Contents
Character Creation in Role-Playing Games
Ken St. Andre
CGDC 1990 Observations
Bill Pirkle
1989 Salary Survey Results
From the Readers
Multiplayer Interactivity, A New Focus
David Whatley
The Association of Computer Game Developers: It’s Coming But Are We Ready?
Richard Mulligan
Indirection (based on my lecture at the 1990 CGDC)
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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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.
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Copyright The contents of this Journal are copyright © Chris Crawford 1990.
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Character Creation in Role-Playing Games
Ken St. Andre
Modern role-playing gaming, including all of the computer role-playing games, began with the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons by Dave Arneson and E. Gary Gygax back in 1973. One of the most important breakthroughs in the history of gaming was made at that time — the idea that characters could be modelled by giving them numerical attributes representing their powers and abilities. If I remember correctly, the original attributes for D & D were: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, Charisma, and Hit Points. In the very early game, most of these attributes went unused — they were simply useful for comparing characters to each other. The single most important attribute was Hit Points, because the more Hit Points, the harder the character was to kill.
In April of 1974 I wrote the first edition of Tunnels and Trolls to “fix” all those things that I thought were “wrong” or “too complicated” about Dungeons and Dragons. It was a blatant imitation of the original Dungeons and Dragons, but simpler. Since the time I spent actually looking at the D & D rules was only about two hours, I didn’t understand anything but the basic idea of the game very well. One thing I didn’t understand was why use Hit Points when you already had an attribute called Constitution that seemed to serve the same function? I also didn’t see the need for many-sided dice (4, 6, 8, and 20-sided in the original game) when the only really common dice at the time were cubes. Since I didn’t have 20- siders capable of rolling a 17 as a saving throw against poison, I completely reworked the saving throw system so that it depended on only 2D6 and the Luck attribute. A saving roll now became 20 minus Luck and was a relative number depending on the character’s Luck attribute, instead of some absolute number to be rolled on a D20 as decreed by the Game Master. I made other simplifications that seemed logical to me at the time, and in doing so, inadvertently made the next breakthrough in role-playing design. Once you have the numbers, there are all sorts of different ways that you can use them. For example: attributes can be used to limit what weapons a character may use in the game by requiring a minimum strength and dexterity for successful use. D & D might require a minimum strength of 12 to use a great sword — if you didn’t have STR 12, the rule was you couldn’t use the weapon. T & T required a STR 12 and DEX 10 to use a great sword, but instead of forbidding the character to use the weapon if he didn’t have high enough attributes, I substituted a logical penalty. If STR wasn’t high enough, but the character used the great sword anyway, then the character would tire. The rate of exhaustion would depend on the STR difference. (Ex: Joe the Fighter with a STR of 10 has lost all his own weapons, but found a great sword while delving. Suddenly attacked by a ferocious GNorph, the player has the choice of letting Joe fight it with either his bare hands (1D6 + Joe’s combat adds) or with the great sword (6D6 + Joe’s combat adds). The GNorph, a small monster, is going to roll 3D6 and add 10 every combat round. Since winning the fight in T & T depends strictly upon who rolls the higher combat total, it is clearly to Joe’s advantage to try and use the great sword, even though he may tire. So, on combat round one, Joe uses the sword, and suffers a penalty of 12-10 = 2 against his STR attribute. On round 2 Joe would have a new STR rating of 8. If he used the sword again, his penalty would be 12-8 = 4, and on round 3 he would have a STR rating of only 4. At this point, Joe is too tired to swing that heavy bar of steel any longer. (Let’s hope he has already won the fight.)
Calculations such as these led to the next important thing about attributes — the numbers need not be fixed, but could vary to represent different conditions the character was in. However, if one rests when tired, one’s strength comes back. Ergo you must keep track of the original attribute along with the current attribute.
Magic in T & T was even more complicated. Each spell had minimum requirements in Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity. Casting spells was defined as physically exhausting, but as the character got better at it (i.e. went up in level), it grew easier and cost less strength to perform the same enchantment.
In addition to using attributes to specify minimums, I let the attributes affect the character’s prowess in battle by using a formula based on Strength, Luck, and Dexterity to determine how many combat adds the character got each turn. D & D characters do not get combat adds. The best they can hope for is a magic weapon that increases their chance to hit by +1 or +2 or +n. The logic was that characters that were stronger than average, luckier than average, or more skillful than average, would do more damage than average on any given combat turn.
A third way of using attributes was to let their relative ratings determine the character class. In the beginning, characters would compare Strength, Intelligence, and Luck. Those with Strength the highest would be warriors, those with Intelligence the highest would be wizards, and those with Luck the highest would be rogues. Simplistic, of course, and only suggested as a guideline for players creating new characters by rolling dice, but effective.
A fourth way was to combine and average attributes to figure some new characteristic. (Example: courtesy was calculated by averaging Intelligence and Charisma.)
I do not mean to make extensive comparisons between early D & D, and early T & T. The idea is to show that even back in 1974 I had already grasped the idea that numeric attributes could be used in many different ways in game mechanics. Even today we are still finding new ways of using the numeric attributes to define characters and the reactions of other characters to them.
