Contents
Editorial: Reviewing the Reviewers
Chris Crawford
Computer Game Amenities
David Dunham
The Journal Reporter
Kellyn Beck
An Approach to Plotting for Interactive Fiction
Scott Jarol
So You Want to Be A Game Designer
Corey Cole
Yet Another Definition of Game
Chris Crawford
The Self-Publishing Option Part 2
Kathy Crawford
Editor Chris Crawford
Subscriptions The Journal of Computer Game Design is published six times a year. To subscribe to The Journal, send a check or money order for $30 to:
The Journal of Computer Game Design
5251 Sierra Road
San Jose, CA 95132
Submissions Material for this Journal is solicited from the readership. Articles should address artistic or technical aspects of computer game design at a level suitable for professionals in the industry. Reviews of games are not published by this Journal. All articles must be submitted electronically, either on Macintosh disk , through MCI Mail (my username is CCRAWFORD), through the JCGD BBS, or via direct modem. No payments are made for articles. Authors are hereby notified that their submissions may be reprinted in Computer Gaming World.
Back Issues Back issues of the Journal are available. Volume 1 may be purchased only in its entirety; the price is $30. Individual numbers from Volume 2 cost $5 apiece.
Copyright The contents of this Journal are copyright © Chris Crawford 1991.
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Editorial: Reviewing the Reviewers
Chris Crawford
Reviews play a crucial role in the success or failure of a game. Customers pay attention to reviews; a good review can significantly boost sales, while a bad review can seriously hurt sales.
Thus, we have an entire industry, with thousands of people working to create games, earning several hundred million dollars each year, whose fate depends largely on the whims of a few hundred reviewers. It’s frightening to contemplate the power these people wield, but it’s even more frightening to realize just how incompetent some of them are.
General Computer Magazines
There are three basic types of reviewers. The worst are at the major general computer magazines. These magazines review dozens of new products, hardware and software, in every issue. They view games as junk software. Perhaps it’s because games are the cheapest products they see; perhaps it’s because game publishers seldom advertise in their publications. Whatever the reason, they approach games with callous insouciance. Rhett Anderson, writing in the last issue of the Journal, referred to magazine staff evaluating games "with a joystick in one hand and a sandwich in the other."
The result is an uneven body of reviews. If you’re lucky, they’ll be impressed with a few simple tricks and wax rhapsodic over the transcending brilliance of your work. In this case, you can be embarrassed for them, collect the kudos, and hope to make a clean getaway. If you’re not so lucky, they’ll roast you for imaginary defects and bogus bugs.
There is one common element to their tastes in games: they seem to prefer "lite" games. The deep, complex, lengthy games never attract their attention. An Ultima 6 will not catch their fancy, nor will a Sierra graphic adventure, nor an SSI wargame. Give them a game with lots of flash and no gameplay and they’re happy.
(In the interests of intellectual honesty, I must point out that this editorial was inspired by a hatchet job of my game Balance of the Planet appearing in MacWorld. To give you an idea of just how little care and attention went into the review, consider this: the reviewer thought that the game was a HyperCard stack, when in truth it is a standalone application. Anybody who has a Mac can immediately grasp from this just how inattentive the reviewer was.)
Beginners at Game-Specific Magazines
The game-specific magazines do a better job. Their editors are very knowledgeable about games; indeed, the editors at gaming magazines probably have a broader appreciation of the body of games out there than professional developers.
However, the editors don’t write all the reviews. Many of their reviews come from first-timers. As Rhett Anderson pointed out in his article, the pay for game reviewers is lousy. This insures a constant turnover of reviewers. Turnover may be healthy in the some situations, but breaking in beginners can be a painful process, especially when YOU are the victim of the beginner’s mistakes.
The principal weakness of the beginners is that they haven’t developed enough experience to appreciate the complexities of game design. In their eagerness to demonstrate their acumen, they tend to write preachy reviews that pontificate on the design errors of the game. It is tempting to benignly patronize their bright-eyed foolishness, but we must remember that these amateurs do a lot of damage through their ignorance.
Old Pros
Lastly, there are the old pros: people who have been reviewing games for years. We have a great set of people here: Arnie Katz, Bill Kunkel, Joyce Worley, Ken St. Andre, Shay Addams, Scorpia, Scott Mace, Alan Emrich, R. Bradley Andrews, and many more. These reviewers have been around the block a few times, and they know how to evaluate a game. First, they give it the time it deserves, knowing that the proof of the game is in the playing.
Second, they have established a context for evaluating games. They know what is realistically possible given the economic and technical realities, and they weigh a game’s strengths and weaknesses with these in mind.
Third, they have long since shed any illusions about being closet game designers. They know that their forte is criticism, not design, and they appreciate the difference.
Fourth, they recognize the narrowness of any individual’s tastes, including their own. "This game didn’t run to my taste because of X, but people who like games with X will enjoy this game." If only all reviewers were so honest!
Lastly, they care. They care about good games and the advancement of the art. They want to see better games and they see their criticisms as a way to improve the industry.
What to do?
Obviously, we need more old pros and fewer beginners. The problem is, how to do we motivate a thoughtful person to stay in the game-reviewing business long enough to develop some polish and insight?
The central problem here is money. The magazines cannot afford to pay their reviewers enough money to motivate them to take their work seriously. Most reasonable people move on to other endeavors after a few reviews. We need to do something about this.
Look at it this way: here we have a product that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop being reviewed by somebody getting a hundred bucks for his time. This is a mismatch. If you view reviews as a subset of marketing, then surely the reviews would merit a lot more money than that.
