accomplishes his goal (destroyed Werdna, found the Holy Grail, beat the High Score) or he dies. With such one-dimensional outcomes, a single screen really does say it all because there is not that much to say.
Perhaps the way to flesh out a game’s resolution is to create nonbinary outcomes. Perhaps the player has lost the battle but not the war. Perhaps there is an even greater evil behind Morgoth. Perhaps the South will rise again! Try constructing plots with multiple plot points and endings such as are in the excellently constructed Rocket Ranger. Think up endings that are really new beginnings which lead the player on further adventures. Best of all, give the player something to ponder or try again the next time he plays.
This last suggestion works well because well-written endings take the player back to the beginning again, but with a new perspective that reveals the very purpose of the story. Star Wars begins and ends with a battle, but the balance of power is changed at the end of the film. Casablanca begins and ends with Rick being without Ilsa, but the film finishes which Rick being at peace with the loss. Such mirroring can and has been successfully put into computer games. The Prisoner begins and ends with the player being free, but the game leaves the player with new understanding of his place in the scheme of things. Beginnings and endings are very important to stories and they should be to games as well, for they contain the real value of the work.
The End
I began this article by stating that I did not intend to convince you that the story is important to game design and I end by returning to that statement. Along the way I tried to demonstrate that games and story have a number of fundamental elements in common and that by looking at game design though the eyes of a writer one can come up with some novel approaches to designing games. If you now are intrigued about designing games with more complicated plot structures or can more easily use films, plays and novels as sources of inspiration, then perhaps you can help to find ways of elevating our craft to an art without ever having to admit that story is important. a
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The New FormatWith this second volume of the JCGD I am experimenting with a new format. The most important change is the reduction from 12-point to 10-point type. This allows me to pack more text onto a single page. This issue contains about 65K characters in 14 pages, while previous issues averaged 60K in 15 pages. Thus, you are getting more stuff with each issue. To support the higher density of the type, I decided to abandon the simple photocopying of the times past and make the leap to offset printing. This, of course, raised the cost of printing from about 50¢ per issue to $1.50 per issue. I think that it’s worth it. I also changed the way I prepare the Journal for mailing. The new system might subject your issue to more abuse at the hands of the Post Office, but it reduces my workload. Stuffing all those envelopes by hand was the most onerous task of the Journal. Finally, I have good news to report. For the first time, I have more article submissions than I can print, even with the larger size of Journal. It therefore appears that I will have to hold my historical trivia in abeyance — for now. But here’s one last one, just for old times’ sake:The 1700’s were a time of royal wars. One of the most popular reasons for war in those days was to challenge the royal succession in another country. Thus we have the well-known War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13), and the War of the Austrian Succession (1739-48). But did you know that there was also a War of the Polish Succession (1733-38) and a War of the Bavarian Succession (1778-1779)? Isn’t that interesting?
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Principles of Playtesting
Dave Menconi
[Dave has been working with games for a many years. He is currently working on a project with Accolade. He also served on the steering committee for the Computer Game Developer’s Conference.]
In 1978 I met Chris Crawford at a wargaming convention in, of all places, Fresno. In the 10 years since then, I have playtested all but two of his ten games. I have also done playtesting at Atari on both Home Computer games and Coin-Operated games.
Playtester Requirements
There are some capabilities that you as a playtester must have. First, you must have games literacy. By that I mean that you must understand and play games. Lots and lots of games. Not just computer games but dice games, board games, card games, every kind of game.
But knowing something isn’t enough. You must be able to communicate your ideas to the developer. You may wonder, “That’s easy. Just tell him/her.” But there are some obstacles to that.
The biggest problem is the developer’s ego. S/he has a lot invested in this game. You must communicate your ideas the same way you feed ducks. If you go after a duck with the bread in you hand shouting “Eat this, you stupid duck!” the duck will waddle away quacking and flapping. If instead you toss the bread crumbs toward the ducks and then let the ducks eat them in their own time you will be more successful. Likewise you must let go of your ideas and let the developer use them as s/he sees fit. To just say “No, no, you fool. — do it this way!” is likely to cause in the developer the same reaction it caused in the ducks: a lot of quacking and flapping (an amusing sight but not very productive).