That’s all ancient history. In the years that followed, many others have worked with the basic idea of attributes as applied to characters in games, and have made many changes. For example, skills were added to role-playing with the publication of Runequest by Greg Stafford and Steve Perrin. A skill is a numeric attribute that determines how well the character can perform any given action. It can be a combat skill, such as Broadsword 55%, or a knowledge skill such as Pig Latin 72%, or a crafts skill such as Shoemaking 7%. Skills need not be expressed as a percentage, and in fact, Mike Stackpole’s skill system for Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes is just a simple number which can be added to the appropriate attribute to make a saving roll based on that attribute more easily attainable.
With the invention and development of personal computers it was inevitable that role-playing games would enter that medium. I could see that way back in 1978 when I first tried to get Tunnels and Trolls turned into a computer game. Robert Woodhead had the first major success in computer role-playing games with Wizardry, (which, incidentally, looked very, very much like Dungeons and Dragons as far as character design and magic and combat went). Lord British was another early pioneer in the field with his Akallabeth and Ultima 1. There were many others — most of which I missed because I couldn’t afford my own computer in those days.
It is important here to note the difference between computer role-playing games, computer adventure games, action arcade games, and computer simulation games — a difference that many advertising departments and much of the general public still hasn’t grasped.
A role-playing game uses both player characters and non-player characters with numeric attributes that can be acted upon by a set of rules to determine the actions and outcome of the game. An adventure game may also use player characters and non-player characters, but they have no attributes. How well they perform in the game depends entirely upon the player. Nonplayer characters perform only their given tasks, speak their set speeches, hand over items or demand them from the player as the puzzles dictate. They are often no more than text. One can’t “kill the storekeeper” unless “killing the storekeeper” is an option written into the game, because there really is no storekeeper to kill. Role-playing games are often confused with adventure games and vice-versa because both are character-oriented and require constant input from the player. The two genres have been combined from time to time, although never very successfully. In a true role- playing game, player characters definitely have free will, and non-player characters operate by algorithms that at least simulate free will in a limited context. In the CRPG there are many decisions for the gamer to make, such as, what race to be, what weapons to carry, where to go, what to sell, who to befriend, what spell to cast, etc.; in the adventure game, there are a few narrowly defined pathways to follow (a few may be as many as a couple of hundred though frequently there are only one or two choices available at any given time), and certain pre-determined events/puzzles await the player on each path.
Action arcade games are primarily concerned with the collision of shape-tables or sprites (or whatever term you want to use for the little animations that move around the screen). The powers and abilities of these animations may be changed by colliding with other animations (i.e. Pac-Man eats a power pill and can kill ghosts for a few seconds), but usually there is nothing like the concept of an attribute involved with these arcade characters, unless you count the number of lives that the character has left. Abilities are either on or off with arcade characters. Segments of the screen are either enabled or disabled, solid or empty. Lately there has been a tendency to include arcade sequences within adventure and role-playing games.
Simulation games cover most of the other possible game categories (excluding puzzle games like Tetris). (Wargames, which might seem to be a separate type, actually break down into the other categories. Something like Crawford’s EASTERN FRONT is actually a simulation of a boardgame, even though Chris didn’t copy any particular game when he designed it, while something like Lukasfilms THEIR FINEST HOUR is basically a World War II flight simulator with arcade action elements incorporated.) They usually replicate one narrowly-defined activity such as flying a plane or playing hockey or building and running a city, etc. The object is to reproduce the chosen activity so well that the player feels that he actually is flying a plane or managing a hockey team or whatever. Oddly enough, simulations, especially those involving team sports activities or vehicles in combat, most nearly approach the role-playing model. In order for members of a team to react to events realistically, they must have simulated abilities (i.e. attributes) that determine what they can do in any given situation (i.e. make the play or not.) In something like Wayne Gretzky hockey, each named player on the ice must have a shooting attribute, and it’s safe to bet that Wayne’s shot is a lot better than Marty McSorley’s. I’m only guessing, but I would assume the players also have ratings for puck handling, passing, skating speed, checking, and damage resistance. Unlike a CRPG, these ratings are fixed, and do not develop in the course of the game. A sophisticated simulation might include an attribute like fatigue which would increment as time goes on, thus requiring a player to leave the game when his fatigue level exceeds a certain threshold. There is no reason why these ratings, probabilities, or attributes need be limited to humans. It is just as valid to describe a submarine, tank, jet, spacecraft, or any other vehicle in terms of its ability-attributes.
Sometimes it is difficult to tell one type of game from another because the attributes are hidden from the gamer. SWORDS OF TWILIGHT, MEAN STREETS, and WAR IN MIDDLE EARTH all do this. Hiding the numbers from the gamer is a way of increasing the seeming realism of the game. The player must identify with his/her onscreen persona more completely, playing more by instinctive feel for situations than by analysis of probabilities. Such games, however, may be difficult to differentiate from straight adventure games or action arcade games. If one cannot check and see that the numeric attributes have changed once in a while, then one may not believe there really are any attributes involved.