Of course, this thinking runs afoul of the reviewer’s need to maintain editorial integrity. We can’t pay the reviewers; they must preserve their independence if they are to have any credibility. So how can we get money into their hands without compromising their integrity?
A Sketch Proposal
I suggest that, if we act as a community rather than a set of individual business interests, we might be able to solve this problem. What if we set up a fund and award cash prizes on an annual basis to those reviewers who most impress the community? Here’s one way that it could work:
First we solicit contributions from a variety of sources. The publishers are an obvious source; after all, a major publisher spends tens of thousands of dollars each year just on public relations a few thousand bucks to materially improve the quality of game reviews should be justifiable. The Software Publishers Association. might also be willing to contribute, as well as the Computer Game Developers’ Conference. And of course, if ever a professional association of game developers gets off the ground, it could probably kick in some money, too.
It should be possible to raise, say, $25K this way. This money would then be awarded to the best game reviewers on an annual basis, perhaps with the award presentations announced at the conference. I think that the money should be spread among a group of reviewers rather than concentrated on a single one. That way, every reviewer out there knows that he has a real shot at getting an award. If five reviewers split $25K on a rank-weighted basis, there should be plenty of money to motivate the reviewing community.
The judges for the awards must be chosen with care. If they are too close to the products, the awards will be perceived as bribes for favorable reviews; the taint would ruin the awards. Ideally, the judges would be knowledgeable consumers whose objectivity would be beyond question. But how do you find such a person? It’s almost as if "knowledgeable, objective consumer" were an oxymoron.
The second best scheme would have a large group of developers casting votes for the best reviewer. While their individual objectivity may be suspect, their aggregate objectivity deserves more respect, and they certainly qualify as knowledgeable.
It’s obvious that we do not have any organizations in place to implement any such scheme. But if we ever build an association, this would be a likely task to start with. Remember, though, that the ultimate goal of any such system must be to motivate good reviews, not favorable ones, and the best way to get good reviews is to have good reviewers and good people of any stripe cost money.
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Computer Game Amenities
David Dunham
[David Dunham, author of the Macintosh programs Acta, miniWRITER, and Findswell, hasn’t written a computer game since high school. He keeps threatening to.]
Introduction
Most computer games don’t take advantage of the computer. Oh, sure, they’re interactive, but they simply don’t exploit the computer’s strengths. They need more than just a computer to play. They require players to memorize maps and other information, or write it down on scraps of paper. They use fonts reminiscent of the most primitive CRTs. They force players to repeat the same steps over and over. Game designers seem not to realize their games will be played on a personal computer (or any computer at all).
This article will mention some of my complaints against current computer games, and offer recommendations.
Copy Perversion
This topic doesn’t need much discussion, other than mentioning that “copy protection” is the wrong term, since we all know that copying is only more difficult. And “protection” gives a warm, fuzzy feeling of security, when in fact the player isn’t protected against anything.
I often take my computer on the road, and have barely enough time to pack a toothbrush, let alone find all the books, key disks, 3D glasses, and other paraphernalia required to run the programs already on its hard disk. The point is, these are supposed to be computer games, not computer-and-a-whole-lot-of-other-stuff games.
+ In most cases, games should be playable with just a computer.
Saving
As I just mentioned, I have a hard disk. That means it’s big. That means I have space for any number of saved positions. Lots of computer games only let me save once or so. Why limit me? I know how to use the operating system to copy files, so you’re not really preventing me from multiple saves, you’re just making it extremely inconvenient.
Game designers also don’t seem to realize why I save a game. I may be reducing the risks of a course of action, but I may also be going to dinner or some other bodily need. I may not always have time to first get my character back to a place on the map where saving is legal.
+ Saving and restoring should be as easy as possible.
Note-Taking
Most of the work I do with my computer, whether it’s programming, planning a trip, or writing this article, involves taking notes. Computers are great organizational tools — until you start playing games. All of a sudden, your computer becomes nothing more than a TV with a keyboard attached.
As a Mac user, I wouldn’t mind this all that much. I have plenty of tools for taking notes. And Macintosh programs let you cut and paste. Except for games. Even text-only games. (Actually, at one time Infocom games let you select text, room descriptions for example, and copy them to the clipboard; they could then be pasted into my Acta outline processor. This doesn’t work with more recent games.) If I use my computer to play games, I’m condemned to retyping text that appears on my computer screen.
I recently visited Tokyo’s Akihabara district, and was intrigued by a self-running demo of what appeared to be a graphics-based mystery set on a steamship (I don’t read Japanese, so I don’t know any details). This game provided a multiple-page notebook where you could choose the suspects’ pictures from a list, then draw connecting lines or make annotations using a palette of tools. I hope this game appears in English, because its note-taker should be a model for every other game.
+ Make note-taking easily, using specialized tools when possible.
Mapping
Many games have some sort of geography. As the player explores, he’s expected to make a map. Why? Didn’t I buy a computer to get away from paper and pencil? Some games have “auto-mapping” features; they all should.
One Apple II game my housemate played showed you a map of the entire game - but only on the screen. He bought a Polaroid camera rather than redraw it himself.
+ Users should never have to draw maps.
Legibility
One of the games I’m in the middle of, Circuit’s Edge, has wonderful graphics. It also has text that’s painful to read. It’s apparently a custom font, so someone did this on purpose. I can’t imagine why, unless it’s an attempt to give me more playing time for my money by slowing down my reading comprehension.