When I was playtesting Balance of Power I had an idea for a new screen that I thought would add a lot to the game. I suggested this to Chris and he rejected it, so I dropped the matter. A few weeks later Chris called me up and told me that he had a great idea for a new screen and proceeded to repeat the essentials of the idea I had given him before. I had let go of that idea and the duck had eventually eaten it. The result was a better game that we both felt good about. [Quack, quack. Flap, flap —Ed.]
Another major obstacle in presenting your ideas is program inertia. Usually by the time the playtester starts to work on a game a tremendous amount of work has already gone into it. More importantly, the deadlines are getting perilously close. If your suggestion is that s/he should abandom the basic premise of the game and start over (“How about if we make it a tank instead of an plane?”) the developer will have to reject the notion. So you must come up with solutions to the problems you perceive that are subtle but effective.
Often a very minor change will alter the whole face of the game. For example, when Chris was doing Legionaire, a game about the Roman Leagions vs. the Germanic Barbarians, the game was almost done before I saw it. It was well balanced and had good features but it was boring to play. I suggested a drum sound effect that sped up as the tribe got closer to the Legions, thus creating some anxiety in the player. This changed the whole experience of the player and yet it didn’t require any major changes to the code.
You may be wondering why I haven’t listed computer literacy as a requirement for playtesting. It’s because I don’t think knowing about computers is necessarily an advantage. It could even be a disadvantage. To the degree that you allow your knowledge of computers to cause you to make assumptions about how the game is programmed and to the degree that you use those assumptions to decide what suggestions to make, that knowledge is a detriment. So computer literacy is a disadvantage only if you make use of it.
How to Playtest
First, read the manual cover to cover. When I buy a new game I almost never read the manual until I have been playing for some time but when I playtest a game, reading the manual comes first. While reading the manual, look for the fantasy the author is trying to create, the features and levels of the game and for any hints about how to win.
Now play with the game. Try moving things around and checking out the menus and options. Look for those neat features you saw in the manual. Don’t worry about getting killed or losing at this point — just get a feel for the interface and the system.
Eventually you will get bored with playing with the game and will be ready to actually play a few games. Look for how the game feels. Do you understand what’s going on? Are we having fun yet? Usually I start on the high levels to get a feel for all the features and then move down.
By the time you have died a few times (and maybe won a few games) you are ready to develop a strategy. There are two kinds of strategies you should try. Strategies within the fantasy and without the fantasy. In Balance of Power (a game of global politics between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.), for example, you could support your allies and put pressure on the allies of the USSR while trying to win over the neutral countries. This strategy is within the fantasy. Indeed, it is a crude description of the U.S. policy toward the world. Alternatively, you could give money to the Eastern Block countries, North Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba and other Comunist countries until they defect to your side. This probably would not work in the real world and so it is outside the fantasy. When I tried this in an early version of BOP it worked just fine and this is why if a player tries it now he will likely start The War — we found it and fixed it.
There is special kind of strategy outside the fantasy that I call “King Log.” In King Log strategy you do nothing. BOP has ten turns and in the first five the computer AI was beating me on all fronts. But then, in the absence of competition, the AI started to shift resources around. Slowly the USSR score began to drop and mine to rise until, by the tenth turn, I had beaten the USSR by a narrow margin. You should always try this trick, especially in strategy games. Few developers would think to check for this, but it can make the game a snap for naive players.
Finally, you must write a report of your findings. There are three parts to this. First, include any bugs that you found. This has the main advantage that serious bugs can prevent playtesting from having any useful results. Second, make your suggestions. This is the heart of the report — remember to “feed the ducks.” Finally, include a section on details — perhaps a word was misspelled or a font was inappropriate. The developer will appreciate your feedback but these things should not be very important at this stage.
You may be wondering, “Why should I write a report? Can’t I just call?” Well, you can call and it will work. But there are some advantages to writing the ideas down. First, information seems more valuable, and therefore more worthy of note, if there is something tangible associated with it — like a piece of paper. Second, it is much easier to let go of your idea if it is on paper. If you simply tell the developer about the idea s/he may react and you may have reactions to his/her reactions and suddenly we have quacking and flapping again. Finally, it is easier to communicate ideas correctly if you have a chance to edit and adjust them. Remember that the first impression that the developer has of your idea will probably determine whether s/he uses it or not regardless of later explanations.