A major theme in computer game design for the last three years or so has been the improvement of non-player character design. The object is to make the game world seem more real by giving its inhabitants more depth of response, more interactivity. Many different approaches have been tried. One very popular approach is the simulated conversation. “Say” the “magic” word to the right character, and he will give you a canned speech with game-relevant information in it. This is a big improvement over earlier designs where NPCs never said anything at all — just fought or haggled. Lord British with his Ultima series is perhaps the consummate master of this approach to reality. The inherent flaw in this technique is that the characters only have a few set speeches and never develop much real personality. It is up to the gamer to invest the NPCs with personality traits and quirks that make them come alive. Many gamers don’t bother to do this, and the game takes on a certain wooden quality the longer it is played.
Another conversational approach is to have all the NPCs speak from a pool of possible responses. I believe Jon Freeman did this with much of his NPC response in SWORDS OF TWILIGHT. Anyone can say, “Hello,” “Who are you?”, “Nice weather, isn’t it.”, “The railroad station is south of town.”, etc. Since NPCs aren’t limited to a narrow response range, the player gets more of a feeling that the characters are real people in terms of the game world. A handy response for this kind of interaction is some variation of “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask X?” This common pool of responses works very well with inverse parsers where the possible input by the gamer is channelled into only those remarks and questions that might make sense in the social context of the situation. However, the pool of responses possible is nowhere near as varied as it would be in real life, and after awhile the responses become predictable, formulaic, and boring. Giving some of the NPCs in such game special unique speeches to deliver at appropriate moments during the game helps relieve the monotony.
Another way of modeling artificial personalities for NPCs in CRPGs would be to have their responses to each other and to the players be determined by specific attributes. For example, all NPCs could have a Hostility attribute that varies depending on a complex formula that might evaluate such factors as character race, economic status, relative military power, reputation, etc. Several CRPGs now use Reputation as an important attribute in determining how certain character groups react to the player. Origin’s SPACE ROGUE comes to mind. (I have worked out quite an elaborate set of attributes designed to model different emotions and physical needs, and hope to work them into a CRPG some day.) Computer controlled characters with algorithmically controlled Emotional attributes would very much seem to have free will. They would seek food when they were hungry, sleep when tired, fight when angry, and converse with players when properly motivated, such as by bribe, drink, friendship, etc. MEAN STREETS by Access has several characters that seem to respond to emotional stimulants, but I don’t know if they have equivalent attributes, or just respond to certain trigger words — I suspect the latter because MEAN STREETS seems much more like an adventure game than a role-playing game. In either case, the emotional responses of NPCs adds considerably to the enjoyment of the game.
One method of adding realism to both game characters and game world that SSI has used successfully in several of its A. D. and D. CRPGs is to seize control of the game for a short period in which NPCs move around, make speeches, manipulate the players and so forth. CURSE OF THE AZURE BONDS may be the prime example of a game with pre-programmed sequences in it that advance the action and reveal the character of the NPCs. ULTIMA 6 also uses such a technique along with stunning animation in its opening minutes. A similar effect can be gained by having the player stop and read something from the game documentation. Interplay’s WASTELAND relied heavily upon external text to flesh out characterizations and advance the story without tying up too much memory. I foresee that as CD- Rom becomes more viable as a gaming medium, the use of long, animated sequences to substantially advance the plot and characterization will become more common.
Still another method of enhancing NPC response would be to give them all goals and script the game in such a way that the NPCs also have game turns and can try to achieve those goals. Combining such character scripts with some of the techniques mentioned above should be very effective in producing lifelike game characters.
There is one approach to character development for CRPGs that I do not think is either practical or do-able in the immediate future, and that is actual simulation of the human nervous system and brain. Making the computer actually recognize and “understand” 100,000 words of English, and a large subset of the cultural mores of the United States so that it could pass the Turing test and react as a human being might react in all possible game situations is beyond the memory and programming abilities currently available to us as game designers on personal computers. Perhaps there will come a time in the future when the human brain can be CAT-scanned and reproduced within the memory of a super Cray neuron by neuron and cell by cell, thus replicating the personality matrix of the subject, but until that happens, I think we game designers should be content with “faking it”. Like a Lucasfilm movie, a good CRPG has an alternate reality of its own, different from, but equally enjoyable to the macroreality we think we live in. If we can enhance that computer reality by better character design, then we have done our job.
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CGDC 1990 Observations
Bill Pirkle
This was my second Computer Game Developers’ Conference and, like CGDC '89, it was extremely well organized and executed, with well thought-out backup material. I particularly appreciated the STATEMENT OF PURPOSE in the proceedings. Since industry statistics are at the heart of the decision-making process, these numbers will assist industry professionals to read the marketplace and develop products that fit, and thus make money.
From the lectures and round tables I came away further convinced that the recreational software industry blends the very leading edge technologies in the world today. I think the industry rides several major technology curves including electronics, mathematics, software development, video graphics, sound, and artificial intelligence. I say “rides” because none of these technologies is being developed solely to support computer games as much as they are being developed to support industry and defense needs.