Old Infocom games on the Macintosh let you choose any font you had installed, which is ideal. More recent ones use Monaco, one of the least attractive fonts available, and don’t give the user any choice.
+ If a game has text, make it as legible as possible.
Owning the world
I’m in that minority of people who play their games on a Macintosh. I’ve been able to run several programs at once for years — unless one of them’s a game. A number of games refuse to acknowledge the fact that they’re guests on my computer, and take it over entirely. I’ve had several games which insist on running only without MultiFinder, so I have to restart my computer to run them, then restart it again to do useful work. I’m sure there are equally rude programs on other platforms (maybe they require you to disable TSRs or something). This is unacceptable on any computer that calls itself personal. Games are not more equal than other programs. There are probably some cases where a game just has to take over the machine to be effective, but I can’t think of any.
+ Don’t be incompatible or hog resources.
Tedium
Some games design tedious activities in (like remembering to have your character eat and sleep — computer characters must have tremendous metabolic rates). That’s bad game design, which is another article.
I’m talking about programs that require you to repeat the same action over and over again, without any provision for making this easier. Perhaps after playing a while, you learn that your optimum strategy is to first walk to the bank and withdraw money. This may involve a dozen commands, which you’ll have to type each time you start the game. Why should users have to repeat steps?
For example, Macintosh text games could allow you to Paste in a sequence of commands. Non-text games could have some sort of record command to create sequences.
+ Don’t make the player perform repetitive steps that a computer can do better.
Arbitrary Limits
I’ve never understood games that limit your character to carrying a small number of inventory items, no matter what size they are. You can carry no more than ten toothpicks — or ten grand pianos. This sort of thing reminds me of rigid mainframe computers. I’d be glad to explain to anyone how to use linked lists to keep track of arbitrary numbers of items. These limits add nothing to the playability of the game, and make the computer interface intrude on the fantasy.
+ Eliminate arbitrary limits.
Conclusion
When you’re designing and implementing your game, please remember that it’s supposed to be played on a computer. A computer is an information tool that increases personal productivity. Just because reviewers never mention it is no reason not to provide a few basic computer amenities.
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The Journal Reporter
Kellyn Beck
The interactive entertainment industry gathered in New York earlier this month at Intertainment ’90 to attend three days of panels and workshops covering the latest developments in multimedia, virtual reality, interactive television, CD-I, CD-ROM...and, yes, even computer games. Among those on the speaker list were Sega chief Michael Katz, Commodore front man Nolan Bushnell, interactive pioneer Jean-Pierre Isbouts and guitarist Jeff Baxter of the Doobie Brothers.
It was the third time out for the annual interactive entertainment conference, and it’s still the only one with workshops on every imaginable form of interactivity: interactive theater, videotex, theme parks, education, call-in television shows, interactive documentaries, teleconferencing, virtual theater, smart phones and interactive advertising. The Intertainment organizers scheduled panels on dozens of widely varied topics, inviting participants and conference attendees to share ideas across the boundaries that separate the various interactive disciplines.
In theory, the idea makes for an invigorating mix of people and discussions, and it is a great forum for making contact with people throughout the interactive industries. In practice, though, the presentations were sometimes disjointed, often forgettable, and more often sales-oriented than they were stimulating or though-provoking.
Several themes ran through the conference. The hardware makers saw it as an opportunity to tout their machines and court developers; Sega, Commodore, AIM and NEC held sessions entirely devoted to pitching their latest hardware.
Michael Katz, President of the Consumer Products Division of Sega of America, gave the keynote address at the conference, following in the footsteps of last year’s keynote speaker Isaac Asimov, who gave an unforgettable talk about the marvels of interactivity. Katz treated the conference to an audio-visual presentation about the Sega Genesis, the first 16-bit videogame machine. Genesis and NEC’s Turbografix are the main competitors in the 16-bit market, and the two companies used the conference as a forum to show off their equipment.
Both machines outstrip earlier 8-bit consoles in every department, and have no real competition in the marketplace until Nintendo releases its Famicom, a full 16-bit machine with 256-color graphics and impressive sound capabilities (and word at the conference was that we’ll see it in the US sometime in mid-’91).
Both Genesis and Turbografix have limitations. Genesis has a speedy 68000 processor with hardware scrolling and sprite animation, but a total palette limited to 512 colors with a somewhat fuzzy video display. Sega promises a CD-ROM drive for the Genesis but it hasn’t shipped yet. On the other hand, close to a million Genesis units have been sold, and there’s a healthy market for new games — the field isn’t as overcrowded as the Nintendo arena. Here’s an example: Electronic Arts has shipped three Genesis games (Budokhan, Populous and Zany Golf) and has been pleased with sales figures to date.
Turbografix doesn’t have a true 16-bit processor; the machine is built around a 65816, but it has a 16-bit graphics co-processor that makes animation fly across the screen at warp speed. Turbografix games have the instant response to user input that you normally expect in stand-up arcade games. The Turbografix also has a cleaner video display than the Genesis, and a CD-ROM player has been on the market for several months. NEC’s product designers should be applauded for the elegance of the Turbografix system. The game cartridges are floppy-thin and come in a CD box, there’s a hand-held version of the machine that uses the same cartridges as the main unit, and you can buy an attachment that turns it into a hand-held TV.
In short, while Genesis had a head start and owns a bigger share of the market, Turbografix is a slick, well-crafted product that could overtake its competitor if there’s enough time before Nintendo Famicom hits the US next year. Then, it’s a whole new ballgame.
