Tiny Subversions

In my previous post about the false dichotomy of hardcore vs. casual gamers, I made some sweeping claim that there are plenty of "causal" gamers who play their games many more hours per week than I (a "hardcore" gamer) do.

Well, Macrovision Corporation conducted a survey of 789 players of "casual" games. Many of them play for long (2+ hour) sessions, many times a week. Fancy that. You can read more about it on Gamasutra's report.

While all of Tom Sloper's articles on breaking in to the game industry are great, I feel like I should point out Lesson #49: Is It Enough?

In case you're too lazy to read it, the heart of the matter is that there is no magic bullet that will get you into the game industry. Not networking, not passion, not a degree, not a demo. It takes time and persistence as much as anything else.

So, yesterday I attended a gaming night. It was about a dozen people, only three of whom I knew pretty well. The rest were friends-of-friends. Everyone was a hardcore gamer geek.

At one point in the night, one of the guests started complaining about her coworkers.

"Oh, my coworkers are all so stupid. They talk about the Red Sox all the time, and they're constantly gambling! If there isn't a sports event for them to bet on, they'll make something up and bet on that instead."

I hate this kind of attitude, and I hear it all the time from gamers. Let me get this straight. You think your coworkers are dumb for two reasons.

Talking About Sports

First, like many people in Massachusetts, they talk all the time about the Red Sox, a Major League baseball team. You disapprove of their behavior because they talk about a game all the time. Waaaaaiiiit just a minute. You, Joe Q. Gamer, talk about games all the time, too!

But wait! Some of you gamers might claim that it's different, because they don't play a Red Sox game, they watch a Red Sox game. They're talking about a game they aren't even playing, whereas gamers discuss games that they actually interact with. Fair enough--except for one thing. Gamers will talk about games that aren't even released yet, at length. We haven't actually played these games. We are mere spectators to their development. I reject the notion that talking about a spectator sport is dumber than the kind of banter you commonly see between gamers.

Prejudice Against Gambling

Then we come to the second argument: the disapproval of gambling. Gambling is just another form of play. Allow me to bust out some words from the play scholar Brian Sutton-Smith, from his excellent book The Ambiguity of Play. He breaks up play into seven rhetorics (forms of expression, you could say), one of which is play as fate.

The rhetoric of play as fate [...] is usually applied to gambling and games of chance[.] It is probably the oldest of all the rhetorics, resting as it does on the belief that human lives and play are controlled by destiny, by the gods, by atoms or neurons, or by luck, but very little by ourselves [...] It contrasts most strongly also with those modern theories of leisure that argue that the distinguishing feature of play is that it is an exercise of free choice.

Gambling is often disparaged as a primitive form of play, particularly by the modern gamer. Building off of Sutton-Smith's words, I would argue that it is old, and that it is essential.

Some gamers disparage gamblers as wasting their money. I see this as flawed in several ways. Gamblers surrender their money to fate: that is their chosen form of play. Gamers surrender their money to other forms of play. Gamers might claim that they're getting more for their money, that the person throwing $50 into a World Cup pool at work is an idiot. Yet video games require quite a time investment.

Let do some math.

Jane spends $50 a week on a new video game, and spends 12 hours each week completing that new game. And let's say she has tons of fun playing each game--I'll make up a unit of fun, just to make the math easier: she experiences 1000 Kosters per hour of fun. I will ignore extra costs, like Xbox Live subscriptions or cheese snacks.

Joe spends $50 a week betting on a sports event, and spends 3 hours each week watching that sports event. And let's say (for the sake of argument) that he has just as much fun as Jane does, clocking in at 1000 Kosters per hour. I will ignore extra costs, like beer or cheese snacks.

Jane, in 1 week: $50 / (12 hr * 1000 Koster/hr) = $0.004 per Koster.
Joe, in 1 week: $50 / (3 hr * 1000 Koster/hr) = $0.016 per Koster.

It may seem as though Jane wins. She experienced 4 times as many Kosters as Joe, and paid less money per Koster. Except for one thing: Joe now has 9 hours of his week free. To like, go outside and ride a bike. Or whatever.

I'm not saying that Joe wins in this case. I'm saying that neither party is dumb. It all depends on what your personal needs are. If you can't allot 12 hours a week to gaming, then maybe betting on a baseball game gives you a decent return on your investment, in terms of fun.