It also appears from the conference that the industry is stabilizing as professionals in the industry continue their specialization. Every step of a computer game project (except its initial inspiration) can now be subcontracted — it’s the perfect cottage industry! I think the CGDC plays a crucial role as this process continues to unfold, a process which will make our product development and delivery system efficient and competitive.
There were several discussions about the game developer as an artist. It seems to me that that would depend on whether or not the work uplifts the players spirit, and gives him faith in his future. These are the things that art does and are what most people agree distinguishes art from craft. Is there a Beethoven’s fifth out there, a game so powerful in its concept, and so effective in its interface that the experience actually changes the player’s attitudes? The CGDC seems to provide a good forum for points of view on these issues to be expressed and evaluated.
It seems from the conference that this industry will continue its polarization between games developed by publishers and their agents and games produced by independent studios. Like the movies, one day there will be corporate art and independent art. The publishers will have the advantage of bank funding, but they will tend to be conservative in their artistic judgements while the independents focus on games that define genres, not exploit them. So, the traditional challenge to big and small alike is the same — develop recreational software that is irresistible. The CGDC plays a neutral role in this polarization with presentations on A/I, virtual reality, new hardware and software, game writing techniques and other sharing of technologies and information. This generic game writing information serves both the corporate and the independent developer and can only contribute to better entertainment software for the public, the ultimate goal for everyone.
The legal roundtables were invaluable in identifying the issues that surround the process of bringing this product to the public. I think the dollar cost of acquiring that much legal advice (and sample contracts) alone was worth the conference fee. I attended both legal sessions and I would like to see a legal session at every CGDC until the industry matures further. Ultimately, the legal battles are not only costly but annoying and distracting to everyone involved.
I hope that in future CGDCs, we will find artists showing off prototypes of their ideas, while electronics designers could meet with game artists to get ideas for new technology. This will help the recreational software industry compete with movies, rock & roll CDs, and other forms of recreation and entertainment.
Finally, at the conference, I could not help feeling that I was in the presence of something special — walking the halls with people shaping Earths new art form. It felt like being on the back lot in the early Hollywood days.
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1989 Salary Survey Results
From the Readers
This year’s salary survey generated the same level of response as my previous survey; 44 readers sent in their responses this year. The results, as with the previous survey, are tricky to interpret. First, the raw numbers: the average 1989 income for all respondents was $42,811.
Unfortunately, this number included “wannabees”, those people who do not design computer games for a living but would like to do so. It turns out that the wannabees brought the average up considerably. Of the 44 respondents to the survey, 20 were wannabees, and their average income was $49,179. The average income of the 24 respondents who are not wannabees (that is, people who earn their living making computer games) was only $37,504. The implications of this are frightening. If we assume that readers of the Journal are a uniform lot, that wannabees are on average just as talented and hard-working as professional developers, then we have to conclude that the income differential must be due to the choice of career. In other words, if you’re a wannabee and you decide to become a professional computer game designer, you will take a 25% pay cut to indulge your interest.
Now let’s compare this figure with what we had two years ago. Back then, the average income was $39,995. That survey was worded differently so the numbers from the two years are not strictly comparable, so I would not go so far as to declare that incomes have gone down in the last two years. I think that we can safely conclude that things have not gotten any better.
For the remainder of this article, I will use the survey data that excludes the wannabees. This includes 24 respondents. The overall histogram of incomes for these respondents looks like this:
Next comes the breakdown of the data based on the traits of the respondents. I broke the data down into groups that split the group roughly in half; this gives us a quick-and-dirty notion of how these traits affect income.
Discussion
The first relationship is the experience of the respondents. The effect here is pronounced and heartening. An experienced game design professional earns more than an inexperienced one. This may sound natural and obvious, but in fact in the 1988 salary survey, there was in inverse relationship between experience and income. I interpreted this to indicate the immaturity of the industry. It now appears that the industry has matured enough that the value of experience is recognized and paid for. Huzzah!
Next comes age. Once again, we have a clear difference. Older respondents earn more than younger ones. This reflects, one assumes, a correllation between age and experience, but in fact I found that correllation to be weak.
Self-employment also showed a strong effect. If you want to make money in this business, get a job! The self-employed people earned much less than those with regular jobs.
The last issue to consider is the job function. The strong conclusion here is that manager is the most lucrative job and implementer is the least. However, there are strong internal correlations in the data. In general, managers are an older and more experienced lot than implementers.
This year’s salary survey offers mixed results. On the one hand, it is gratifying to observe that the industry does at long last recognize the value of experience and reward it. On the other hand, average income does not appear to have risen in two years, and may even have declined. This despite the fact that the industry as a whole has become wealthier.
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Multiplayer Interactivity, A New Focus
David Whatley
A great deal of the intellectual effort being focused on game design today is spent in the pursuit of a method that can reliably induce an emotional investment by the player. Other entertainment media, such as cinema or literature, are capable of producing an emotional reaction but these are always vicarious experiences. Because a computer game is actually a primitive virtual reality, this medium is ideally suited to spearhead a new frontier in first-person generated experiences.