The two main competitors in the race to get interactive CD in the hands of consumers also showed their machines at the conference. Commodore and Philips/American Interactive Media displayed working hardware, and the Philips CD-I player looks closer to being finished than Commodore’s CDTV. However, Commodore promises to bring its machine to market first.
In a special luncheon that was closed to the press, Commodore’s Nolan Bushnell told the conference that CDTV would be launched at January CES and begin shipping during the first quarter. Bushnell promised that full nationwide distribution would be achieved by next June, adding the disclaimer “the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise”. As of this date, there are few if any developers with CDTV players and a limited number of applications completed or even nearing completion.
The CDTV resembles a standard CD audio player, and it contains the basic components of an Amiga 500 with a CD-ROM drive. Commodore plans to sell CDTV at a price point under $1000, and some mail-order houses have already run ads offering CDTV for $799 (“depending on availability”).
Philips and AIM have been working on CD-I for several years, and a number of software products have already been completed. Conference attendees were invited to try out a CD-I animated jukebox that lets you play ’60’s oldies while animations are displayed on the screen. AIM also demonstrated a completed Sesame Street game and a paint program for preschoolers. Aware that good software drives hardware sales, Philips is delaying release of CD-I until there is an adequate library of software available to make the machine attractive to consumers. CD-I’s price point is expected to be at or above $1000 upon initial release.
Game Designers and CD-I
A recurring theme at the conference was the widening chasm opening up between the computer game industry and the growing interactive CD industry. At more than one panel, interactive designers expressed disdain for “traditional computer game designs”. One speaker began his talk by proclaiming that the product he was about to demonstrate contained “no wizards, no swords, no dungeons and no hit points”.
Ours is viewed as the “old” industry, and the interactive multimedia folks see themselves as a “new” industry. They aim at avoiding the look and feel of the old medium, and to some degree they try to avoid having their medium associated with ours.
In reality, CD-I, CD-ROM and interactive videodisc products generally use interfaces first invented for a computer game or other computer software product. Regardless of who buys computer games today, mass acceptance by consumers of any new interactive device depends on the public’s existing familiarity with home computers and Nintendo games and the way they work. People are comfortable with Nintendo now. People have used controllers, thumb-pads and menus in our products, and they’re comfortable with the interfaces we’ve designed. Multimedia designers would do well to copy existing interface designs; given a choice, people are always drawn first to things that look familiar.
But that doesn’t change the fact that AIM and Philips seldom hire computer game designers to make CD-I products. Many of the titles being developed for CD-I have been designed by people with little or no experience at making interactive entertainment products. They are talented people, to be sure, but their experience often lies in the record or film industry, and their natural inclination is to look down on the computer game industry.
Even Commodore has gone outside the software industry to find developers for CDTV, and only part of the products are being made by computer game developers.
As new interactive media develop, game designers are going to have to go to them and prove themselves all over again. It’s up to our industry to convince the multimedia folks that they need us, that they need our talent and experience at designing successful interactive products. By the same token, we have to keep up with changes in the design and objectives of interactive media to become more attractive to the new multimedia industry, if we don’t want our medium to be left in the dust.
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An Approach to Plotting for Interactive Fiction
Scott Jarol
The debate drifts along as to how adventure games may reach their full potential as “Interactive Fiction,” and the arguments focus on what game designers appear to view as the principal device of game design, the puzzle.
But the Puzzle may represent the point at which interactive fiction secedes from Adventure Games. If games are ever to become stories, or to at least attain in an indigenous way the sophistication of storytelling, they are going to need plots; and plots are woven not from puzzles but from problems. In fact, a plot is a problem.
Problems vs. Puzzles
The notion of a puzzle itself denotes an encapsulated activity with a definitive outcome. By stringing together dozens of puzzles the author simplifies his work; his story looks big and broad. But, like Hamburger Helper, puzzles are added to bland stories as extenders, as if the value of a story is measured in minutes of play per dollar. This limited approach to posing problems for the Player will never yield anything more than an adventure game, no matter how cleverly foreshadowed the solutions may be.
Puzzles are generally inanimate challenges — locked doors, labyrinthine corridors, broad chasms, guessing games. But a well developed plot is itself the process of solving a problem — not just to pursue an object or objective, but to understand it. In the Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade seeks not only the statue, but also to discover the motives of the unsolicited clients who want him to find it.
A story problem is an elusive goal. Each time the protagonist approaches his target, it slips away or divides like a trapped bubble. The forces that impede his success are the actions of other characters, acts of nature, or his own errors and hesitations. To sustain an interesting problem for the full duration of a game/story requires extensive linkage from event to event.
The problems of a story are structured. Because we experience conventional print and screen stories in sequence, we tend to think of stories as linear successions of events, or graphically as a simple line, rising as the tension builds, peaking at the story’s “climax” and dropping off as the story reaches its conclusion. The puzzle-filled maze of an Adventure game appears to parallel this narrative structure because it leads the Player through a series of trials on the way to a principal goal. But stories are more complex than this. The linearity of a story graph represents the way we experience the story, not necessarily the way in which it takes place. The author selects those events in the story that are the most entertaining, leaving us to fill in the missing details. Stories are collections of snapshots of many interconnected motivations and actions as seen from a particular point of view, or from several points of view. In movies, the crosscut shows us events happening at the same time at diverse locations, such as the attack of the indians and the charge of the cavalry. Many omniscient novels are written in the form of a diary, jumping from one setting to another (look at Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October). Each event contributes to the progress, and eventually the outcome of the plot. In the best stories, few scenes are used to provide background information. A good story snowballs, dragging along the protagonist deeper and deeper into his dilemma.
