Game Design Aesthetics: Theme Vs. Mechanics...

This is the first in a series of posts looking at the game design process through the lens of aesthetic appreciation. Now, while I am trying to establish a firm method for understanding why it is the we like games and in particular, what is it about certain games that make them more or less interesting to the individual, it is framed as an analysis of why I like games in particular. So take any opinion in these posts as exactly that. No need to rip me a new one over why I'm wrong and D&D 4E is the greatest game EVAR. I understand that some people feel that way, I just don't and that is the whole point of this series: to help us understand why.

With that said, in Game Design, there are as many different styles of play as there are people, but the proper application of the following oppositions seem to be as near universal as you can get with Game Design Aesthetics. When considering these six areas of aesthetic approach and applying a rating of 1-3 left or right, where the ends of the scale represent the full embodiment of a single aspect and 0 represents a game that is equally representative of both aspects, I believe that it becomes easier to identify the correct audience for a game and market appropriately. 

More importantly, by using these criteria to better understand your personal tastes in gaming, you become a smarter consumer and should have a better idea of what types of games are worth your time and money. Let's start with the first thing that draws the consumer's attention before anything else...

THEME VS. MECHANICS
Some games are about the mechanics of the game and it is the skill at handling those mechanics that determines the ‘fun’ level of the game. Others have thick themes that create enjoyment out of the accurate depiction of that theme in every mechanical aspect of the game.

Monopoly is a game that has remained unchanged for a century. No matter what theme is overlaid on top of it, from college football to Star Wars, the play remains the same and is totally disconnected from the theme. It doesn't matter if you land on Boardwalk or the Death Star, it's still the most valuable property on the board and passing 'Go' still nets you $200 (or whatever the Galactic Imperial version of a dollar is).

The Doctor Who RPG, however, has mechanics built around the genre tropes of that property and it is perfectly suited for gaming Doctor Who, a television property in which brains and know-how always triumph over violence and weaponry. The initiative system favors talkers first, runners second, doers third and fighters dead last, which totally reflects the ethos and realities of Doctor who, but is a poor fit for combat oriented games, even the Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood.

I for one find games that have unique, thematically related mechanics to be much more aesthetically pleasing than generic systems with themes shoehorned into them. I found the overuse of the D20 system for everything from sword & sorcery, to superheroes to superspies, to be a depressing development of the last decade and actively resisted adapting Doctor Who to it when attempting to acquire the license back in 2004. What do you think?

PART 2: MECHANICAL AESTHETICS...

Bloggin is Haaaaaaard...

I'll freely admit that I am really bad about this whole blog posting thing, but what can I say, life is busier and more chaotic than a bag of cats. C'est la vie.

I see the point of a blog as, if nothing else, a 'cloud' diary' for organizing thoughts and keeping track of ideas. I just don't like to waste time pasting half-formed thoughts or ideas, hence long periods of radio silence as I work on things.

Well, 8 months of activity have actually presented a number of interesting things to post about, a lot of it academic (but not snooze-worthy academic, I'm not that kind of guy) and some of it Jabberwocky Productions (now Media) related, but more on the business later. Let's start with an analysis on Game Design Aesthetics...

BoL Gameslate Design Dairy 2: Character Sheet User Interface...

After a week of fiddling with the thing, the design for the Character Sheet section of the Player Suite is complete...

A few changes of note since the last post. First, I've come to the realization that trying to get a free flowing design for both portrait and landscape is a fool's errand with an interface as complex as this one. I spent a great deal of the last week trying to design the sheet in three dimensions: as a graphic design; a UI design; and finally, web design. As a result, something that I can usually knock out in three hours took me probably triple that in actual work hours. It will still be flexible in both formats, I'm just going to have to code two CSS sheets for it and insert some code to detect orientation and switch between the two.

Now a description of the inner workings of the sheet:

THE GAMESLATE MENU

In the upper right corner we have the three icons for changing modes between (in order from left to right) the Player Suite, the GM Suite and the actual BoL Rulebook. The Rulebook, it should be noted, will not be a simple PDF of the Legendary Edition, but a searchable web standards setup, more akin to BoL: the Offline Web Edition. All text, no pictures, just what you need to learn the rules. Also, as it will be in HTML, it will be a simple matter for you to add house rule pages to it, using a special interface found in the GM suite.