The trick, of course, is to determine what it is that will generally provoke an emotional investment by a human being. We can make some assumptions to narrow the scope of this effort; namely, that the player is interested enough in the subject matter to have bought the product, and that the person is capable of being emotional to some extent. What is required at this point is a catalyst for emotion and a substantive environment in which these feelings can be engendered, enhanced,and brought to maturity.
For there to be an emotional investment, there first must be a reason for the player to care. In the case of a virtual reality, this means caring about oneself or perhaps about one’s alternate persona as it exists in this reality (man vs. self). The player must also care about the state of the environment in which his persona exists (man vs. nature), and he finally he must be concerned about the state of others within that environment (man vs. man). From these building blocks, we can construct the most complex of first-person emotionalism that can be observed in real life. For example: a player who is concerned that his recent actions will be perceived by other characters in the environment of the game in a less-than-flattering light is feeling the very real pangs of shame or embarrassment.
Inculcating caring about oneself, or one’s character, in a game is the least difficult of these feats to accomplish. The problem is in determining the degree to which this approaches a first-person experience rather than a vicarious one. In many cases, the experience of the character in the game will create an emotional reaction, but with ambiguous causes and results. For example, when a character in a game dies, does the player feel grief for his death or for losing the game? Or does he, perhaps, feel grief for the loss of time invested in the nurturing the character to that point? In this case, the emotional reaction is synchronized with but quite detached from the virtual reality.
Many fantasy role-playing games that offer virtual reality simulation have a story line dealing with a land that must be saved. In this sense, the state of the environment of the game is of concern to the player but, as before, this concern is very indirect. The player is actually concerned about the accomplishment of the goal leading toward victory. His reward does not consist of the knowledge that that the land has been saved, but rather that he has beaten/solved the game. The attachment of the fate of the land to a winning scenario does not move us any closer to a real solution.
Perhaps the most problematic area where efforts have been concentrated so far has been in the domain of caring about others within the game environment. In the simple model, non-player characters are created merely as persona who either obstruct or abet the attainment of specific goals. Even characters who are helpful must be manipulated correctly in order to obtain these rewards. Again, we find ourselves forcing players to interact with these characters as if they were concerned (be it positive or negative, whichever is appropriate) in order to advance toward a winning scenario, rather than establishing a virtual reality whereby there is actual concern generated. Character interaction is in fact the most important of these areas, as all other interests are multiplicative with this one: a person tends to feel more excited about his successful manipulation of nature (e.g., building a shelter) if he can impress others with it.
In each case, it is apparent that the player’s interest is rooted in the winning of the game. All other factors within the virtual reality of the game world present only superficial representations of emotional investment which cloak the simplistic mechanics of winning. In such instances, we as game designers have failed on two levels: first, we have not managed to exploit the unique nature of computer games as entertainment (the generation of first-person emotionalism) and, further, we have failed to even induce the vicarious emotionalism the player could have experienced from a much less expensive trip to the movies.
To design a game in which we intend to bring about a first-person emotional involvement, we must make some changes in our philosophy of game design. We must begin to realize that a virtual reality does not have a winning scenario but rather presents a set of dynamic circumstances in which the characters have a vested interest in their outcome. One of these characters, of course, would be the player.
A virtual reality does not contain story lines but instead generates them. It is this attribute of virtual reality that causes the difficulty, if only because the technology needed to create a world with such depth and flexibility, and to bring to life viable characters with a high level of interactive functionality is beyond us at this point. A revolutionary development not just in algorithms but in hardware still must occur before our realization of this capability.
Yet there do exist a few games that possess some degree of these grand idealisms. These seldom-mentioned products host players who care deeply about the well-being of their alternate persona, are cautious about how they present themselves to other characters, weep at the loss of beloved lands and are angered by conflicts which may never have anything to do with physical combat. Imagine a player risking the life of their alternate persona in a desperate effort to save another character despite the fact that this furthers no established goals towards ’winning’, or a player who actually falls in love with a character and sets about to marry, this being in no way related to the pursuits of game victory.
The solution these products have found for bringing about real first-person emotional involvement by a player has nothing to do with advanced algorithms or massive hardware, but rather the most basic of concepts: there is nothing more human than a human. To bring about human-like traits in game characters, have them controlled by humans. This is where real-time, multi-player games have been able to succeed.
Simply bringing people together may not smack of game design brilliance, but if the desired effect is achieved, then this point is moot. Regardless, the fact remains that the best solutions tend to be the simplest ones. If large-scale, multi-player games do succeed to some degree in bring about an emotional investment by the player, then these products can serve as our initial guage of the worthiness of such a goal. Consider that when a player purchases a PC-based game, he will usually spend between $40 and $60 for the experience it offers. A multi-player game will tend to cost the player between $6 and $12 dollars per hour of play with many players spending hundreds a month for years on one single product. In this regard, multi-player games show a uniqueness that can be equated with tremendous potential for the future.