This is not to say, of course, that the hero does not accomplish any intermediate goals. In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker recovers his lost droid, retrieves the princess from the Death Star, learns the ways of the Force, destroys several Tye Fighters, and finally, as the culmination of all other sub- goals, blows up the Death Star, thus saving the rebellion.
Some of these problems could just as easily be called puzzles. But no points are scored. Luke Skywalker can judge his success only by whether he escapes from each dilemma with useful information and most of his limbs intact. It sometimes isn’t possible to identify the correct solution to a problem until much later in the story, and sometimes problems don’t have solutions, just options. Each escape deposits the protagonist into a new predicament.
To tell good interactive stories you need a fertile imagination. To tell them well, you need to understand first how stories are told, then how the craft of storytelling can be adapted to, and transformed by interactive technology.
What is a Story?
You can’t create an interactive story until you know what a story is and how it works, and the best way to learn that is to study the conventional literature. Interactive fiction need not be constrained to the limitations of the fixed media, but several millennia worth of flops and blockbusters have left us a legacy of obvious pitfalls and useful techniques.
When we analyze the plot of a story, we are asking what the characters do, as opposed to where the story takes place, or what its message, theme, or moral may be. And, in asking what the characters do, we expect some compelling connections between their actions. Each event either leads to or causes another.
An event that just leads to another cannot perform a critical role in the plot. For example, when Luke Skywalker and company escape from one of the Death Star’s trash compactors, that episode is complete. The trash compactor has no further consequence. On the other hand, the overall sequence of which that scene is a part, the rescue of Princess Leia, profoundly affects the outcome of the story by providing the hero with the information he needs to deliver the Death Star plans to the rebels. The rescue and escape sequence performs a critical function in the plot because it antagonizes the antagonist — Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker have entered into a race — and because it leads Vader to the rebel base. The accomplishment of one goal, the rescue of Princess Leia, places the heros in their next predicament.
More than a daisy-chain, the events that constitute a successful plot need a superstructure. The connections between scenes, or between individual actions, will not drive a story to a cathartic conclusion unless they contribute to the big picture. Each of the principal characters pursues his own objectives. Darth Vader’s mission is to crush the rebellion. Leia’s mission is to defeat the empire. Luke Skywalker intends to deliver the Princess and the Death Star plans to the rebel base. Han Solo hopes to evade his creditors and collect a cash reward. When one character’s path crosses another’s, a conflict occurs, the resolution of which affects the outcome of the story. Like the bloodthirsty plant in Little Shop of Horrors, a plot is a problem that sprouts limbs.
Two intertwined processes take place as a story is spun: discovery and confrontation. From the moment the main character recognizes that he has a knot to untie, he begins to pry at the rope. But in the beginning he rarely recognizes the scope of his problem. When Luke Skywalker agrees to accompany Obi-Wan Kenobi, he has no knowledge of the Death Star. As he confronts whatever forces threaten him, he discovers that the opposition is larger than he had anticipated. Each time a revelation occurs, he adjusts his strategy to compensate. Both his character — revealed through his response to adversity — and his dilemma crystallize before our eyes.
In a handy book entitled Playwriting: How to Write for the Theater, Bernard Grebanier, a teacher of theatrical writing, proposes a method with which to analyze and to create dramatic plots. Grebanier’s definition of plot incorporates the symbiotic relationship between plot and character. He summarizes a complete plot as a three part process he calls “The Proposition”:
(1) The condition of the action.
(2) The cause of the action.
(3) The resulting action.
Grebanier illustrates his theory with an analysis of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and this is his capsule summary of what is considered a definitive tragic romance:
(1) Romeo, scion of a family at feud with Juliet’s family, falls in love with Juliet at first sight.
(2) Although their families are at feud, he marries her.
(3) Will he find happiness in his marriage with her?
Grebanier defines each of the three points of the Proposition in terms of the actions of the Main Character:
The condition of the action is the first significant event of the play, the event which holds the root cause of the action. For example..., Romeo falls in love with Juliet at first sight. The cause of the action is the event which follows from the condition of the action, and which raises a question which the rest of the play must answer. For example..., Romeo marries Juliet. The resulting action will answer the question raised by the cause of the action, the question [or “problem”] which is the chief business of the plot. For example, Will Romeo find happiness with Juliet?
The word “action” in the three steps of the Proposition identifies the events that trigger the story. These events all occur within the first “Act.” The “resulting action” is actually the bulk of the play, everything that happens after the main character has committed himself to a serious predicament. The “cause of the action” must never be confused with the “Climax,” which although conspicuously absent from the Proposition, plays a major role in Grebanier’s complete plotting system. The Climax is the action taken by the “Main Character” that determines the outcome of the story.
In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo marries Juliet — that’s the cause of the action. The Climax occurs when Romeo kills Tybalt. This slaying causes Romeo, the Main Character, to become separated from Juliet, the “Second Character.” After Romeo flees into hiding, Juliet decides that the best way to rejoin him is to fake her own death. She sends a warning to Romeo, but he hears of her death before the message arrives and rushes back to Verona to be by her side. You know how it ends.
The events described by parts 1 and 2 of Grebanier’s Proposition share a major constraint: both must be performed by the Main Character and directed toward the “Second Character”:
Romeo falls in love with Juliet.
Romeo marries Juliet.
The Climax must be an action taken by the Main Character and directed toward the “Third Character,” in this case, the unfortunate Tybalt. Furthermore, these three characters are the only ones essential to a dramatic story.