A great gamer can play decently well in any FPS, RTS, tabletop RPG, CRPG, MMO, wargame, and so on. In other words, a really dedicated gamer is someone who is literate in many forms of play. So, gamer geeks, if you wish to be true to yourselves, you should embrace gambling as just another form of what you love most: play.

(I also want to make clear that I'm not defending gamblers with an addiction, who spend thousands of dollars a week, or more, on their habit. That sucks, and people like that need help from some place like the National Council on Problem Gambling.)

Sports Fans and Gamer Geeks

While I'm on this subject, I want to point out that sports fans and gamer geeks aren't that different. To me, there is very little difference between a girl who knows the batting average of every player on the New York Mets and a guy who knows the spell resistance of every Kobold in D&D. Sports fans and gamer geeks like to talk about games incessantly. Gamer geeks enjoy playing their games, but many also love to watch others play (rhythm games and fighting games come to mind). And many hardcore sports fans seek out ways to "play along" with their beloved teams: some gamble, while others participate in the INCREDIBLY geeky pastime of fantasy leagues.

You're not that different! Stop disparaging one another!!

After trying other business models, it seems my pal Charlie Cleveland (of Natural Selection fame) is now funding his game company via the bootstrapping model. This is where you do a very small game and try to pull a modest profit out of it. Then you do another one. In fact, you're typically doing projects that just barely keep your company afloat for the first year or so the company exists, until you build up a big enough portfolio that you can pitch something medium-sized, gradually working your way up to a AAA title of your own. It worked for Demiurge, is currently working for Dragonfly Game Design, and it seems from these cases that you're typically looking at two to four years to hit your stride, in terms of stepping up to big contracts. Hopefully it'll work for Charlie's company, Unknown Worlds.

Charlie's written a detailed post about his move to the new business model. More importantly, you should check out Zen of Sudoku if you want to support an awesome guy do great things. Tell your casual gaming friends and coworkers!

So one of the main points in Getting Real is that traditional companies that sell packaged software applications need to keep updating the application every year so they can keep selling you more boxes of software. But with subscription webapps, "you just need to provide a valuable ongoing service." This is a main reason for 37Signals' belief that webapps don't need to pile on more features all the time.

But that's not true for video games companies, even when we're based on the subscription model, as in the case of MMOs. MMOs need to sustain player interest, where as a webapp just needs to continue functioning well. If World of Warcraft never added new content and features, people would consume most of the content, enjoy some PvP, and then get bored and move on.

However, I like the idea of avoiding bloat in your product. How's this for a thought experiment: what if we're adding new zones to an MMO, and for every zone that's added, we take away an old one? Hell, we could release a schedule players: "Hey, the Pyramid of Fleeble is being demolished in 10 days to make room for the Strip Mall of Doom." The game stays tight, the code/content base stays small, and we give players a reason to enjoy a wide variety of the areas in our game: what's here today could be gone tomorrow.

While this flies in the face of the idea that players want gigantic, ever-expanding worlds, it touches on something that Craig wrote in an article called Circles in the Sand:

I'm saying that, in order for a game to be truely dramatic, death has to be so fatal that you avoid it. Death has to be something you only risk for the most important reasons.

While I'm not talking about death here, I am talking about incorporating the fleeting nature of the material into your game design. And that hits a place that's emotionally pretty damn close to death.

I've strayed off of what I wanted to talk about, which was how applicable the techniques in Getting Real are to game development. But trust me, as I continue to read the book (I'm 60% done by now), I will update more.

I didn't know until just now that Brian Eno is contributing to the audio for Spore. That is pretty awesome.

I've enabled non-Blogger users to comment on this blog. Originally, I limited it to registered users because I thought it would reduce blog spam. But since the advent of Blogger word verification, it's been sort of redundant.

(So you're free to comment now, Jeff.)

Yesterday's post, and Jeff's response to it, have led me to do some more thinking about replayability in games.

Jeff says that to demand that all games be highly replayable is "ludicrous." Specifically, he writes that

an interactive work should be able to be appreciated the first time, as if it is the only time it will be played. The fun should come from (either implied or actual) agency in the work, not from the exploration of multiple branches during multiple times through.