Remember, the purpose of playtesting is to improve and polish the game. Any effort that does not serve this goal is a waste of your time.
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A Celebration of Geeks
The Second Computer Game Developer’s Conference
Eric Goldberg
[Eric comes to us from the boardgame industry. He started his career as a designer at Simulations Publications, Inc (SPI). After a stint as a consultant for a number of early videotext projects, he ran the development effort at West End Games. Now he is freelancing again. His list of design credits is too long to include here.]
Copyright © 1988 Eric Goldberg
Have you ever been present at an event that everyone could tell would be a failure from the very start? Do you remember that sinking feeling when you realized that the rest of the day/weekend/ week was going to be just so much wasted time, and how the organizers desperately scurried around trying to enthuse the attendees with false optimism? Yeah, it wasn’t any fun for me, either, but hold the image.
Now, reverse it by 180 degrees. You now have an excellent approximation of how people felt at the Computer Gaming World reception that kicked off the Developers’ Conference on Saturday night. Over 150 computer game developers and assorted hangers-on discovered that they were not alone, that they were part of a sizable community, that the other people in the community shared their hopes and concerns about the entertainment software field, and that they had a definite preference for cheap American beer over Jolt cola. If ever a spirited exchange of ideas among creative professionals could be called anticlimactic, the ensuing two days of seminars and shmoozing were. The success of the conference simply was not in doubt.
In his keynote speech, Dan Bunten reaffirmed that we are part of a maturing community. He cheerfully acknowledged that he, in common with the majority of the attendees, had grown up a nerd, and ran through a catalogue of the recognition signals. (Hands in pockets, standing on one leg, slouched posture, social gawkiness, etc. , etc., etc.) Without suggesting that we should be ashamed of what we were (and perhaps still are), he matter-of-factly noted that we shared an extraordinary talent, and that we should take pride in our accomplishments.
Bunten then outlined a formula for continued success and professional growth, which was at once breathtakingly simple in conception and frighteningly difficult to put into practice. First, find a good woman. By sharing interests, she will be your bridge to mainstream adult culture, where RAM caches, flight simulators, and evil wizards are not the stuff of everyday conversation. Second, marry her. Third, have kids. As they grow up, your children will give you an adolescent perspective on life that your wife cannot. (It was Dan’s 14-year old daughter who told him that he had been promoted from “nerd” to “geek.”) Continue in domestic splendor until ennui, retirement, or death cause you to leave the field.
Bunten, who practices what he preaches, was underscoring the point that, for an artist to effectively communicate through his work, he should understand his audience’s frame of reference. The best fiction writers, by way of example, tend to be social creatures and to be intensely interested in the way other people live and work. Chris Crawford had earlier proposed an academic approach to the same problem, when he suggested that the aspiring designer read about a broad range of subjects. Immerse yourself in literature, in texts on philosophy, sociology, history, the sciences (and so on), Crawford told us, and your work will become three-dimensional and, perhaps, truly great. Taken together, Chris and Dan were asserting that the well-rounded person has the greatest potential to be an accomplished artist.
Bunten did not address what the several husband-and-wife teams in the computer game field should do, short of moving to Utah and converting to the Mormon faith. However, the few couples at the symposium, such as the Robinsons and the Dittons, appeared to have worked out their own solution; briefly, cultivate a circle of friends who do something other than what you do (which includes 99.9-repeat-9% of your neighbors, even if you live in Silicon Valley). Dan did not say what the single women in the field ought to do, but it’s a safe presumption that, if they switch the genders in the appropriate places, his recommendations should work just fine.
The attendees at the symposium were overwhelmingly male, and often could not figure out how to deal with the few females who make computer game design their business. At one seminar, Amanda Goodenough, author of children’s stackware, did everything short of shooting off a signal flare to be recognized by the speaker. Though the audience deferred to Goodenough after the better part of a half-hour, other women commented that they gave up raising their hands after the first day. (Before condemning the assembled moderators to a remedial course in manners, keep in mind that short people at the back of the room, regardless of sex, tended not to be called upon to speak.) Bunten rescued us from terminal Neanderthal status by asking the women in the audience to comment on how they thought computers could support truly popular multi-player games -- and studiously ignored the men champing at the bit to be heard until a representative sampling of women had spoken on the question.