In Romeo and Juliet it may seem arbitrary to say that Romeo marries Juliet rather than the reverse, but this ambiguity is resolved by finding the “common denominator,” or Agent of all the major events. We know that Romeo kills Tybalt, and that this action has a profound effect on the outcome of the story, so there’s a pretty good chance that Romeo is the Main Character. Since it is possible to state the Cause of the Action, “Romeo marries Juliet,” as an assertion by Romeo, then we may guess with some certainty that Romeo is the main character. If our analysis of the plot and our analysis of the character hierarchy correspond then we may assume that they are both correct.
Grebanier claims that every successful drama must cling to a spine as rigid as this one, and in his book he offers numerous examples. The “Proposition”, which he comes as close to proving as any artistic theory can be, is that the foundation of drama is plot and that a well-formed plot necessarily demands and produces strong characterization. While it is too vague to be called a formula, he builds enough rules around this proposition to form an axiomatic system so rigid that it begs defiance.
Next time, in Part 2, we’ll take a look at an entirely different approach to plot analysis and construction, a system designed to aid screenwriters. Then, in Part 3 we’ll begin to examine how these ideas can be used to develop real stories that are truly interactive.
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So You Want to Be A Game Designer
Corey Cole
Nobody Said This Would Be Easy
So you want to be a game designer. You’ve just finished playing a computer game and thought, “Wow, that’s incredible. I wish I could help create games like that.” Or possibly, “What a piece of junk! They’re charging $50 for that? I could do better in my sleep.” In short, you want to design computer games. Well, it isn’t easy, but there are some ways you can improve your chances of breaking in to the computer game industry.
I’m going to start by using my own history to try to show you at least one way in. Then we will talk about the three crucial “break-in tools”, Desire, Contacts, and Timing.
So How Did You Get Here?
I’ve been addicted to playing games most of my life, and a role-playing gamer since college. My first introduction to Dungeons & Dragons™ was a computer version on PLATO, and I’ve been trying to program them almost as long. When personal computers like the Apple ][ and TRS-80 arrived, I thought it would be great to create games for them, but I didn’t think I could do it by myself. For the next eight years, I tried to break into the growing computer game industry, and kept failing through seeming bad luck or timing.
Finally, two years ago I received a call from Carolly Hauksdottir, then doing animation work for King’s Quest IV at Sierra On-Line. Sierra management had decided that they wanted a “Dungeons & Dragons™-like game”, and were looking for “the best tournament-level Dungeonmaster they could find” to write it. Did Lori and I have any interest in trying for the contract?
Carolly’s call came at an interesting time. After three years of work on an independent project targetted at the Atari ST, I had recently come to the frustrating conclusion that the ST market had not grown enough to support it, and that the program would need to be totally rewritten to be a viable IBM PC product. Meanwhile, the San Jose smog and my asthma were slowly killing me, and we had decided that we would have to leave the Bay Area.
So I called Ken Williams at Sierra (after having Carolly talk to him about us). He said that we would have to relocate to the mountains. Well, that part sounded good. Then the tough question, “Why are you the best possible designers for this game?” I told him about my published paper role-playing scenario, our ten years of playing and moderating campaign and tournament games, and our role-playing fanzine. And somewhere in there, I happened to mention that I would be able to work well with the programmers, because I had twelve years of programming experience, and had a number of ideas for ways a really good computer role-playing game could be implemented. Suddenly, the entire tone of the conversation altered. Ken’s voice thawed by about 10 degrees, and he said, “Wait a minute. Carolly never mentioned that you were a programmer. What kind of work have you done?” The upshot was that I went up to Oakhurst to interview for a systems programmer position instead of becoming a game designer. (“You’re clearly qualified to design games, but right now we desperately need someone to translate our game interpreter to the Atari ST. We can talk about the game idea later.”)
Lori stayed behind to sell our San Jose house (burning bridges behind). A few months later we put together a design proposal based on a hybrid of some of the ideas in our files with the type of games Sierra was creating, and Lori got the contract for Hero’s Quest. (So I still wasn’t a game designer, but at least it was in the family!) A year and a half later, with Hero’s Quest 1: So You Want To Be A Hero a success, I am finally officially a co-designer on Hero’s Quest 2: Trial By Fire.
“That’s A Nice Story. Now How Do I Get To Write Games?“
Good question. You probably don’t want to wait ten years for your turn, I certainly hadn’t intended to. Even when my big break came, the opportunity was one of programming instead of designing, and of having the privilege of being paid about half what I had been earning, and less than I had made in eight years or so. But I was doing games, and once I had made it into the industry, I found other opportunities as well.
So the real question to ask yourself is, “How badly do I really want to do this? Is it worth tearing up roots and putting everything on the line to enter this crazy computer game field? Is this something I have to do?” If the answer isn’t a resounding “Yes!” to each question, then you probably won’t make it. You have to both love and hate computer (and other) games. You have to have a driving need to create a great, unique game. Whether you are working directly with a game company or trying to “do it” on your own, there are too many stages at which to become discouraged and quit if you don’t have that degree of motivation. Nor is any existing game company likely to offer you the chance to create a game unless you can convince them that you have that vision and that drive. Virtually all major games now take several man-years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete.
Once you’ve decided that you need to create games, the next step is to convince a publisher that they need you to create it. This takes three things: contacts, a great game concept, and timing.
