Table of Contents Editorial: Better Days
Chris Crawford
Blowing My Siboot-Horn
Chris Crawford
Multi-Player Games
Dan Bunten
The Costs of Advertising Games
Susan Lee-Merrow
Arithmetic Methods
Chris Crawford
Egotism
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:
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5251 Sierra Road
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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),or via modem. No payments are made for articles. Authors are hereby notified that their submissions may be reprinted in Computer Gaming Forum.
Copyright The contents of this Journal are copyright © Chris Crawford 1987.
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Editorial: Better Days
Chris Crawford
I have noticed something developing within our community over the last few months. There seems to be a growing sense of security on the part of developers and publishers. It seems that the history of our little industry can be divided into phases characterized by moods. There was the pioneering phase from 1979-81. The dominant mentality then was that of the prophet. People in the industry in those days didn’t care much that computer games didn’t sell very well and weren’t very good. There was intense excitement over the potential of games even if the reality was less grandiose. Computer games were going to conquer the world. They were going to be fabulous, glorious, magnificent. Hollywood had better watch out, we told ourselves. Here we come.
Then came the boom of 1982-83. People were buying games faster than we could make them, and they didn’t seem to care whether the games were any good. If it was new, they plunked down their $40. We went into a gold-rush craze. Publishers were scrabbling for any jerk who could rub two bytes together. Coding speed was the primary qualification of a good designer back then. If you could get the game out in eight weeks, you were hot. Money was being made by the fistful, and everybody wanted in on the action. Opportunists flooded into the field.
Next came the inevitable bust of 1984-85. Basically, almost everybody died. The better-run companies stayed in business. Most of the opportunists departed to pursue other scams. Only the truly determined designers stayed on. The mood in those days was one of desperation and disbelief. “It can’t keep getting worse!” we told ourselves, but it did. Survival was the foremost consideration in everybody’s mind.
Now we appear to have moved into a new phase. 1986 was a decent year, not great, but nobody starved. 1987 appears to have been a great year, and attitudes seem to be changing. After the desperate years of the bust, most people are finally developing a sense of optimism again.
I sense in our community a greatly compressed version of the experience of my parents’s generation. The Depression shattered confidence in the future and instilled a deep fiscal conservatism in everybody. That conservatism remained with people through the Forties and Fifties. It took the go-go Sixties to shake the black cloud of fiscal pessimism from the community. Our experiences in the last five years distantly parallel the five decades of our parents’ time. First a boom, then a devastating collapse engendering deep pessimism. Now, after several years of recovery, we are just beginning to look to the future with some confidence and, perhaps, even optimism. I doubt that we will ever be able to look forward with the same naive opportunism that once dominated our world-view. But I think that there is once again room in our industry for some idealism, and for that I heave a great sigh of relief. A creative field without optimism is a dying field.
So let’s take a moment to pat ourselves on the back. We deserve it — we done good this year. Especially after the tough times of the last few years, it feels good to be alive and well again.
But most important, I hope that we can rekindle the outlandishness, the risk-taking that once animated our efforts. Granted, we’re not the same rumpled crew that started this revolution ten years ago. We’re a big industry now, with millions of dollars of other people’s money riding on our decisions. Yet we must never forget that we are in the entertainment business, and creativity is the lifeblood of our industry. For the last few years we have been coasting on old creativity, too scared and too poor to take chances on new ideas. Now the market is secure enough to support some bold leaps. Who among us is up to the task?
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Blowing My Siboot-Horn
Chris Crawford
My latest game, entitled Trust and Betrayal, the Legacy of Siboot, has at long last been released by Mindscape. As some of you know, this project has been a long and painful one for me. I am, quite naturally, proud of the fruits of my labors, and I am tempted to boast of the surpassing glories of this design. Certainly the 13 blank pages of this issue of the JCGD are temptation enough. So, yes, I believe I shall indulge myself and show off my latest creation.
Characters
The game is, I think, important for game designers to note, because it breaks new ground in several areas of game design. The most important of these is of absolutely fundamental importance: the first incorporation of real characters in a game. Now, there have been characters used in games before. Who can forget Floyd the robot from Planetfall? Or Werdna from Wizardry? Or even Pinky, Blinky, and ole Whats-his-Name from Pac-Man? We have seen characters before, but what did they actually do? Did Floyd ever once acknowledge your existence as a human being? Did Pinky ever treat you like a real person? Did Werdna ever show you that he cared about you?
The answer, of course, is always negative. These “characters” that we have so far seen in computer games are poor substitutes for the real thing. They are Potemkin villages, false fronts that cover a shabby reality. The reality is that they are NOT characters, they do NOT have any feelings, they are NOT aware of your existence, and they can NOT interact with you as characters. They are Teddy Ruxpin dolls, not characters.
A good character is somebody with whom I can have a rich emotional interaction. A good character has a distinct personality that I can get to know, and will behave in a manner consistent with that personality, even if it isn’t always predictable. If I tell Floyd, “Floyd, you are ugly as sin!”, his feelings should be hurt. And if I suggest that we perform unnatural acts together, he should respond differently.
This is of fundamental importance because characters are the vital essence of so much of our art. Try to imagine the movies without any characters in them. Try to imagine literature without any characters, or theater without any actors. You think that’s too highbrow? OK, take Star Wars and delete Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Obiwan Kenobe, Princess Leia, Han Solo, C3P0, and R2D2, and what have you got left? Nothing! Without characters, the movies would be dull, boring, and lifeless. How can computer games hope to be any better without characters?