Brenda Laurel, already well-known in the Bay Area community and in no need of assertiveness training, presented herself as the software community’s high priestess of weird. (You could have looked it up in the “Job Openings” section of The San Jose Mercury-News a couple weeks ago.) Laurel also passionately championed the cause of innovation before presenting Cinemaware with the award for Most Innovative Publisher.
Other award winners were Electronic Arts for Best Technical Support; Microprose for Best Q.A. Operation; Matt Householder of Epyx for Best Producer; and Origin Systems as Best Publisher. Dallas Snell of Origin Systems said that he was as startled as anyone else when Origin won, if only because the number of developers who work with Origin is barely above the minimum necessary to receive the award. Regardless, any sensible developer will now seriously consider Origin as a publisher, and the company’s claim that Origin is more than a vehicle for Richard Garriott’s designs has been borne out by his peers. There should also be a scramble to work on projects with Householder, who just as probably is booked into the next millennium by the developers who voted for him.
While some may choose to disagree with individual awards, there should be no question about their collective legitimacy. Origin Systems decided to attend the conference at the last minute; the Cinemaware representative was genuinely astonished when called on to accept the award; and Householder maintained a low-key presence throughout the conference. These are not the ways dark horses go about campaigning for awards.
In a surprise presentation, Crawford was cited as “Zee Greatest Game Designer in Zee Universe.” The award took the form of a lucite light bulb mounted on a black base. Though Chris is clearly among the best in his profession, the award was as much to honor him for making the event at which it was presented a reality, for turning the Journal into a must-read newsletter, and for establishing a BBS, as it was an acknowledgment of his abilities. In short, the community Chris brought together showed their appreciation.
(Later, Crawford mused aloud whether he could accept the Grand Old Man status the attendees wished to confer upon him, because he felt it would require him to give up his gadfly role. Nonsense. Chris, you proclaimed yourself “an asshole” to a room packed with your peers. The award, in addition to being a token of our respect, is our way of saying that you’re a lovable asshole, and that we like you just the way you are.)
The conference committee made a deliberate decision not to give awards to game developers -- at least this time around. Apparently, there was a strong sentiment that these had far too much potential for creating animosity, and also that giving awards to each other was somewhat unseemly. Awards to peers can and do work quite well (see, for example, science fiction’s Nebulas), so it is likely just a matter of time before a successor committee begins giving these out. As for the harmony issue, it didn’t hurt that five different publishers were honored.
In fact, there was surprisingly little rancor at the symposium, particularly when one considers how many large egos were confined in a small space for two whole days. Early in the program, there was a vigorous program of ”marketing bashing,” but by the wrap-up session, this was a dead horse. To the credit of the attendees, they realized that the accused ought to be present to answer the charges being bandied about, and that the few marketers present felt that the atmosphere of general disdain for their profession was not one in which to present their views.
The chief bone of contention was the role of publishers in future conferences. A vocal group of developers felt that the publishers, with their greater resources and as the source of the developer’s livelihood, would disenfranchise the free-lance developer in what’s supposed to be a forum of his peers — but not if the publishers were somehow kept out. There was a brief controversy about an impromptu company party thrown just before the awards banquet, but, by the time it was put to a show of hands at the wrap-up session, not a single attendee voted to deny publishers the right to ply them with beer.
The publishers are not going to be excluded, unless we don’t even have the little good sense with which we are born. They are too important a part of the computer game development process, and we will be the poorer if we do not benefit from what they have to contribute. (No writer’s workshop, for example, is complete without editors who work for book publishers.) As one employee pointed out, this conference is the only place, including the SPA, where the entire spectrum of people who design, develop, program, produce, market, and sell computer games is represented. It offers an unparallelled opportunity for developers to learn, from each other, and from everyone else with whom they work.