I think that there are some games out there that are meant to be addictive and played a million times. And there are some games out there meant to be consumed once, like a novel. I'm very tempted to draw this as a disctinction between ludic and narrative games (the novel metaphor is kind of asking for it), but I'm not 100% willing to jump to that conclusion just yet.

The entire casual games industry is built on the assumption that games should be replayable. Maybe this is because we perceive that casual games must be short in length, and if we give people a five minute game, we have to justify selling it for $10 by providing lots of replayability. But the MMO industry is also built on the assumption of replayability. Most MMO companies rely on revenue from subscriptions or from advertising in order to survive, so replayability translates into sustained attention to the game, which in turn translates directly into profit.

On the other hand, most traditional games are perceived as one-offs that need to sell well in the short term or be doomed to financial ruin. Well... mastery games are an exception. Street Fighter 2 and Soul Calibur are fighting games, but they're mastery games at their core. Same with Amplitude (my favorite mastery game) and other rhythm games. These aren't considered casual games, and they're not usually online games, but they share the same replayability characteristics.

Which reminds me. I was just thinking about how most RPGs definitely fall into the one-off category. But not Chrono Trigger, which was meant to played down different paths, getting different endings. Now, it's not like the gameplay changes every time. Sure, you can experiment with different characters, but it's not like System Shock 2 where you're practically playing a different game depending on which of the three classes you choose. Chrono Trigger is like a choose-your-own-adventure game in that respect. Except for one thing: New Game+ mode. For those of you poor souls who haven't played Chrono Trigger (and I hate Japanese RPGs, so this is a huge endorsement from me), New Game+ was made available after you beat the game for the first time. You're given the option of starting from the beginning, but with the stats at which you ended the last game!!

This does a few things. It completely changes the way the game feels and plays, for obvious reasons. It means that collecting that impossible rare item is actually possible now. It means that min/max players can conceivably tweak their characters to perfection. And it allows you to explore new narrative branches of the game without being overly burdened. In other words, it opens up the game for exploration, and transforms it from a game with little replay value to a game with tons of replay value.

This is something that I think traditional one-off games should do more often. When the player beats the game for the first time (or beats it on hard mode or whatever), let them mess around. Unlock a bunch of cheat codes. Transform the game from a linear narrative to a playground, even if it totally breaks your game. Who cares if it's broken, if it's the difference between the player enjoying your game more or putting it on the shelf forever?

I've been reading Getting Real, a book about building web applications in the agile fashion that the guys at 37 Signals have done for Basecamp, Backpack, and other great apps. But while reading, I couldn't help but come up with one central difference between building a video game and building a web app.

Web apps are permanent, games are ephemeral.

I play a game. I beat it. I'm done, and I'll probably never play that game ever again, unless it's my favorite game in the universe, or it has infinite replayability.

But I don't ever finish using Gmail. It's a utility, something that I use every day of my life, and will probably continue to use for a very long time.

Getting Real works for webapps, because it's about delivering a limited feature set, launching early, fixing bugs as you go, and adding or subtracting features as users demand them. Which is kind of useless if a lot of your players have already finished your game by the time the first major update comes around.

Now, the difference I outlined does have some exceptions. Some games aren't ephemeral. Online games are pretty permanent. Except they're still different from webapps. The reason is that most online games are less fun if there are less people playing. Meanwhile, Backpack does not become much less useful if there are less people using it.

The feedback loops are different. I launch a webapp called WidgetFoo, and it has 1,000 users at launch because it doesn't have all the shiny features people think they want. The application is pretty damn good at what it does, but it only does one thing. The users want another feature. I add that feature, but by the time it's added... oops! There's only 500 users. But these users tell their friends, about the cool new UI, and now we're back up to 1,000 users with a better product and more word of mouth. The app will grow.

Meanwhile, I launch an online game called WidgetGame, and it has 1,000 users at launch because it doesn't have all the shiny features people think they want. The core gameplay is there, and it's good, but the users want more features. I add that feature, but by the time it's added... oops! There's only 500 players. And now they're pretty pissed off because they lost half of the people they liked to play with. Which means the game is less fun, and more players will leave. It's a positive feedback loop of doom.

Not sure where I'm going with this. I just wanted to point out a key difference. I'm still thinking of ways to use Getting Real in game development.

