Death Penalties (in games)

I strongly dislike the death penalty in Hellgate london. Why? Because it encourages you to stop playing.
Dying in Hellgate: London gives you an XP penalty for 5 minutes. Because it is timed, going afk for 5 minutes is encouraged. I much prefer the penalty of City of Heroes, where instead you just accrue XP debt, effectively cutting XP gain in half for a set amount of XP. Though, in a game where enemy level is often dictated by character level, it ends up not being much of a penalty at all.

P.S. It has been way too long since my last post. I need to come up with something I can make more regular posts about.

Notes: God Hand

Some things I learned from God Hand.
1) Style matters. Music matters. Make them good.
2) Ramping difficulty: The way God Hand gets more difficult the better you do seems to work very well. It encourages doing well and not getting hit, while at the same time, not letting difficulty drop too low when you aren't doing well. It ensures you'll constantly be challenged. (note: it is important to include a reward with higher difficulties to encourage people to want to get it high.)
3) The skills all have subtle differences that aren't obvious at first. Number crunching isn't going to really help any. Intuition, experience, and experimentation are key. I think that's important.

EVE's council

http://www.warcry.com/articles/view/previews/2606-EVE-Online-The-War-on-the-Impossible-Part-2-Democracy
Sounds like it's an elected council of advisors. They have no actual power beyond the ability to speak, and the implication that they will be heard.

God Hand

Fist of Gold
Swinging high
Sending enemies
To the sky

http://www.capcom.com/godhand/
It appears the official page died, guess I'll just have to settle for the wiki entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Hand

I love this game. Bloody hard though.

Random Writings

Time to try,
Making rules for a game.
'tis a shooter I want.
Chaos aplenty.
Yet, control needs to be,
for the puzzle I seek.

Tricky weapons.
One shot kills.
Chain reactions.
Puzzle, not skills.

The right manuver,
the right place.
A single shot,
fired in their face.

I want a shooter,
with a fight.
All the enemies,
line up just right.

A single shot,
A single space,
Sending fire,
All over the place.

Different weapons,
different means.
Different people,
different teams.

Tonight I try,
to make this out.
A sense of chaos,
all planned out.

Links

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_32/200-Infinite-Princesses
I like this article.
There can be more to gaming, than just the player and the game.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_96/537-Vision-Doesn-t-Sell-Copies.2
Reminds me of an observation I heard once regarding movies. The ones that get great reviews are rarely blockbusters, and the blockbusters rarely get good reviews.

Mechanism Design

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9880

Trying to create a system of rules that won't have unwanted side effects is bloody hard.

One of Bioshock's charms.

I think one of the important "little things" the game got right, was having a character who could experience Rapture as a new and strange place, just like the player does. Having the player and character share the same experiences, is important to immersion. Note: Avoid amnesia. Unless the player has amnesia, they won't be able to relate.

Link time...

http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/lawsindex.shtml
A bunch of laws about online games. It's funny, because it's true.

Virtual Toys.

I was reading an article on Habbo Hotel (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1946/designing_a_gameless_game_sulka_.php), and when trying to describe what it was, they made this analogy: "if you go to a room and you're alone, it would be just furniture. There's no play. You're kind of playing, but it's the same as if you had a doll's house, just moving the furniture, which you can also kind of play, but it's definitely not a game. "

Seems to me like the word they are looking for is "toy". A virtual toy.

I feel a need to link this.

http://www.nowheregirl.com/

Bad Design

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1667/the_designers_notebook_bad_game_.php?page=2
I linked to the second page in the article, because I felt it and the next page had the most salient points. I especially liked the example, at the bottom of the page I linked, of how to give lots of information fast.

Random Writings

A mountain of pain, built from failures.
The inability to express, what I most desire to confess.
I have a dream. I have a dream.
Yet, I amount to naught.


The Writings I make, are the best I've got.
Their vagueness, all the precision I have.
Forever frustrated, I turn to this.
Incomplete, inadequete. The best I've got.
The best I've got.

The more you define something, the more you lose sight of it.

Amusing Quote (with link)

"Will Wright's genius wasn't in making a sim of human life. It was in making the world's easiest-to-use CAD tool. " - http://web.archive.org/web/20130531004646/http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2007/08/gamesfrontiers_0814

Random Writings...

Distant dreams
impossible it seems
Hope flickers,
and then dies.

Dreams lost in darkness
Hopeless
Light forever missing
False hope
The paths they tell us,
end in ruin
Pain sets in,
it stays
Rhythm dies
the path forward lost

Endless desire
never met
Needs
never seen
Problems
ignored
Pain
not believed
When you don't belong,
no one understands you.
They can only see what they know,
They only know, what belongs.
If you are not a part of the world they believe in...

Random Writings

Darkness calls to any who will listen.
Yet, it is not feared by all who hear.
For some, it can even be a comfort,
the one stable thing in life.

When you see the future,
it can be hopeful, or hopeless.
I pray for the former,
and hope to change the latter.

Darklight
An oxymoron?
Perhaps, but even the darkness can illuminate truth.

Pray, meditate, and listen.
If you're lucky,
it might tell you something.

A link... (can AI save gaming?)

http://www.skotos.net/articles/engines07.shtml

A link... (Game Design)

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070326/sorens_05.shtml
"Solution 2: Make creativity the object of the game"

That really caught my eye. I've been looking for a good creative outlet, and haven't been able to find one. I'm not good enough with words to make a story, or skilled enough in other forms of art for pictures or movies. I've tried messing around in Second Life, but I just don't have the talent to create what's in my mind. So I could really use a game, where the whole point is creative expression with the tools to make it easy, and the ability to share with friends (and the world).

A link (on the challenge set before game developers)

http://chessack.wordpress.com/2007/06/06/open-letter-to-game-designers-the-value-of-your-game/

While I don't have the same time constraints the writer of this article has, I do find that I just don't enjoy time sinks anymore. A game (or other distraction) must be intriguing to hold my attention. Otherwise, it quickly becomes a source of misery.