The lines between publishers and developers are continually blurring, particularly with the proliferation of affiliated labels. (A developer becomes an affiliated label when he/they agree to take on the manufacturing risk, the producer’s role, and the marketing and advertising tasks. A conventional publisher, with a full-fledged sales apparatus, distributes the label’s finished product.) Many people within publishers — such as Microprose, which has yet to publish an outside submission — are developers, or are intimately involved in the process. Dave Albert of Electronic Arts put it neatly when he said, “I first worked for Penguin, then for Origin Systems, and now for EA. Several years from now I may be somewhere else. But wherever I go, I am a producer, and what I care about is making the best possible games.” [My apologies to Dave for any eloquence lost in transmission. You had to be there to appreciate his fervor.]
Any developer who doesn’t believe he has something to learn from Trip Hawkins of EA or Bill Stealey of Microprose is sticking his head in the sand. And as long as the developer’s conference is firmly established as serving the interests of the independent developer first, we will have a forum that can benefit everyone in the community.
The design community displayed a keen commercial awareness. The success or failure of individual products was largely judged to be a function of sales: Bunten advanced M.U.L.E. as a failure, because it had sold “only” 30,000 copies; similarly, Crawford pronounced Trust and Betrayal a dead loss because it had sold even less copies than M.U.L.E.. Perhaps this was a result of the proximity of Silicon Valley, home of many a successful entrepreneur; perhaps this was an artifact of the money-obsessed late 1980s; but whatever, the argument so prevalent in other creative fields which serve the home market, that art is often distinct from commercial success, was noticeably absent.
The attendees, for the most part, gave short shrift to the notion that the arcade-style games currently being played by adolescents are precursors to the popular entertainment software of the early 1990s. During the Market Trends seminar, John Skruch of Atari US suggested that designers ought to be paying attention to the leading-edge Nintendo and Atari 7800 games; his remarks were greeted with massive disinterest. One Nintendo game, Zelda, was given grudging respect, because it was considered to transcend the limitations of the Nintendo system.
(No one argues that the Nintendo system itself will be a permanent fixture in home entertainment. Rather, the question is whether the best-selling games are precursors of a significant computer game sub-genre.)
This reaction calls to mind the George Santayana quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Game design professionals, at least as represented at the symposium, are in their late 20s and 30s, and have achieved as much as they have at a relatively young age because the previous generation, now in their mid-40s, was slow to adapt to the computer. The corollary of Skruch’s point is that the new designers of the 1990s will have been intimately familiar with the computer from earliest childhood, and that, if the current generation of designers wishes to avoid a rude shock, they had best be studying the software that most interests today’s pre-adolescents. Instead, the symposium response to Santayana was Satchel Paige’s “Don’t look back, someone may be gaining on you.”
The theme of Bunten’s keynote address hammered home the underlying logic of Skruch’s point. Bunten’s recipe for success is find a good woman, marry her, have kids, and then learn from your kids. [The emphasis is mine.] Bunten credited his daughter with keeping him in touch with popular culture; without her, he said he would not be familiar with things as diverse asFamily Ties and MTV. It’s not that future games will be directly based on the most popular entertainments of the moment (though I rather like the idea of Rock Star Rascals ), but that designers should have a common language with the teenagers who are, after all, the bulwark of the customer base.
The community seemed taken with Trip Hawkins’s “New Hollywood” metaphor. There was relative certainty that the games we do, which are constantly requiring more and better sound and graphic effects, will merge with video entertainment. There was some discussion about what might happen when we collide with the “Old Hollywood;” the consensus was that we would play nimble mammals to the movie studios’ dinosaurs. In any event, if such a collision does happen, the best-positioned company is Lucasfilm Games.
(Dave Albert pointed out that, based on how games are presently done, the “New Motown” is a more apt sobriquet.)
Not that everyone spoke with one voice: an observer who went from the Market Trends to the Multiplayer Games seminar would have had reason to wonder whether the two were being given at the same conference. The Trends audience paid little or no attention to the notion that telecommunications would play a large role in the future of computer game development; the Games people quickly concluded that the present machines were not the vehicles for popular multiplayer entertainment, and moved directly to a lengthy discussion of how the modem was the answer. Robert Gehorsam of Prodigy, an IBM/Sears joint venture which is making a spectacular entrance into the home videotex market, briefly described how well the games on his service have gone over with computer-literate professionals; he and his peers at CompuServe, etc., will be giving a panel during at least one of the next two conferences.