Putting real characters into computer games is not easy, as many of us have already learned. There are two gigantic problems to be solved: artificial personality, and a language of interaction. Trust & Betrayal solves them both, in a pioneering and therefore clumsy fashion.
Artificial Personality
Artificial personality involves the modelling of human personality in the computer. It is NOT related to artificial intelligence. AI is an academic discipline dedicated to the solution of academic problems, mostly mathematical in nature. Artificial personality is concerned with the capturing of human nature in algorithmic form, and is more properly treated as lying in the field of the arts rather than the sciences. The fact that artificial personality makes use of highly technical means (algorithm creation and programming) does not remove it from the domain of the arts; the sculptor, the painter, and the musician must also master highly technical material before they can ply their arts.
In the course of this project, I developed an artificial personality module that made decisions for the computer characters. The model uses seven invariant personality traits such as integrity, gullibility, desire to be liked, pride, and so forth. There are three relationship variables: love, trust, and fear. Finally, there are three short-term moods corresponding to short-term versions of love, trust, and fear. For each possible type of interpersonal event that could happen to a character, I wrote a set of evaluative equations that first determined the character’s emotional response to that event. Then I added a set of behaviors from which the character would choose, depending on his personality, mood, and relationships. The code to do all this ran to some 1100 lines of Pascal, much of it performing arithmetic calculations.
Language Problems
Actually, the second problem was the tougher one. I had to design a language of interaction for the game. Characters don’t mean much if they can’t express themselves. Now, the obvious choice here is the English language, but we should not be overly optimistic. We will not be able to converse in English with any computer anytime in this century. What’s the problem with stuffing English into a computer, you ask? It’s certainly not the 600,000 word vocabulary. Jeez, a few megabytes of storage can handle that easily. And grammar and syntax, those are child’s play. A few thousand rules to code up, some tables of exceptions — big deal! The real problem, the killer, is this: if you want to put English into a computer, you must also squeeze in the rest of the universe.
Consider, for example, the simple word, “brick”. Five letters long; you compaction freaks could probably squeeze it into a couple of bytes. The problem comes when you try to use the word. Do you realize just how much intellectual baggage comes along with that simple word? A brick is hard; if you intend to talk about bricks you had better understand what hardness means. It has flat sides; make sure that your program understands flatness, too. It is massive, so you’d better include all the laws of physics regarding the behavior of massive objects if you want to understand sentences such as, “Can you tie the paper to the brick and throw it across the chasm between us?” Oh, yes, it also has color, so be sure to include everything about color and while you’re at it, be sure to include such things as texture and thermal conductivity, as well as magnetic susceptibility and ignition temperatures and combustibility...my, my, it does get out of hand quickly, doesn’t it?
Language does not exist in isolation from reality. Language mirrors reality. We live in an immensely complex world, and short, simple words such as “brick” carry much of that complexity with them. When you see something called a brick in a regular text adventure game, you know it isn’t really a brick; it should more properly be called “the thing you throw through the window in the log cabin to get inside”, because that is the true operational reality of the thing, and its ONLY reality in the text adventure. To bestow so grandiose a title as “brick” on so lowly an entity is truly a crime against the language.
I do not argue that putting language inside a computer is impossible. It most certainly will happen, eventually. After all, language is the vehicle we use to communicate with other people. It’s stupid to communicate with people in one language and computers in another. Someday, we must and will communicate with computers in English. But that someday is a long way off. So what do we do in the meantime?
One approach is to use a subset of English. Restrict the vocabulary to a few thousand words, the grammar and syntax to sixth-grade level, and keep the game environment very simple. That should hold the problem to levels that can be managed in a microcomputer.
It doesn’t. English words don’t fit inside tiny boxes well; they tend to have broader meanings than we need. Worse, I have yet to see a text adventure that restricted its environment tightly enough to allow the words it used to carry any true meaning. The game-language should be a verbal image of the game-world; so far, the subsets-of-English that I have seen are distortions that poorly image some of the traits of the their game-worlds and suggest other traits that don’t exist.
My Special-Purpose Language
Another solution, the one that I created for Trust & Betrayal, is to create a special-purpose language for the game. This may sound radical, but in fact all computer programs create special-purpose languages. Watch some poor wretch struggling with the mass of commands in MicroSoft Word sometime. It’s a language, all right, but a language designed for the convenience of the programmer, not a language designed to conform to linguistic principles. Sometimes the languages of applications programs are elaborate, sometimes they are simple, but they are always there. I decided to be explicit about it.
The language used in Trust & Betrayal has many interesting features. It is a visual language, using icons as words. The player clicks on icons to speak the words. Now, all you religious fanatics on either side of the icon issue can just calm down, because the icons are not the essence of the language. If you want, you can click on an existing icon to get an approximate English translation. The icons do allow me to build sentences that are geometric structures, and the spatial relationships between the words suggest the structure of the sentence. For example, direct objects are always to the right of the verb, and indirect objects are always underneath the verb. However, the same thing could have been done with text by showing a sentence diagram.
The first really important thing about this language is that it uses what I call an “inverse parser”. A regular parser has you type in your sentence, and then it scans the sentence, figuring out what you meant to say. If you make a mistake, it spits out the sentence with a dismissive error message and you must try again. Regular parsers put the human in the position of the supplicant. That’s the wrong way to run a user interface!