THE ATTRIBUTES

Just below the Gameslate Menu, we have our BoL Attribute List. The numbers are editable, of course, and some of them will feed directly into other parts of the sheet. Your Lifeblood maximum, for instance will automatically adjust based on your strength. They will also take adjustments, so selecting the Cerulean Strength Boon will add 1 to your Strength (or remove it when you take the boon away) and it they can also be temporarily boosted by spells, alchemy or items, turning bright orange when the stat is being artificially boosted or lowered.


THE BACKPACK

This box, located underneath the Attributes, will list all of the current gear being carried by the character. Double tapping an item will bring up a quick info box on the item, while pressing the backpack in the bottom right corner will open up the Backpack Editor, which allows you to move things to and from your backpack and create new items.

The Grimoire item is the one exception to the double-tap info rule, in that when you double tap it, it takes you to the Grimoire editor which allows you to create and use spells and alchemy items.

NAME

This box, right beneath the logo and really part of a larger Bio section with everything under it, is a workhorse box for saving, recalling and deleting characters from the database. By pressing the small button to the right of your name, you can do all of those things. Each character is saved under the name you type in the Name area, which can be edited simply by tapping it.

Beneath it, you can choose your heroic background. By tapping the 'Of' you get a selection of backgrounds from BoL to choose from. Together with the name you get something like 'Thongor of Valgard' or Balthazar of Cerulea' or the like, and this also determines what boons and flaws you get to choose from.

As with most of the other options, we will include a database editor to allow you to add or modify these options as needed.

CAREERS

This box is really a display box, and tapping it take you to a small editor that allows you to add, subtract, or modify careers, even making up completely new ones if you like. You can also change the background picture to that of another class (all the ones in the book will be included). Again, for those who wish to, you will also be able to add pics of your own using the GM Data Editor.

BOONS & FLAWS

Right under your Careers are your Boons (in red) & Flaws (in red brown). Double tapping the box brings up an editor that allows you to add or subtract them.

Because of the wide variety of boons and flaws, the only ones that will actually do anything will be those that add to attributes. Those that add bonus or penalty dice, or have other, more roleplay oriented effects will rely on the players and GM to implement them (as when using the Die Roller).

LANGUAGES

As with Boons & Flaws above, except that it is strictly a list and has no other effects outside of RP.



STATUS SECTION

The furthermost third of the screen is dedicated to the most active variables in the game. It contains:

The Die Roller Button
By clicking the double dice, the die roller comes up (more on that later).

The Arcane Point Indicator

The moon shows, graphically how many AP you have left, as do the numbers below it. Tapping the moon reduced the number by 1, while tapping the sun increases it by one.

Lifeblood Indicator

The character silhouette represents how many LB you have left graphically, as the number do to the right of it. Tapping the silhouette reduces the total by 1, while tapping the cross adds one.

Hero Point Indicator

the number represents the remaining HP total. Tapping the triskele brings up a selection box which give you a selection of options for Hero Point use, which reduces your Hero Point amount, and to add Hero Points back.

Weapon Select

Tapping the box give you a drop down populated by your available weapons, selection of which determines damage in the Die roller. the small axe to the left can also be pressed to generate a random damage number for instances when you don't need to roll to hit to do damage.

Armour Select

Tapping the box give you a drop down populated by your available armours.  The small shield to the right is tapped to generate your damage reduction based on the armour you are wearing.

THE DIE ROLLER INTERFACE

This box pops up whenever you use the dice. Difficulty is set using a drop down and then the player selects whatever Attribute, Combat Attribute and Career they will use in the roll in the same way, the numbers being drawn from those on the main character sheet. And yes, you could use all three, even if the game, as written only allows the use of two. This is to allow room for GM fiat.

You also select the number of Bonus and Penalty dice you will be using. Again, you can select as many as the GM desires for flexibility reasons, although you will normally only pick one.

The results section shows you your original roll, the bonus and/or penalty dice rolled and then figures out the final two dice to take. the result is added to the totals of the Attributes selected above, compared to the difficulty and then a result generated from Catastrophic Failure, Failure, Success and Mighty Success. By pressing the Hero Point button to the right, you can reroll the dice on a failure, turn a success into a Mighty Success or turn a Mighty Success into a Legendary Success.