The capability to simulate characters to the degree that they are indistinguishable from human personalities exists only in the unforeseeable future. However, the technology to bring more and more people together in virtual realities, to interact in another world, is upon us. There will have to be some significant changes in the way multi-player games are offered in order to capture the mass market, but once this occurs the idea of playing against or with a machine will seem as unfulfilling and empty to the millions as it now does to those who have already experienced the possibilities. As game designers, we should widen our vision to the day when players will interact with each other regardless of their logistics as a matter of course. We must begin to develop the new techniques that will enhance the process of virtual reality creation and modernize the presentation style that will be the interface to these other worlds.
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The Association of Computer Game Developers: It’s Coming But Are We Ready?
Richard Mulligan
At the recent DevCon, the roundtable on whether or not we should form an association presented one fact quite clearly: emotions on this subject are deeply polarized between two groups of thought.
The ‘No’ group of thought felt that we aren’t quite ready to take the leap. Chris Crawford’s comments concerning the price of failure (ie: failure might well shoot down the chances of forming a viable association for a number of years) were well taken, as were his pointed note that only 26 people attended the roundtable, out of nearly 500 DevCon participants.
The ‘Yes’ group of thought asked “If not now, when?” and pointed out that if the roundtable title hadn’t been phrased in the form of a question but, instead, a more forceful statement implying a definite trend toward association, far more people would have attended.
The roundtable left me with what I feel are two very important impressions: One, we are moving, albeit slowly and carefully, toward establishing an association and; two, the danger of our small and fragile community splintering into two or more mutually destructive factions is terribly real.
Point Two scares the *&^% out of me.
I’ve been watching the efforts of Chris, Dave Menconi and the board with fascination for the past two years, as they carefully and with seemingly infinite patience and personal committement nurtured the growth of the Journal and DevCon. The ulterior motive seems obvious; a sense of close community has been springing up among computer game developers and we’ve been slouching toward the formation of a national association ever since. The Journal and DevCon provide the springboard; they allow designers and publishers to keep in close contact by sharing ideas and schmoozing on an ongoing basis. In reverse of the old adage, familiarity is breeding new respect between publishers and designers.
Now, what I personally perceive to be a few hotheads are attempting to rip this embryonic association from the womb before its time. For all the right reasons, to be sure; it’s still too early.
Here are the problems:
1. There is no grassroots movement among computer game designers to formalize an association among us.
Part of this comes from the fact that computer game designers are part of dying breed: the cussed individual. One of the reasons most of us took a flyer in this biz was to control our own destinies; most of us hate getting up before noon (although we can force ourselves to do it when a deadline or milestone is approaching), much less taking orders from some marketing puke who doesn’t know a tenth as much about game design as the average Nintendo addict. Trying to force an association before its time smacks too much of ‘credentialism’ to this individual; it also smacks of trying to shove an association down one’s throat, for his own good and the good of the community. I don’t know too many game designers who are going to put up with that.
2. Another reason for the lack of a grassroots movement is the youngness of our niche of the computer industry; it is barely a decade old, and is not a major force within the industry, much less society at large. We know that our niche will one day be such a force, perhaps even within the next few years; gaming permeates every facet of life, after all. However, with only a decade to gauge our performance and create an (inter)national community, we shouldn’t be surprised that so few computer game designers give a rat’s @*$ whether or not there is an association.
3. Most game designers can’t intuitively see what the advantages of a national association would be; in fact, most have never belonged to an association, so they have no experience to guide them in a rational decision.
4. Personal contact with a designer is necessary to foster a feeling of committement to the community and an association. DevCon works well in this respect; local associations work even better. You can see the pyramid building: Yearly contact through DevCon, monthly or bi-monthly contact through a local association, culminating in a national organization to tie together all the local groups and to include those in the ‘outback’ in the discussions. This is what is happening now; it may or may not be the best way.
5. Fear of a union or guild causes many to shy away from any affiliation with an association.
There isn’t a game designer in the world who wouldn’t join an association, if he/she could be assured that such an organization wouldn’t try to regulate the industry or the members; I firmly believe that. So, what does this leave us with? Where do we go from here? I have included a chart following this commentary, but I’ll go over the main thoughts:
A) If an association is to be formed, its charter should clearly state — and limit — it to the sourcing, storing and dissemination of information, tools and services to the membership at large. Such information, tools and services would consist of sample contracts from companies, a database of computer game information and histories, a library of computer games for circulation to the membership, membership in a credit union, group insurance and medical plans, consultation and information on publisher practices and specific publisher idiosyncracies.
B) Such an association should also charge a membership fee for the necessary expenses: proper storage space and products for a permanent library, printing costs, etc. I strongly suggest it be held to $30 or $40 a year and in no case over $100.
Frankly, to prevent any possible perception of abuse of these funds, any checks written by the association should require two signatures by different association officers.
C) The charter of the association should specifically state that it doesn’t seek a totally adversarial position in respect to publishers. Some tinge of adversarial relationship is unavoidable, of course; the purpose of the association should be to alter poor publisher attitudes and practices over a period of time, by encouraging and helping its members to be firm but fair in negotiations and completion of contracts, and to provide reporting facilities to the membership at large on unfair or unethical behavior by publishers.