The inverse parser examines the user’s situation and determines all possible words that the user could reasonably choose for the next position in the sentence. It then presents only those words that make sense, and the user selects a word from the set offered by the computer. The advantages of this are manifold. First, the user never has to play parser puzzles. Anything that can be said is automatically legal. The user cannot make a semantic mistake. Moreover, the rules of the game can be implemented in the inverse parser; thus, the user simply cannot cheat. The user cannot lie; any untruthful word is not made available. Finally, many wasteful or useless expressions can be eliminated by the inverse parser. For example, one of the constructions used by the inverse parser allows the user to offer a deal to another character. The inverse parse is able to examine all possible offers and eliminate those offers that would not make sense, such as offering information that the other character already possesses. In this way, the game is made to run faster and cleaner.
As you might imagine, all these wonderful things do not come for free. It takes a lot of code to execute all these great features, and this raises issues concerning resource consumption. How much RAM does all this take? How many cycles does it eat? And how much programmer time did it take? Well, the RAM consumption is not too bad — maybe 30K for all the code and data. The consumption of cycles is high, but not enough to cut into the play of the game. The inverse parser always comes back in a perceptible fraction of a second. Even so, I can still enter sentences with the inverse parser much faster than I could type the equivalent text, and I’m a fast typist. It is true, however, that the creation of the inverse parser consumed a great deal of my time. I estimate that I expended about two months getting it to work properly. The inverse parser routine culminates in a single mammoth boolean expression an entire page long. As you might imagine, this took some time to debug.
The other important thing about this language is that all the words actually mean things. There are only 80 words in the entire language, but each word is fully operational. These 80 words define a complete social system. All of the interactions available in the game are completely addressed by the language. The real trick here is that the language completely covers the reality of the game because the reality and the language were defined together. I defined the entire system as a whole, struggling to find a combination of reality and language that was expressible, manipulable, and fun.
Minor Stuff
There are a number of design elements that are interesting but not earth-shaking. One of these is the “Random Events” feature. I have long preached about process intensity in games, the notion that a game is (or should be) a process-intensive program with lots of heavy number-crunching and very little reliance on data. Most games are data-intensive, putting most of their resource on snazzy data in the form of images, sounds, or predefined stories. The weaknesses in my arguement have been first, that data capacity has been growing much faster than processing capacity, and second, that process-intensive games tend to lack color and texture. My concession to these problems is the Random Event, a special-case situation that arises just once during each game, although there are some fifty different random events that could arise. Each random event tells a little story and presents you with four options. The random events are not as purely process-intensive as I prefer, but they do add a lot of color to the game.
Another cute feature is the use non-commutative combat relationships. I have argued for several years now that non-commutative combat relationships are necessary to promote anticipation in game-playing. Anticipation, in my theories, is vitally important as a way of deepening the interaction between two players. The problem is, non-commutative combat relationships just aren’t realistic. If my stick is bigger than your stick, and your stick is bigger than Fred’s stick, then I can still womp Fred real hard. I was able to get around this problem by postulating “mental combat” that takes place while you sleep. Anything’s possible if you’re willing to get weird enough.
Conclusions
At a recent speech in Boston, I held up a copy of Trust & Betrayal and declared that I was “nailing it to the church door”. It was a cheeky metaphor, and the audience grumbled at my hubris, but if you take away the wild exagerration, there remains a grain of truth in the metaphor. Trust & Betrayal is a radical departure in game design, and its emphasis on characters rather than resources is profoundly important. I very much hope that all game designers will look over the game, extracting the important ideas even as they look beyond the flaws.
A Strange Offer
The very first proposal for the game that eventually became Trust and Betrayal was written in January of 1986. It described a game in which you crash-landed on a planet with a single character called a “siboot”, and the two of you together walked across the planet. That game design evolved into a game with six other characters locked in mental combat to acquire auras and the position of “Shepherd of Kira”. How did I get from one to the other? How did I go about designing this weird game? Buried in my files are four file folders of design documents for the game. Most of these are design essays that I wrote to myself during the process of designing the game. They are a way of organizing my thoughts, listing and characterizing my options, and sorting everything out. Some are hand-written design notes I made to myself. There are worklists and sketch diagrams, equations and other stuff. It’s a huge pile, two and a half inches thick; it must contain about four hundred pages. Taken as a group, they convey a sense for the convoluted process through which I created this strange game.So here’s my strange offer: I will photocopy this pile and mail it to any JCGD reader who sends me $20 to cover the cost of photocopying and postage. There isn’t much organization to it — things are in chronological order, that’s about all. You’ll have to approach it with the air of an archaeologist digging up old garbage. But you might find some useful ideas buried in there, and the story of my frantic design peregrinations will surely get a few laughs.To keep things simple for me, I will not fulfill any orders until the first of January; this will allow me to collect all the orders and make a single trip to the copy shop.
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Multi-Player Games
Dan Bunten of Ozark Softscape
[If you don’t know who Dan Bunten is, don’t admit it to other game designers! Dan is one of the most creative and most prolific game designers in the business. His career goes back to the early days of computer games and includes many great designs, including M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, and Robot Rascals. Those of you who live in isolated places and feel left out of the action in Silicon Valley can take heart in the fact that Dan lives and works in Little Rock, Arkansas.]