The technical seminars are, for the most part, glossed over in this article; there were two programming tracks, and no prizes will be awarded for guessing which was of greater interest to me. Evan and Nicky Robinson’s “Developing for MS-DOS” was praised by many attendees. While no one professed a desire to grapple with an operating system universally regarded as clunky, the Robinsons were given full marks for a concise explanation of how to get through the odious task of supporting all four of the CGA, EGA, VGA, and Hercules graphics standards. The IBM PC and clone family is clearly where the most money is to be made in games.
Another sharp, semi-technical seminar was “Playtesting and Q.A.,” given by Dave Menconi, Cem Kaner of EA, and Bunten. Menconi gave a solid overview of the playtesting process, and sparked a brief but lively debate as to whether a professional playtester was necessarily compromised (because the payoff for the consumer is fun, not money). The three panelists did concur that playing a game to debug it was an honorable profession. Kaner gave a solidly brilliant exposition on the process of Q.A., including a scheduling bar graph which provoked ripples of laughter for the first few minutes of his talk. (“Order T-shirts” followed soon after “Begin Design;” “Ship Game” preceded “Finalize Design Spec.”)
Unsurprisingly, the quality of the speakers and the seminars was uneven. The best, aside from several lauded above, were Brian Moriarty’s “Interactive Story Making,” Crawford’s “Creativity and Game Design” (and demonstration of whip technique), and Bunten’s keynote speech. Others ranged from the undistinguished to the downright poor, including one in which the audience hijacked the talk from the moderator and took it off in some very strange directions, and which ran out of steam well before the hour was up. This is not intended entirely as criticism; one can be a game design talent without being a good public speaker, and we would be foolish indeed to deny ourselves the wisdom of those of our top designers who aren’t good lecturers. Rather, we are in need of game-literate moderators.
By general acclamation, the text of the prepared seminars will be found in the pages of the Journal. This will allow Crawford to relax, ever so slightly, his never-ending quest for contributions, though I, for one, will miss his completely obscure historical trivia. (Where else can you find out about the decline in the Finnish rate of marriages in the 18th Century?)
This second developers’ conference will come to hold a certain charm for the people who attended. Never again will we experience that first rush of excitement of seeing a community come together, and never again will we be so damn grateful to find out how many people there are out there who are like us. By the time of the next conference, the game design community will have matured, and with this maturation will come professional rivalries, people who refuse to speak with each other, and the occassional messy drunk. (Nerds are not great at holding their liquor.) All of these are part of our collective growing-up process, and are a small price to pay for what we have gained.
The conference was a personal triumph for Crawford, Laurel, Menconi, Tim Brengle, Stephen Friedman, Jeff Johannigman, and Stephanie Barrett. These people are the conference committee, and one of the consequences of their success is that they are responsible for harnessing the enormous momentum and goodwill generated for next May’s conference. After the first conference, at which 27 people were present, Crawford hoped the next one would attract 60. His guess was low, by 120 attendees. Estimates for the next time around range from 250 to 300; the chief worry expressed by long-time designers was that even more will come. The committee deserves as much of our help as we can give; they are faced with a daunting and exciting task, and deserve our best efforts in return for enhancing our professional lives.
Dan Bunten should also receive our thanks, for doing us a favor of sorts. By seeing the humor in one of the more deep-rooted elements of our negative self-image, he has helped us make the transition from this conference, a celebration of geeks, to the next, a celebration of game designers.
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Dan Bunten giving the keynote address. Photograph courtesy Brian Moriarty, digitizing committed by Chris Crawford.