This does not mean launching vendettas for personal reasons, or seeking to constantly influence a publisher’s behavior by threats or by distributing unattributed rumors to the membership. Any member reporting an abuse should be willing to have his name on it, for confidential disclosure to the membership, on an as needed basis. The membership will decide on the ‘as needed’ part by re-electing or tossing out officers who are too free (or act unethically themselves) with such information.
D) A grievance committee and process is probably necessary. The arbitration clause of the Model Contract, and association with a national or international arbitration society, will give us a basis for setting these policies and procedures. The purpose here is to prevent negligent or unethical behavior by either the designer or the publisher. Computer game designers are not known in this industry for keeping deadlines; we have to change that.
The above points should, I feel, give us a rational approach for continued discussion of this very volatile issue. They represent my personal views, as a game designer just this side of a wannabee, and as a member of such diverse associations as SAG, AFTRA, the Non-Commissioned Officers Association and the Society of American Fight Directors.
Your turn.
What an Assocation Should Do
•Be strictly voluntary in membership.
•Recommend negotiation guidelines and offer a model contract.
•Provide confidential information to its members on publisher practices, negotiations and follow-thru history, and ethical behavior (or lack of same).
•Offer group medical and insurance plans, contract with a credit union, and seek hardware and software deals for its members.
•Maintain a library of computer games and publications relevant to game designers and programmers.
•Charge annual dues not to exceed $100 per member.
•Hold an annual election of officers at DevCon.
•Maintain close ties to the Journal and DevCon, and have an elected member of the Association on the DevCon board.
•Maintain a library of programmer’s design utilities and toolkits for inexpensive license to members.
•Maintain a grievance and arbitration committee for the benefit of the members, and to help foster closer cooperation and ethical behavior between the designer and publisher.
•Maintain information on members who negligently fail to fulfill their contracts with publishers. Members should be willing to give up THAT much freedom.
What an Assocation Should Not Do
Mandate membership.
•Require its members to use a model contract or the Association as exclusive bargaining tools or agents.
•Take an overly aggressive, adversary approach to publishers in disseminating information on them to its members.
•Restrict such to members only, but include spouses, children and, in special circumstances, non-members.
•Restrict access to or content of the library on personal, political, religious (or any other) grounds.
•Raise the dues without a 75% majority vote of the members.
•Restrict any member from serving solely on the basis of lack of professional accomplisments.
•Allow emotions to cause a schism between polarized groups.
•License the toolkits to non-members or publishers, unless at a higher rate than members receive.
•Use such grievance procedures as a bludgeon on the publishers.
No comment necessary.
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Indirection (based on my lecture at the 1990 CGDC)
Chris Crawford
Consider the classic diagram for the structure of the play of a computer game:
I call this diagram a gametree. It represents the states through which the player can pass in the course of a game. The player begins at the top of the tree and makes a choice which takes him to one of the states in the next level of the tree, which then presents him with a new set of options. He repeats this process until he arrives at an endgame state, which is either a victorious state or a losing state.
Now consider a diagram for the structure of the use of a word processor:
I call this diagram a program tree. The user starts with a blank page and selects a letter to type, which creates a new state, a document with that letter. He then selects another letter to type, which takes him to a new state, and so on until he reaches the bottom of the program tree and his document is complete.
You will note that the structural diagrams for the use of both products are identical.
Differences
But there is a big difference between word processors and games: the former do their job better than games. I use Microsoft Word 4.0 on a Mac, and I am very satisfied with the product. It does everything that I want to do with a word processor, and then some. By contrast, I have yet to play a game that gave me such a sense of satisfaction. Every game I have ever played restricted my freedom of action, refused to permit me to do the things that I wanted to do.
How can it be that games and word processors can yield such different results when they are structurally identical? What is it that word processors do that games don’t do? What do they have that we don’t?
Two new concepts
To answer that question, I shall have to introduce two new concepts. The first is the set of accessible states in a tree. These are all of the states that the user can get to as he traverses the tree. In a word processor, this is the set of all documents that the user could create; in a game, it is the set of all realizable game endings.
The second concept is a little more difficult; it is the set of all expectable states . These are the states that the user might expect to be able to access. In the case of the word processor, these would include all the documents that a user might want to create. In a game, it would include all the game endings that a user might visualize. (I thank Steve Peterson for suggesting that I use the term "expectable" in place of "imaginable".)
A criterion for excellence
I would now like to direct your attention to the ratio of the number of accessible states to the number of expectable states. I suggest that this ratio provides us with a criterion for evaluating the overall merit of a product. Consider that the source of my satisfaction with my word processor lies in the fact that "anything I want to do, I can do." In other words, any state that I expect to access, I can access. The ratio of accessible states to expectable states is very nearly 1. On the other hand, I do not have same experience with games. Many times in games I feel trapped by the design, unable to do the thing that I want to do. In other words, the state that I expect to access is not there. Thus, with games, the ratio of accessible states to expectable states is significantly less than 1.
How can we improve this ratio? There are only two ways to increase a ratio: increase the numerator or decrease the denominator. I shall take up the latter case first.
Decreasing expectable states
This may sound silly at first. How can a designer lower the expectations of his users, short of mass frontal lobotomies? In truth, though, we have a great deal of power, as we set the expectations of our users with the cues we give them. In most cases, sadly, we set them up and then confound their expectations.