I love multi-player games! They have had a significant part in my life, even outside my career as a computer game designer. Playing games with friends and family taught me about competition and cooperation. They let me establish competency when I was growing up and enjoy the camaraderie of play when I was mature enough to appreciate it. My family played Clue and Monopoly when I was young. Games let us enjoy each other’s company without getting all mushy or complicated. Even now, after holiday meals there are always games of poker, Risk or Trivial Pursuit. So when I thought of writing games for a computer, multi-player games seemed natural. Since 1978 I have done eight games that made it to the market. Six of them were multi-player games. I have done four games for four or more players (Wheeler Dealers, Cartels and Cutthroats, M.U.L.E. and Robot Rascals) and two games for 2 players (Computer Quarterback and Cytron Masters).
Board versus Computer
In my enthusiasm for computers when I started writing games, I believed computers could create a Renaissance of gaming. I believed that simply eliminating the complexity of heavy-duty strategy board games would make everyone want to play them. In Computer Quarterback I took what was a tedious, complex and error-prone process in games like Tudor NFL Strategy and Sports Illustrated Paydirt and turned it into a very clean, simple activity. In Cartels and Cutthroats I eliminated all the paperwork of games like 3M Business Strategy and Executive Decisions and even threw in a little animation (very little!). I was crestfallen when these games didn’t make me rich. However, now that time has passed it makes more sense. Complex games with lengthy rules and probability tables could be made much more playable. But many of the games “improved” in this way were only successful with small special interest groups anyway. So what if we broadened our market by improving playability! We also reduced our market by charging twice as much and necessitating significant investments in hardware. We ended up with sales that mimic board game sales in special interest categories like strategic sports games and economic simulations.
Not to be deterred, I set my goal a little higher. Don’t write special interest games but do the Monopoly and Clue of the computer game field! In this area there were other advantages the computer could bring. The computer could not only reduce the complexity and tediousness of “realism” but it could also make the game more interesting. Using a computer as the playing board and pieces could make them come alive. You could change them dynamically. This type of gameboard wasn’t frozen forever at printing time but could change with situations during play. In addition to its role as board, the computer could also contain the players’ status/inventory. This had many additional benefits. Complex algorithms that more realistically reflect outcomes and quantities could be used in place of die rolls, chance cards and properties. Maintaining player inventories and standings also became trivial with all the information available in the computer. Not only did this reduce the demands on players but it also allowed the computer to do various types of play balancing. Opponents of different skills could play on an equal footing with easy computer handicapping. The computer could even tilt good luck towards losing players and bad luck towards winners so the game would stay interesting till the end. Thus, it seemed to me that computers had significant advantages over boards in multi-player games.
However, computers also had several disadvantages versus boards. Computers aren’t as familiar or friendly as boards and playing pieces. Despite my best efforts to make my software interfaces clean and simple, some people are still intimidated. Inside my own family I’ve heard “I don’t trust computers” and “Which way do you hold the joystick again?” Also, you don’t get those neat little plastic playing pieces with computer games. (I was always a sucker for Milton Bradley games and those little ships, soldiers, planes, etc.) Not only are the computer’s playing pieces not neat tangible things but they are often so abstract that they’re virtually “imaginary”! (In my most recent game, Robot Rascals, I tried to eliminate some of the abstract quality of computer games by introducing cards).
Computers aren’t as accessible or portable. Most computers are relegated to places in the home where gathering players together is somewhat problematic. Unlike the old Atari VCS or the new Nintendo, home computers are seldom found in the living room. Although quite a few people will move furniture and get the old card table out of the closet to play poker, messing with all the wires and cables of a computer is not something undertaken lightly.
Computers screens aren’t as big as table tops. Frequently in computer games you are unable to see all the stuff you’d like to see at one time. Depending on the design, you have to remember certain things or examine other “status screens”. Secret information has also been a problem with no easy solution since everyone shares the one small screen. (This was another reason I used cards in Robot Rascals).
Overall, I think the computer as playing board and pieces can still come out on top. However, when you factor in the price difference between computer games and board games, I can understand how some people aren’t impressed.
Multi-Player versus Solo
I’ve always believed that solo games were more like puzzles than games. The object was to uncover the model the programmer had in mind and learn to beat it. As time has passed and products have become more sophisticated, those models have become more involved. Although I am not a fan of text adventures, I can tell they have improved from the days of the original Adventure. Objects in the game now have much more realistic attributes. The brick in room 3 is not just for breaking the window in room 5 but it can be a weapon, a small step ladder or even a door stop. Fantasy Role Playing (FRP) games have also improved. The goal in that type of solo game has gotten more interesting. Ultima IV included spiritual growth along with hack-and-slash to add more depth. Even the characters you encounter in games have gotten better. They are occasionally humorous or even touching. A lot of work is going on to make them more realistic. Chris Crawford’s latest game (Trust & Betrayal) creates characters with “artificial personality” that have emotions and needs with which the player must contend. So solo games have come a long way and will probably go much further.
From my point of view there is nothing a computer can do in a solo game that compares with the feeling you get from interacting with real people. The models have gotten better but they are still puzzles created by the programmer that you must figure out in order to win. (There is some evidence that among hardcore gamers, the longer it takes to “puzzle out” a text adventures or FRP, the higher the game’s perceived value). It is true that computerized opponents are more convenient and less threatening to our egos but they are so much less satisfying that I have continued to believe that the cost-benefit ratio was still tilted in favor of human opponents.