What went WrongThere can be no doubt that the conference was a big success. The feedback we have received so far has been uniformly enthusiastic and congratulatory. Being a crotchety SOB, I’d like to point out some of the screw-ups and mistakes that may not have been obvious.The most hair-raising one was the ballot-tabulation for the publisher awards on Sunday night. We were prepared with computer, spreadsheet, and calculators and paper in the event of emergency, but the task of counting the ballots proved to be more time-consuming than we had allowed for. The conference committee holed up in a room with the ballots, the computer, and an hour and a half. We just barely pulled it off, sneaking into the banquet room ten minutes late. And did anybody notice the committee members sneaking out half an hour later for a last-minute meeting in the corridor? Next time we’ll do it differently.The physical layout of the rooms left much to be desired. The corridor was so badly jammed with people between sessions that movement was difficult. Finances were too tight. We had to make a run to the bank to deposit the door receipts, just to make sure that the final check to the hotel wouldn’t bounce. The good news, though, is that the conference did make a profit in the end, not much, but enough to seed the next conference.Although the conference committee prepared for many contingencies that never arose, much of the smooth operation of the conference must be attributed to the patience and good grace of the attendees, who cheerfully stood in line for lunch, balanced paper plates on their knees, filed into lecture rooms at the appointed time, endured crowded rooms, and had a good time throughout.Next time we’ll do better.
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Stephen Friedman presents Dallas Snell of Origin Systems with the Best Publisher award. Photo by Brian Moriarty, digitizing perpetrated by Chris Crawford.
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The BBS is Up!
Chris Crawford
The JCGD Bulletin Board System is now fully operational! To log on, set your telecommunications software for 8 bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit. The BBS telephone number is (415) 848-1996. Your ID number and password are written on the inside front cover of this issue. When the BBS answers, it will first ask you for your ID number. Enter your ID number and a carriage return. Then it will ask you for your password. Enter your password and a carriage return. This is a private BBS, not open to the general public, so you must use this ID number and password to log on.
Once you are on the BBS, you will find it fairly simple to navigate through the system. At any prompt you can type “?” to get help. I will warn you, though, that the standards of human engineering are not high. A given letter-command will mean completely different things in different contexts. I use the “?” heavily.
Because this is a single-line BBS, your call is limited to 30 minutes duration. We do anticipate that, for the first week or two, the BBS will be swamped with all the new users trying out the system, so don’t be disappointed if you keep getting a busy signal.
There are four major sections of the BBS: the bulletin boards, the mail system, the voting system, and the uploading/downloading area (“SuperTac”). The mail system is a handy way to submit articles to the Journal. The voting system will allow us to take quick polls on a variety of subjects. The SuperTac area makes it possible for people to move non-text files through the BBS.
You will spend most of your time in the bulletin boards. These are the areas for public discussion of topics of the day. There are 11 boards covering a variety of topics, from specific areas of game design to business issues.
Follow the ongoing discussions in the boards and make your contributions. We do have some rules and restrictions. First, the software will not allow you to post messages longer than 4K characters. This is an entirely reasonable restriction; if you can’t say your piece in 4K, perhaps you’d better edit it. Remember, other people are paying money for connect time to read it!
The more important rules concern the tenor of your comments. This is a BBS for professional computer game designers. Its function is to advance the profession. We will not tolerate unprofessional behavior on this board. Flaming (posting angry messages) is forbidden. We encourage disagreement; we applaud eloquence; we respect forcefulness; but we require gentlemanliness.
There is another area, a rather touchy one: rumors and ugly truths. This board can provide a valuable community service by allowing developers to share information on the mistakes and foibles of publishers. At its best, such a function creates a climate of openness that encourages participants in the marketplace to trust each other. It will make it easier for developers to trust honest publishers. It will also serve to drive out of the marketplace those shadier publishers who create an atmosphere of distrust all out of proportion to their numbers or size.
There is a downside to the operation of a rumor mill: it is too easy to crucify the innocent through rumors. If our board helps such wild rumors spread faster and wilder, then we have done a disservice to the community.
How are we to balance the need for information against the need for reliability? The responsibility for making this difficult judgment must lie with the person reporting the information. We, the operators of the BBS, accept no responsibility for anything said on the board. The board is a medium of communication not under our immediate control.
We do have guidelines for users to consider in posting a message containing information damaging to the interests of any other party. Any information that you present must come from your direct experience or that of a close colleague. No fair telling stories about what happened to a friend of a friend. Also, remember that there are laws against slander and you can be held legally liable for the statements that you make on the board.
The BBS has a group of moderators whose task it is to police the boards, but we don’t expect to need their services often. We think that the community is mature enough to handle the responsibility. We hope that you will log onto the BBS soon and participate in the discussions there.