As with most creative industries, contacts are crucial. Sierra receives over a thousand “cold” game proposals a year, and rejects virtually all of them. If someone the company respects speaks highly of you, or if they know of you from related work (or play), then you at least have a foot in the door. Friendships formed now could pay off tomorrow . . . or ten years from now. If you can’t get a producer or other decision maker to listen to your game proposal, then you can’t sell it to them.
As for the concept, if you don’t have half a dozen truly original and great game ideas struggling to get out, you’d better go back to figuring out what else you want to do for a living. Two standard writers’ answers to “Where do you get your crazy ideas?” are “Anywhere and everywhere.” and “Where do you get such stupid questions?” A great concept and proposal will let the publisher know that you’re capable of coming up with at least one original idea. And the concepts involved may get him/her excited enough to keep talking to you. Don’t worry about a publisher stealing your idea, by the way. There are lots of ideas in the world, but very few people with the talent to bring them to fruition. An ideal game proposal is one which immediately makes it obvious that you are the best possible designer for that game.
Timing is the last crucial element. You want to talk to the publishers when they are actively looking for new games/designers. Your contacts can help here. You also don’t want to present a design that sounds too much like one they’ve just started, or like five other games announced or released that year. You will do better if you can convince them that this will be a hot topic in a year, but that no one else has thought of it yet.
There is some luck involved here. But how much of it really is luck? The real key to timing is recognizing an opportunity when it arrives, and grabbing it before it leaves again. Your chance to break in could start with a call from a friend in the industry, or from a game producer who loves your work in another creative medium. Or it could be simply that you suddenly spot a “trend about to happen” and manage to convince a producer that there is a game in it. (That you opened his eyes is a pretty good indication that you might also be the best person to create a game on the subject. But, frankly, you’ll have much better odds if the producer already knows you.)
So you still want to be a game designer? Breaking in isn’t easy, and it isn’t always fun. But if you really have what it takes to be a designer, and are willing to take the risks, you can make it. And the computer game field needs you. Polish some ideas, make contacts in the field, and when you see the brass ring, grab it!
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Yet Another Definition of Game
Chris Crawford
Over the last several issues of the Journal, we have had articles discussing definitions of the term “game”. These articles mirror a debate that has raged in the JCGD RT on GEnie. Although this article represents my own thoughts on the matter, I am borrowing heavily from ideas first expressed by Dave Walker, Evan Robinson, and other correspondents on GEnie.
“Intertainment” is the class of activities that entertain through their interactive nature. This is the broadest class of activities; for now we recognize two subclasses to this class: interactive stories and playthings.
“Interactive stories” are conventional stories with some small interactive element added. They have a defined storyline through which the user progresses, ultimately reaching a single predefined endstate. The user may meander through different paths in experiencing the story, but the basic direction of motion through the story is unchanged. The solution of puzzles is not the primary intent of the intertainment; the primary entertainment value of the activity lies in the story. Examples of this class are the AmandaStories, Manhole, Cosmic Osmo, and Loom. Earlier examples are the Make Your Own Adventure line of books.
“Playthings” are systems that entertain through their response to the player’s actions. These are systems with defined behaviors established through physical properties, formal rules, or algorithms. The behaviors are entertaining because the player finds them interesting. All members of this class are indulged in through play. There are two subclasses of this class: toys and challenges. The differentiation between the two classes lies in the presence or absence of a defined goal. Note that the presence or absence of such a goal is provided by the player while playing with the plaything. That is, a given plaything can be used by one player as a toy, and later used by another player as a challenge. The distinction arises from the player’s use of the plaything and is not necessarily intrinsic to the plaything.
“Toys” are playthings without defined goals. A player uses a toy in an unstructured fashion, without pursuing an explicit goal. This does not mean that the player’s actions are arbitrary, for the player can still be engaged in exploratory play, determining in some fashion the behavior of the toy. The player’s exploration may indeed follow some exploratory structure, but this structure is not directed towards the satisfaction of any goal other than the determination of the behavior of a system. For example, a child may play with a crawling insect as a toy by attempting to determine the insect’s response to various obstacles that the child places before the insect. The child may follow a methodology of his own devising and still be said to be using the insect as a toy. However, if the child sets himself the goal of confining the insect to a defined region, then the insect is no longer a toy. Examples of software toys are SimCity and SimEarth.
“Challenges” are playthings with clearly defined goals. The player of a challenge seeks to achieve some defined standard of performance. The challenge can take many forms: physical, as in an athletic sport; hand-eye coordination, as in an arcade game; or intellectual, as in chess. There are two subclasses of challenges: puzzles and conflicts, differentiated by the presence or absence of purposeful opponents. A purposeful opponent need not be a human being. It is instead any collection of algorithms that creates an illusion in the mind of the player of a purposeful will seeking to beat the player. This is determined by both the complexity of the algorithms and the perceptiveness of the player. A sufficiently insightful player will perceive the most advanced artificial intelligence to be nothing more than a collection of algorithms to be second-guessed; to such a player, there are no purposeful opponents, only puzzles.
“Puzzles” are challenges with no purposeful opponents. They have a clearly defined goal and a variety of obstacles that the player must overcome to achieve the goal. The obstacles may be active or dynamic, and may even have behavior patterns of their own. However, so long as the player does not attribute to their behavior a purposeful attempt to foil his actions, they are obstacles rather than opponents and the chal-lenge is a puzzle. The majority of entertainment software products are puzzles. Adventures, for example, whether text or graphic, are puzzles. Tetris and its clones are puzzles.