Notwithstanding my beliefs, even my own best selling game was a solo game (Seven Cities of Gold). It sold more than all my multi-player games put together! This is despite the critical acclaim M.U.L.E. and Robot Rascals have received. And this is despite the fact that lots of people answer “multi-player” when asked “What type game would you like to see more of?”
What’s the problem with the multi-player market? As you can imagine, this question has taken up a good deal of space in my consciousness. There was a time when I was convinced that piracy accounted for a large part of the discrepancy between what people say (they like multi-player games) and what they do (they don’t buy multi-player games). M.U.L.E. was certainly victimized by being played much more than it was sold. (Side note: One result of piracy is a lot of disenfranchised people since sales are the only votes that count. I’ve toyed with the idea of letting pirates register their votes by sending $5 directly to me but I don’t think my publishers would appreciate it). However, it’s still hard to see how such an explanation could account for a 5 to 1 ratio of Seven Cities’ sales over M.U.L.E.’s.
Another, and not very complimentary, possibility is that computers have been sold to nerds who prefer solo pursuits to social ones. There is some anecdotal evidence that this was true in the days of early adoption but computers are increasingly showing up among the broader populace. And don’t forget it was those same nerds who loved Dungeons and Dragons, wargames and board games in general. We nerds were the ones keeping the adult game business alive.
My final rationale for the why multi-player games aren’t successful is the most compelling one I believe. The multi-player games on the computer are just not good enough!
Whence The Future
The computer games industry has often been compared to the film industry at the turn of the century. We are high on technology but low on art. We haven’t fully discovered our medium — what it’s good at and what it’s bad at. Thus, designers are trying a lot of things searching for our real strengths. I think one element that will have a place in our medium will be social interaction. When we eventually discover the form that social interaction should take we will look at our current multi-player games as appallingly primitive (similar to the way we will look at current text adventures when our eventual “story telling”/“interactive fiction” format is invented). Although my previous attempts with multi-player games have failed to strike a rich chord, I am still very optimistic about the future. Part of that optimism derives from the project I am currently involved with and the way it resonates beyond even my expectations. The remainder of this article will describe that project and why I think it is closer to the future potential of multi-player games.
The game I am working on uses modems to connect the two human opponents. I had been wanting to do a game like this since I first started writing for the market but I had to wait until modems became common. (I originally wrote Computer Quarterback in 1976 on my employer’s mini computer and it was played from remote terminals). Several of the problems associated with multi-player games suddenly disappear with a design like this.
The software can be more challenging since both opponents are likely to be “computer literate”. You don’t have to move your computer anywhere. You let your “fingers do the walking”! The size of the screen is less important since I can provide any number of additional ways to look at the game status data at the press of a key (or joystick button) independently for the players. Hidden information becomes a snap! In fact it can now become a key element of the design simply by having each computer withhold certain data regarding the opponent. With “over the modem” multi-player games it’s possible to approach the convenience of solo games (which I believe is the biggest factor in their success). All players need is a data base of opponents cross-referenced by their availabilities and they can play anytime they like.
When I started designing this game I was aware of all these advantages but I was afraid there would be a loss of social intensity. Telephones may be “the next best thing to being there” but they’re not a close second. However, rather than being negative, the fact that you are only interacting through your screen displays has turned out to be a positive experience. Admittedly it is different from sharing physical space but it’s like sharing a psychic space. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s because we are all familiar with solo games and to all intents and purposes this game looks like a solo game against a computer opponent. But while the display lulls you into that thought, you’re periodically faced with the realization that, “No that’s Bill on the other end of the line”. This kind of “double think” keeps happening and the only word I can think of that describes it is “titillating”.
The game itself (working title: The Sport of War) is a fast action/strategy game where each player is in a “comcen”, a mobile command center, from which they direct small armies of robots. The objective is to score a “knockout” by disabling the opponent’s comcen or scoring more with terrain and damage for “a win on points”. (In tournaments, where each entrant plays all others 4 games, the leader is the player with the most KO’s). The pace of a game between two experienced players is very intense. You spend your time directing forces, flying drones, firing missiles and repairing damage for 15 minutes in the Quick Battle and 30 minutes in Full War. The effect is an adrenalin rush that often lasts the whole game!
During the game, players may send messages across a “chat line” to their opponent (when the pace of battle allows) and like the CB mode on Compuserve, people tend to exaggerate their personalities. Shy and retiring types have been known to make vicious taunts! After each battle, players can choose to go to voice mode and talk while they save or watch the replay; or they can stay connected only through their computers and the chat line. Players who are well-acquainted tend to opt for the voice mode where they hurl epithets at each other while others may constrain their interactions to euphemisms typed between them - like “good game, thanks.” It’s like getting the best of both worlds. With people you like, you can have more complete verbal interaction; with people you don’t know very well you can keep it light and distant. But in both cases, when the game is on, you’ve got to deal with what they’re doing inside your computer and down the wire!
I don’t want to claim too much for this game (especially before it’s finished) but it does tell me there’s hope for the future of multi-player games yet - even if it’s through the back door!
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Begging for Articles
Yes, once again it’s time for me to beg, to plead, to grovel for articles. It’s a sad day indeed when so much of the material of this journal comes from my own pen (er, keyboard). I don’t mind doing it — I’ve got several dozen essays gathering dust in my files, any one of which can be pressed into service. But I worry that a Journal that is really a mouthpiece for my own opinions won’t be much of a forum for everybody else. In the six months of its existence, the Journal has received only three unsolicited articles. It is time for you to vote with your feet (or your keyboard; these old expressions just don’t work anymore.) If you are perfectly satisfied with the JCGD in its current form, if you are convinced that I am the one true font of wisdom on all matters related to game design, and that I never say anything you might question, then do nothing. Sit back and allow me to pour my oozing vat of expertise all over you. If, on the other hand, you have some ideas of your own, or perhaps you disagree with something I have said, or maybe even you find fault with what I haven’t said, then write it up and send it in.