NEXT...

The completed character sheet UI is a few days late, but the next one, the Backpack Editor, should go quicker and be ready by Friday. Let me know what you think about the format, in the meantime...

Maps as Audiovisual Representations of Data (Part 1)...

I've been asked by Professor Frank Dufour to start pondering the nature of maps as a means of representing data. This data need not represent actual physical space, and, indeed, the very exercise of 'mapping' something has long since evolved from the abstract representation of spacial placement and distances to include everything from work flows to social networks to vin diagrams. The one thing all maps have in common, however, is our need to take data, no matter how abstract or unrelated to spatial location, and place it in a logical, consistent physical order that we can navigate as easily as a person navigates a city using a traditional geographical map.

This is a potentially huge topic and one that will not be answered simply or completely on a blog. The goal is to gather material for a series of lectures for my class and basically see where it takes us.

The first thing I'd like to do is explore map types and try to establish a common frame of reference for discussing them. After that, I'm just going to let the Train of Thought roll along at a leisurely pace, occasionally changing tracks as new ideas present themselves (either from my own rumination or your comments) until the whole thing is derailed by the Cow of Disruptive Thought.

From a top down perspective, there are three general data types, which leads to the following map types...

SPATIAL MAPS
The oldest and most basic type of map, a spatial map translates physical location data into a visual reference to allow you to physically go from point A to point B. The most interesting point about spatial maps is the fact that they do not have to be pin-point accurate to get you where you want to go. The first maps were rough approximations, at best, and even some modern maps (like a map of a carnival or fairground) are less interested in spatial distances than they are spatial relationships. A map of the Six Flags Amusement Park, for instance is not drawn to actual scale, but it clearly lays out that the Superman ride is after the Shockwave ride and before the Titan. And all of these rides are laid out on the map as huge drawings on a tiny area that, if they actually existed in that ratio, could be seen over the curve of the horizon.
 
TEMPORAL MAPS

A temporal map defines not physical space, but temporal progression, in that if event A happens, you can expect event B to happen. A sheet of music, for example, shows the progression over time as does a storyboard or workflow. Events A and B can take place anywhere, and need not have any spatial relationship to each other. Shot 1 on a storyboard might be followed by Shot 2 in a film, but they might have been recorded half a world apart, for instance.

RELATIONAL MAPS
In a relational map, we are looking for abstract ties between data points, how they relate to each other. Data Point A and Data Point B may not exist in the same physical relationship, in other words, you can't find B just by knowing the location of A. They may not even exist in the same temporal location. Data Point A might only apply in the 1800's while Data Point B applies to today. They simply have a variety of non-causal similarities that allow them to be mapped relative to each other. For example, Human Male 1 in Texas has never met Human Male 2 in China, but they can be mapped together because they are both Human Males. Vin diagrams are excellent examples of relational maps.

MIXED MAPS
The combination of the three types above can lead to a wide variety of mapped data representation. In gaming, for instance, we adventure maps that not only represent a spatial layout of a dungeon, castle, spaceship, etc., but also have a meta-function as temporal maps, arranging hallways and rooms in a manner that ensures the players will complete the dungeon in a way that builds up the excitement slowly and keeps the challenge level steady even as it allows them room to explore. You never fight the big boss monster in the first room, for example, but only after traversing the whole dungeon and facing a succession of increasingly more challenging monsters.

Another example would be the board game 'Black Death' which represents an abstract spatial map of the lines of disease communicability in medieval Europe, but also a relational map, where certain squares (marked with a + or - and a number) are more or less likely to spread the disease based upon the virtue of their being slums or hard to traverse terrain. It is also a temporal map, as the movement of disease using its virility rating doesn't represent the disease literally walking across Europe, but slowly being passed, over time, from person to person in one area and then breaking out in another, nearby area. The loss of a disease chit from the board through its Lethality also reflects the temporal nature of the disease running its course and killing off the population.

Yet a third example would be a farmer in a rural area giving directions by using not only spatial references ('turn left at the farmhouse') but also relational ('that was completely flattened by a meteor') and temporal ('in 2001').