Too many designers succumb to overweening pride in creating games that attempt too much. In their eagerness to create an entire world, they toss in features willy-nilly without recognizing the geometrically increasing expectations that such features instill in the users. Whenever you add a new feature to a game, you are suggesting to your users that they might be able to use it in ways that you never imagined. It is incumbent upon you to anticipate all those possibilities and provide for them.
What we need here is completeness of the universes we create. Such completeness is only obtained through closure. A good game design presents a closed and complete universe. Leave out the petty things so that you can do the important features completely. Thus, one desideratum of game design is parsimony. Parsimonious design decreases user expectations.
The user interface manifestation of this problem is the text parser. A parser suggests to the user that any valid English expression will be accepted by the parser. This is a cruel falsehood to perpetrate on a user. We’re programmers; we’re used to the high failure rates associated with command line interfaces. To place this expectation on our users is unwarranted.
Increasing accessible states
I now turn to the happier solution of increasing the number of accessible states. How might we do this? How can we make our gametrees thicker and bushier? A backhanded strategy is to compare games with stories. Here is a structural diagram for a story:
This structure provides graphic representation of the term storyline. A story is a linear sequence of events with just one accessible final state. This suggests that the way to get bushier gametrees is to make them as unstorylike as possible. Unfortunately, negative observations have little utility; we need to know what to do, not what not to do. However, it suggests a convoluted strategy for solving our problem. If a story is the skinny version of a gametree, what occupies the analogous position with respect to the program tree? The answer is a calculation:
If we examine the progression from linear calculation to bushy word processor, then perhaps we can understand how to build bushier gametrees.
Calculator to word processor
A calculation is most often carried out on a calculator, a device with four arithmetic functions and no memory registers. As we move up the scale, we get calculators with more memory registers, then calculators with indirectly addressable memory registers, then 8-bit microcomputers with 64K of RAM, and lastly my Mac IIx with 8 megs of RAM organized in heaps.
There are several attributes that increase as we move up the progression from calculator to word processor. The first, obviously, is that the program tree grows progressively bushier. There are more accessible states with the more exalted machines. This is expressed both in terms of the number of buttons available to the user (allowing him to specify more states) and the number of displayable states made possible by the increasing display power of the machines in the progression.
There are other attributes that increase as we move up the progression: the computational horsepower of the machines; the number of storage locations available to the user. But the one that strikes me as most important is the indirection of use. The four-function calculator is the most direct, most explicit machine of the set. You punch in a number and crunch it directly, seeing the results directly on the display. As you move up the scale, the number disappears into a memory register, then into one of many memory registers. Later still, with the 8-bit computer, you use a program to talk about the number. With the Mac IIx, you refer to the number by a symbol that holds a handle that refers to a pointer that equals the address of the memory location that holds the number. That’s four levels of indirection!
This suggests to me that indirection might be associated with increasing number of accessible states. I haven’t proven this, of course, but I find the suggestion intriguing. If it be true, how could we increase the amount of indirection used in our game designs?
More and bigger variables
The first tactic we might use is to increase the number of variables we use in our games. After all, a variable is the means by which software utilizes a hardware register. The hardware progression showed increasing numbers of registers, so presumably we should cook up increasing numbers of variables to put into these registers. These variables should also be multi-bit arithmetic variables instead of the single-bit boolean variables so common in computer games. The classic text adventure, for example, has perhaps 50 boolean state variables. These variables can generate 10**15 accessible states. While this may sound like a great many, it compares poorly with word processors. Even a simple one-page word processor with a single font with no stylistic or size variations can generate 10**3600 distinct documents.
Indirect graphics
Games use more graphics these days. Most of the images used, though, are simple bitmaps hand-drawn by artists and blitted onto the screen when needed. This is too direct an approach, and it limits the number of accessible images we can create. A more indirect approach creates images algorithmically. If, for example, we were to devise a room-drawing algorithm, then we could order up rooms to fit any situation, simply passing parameters defining the size, shape, decoration, and function of the room. The same can be said of many of the other graphic elements of our games.
Eschew hard-wired branching
Another overly direct practice is the use of explicitly defined branches in a gametree. All too often, gamers reach points where the designer clearly expects a particular course of action. The code for such situations is a simple IF-statement that rewards the single correct action. This is too explicit. A better solution is to use a more general IF-statement that considers issues more indirectly. For example, instead of "IF the player gives the apple to the horse, then the horse will let the player ride him," we should rather use statements akin to "IF the player satisfies the needs of a nonplayer character, then the nonplayer character will feel gratitude toward the player." This latter form is more difficult to handle; it requires us to define such variables as "needs", "satisfaction", and "gratitude". These variables in turn will imply fairly complex algorithms. Yet consider that the latter form of the IF-statement will handle a great many situations. It can be applied to any nonplayer character. It allows the designer to meet the player’s expectation that all characters have needs and desires. The first form of the IF-statement suggests the possibility of such needs and desires while delivering such behavior in only a single case -- a single accessible state with many expectable states.
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