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The Costs of Advertising Games
Susan Lee-Merrow
[Susan was a marketing person at Epyx, but back then the company was called Automated Simulations. Later on she went to Electronic Arts, where she was one of the company’s first producers. After a stint as a freelance writer, Susan is now the marketing manager at Unison World.]
“Are you going to advertise my product?”
This question is one of the most frequently asked by independent developers to their publishers. And it is not a question that is simple to answer.
Usually companies spend somewhere in the neightborhood of 5% of gross sales on advertising. Some companies, like Apple, go up to 10% in certain quarters, but most stay in the 5% range. For a $27 million company — like, say, Activision — this means that 5% represents $1.35 million. For a smaller $4 million company — like, say, Paperback Software — 5% generates only $200,000 for ads. (I use these examples because the companies are public, so their sales figures are generally available.)
Now let’s look at some advertising costs. The following figures represent the cost of one insertion in the magazine at the 1-times rate for a four-color ad. (If you run more ads over the course of a year, the rate drops somewhat.) I’ve also included the circulation numbers. Please note that some of the figures may be from old rate cards (meaning the cost is a bit low) and the circulation numbers are from old audit forms (hopefully meaning the circulation numbers may be a bit low). In any case, the overall picture is reasonably accurate.
Name Insertion Cost Circulation CPM
A+ $7,795 175,000 $ 44.54
inCider $6,175 125,000 $49.40
Nibble $3,495 75,000 $46.60
MacUser $8,495 150,000 $56.63
Ahoy $3,020 126,000 $23.97
Commodore $3,900 205,000 $19.02
Compute’s Gazette $5,890 275,000 $21.42
Info $2,650 120,000 $22.08
Run $6,250 200,000 $31.25
AmigaWorld $5,400 75,000 $72.00
PC Magazine $14,900 425,000 $35.06
PC World $10,890 299,000 $36.42
Personal Computing $12,000 450,000 $26.66
Compute $8,195 327,000 $25.06
Family & Home Office. $12,000 425,000 $28.24
Let’s say you have an Apple product, and you want to advertise it in an Apple “book” (marketing slang for magazine). You can get the biggest bang for your buck with A+, which is only $44.54 per thousand impressions. That means setting aside about $7,800 for your insertion. But actually that’s not enough.
One advertising rule of thumb is you’re wasting your money unless you run your ad at least three times. It takes people at least three exposures to the information before it begins to sink in. So we’re not talking about $7,800, we’re talking about $23,400. If you place your own insertions with the book, instead of having an advertising agency handle it, you can deduct 15% from the bill. But it also means that the publisher has to have a person devoted to media research, insertion schedules, and relations with the publishing companies.
And, of course, we can’t forget the money required for creating the ad in the first place. If photographs are used, the cost goes up (the going rate for experienced, professional photographers in the San Francisco Bay Area ranges from $800 to $1200 per day). If special effects are used in the photo, the cost goes up again. Then you have the designer and the copywriter. Plus any color separations and the film work. When you’re finished, the ad could run anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000. Let’s assume $10,000, and add it to $23,400 to get $33,400.
Now let’s assume that the program runs on the Commodore 64 also, and you want to run the same ad in Compute’s Gazette for three months at $5890 for an additional expense of $17,670. Add that to $33,400 for $51,070-- 25% of the ad budget of the $4 million company. The result is that two SKU’s (stock keeping units -- NewsMaster on the Apple is one SKU, on the C64 is another SKU, etc.) are taking up 25% of the advertising budget.
Most $4 million game companies have at least 20 SKUs. The larger $27 million company with an ad budget of $1.35 million is not in such different circumstances. Activision, at my last count, has 218 SKUs, so if they spent 5% of their revenues on advertising, they would be able to allocate $6,193 to each SKU annually -- one ad once in one book (as long as it’s not IBM).
The large business software companies that make only a word processor or only a database manager may have only a handful of SKUs being sold for hundreds of dollars each, so their end-user advertising can be sufficient to promote all their SKUs. But game companies are selling most of their wares for less than $50 a unit, and they need more SKUs to generate the revenues.
What we come down to is that all products from an entertainment publisher cannot be advertised. It’s simply too expensive.
The strategy, then, is to use the advertising dollars to gain maximum leverage for all products, often by promoting the leaders. Then, when end-users are thrilled with the product, they will go back to the store looking for more products by the same publisher. Advertising the leaders will pull other products through. The effectiveness of this strategy is difficult to analyze, because the line-up often changes. Some companies need to pick the potential leader out of all their new introductions, because they are promoting their new line. Then the advertising could easily become a self-fulfilling prophesy. That is, the marketing department decided that X product would probably be the leader and by advertising it they have assured its sales leadership.
Another strategy is to promote only weaker or newer lines, because leaders sell well without advertising. Broderbund, for example, advertised Print Shop only at its initial release. From then until now, none of the Print Shop line was advertised, despite the fact that the line was responsible for 65% of Broderbund’s annual revenues.