THAT'S A START...
Now that we have a set of definitions, I think there are a few questions that raise their heads, the first and most important being, why do humans feel a need to spatially map abstract data? I'll look into those and anything else that comes down the tracks as the series continues...

BoL Gameslate Design Dairy 1...

This will be the first in a series of design diaries highlighting the march of progress of a Gameslate from concept to finished app (for those who have no idea what this is, you can check out the first stirrings of the prototype project here). I'm doing this partially to record my thought process for future reference but also to show the usefulness of standards based design in the creation of system agnostic apps and, finally, to show how the table top RPG can take advantage of the digital age beyond very basic dice rollers and PDFs.

Barbarians of Lemuria will be my first system agnostic Gameslate project and I am currently in the process of working out the visual design and UI elements. To get an idea of the look and feel I'm going for, here is a pic of the visual design in progress...

Now some of you might be looking at this pic and thinking 'what screen is that thing formatted for?' and the answer is 'none of them and all of them.' What you're looking at is a theoretical layout on which I will place the UI elements and try to get a coherent look and feel.

To make a truly system agnostic layout, I am using a number of elements. The first is a background image that is built to fit a screen up to 10.5" long at 300dpi (Retina Level, i.e. as detailed as a human can pick out). That bit of bloody parchment is it. There will be no need for tiling, it is one size fits all for pretty much any screen coming out in the near future.

The next bit are the midground design elements. They will be layed out in the typical HTML5/CSS manner, but with relative, rather than absolute positioning. So the title will always float about 3% from the left and the top while the snake knots will float at around -1% or 101% (depending on their corner) from the left and 100% and 0% from the top (these numbers are all just estimates right now, but you get the idea). This allows the page to work in both landscape and format depending on tablet orientation.

Finally, the yet to be added foreground UI elements will be layed out in a manner similar to the midground design elements. Again, this allows the character sheet to flow naturally if you tilt the tablet. It will take some tweaking to make sure the priority of flow is maintained, but it shouldn't be too difficult and will hopefully negate the need for a mess of alternate layouts and the code to implement them.

I'll probably tweak the title a bit to make it stand out more, but I'm fairly happy with it. On to the UI elements...

Back in the Saddle...

I haven't felt a need to blog since the class I started it for ended a year ago, but now seems like a good time to start again. This time, however, I'll be more liberal with my subject material, covering my school work, politics and gaming much more freely than I would on Facebook.


For my next post: a discussion of 'Listening' a book on audio perceptual theory. And maybe a bit on the problems of designing RPGs for mobile devices...

Protecting The Net From Itself...

The internet is its own worst enemy, according to Jonathan Zittrain (see what I just did there), and I tend to agree with him for the most part. The openness and anonymity of interaction on the net does lead to a great deal of innovation, but at the same time, it also allows for a wide variety of collectivist thought (endless repeated memes and 'remixing'), anti-social behavior (griefing, trolling, flaming, vandalism, spamming) and outright crime (malware, spyware, botnets, etc.).

As a result, many are turning towards 'Tethered Appliances,' technology that is easy to use, all but impossible to tinker with and directly controlled by an external vendor, for their digital content. The appeal is obvious: all the consumer has to do is press and click and they leave all the technical problems to the licensing company to figure out. The downside is not as obvious: the inability of users to modify or enhance the content leads to innovative stagnation.

In Zittrain's estimation, the internet and all its potential for disruptive innovation is doomed to becoming largely irrelevant in the face of tethered appliances in the near future unless something is done to make users feel more secure in their online experiences. He does not see overt regulation as the answer to this, but he does believe that a few systematic changes might help to curb the tide of 'bad code' without overly restricting the generative nature of the net. Those ideas that strongly resonated with my own, in particular where my upcoming research paper was concerned, are detailed below.

ISPs AS GATEKEEPERS

One of the main problems he identifies is the end-to-end nature of content dissemination and the difficulty of monitoring and filtering it. As ISPs act more like super-highways rather than gateways, any information, good or bad, can get to any source and the onus for filtering out bad material is left to the end user, who is usually ill-prepared to do so. A temporary solution for Zittrain, until more effective end-to end solutions can be found, is to get the ISPs to actively filter out malicious content. To act as 'Gatekeepers.' This, of course, makes total sense as the ISP only real consistent choke point in the whole system. If an algorithm could be designed to detect malicious code or the activity of zombies and bot-nets, the internet would become a great deal more secure.