So a while ago I wrote a post on gamer taxonomy, specifically talking about how the words "casual" and "hardcore" don't actually describe anything worthwhile. First, I want to address some reader comments, and then if I'm feeling to the task, I'll write some more of my thoughts on the issue.

Troy's Comment

Troy Goodfellow of Portico (a great blog covering strategy games and the process of reviewing games) wrote:

I think there are levels of "casualness". I have a good friend who I would consider a casual gamer since he is always asking me for advice on what games to buy and he usually wants something similar to something he already plays. "Is there anything out there like Pirates?" "When is the next Total War game coming out?"

Which is super-interesting, because a game like Total War is what a lot of people would call hardcore. And yet by Troy's definition, this guy is casual because he's only interesting a small slice of the gaming pie out there. Troy also had a good point that I hadn't thought of: one way that a person can be perceived as more hardcore is if they follow the gaming press.

Darren's Comment

Darren Torpey of The Designer's Scroll (his not-updated-often-enough gaming blog) wrote:

How do you describe a gamer who buys more than a dozen games a year and never beats any of them? I play games largely for the novelty of the experience (as Craig so aptly pointed out a while ago). I'm extraordinarily games-literate, I really get into the games I play, and I consider games to be a deep part of my entertainment time in my life. Together, I'd say that's what makes me "hardcore". I just hate the implication that hardcore means you have to master everything you play and turn games into a pathetic, juvenile pissing contest.

Ahh, mastery. James Paul Gee has written (in What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy) some great things about games as mastery systems.

Tying it All Together

So between what I wrote and what my readers wrote, we find certain attributes that may describe a gamer who is... I actually don't know what we're describing. Some would say a hardcore gamer. Some would say a literate gamer. I'm sure there's a better term.

• Mastery level: how much you seek to dominate a game system.
  
• Heavy time commitment: simple hours per week spent gaming.
  
• Variety of gaming interest: do you only play World of Warcraft and nothing else, or do you have gaming wanderlust, always seeking new experiences?
  
• Interest in gaming current events: do you read gaming blogs, magazines, etc?
  
• Giving back to the community: do you contribute to the gaming community somehow?

I added that last bullet point just now because I think that propels you into a new level of involvement with video games. Do you run a fan page? Have you contributed to a community project like GameFAQs or MobyGames? Are you active on a forum? Maybe you've made a mod or two?

Anyway, I think what I'm trying to describe here is someone for whom gaming is a primary interest. Wish I had a word for it. But I think that if anyone has maybe three of the five bullet points I listed, they fit into this nebulous category.

Questions for Readers

Do you have any more bullet points to add?

Do you have a name for what I'm trying to describe?

Oh, Chris Crawford. You are pretty much the person who convinced me that games are a worthwhile medium to work with. You taught me that a design vocabulary for games is possible. You were my #1 inspiration in the first few years I spent breaking in to the game industry.

And then you go and say shit like this:

I was appalled, for example, at the recent GDC. I looked over the games at the Independent Games Festival and they all looked completely derivative to me. Just copies of the same ideas being recycled. I didn't see anything I’d call innovative, and this was from people not even interested in doing anything…in making money. It was just straight amateurs trying to be innovative and even they couldn't be innovative.

Did you even play Braid? No, you probably just looked at it and said, "Oh, a platformer with time control. Bah." You missed out.

Labels: gdc

So I was having a discussion with Ian Schreiber a few weeks ago, about how the terms "casual gamer" and "hardcore gamer" don't actually describe people in a very accurate way. For instance, while most people would consider me more on the hardcore side of the spectrum, I know people who play Windows Solitaire like 60 hours per week. Meanwhile, I'm playing Galactic Civilizations II for like one hour, if that. Who's more hardcore? I'm playing the hardcore game, but the solitaire person is clearly a more hardcore player.

It seems to me that the terms "casual" and "hardcore" are really describing different levels of gaming literacy. The 60 hr/wk solitaire player is casual because he or she would have no idea what to do if you sat them down in front of an Xbox with Halo, or a PC with SimCity, or even an 8-bit Nintendo running Super Mario Bros. On the other hand, you can give me, the hardcore player, five minutes with pretty much any game and I'll have a decent idea of what I'm supposed to be doing, and how I should go about doing it.

I was going to write more, but that's about all I have to say. For now.