Another strategy is to advertise more than one product in the same ad. This must be done very carefully. It is easy to defuse the effectiveness of the ad by not being focussed on a single message or theme and thereby not giving the user a clear message of action.
So how do publishers answer developers when they ask, “Are you going to advertise my product?” Carefully. Aside from wanting to know how much the royalty on a product will be, the second biggest area of concern is around issues of promotion.
If your name recognition with end users is big enough to promote sales, publishers are more likely to consider advertising your product when they are following the “advertise your leaders” strategy. If the publisher has a strategy of promoting newer and weaker product lines, you might have a better chance of being singled out for an ad.
Your best bet of all is to make your product into an identifiable potential leader. And this means not simply having the best or most innovative idea. It means, more than anything, putting in the time and effort to give your product all the finishing touches that lift it above the competition and above the ordinary.
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Boston Computer Museum Computer Games Weekend
Chris Crawford
On Saturday, November 7, 1987, the Boston Computer Museum hosted a pair of panel discussions on computer games. The morning panel featured some of the early pioneers of computer games, such as the inventor of SpaceWar and David Ahl. The afternoon panel included Dan Bunten, David Lebling, Tom Snyder, and myself. The afternoon topic of discussion was the future of computer games. The discussion was significant for its points of agreement as well as disagreement. Most surprising to me was the consensus the panel quickly reached over the direction of future development in computer games. Absent was the gushing over glorious graphics and fabulous animation so often heard from less experienced commentators. This panel was unanimous in its emphasis on characters and character development in the future of computer games. The main disagreement arose over the strategies most likely to produce such developments in the near future. Each panelist saw a different path as the one most likely to realize the potential of games. I argued for artificial personality; Dan Bunten liked multi-player games; David Lebling saw the future in natural language processing; and Tom Snyder seemed to be arguing for less slavish emphasis on pure interactivity. Another disagreement arose over the nature of stories in computer games. Here there was considerable disagreement, but in my opinion the problem was more one of confusion on everybody’s part rather than incompatibilities between well-formed opinions. One group, arguing for games as story-presenters, asked, “Would Hamlet be Hamlet if it ended differently?” The other group, argued for games as one level of indirection removed from stories, but could not clearly state what this meant.
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A Plea for Greater Use of Arithmetic Methods in Games
Chris Crawford
In this essay I shall present my case for greater use of arithmetic methods in computer game design.
Boolean methods
The conventional style in most computer games makes heavy use of Boolean methods. Many of the critical variables are Boolean flags, and many of the central calculations are Boolean in nature. You can sense the Boolean components of a game when events are triggered by some condition, or when game behaviors turn on or off in reaction to your actions. A good game designer can feel the IF-THEN statements crunching away in somebody else’s game.
There’s a perfectly good reason for the emphasis on Boolean operations in computer games: many computer game designers were trained as programmers, and programmers quickly learn a great deal about Boolean thinking. The more highly-trained the programmer, the more comfortable he is with Boolean operations.
Boolean operations do not mirror the world very well. They are a grand artifice, an intellectual crutch distantly removed from the operations of nature. They have only two saving graces: they work well on computers, and they are easy to understand.
Arithmetic methods
Arithmetic methods rely on the four elementary arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The fundamental difference between arithmetic and boolean operations lies in the fact that Boolean operations are single-bit operations, while arithmetic operations are multi-bit operations. (I concede that most CPUs can perform the Boolean operations on all the bits in a word, but argue that in practice, most Boolean operations are performed on single-bit Boolean variables.)
Because the arithmetic operations typically involve more bits than the Boolean operations, they tend to be “crunchier”. That is, arithmetic operations make greater use of the processing power of the computer. They make it easier for us to realize the potential of the computer. A computer programmer whose programming style is primarily Boolean is like a car driver who never shifts out of first gear.
A comparative example
At this point a comparative illustration of Boolean and arithmetic styles might help. Consider the following situation:
We have three actors, A, B, and C. Actor A is about to perform some action towards Actor B. Actor C will observe. Now, the Actor A’s action may be either beneficial to Actor B or hurtful. Actor C may either like or dislike Actor B. We need to calculate the nature of Actor C’s reaction to Actor A’s action. Will it be approving or disapproving?
The Boolean solution to the problem is certainly simple:
C_Approves = C_Likes_B EOR A_Hurts_B
Here the symbol “EOR” refers to a Boolean exclusive-or operator.
The arithmetic solution appears to be simple, too:
C_Approval = C_Like_for_B x B_Benefit
Here the “x” represents multiplication.
Now let us compare these two calculations. The Boolean one is simpler to understand. It may take a moment to work out the significance of the logic table for the calculation, but it is still easy to understand.
The arithmetic calculation takes a little more time. There are more assumptions built into the equation, such as the notion that the value of C_Like_for_B will be positive if C likes B and negative if C dislikes B. Similarly, B_Benefit will be positive if A’s action helps B, and negative otherwise.
A simple way of comparing the two calculations is to tote up the number of separate cases each can generate. The Boolean computation yields exactly four cases, so it doesn’t take long to verify its operation. The arithmetic computation, though, yields 2**32 cases, if we assume 16-bit words. You cannot possibly walk through all these cases verifying their function. And this is one of the causes of our reluctance to use arithmetic methods. The Boolean methods are so easy to check out, so reliable. The arithmetic methods require us to use our intellects to imagine results without directly confirming them.