“Conflicts” are challenges with purposeful opponents. There are two subclasses of this class: competitions and games. They are differentiated by the ability of the opponents to impede each other’s performance. If the opponents are constrained from impeding each other and instead devote the bulk of their attentions to maximizing their own performance, then the conflict is a competition. If on the other hand, they are permitted to hurt each other’s performance, then the conflict is a game.
“Competitions” are conflicts without impeding action between the competitors. Examples are races and political campaigns. It is almost always against the rules of a race for the racers to take direct action against each other (tripping, stabbing, mudslinging.)
This leaves games as conflicts in which the players directly interact in such a way as to foil each other’s goals. In other words, if you can shoot back at the other guy, and he shoots at you in a manner that convinces you that he’s out to get you, then it’s a game. Their Finest Hour, Railroad Tycoon, Second Front and Trust & Betrayal are all games.
This can all be summarized with a taxonomic diagram:
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________A Letter From Greg Costikyan
Computer game designers, it appears, are puzzled and intrigued by the notion that network games can involve more than one player. That reaction strikes me as funny.
After all, solitaire games are about as satisfying as solitaire sex. Real games are inherently multi-player.
The best single-player card game is solitaire; red eight on black nine, that kind of thing. But what would you rather play: solitaire, or poker?
And there are versions of solo chess; but no one would mistake them for the real thing.
The whole history of computer gaming has been artificially warped by the single-user nature of home computers. It is no surprise that this paper gamer finds most computer games uninteresting and trivial; by the standards of real games, they are. They pit me against a set of algorithms that, by the standards of real AI, are laughable — and real AI is still pathetic by the standards of human intelligence.
Indeed, in most computer games, the player’s interest is sustained by an exploration of the computer-opponent algorithms. Eventually, one gains a gut understanding of how they work and the appropriate response. At this point, the game ceases to be interesting. Telling the player the algorithms would defeat the purpose of the game; the player could figure out how to win without spending hours gaining that knowledge. If telling a player how a game works renders the game trivial — that, it strikes me, implies that the game was trivial to begin with.
Games, unlike other works of art, are intended to be social affairs; they involve a group of players in non-hostile, friendly competition. The game itself is merely a set of rules to establish an interesting epi-reality through which the players may interact. To the extent that a game becomes more like a traditional artform — static, uninvolving, experienced by individuals and not groups — it becomes less a game.
The real story of computer gaming has only just begun — because only now is a market for multi-player gaming opening up. Everything up to now has just been — masturbation .
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The Self-Publishing Option Part 2
Kathy Crawford
As I think back on the tasks that were required to bring Balance Of The Planet to market, I remember confusion and frustration because there were things I just didn’t know how to do. This article is meant to save some other soul a measure of that frustration.
Let’s start with the box. I am not concerned with the type of box or outer packaging, only the identifying information.
On the front face is the information that identifies the product. I will leave it to the game designers and publishers to discuss titles and attributions. Behind the names is a graphic image. This graphic image can be a photograph, original art, or any combination. As a self-publisher, you get to pick the graphics that will represent the game. Before you pay for your artwork, find out who will own it. If you are licensing a photograph from Ansel Adams, for example, you will not own it and may have to pay extra to use the art (that is, your box cover) in advertising. You must negotiate the ownership of an original painting even by an unknown artist. When we contracted for the BotP painting we assumed we would own the artwork and didn’t discuss the point until later when we made a mention of where we would store it. If the painter had kept it, he could have legally used it again or sold it to someone else as long as we were guaranteed access to make a new transparency for the box art. Negotiate the ownership or license rights upfront.
Keep the size of the image in mind. If you use borders, as LucasFilm does, the artwork should be sized to the frames. Of course, you will need back, side, and border artwork too. If you use a sleeve, the artwork should be sized to full open size of the sleeve. If you use a pop-up box, the artwork should be sized to the full open size of the box with sides, back, tabs, and overlaps included. Think about the size of packaging and the configuration before you commission the artwork.
Most of the rest of the things you need to know concern the SKU label that will start at the front corner and wrap to the back of the box. First is the color of the label. Did you know that the SPA has a color standard for identifying the hardware configuration? It is voluntary and if you look along the shelves in a computer store, you’ll find that most products have labels that coordinate with artwork rather the SPA guidelines. So much for standards.
The part of the SKU label that ends up on the lower left corner of the front of the box will hold the compatibility information. You should be as specific as you can. Some companies even note the configurations that are not supported. The more specific you are, the fewer upset customers you will get. The part of the label that covers the spine of the box should contain a simple, large indicator of the SKU, like "MAC" or "IBM 3.5" to make it easy to identify even when positioned on the shelf like a book.
The part of the label that extends to the back of the box contains the bar code information. The bar code is derived from the UPC (Universal Product Code). You pay $300 to the Uniform Code Council, Inc., 8163 Old Yankee Road, Suite J, Dayton, Ohio, 45458: (513) 435-3870. After about three weeks they will provide you with a formula from which you determine your own UPC. The UPC is mandatory for retail computer inventory tracking.
The other code that may be added here is the ISBN number -- it’s the one in computer block letters (x-xxx-xxxxx-x). I believe this code is used by libraries and book stores as a reference. It costs no money but takes about six weeks. We haven’t seen it used yet. However because of the educational market, we use this coding system-just in case. The address is R. R. Bowker, 245 W. 17th ST, 9th floor, New York, NY, 10011: (212) 337-7094.
As a final note, if you have time, print the most common of your SKU labels directly onto the box and save some money. Just be sure the other SKU labels are big enough to cover the printed one.
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