Unfortunately, the ISP providers do not want to engage in this sort of activity for ethical and commercial reasons. It is expensive and time consuming to try and filter out good information from bad, and would require the providers to interact directly with the millions of net users on a regular basis to correct cases of misidentified content. Governments can take control of ISPs, but this leads to a less desirable environment for generative purposes, especially in authoritarian environments, like China, where information is heavily filtered and monitored to protect the government, encouraging users to bypass those particular ISPs in any way possible, taking their business off-road, so to speak, defeating the purpose of the ISP as Gatekeeper.

THE DUAL-BRAINED COMPUTER

Now, this idea had occured to me early on as I read Zittrain's book The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It, so I was pleasantly surprised when I came upon his version of it in the solutions section of the book.

Basically, you split your computer into two parts: the frontal lobe that takes in information and is easily 'reset' and the rest of it, which stores your important information and permanent programs. Most knowledgeable users  already do something similar to this through the act of partitioning drives or storing permanent data in external sources. The difference in this case is that your whole computer is separated from its 'desktop' by a tightly controlled gatekeeper. A sort of 'personal ISP' that controls throughput.

You can think of your PC as the castle, with a gate and a moat, and the desktop as the village outside the castle which provides sustenance for the castle's inhabitants. All sorts of things can happen in the village. A spy can enter the village via a trade caravan, for instance, but as long as the gatekeepers check all the goods coming into the castle, he'll never know what goes on behind those walls. The spy can even foment rebellion and get the villagers to turn on you, but as long as you have all your systems of governance inside the walls, you can fight off the rebellion and then sally out to 'reset' the village by clearing out the rabble-rousers (or in the PCs case, the whole village) and starting again.

This whole concept does tend to move internet usage towards the 'tethered appliance' concept, with the internet being a separate appliance from the main computer, but the difference is that the user is the one that decides what is and isn't permissible content and when to reset. The main advantage is that the arduous process of reloading settings and programs becomes a thing of the past as only ephemeral data related to web browsing has to be reset.

The only problem is, again, the technical ability of the user to reinforce their gate properly so that the gatekeeper to distinguish between good and bad code. And then there is still end-to-end contact with every other user on the net, and the most malicious of these may well send an 'army' of bad packets to 'besiege' your gate and overwhelm it. In other words, your castle walls are only so strong as the force defending them.

THE ROTATING SUB-NETWORK PROTOCOL

Ok, this is my own idea, based on the concepts illustrated in Zittrain's book, as well as a few other readings from earlier in the semester concerning network.

The problem with most networks, as pointed out above, is that they are too damned big, diverse and distributed. The only active bottleneck in the system occurs when you build a gate at your end-point, but that gate is often easily overrun or fooled into letting in malicious code.

The solution for these problems comes in two parts. The first is to institute Zittrain's 'Gated Community Network' concept, in which a smaller net of concentrated interest is created (like 'Trekkie-net' or 'Puritan-net.'). Each member of this exclusive community actively participates in it, access outside of the community is not end-to-end, but only allowed through a special ISP like 'gatekeeper.'

The second part is this gatekeeper, but not just a single gatekeeper, but a trio (or more) of gatekeepers who act to validate each other. Basically, one of these nodes acts as out dual-brained computer desktop mentioned above. After any activity is completed within that node, the information filters through a second node to assess long term harm, and eventually into permanent storage. In case of corruption,  the third node can 'reset' the affected node(s) using its base code.

These sub-networks are not mandatory, but are a way for like-minded individuals to gather together and use the principle of motivated self-interest to keep the environment stable, in much the same way the users of Wikipedia 'overwhelm' bad edits. This 'Social' reinforcement is complemented by 'Code' reinforcement in the form of the Gatekeepers, which can be set to heavily reinforce protocol (like 'don't allow pornography' on Puritan-net or 'No Next Generation Content' on Old School Trekkie-net).

I'll be thinking more about this concept and trying to develop it for my research paper, but at first glance, this might be a good method of creating protocol first networks that are resistant to external corruption...