But this wide variability of the arithmetic methods is their strength. They allow us far greater range of algorithmic expressiveness. We can say and do more with arithmetic operations.
How to do it
How does a designer make greater use of arithmetic operators in his programs? This is largely a matter of style and outlook. Reliance on arithmetic methods is not a matter of grabbing tools from a pile; it is part of a person’s worldview. Certainly the intellectual tools at hand are simple enough. Arithmetic is taught in grammar school, and the algebraic notions required are really just first-year high school algebra. Surely none of us have problems understanding the basic tools.
The difficulty, I think, lies in the generality of approach that is necessary for proper use of arithmetic methods. Consider the example I used earlier. It is a simple matter to express the relationships in Boolean terms (“If you hurt someone I like, I will disapprove.”) But the more general arithmetic form defies clear verbal expression. (“I will approve or disapprove of your actions in proportion to the amount of help or hurt those actions create and the amount by which I like or dislike the object of your actions.”) Arithmetic expressions are more abstruse than boolean expressions.
It is the abstruseness of the arithmetic expression that repels the incompetent and attracts the perfectionist. Yes, arithmetic methods are more difficult to use. They are more difficult because they are more powerful. Yes, we have to think harder to use them. Isn’t that our job?
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A Symposium For Game Designers?
Several readers have suggested that I organize some sort of symposium for game designers. There seems to be a hankering out there for people to meet each other face-to-face and talk shop. It sounds like a great idea to me. So I am willing to act as organizer and, if necessary, host. Here’s my proposal:Let’s have a symposium either before or after the West Coast Computer Faire. The Faire itself runs Thursday through Sunday, April 7-10. We would have our symposium on either Wednesday, April 6, or Monday, April 11. It would last one day. If attendance is less than fifteen people, I can hold it at my house up in the hills and we can all save some money. If more people would attend, then I would have to line up a meeting room in a hotel, and then we start talking registration, fees, and other administrative schmuck.If you are interested in attending, then you must contact me before January 1. You can give me your opinions on how it should be run, and what date you would prefer. If you do not contact me before January 1, you will still be able to attend, but you will have no voice in the planning process. However, if interest appears to be weak, and I therefore decide to hold it at my house, and you are the 16th person to commit....you’re outta luck! So please, if you have an interest in attending, write or call me. My telephone number is (408) 926-5388.
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Egotism
Chris Crawford
Many years ago the CEO at Atari referred to the company’s game designers as “high-strung prima donnas”. The comment was not meant to be derogatory, but the designers responded with a T-shirt that proclaimed, “I’m just another high-strung prima donna from Atari.” Perhaps the CEO was right.
I have known many game designers; they encompass a broad range of personalities. Yet all these disparate people share one common trait: they all sport towering egos. Each one is absolutely certain that his own talents are the purest, truest, most brilliant talents of any game designer in the world. I myself am given to introducing other game designers as, “...the second best game designer in the world.”
Why is egotism so rampant among game designers? Is it perhaps the self-indulgence of a pampered elite? I think not. Consider, for example, my own case. Was Chris Crawford spoiled by too much press attention? The fawning masses, the rivers of adulatory prose, the screaming nubile nymphs (OK, so I exaggerate a little!) — have all these things gone to my head to make me the hopeless egomaniac I now am? No, a thousand times no! Chris Crawford is too big a man to be spoiled by such trivial things! I was already spoiled long before any of this happened to me. Mine is a mature egomania refined and developed since the day I emerged from the womb and took a bow.
I think that egotism lives in game designers because of a selection effect. Game designers without healthy egos will never achieve as much as their better-endowed colleagues. The egomaniac sets higher goals for himself than he can reasonably expect to achieve. This may sound idiotic, but in a poorly defined field such as game design, it is the stuff of creativity. A civil engineer doesn’t get too experimental with the bridges she designs, because it is easy to reliably calculate what will and what won’t work. But we don’t know as much about computer games. We don’t know where the limits are. So we need these foolhardy egomaniacs who blindly plunge into the darkness, boldly going where no one in his right mind has gone before.
The egomaniac has another gigantic advantage over the more emotionally balanced person. In the darkest hours of a project, when the problems seem overwhelming and there is no rational basis for hope, a reasonable person would start casting about for ways to scale down or even abandon the project. But the egomaniac lies face down in the mud of his own failure and then draws himself up, proclaiming, “I am ze magnificent Crawford! I weel find ze way!” Egotism, of course, takes a back seat to reality, and sometimes he fails; but when he succeeds, it seems like magic to the rest of the world.
There are, of course, liabilities created by egotism. There is the deadly difference between pre-project egotism and post-project egotism. The former serves to inspire the designer to greater heights of achievement. The latter convinces him that he has already scaled those heights. Post-project egotism blinds the designer to the flaws in his work and robs him of the ability to learn and improve.
Then there are the embarassing consequences of an ego that is foisted on other people. It is one thing to smile inwardly in secret appreciation of your untouchable superiority; it is another thing entirely to tell it to other people. The mature, genteel egomaniac keeps to himself the untold story of his towering intelligence and blinding creativity.
So don’t feel embarassed by that ego of yours. Go ahead — stand on the craggy mountaintop, lightning bolts playing about you, head held high as the furious wind hurls rain in your face. Laugh scornfully at the elements that doubt your greatness. Shout lustily into the tempest, “I am ze greatest game designer in all ze universe!”
Then crawl back into your cave and get back to work