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Post-Mortem: Asset Management

Mastery Journal - Post Mortem

Project Overview

Phantasm is a game where the player needs to help Thea to fix her wounded mind and wake up from the coma she entered after the accident that started the game. The players are dropped into the world of Thea’s sub-conscious, essentially lost, without a clear explanation as the why they are there and the first goal placed in the mind of the player is finding Thea’s father. Phantasm’s facing the same axis. The main characters and the enemy objects are 3D models dropped on the same plane as the 2D backdrop that serves as the ground and platforms. These ground and platform backdrop would be on a plane in front of all other 2D backdrops, which is the closest to levels are continuous 2D spaces. Various 2D images are laid on top of each other in a parallax style. What this means is the different 2D backgrounds would be placed on different planes but the player. Another 2D layer that rests on the same plane as the ground and platforms is the “trap” 2D layer. This layer has special functions that either hamper the player’s progress of kill the player character outright. Overall, we estimated 244 work hours, 10 hours per week per person.

Milestone 1

The First Milestone was focused on building the engine and all the basic functions that the gameplay needed and preparing all the documentation plan out the schedule and determine how to prioritize the assets and features that were needed to be put into the game so that we can focus on getting the more important assets and features in early on. While we prepared most the documentation ahead of time and got/made most of the assets we needed, we did not include several key pieces that were required, forcing them to be kicked down the pipeline and not only clog up time that could have been used elsewhere, but for some pieces like the Validation and Verification Documents, meant that we couldn’t complete them as we completed features and assets.

 Milestone 2

In Milestone 2 we as the team planned to deliver a character model along with all of its animation cycles and states (idle, dying, attack and dying)) but in truth the 3D model for the character wasn't in the build so it wasn’t delivered on time. The same goes for the enemy spider, but  we did manage to put the wolf in the game and some parts of the level design, the only thing was was missing level design wise was the art placement, which was not finished throughout the first level, the PC and NPC sounds were made but never put inside the game because it didn’t match the feel and style of the game. A big plus is that the game was playable at some degree, but the team would have to work hard in order to finish getting all the deliverables for milestone 3,

 Milestone 3 - Sprint 1

In Milestone 3 sprint 1 the team planned to have the levels completed and playable and have the official characters, both PC and enemy, have death, attack and damage states. We managed to get the PC and enemy to attack but not do damage. The levels were complete but there were issues with playability. The biggest drawbacks were the lack of death and respawning. Every time the player fell off the level it became necessary to manually restart the build.

Milestone 3 - Sprint 2

In the Second sprint of milestone 3 the major concerns were to create damage states for the PC and enemy characters and creating respawning upon death of the PC. We managed to get the enemy to do damage to the player but the PC character was still unable to damage the enemy. The player respawns after death either caused by the enemy or by falling off the world. We also created a pause menu that could either resume play or exit to the main menu. Lastly we creating and end level point which would return the player to the main menu.

Conclusion

To sum up, develop a game in one month is hard for any team. Nevertheless, this team made the possible to finish the game on time. As we can see on the Burndown Chart, we are in a LATE status. we estimated 244 hours and with a work log of 2 hours dedicated only to the game every day; we can see the project is about 79 hours left to be done. If we go to more detail by features, the UI is 100% done and the next too which are almost done are the Main Character and the Levels with an 89% of completion. The most critical feature is the Wolf enemy with a 59% of the completion. Also, as a team, we decide to no start to develop the light mechanics neither the QA tests. Finally, we can see the Burnup Chart per team member. The main difference with each team member is the Capstone dedication hours. If we create a Burnup Chart only for the project, then we can say the work log is more equative.

What we did right

As a team, we created two different levels that were tested for playability. We got a workable build finished in less than a month from start to finish. We focused our communication in one tool after we realized how inefficient it was to use multiple tools. We clearly defined team roles and came together during the period before class to make sure the final product was as complete as it could be. On the art side, we managed to create a visual art style that reinforced the theme of the game.

What we did wrong

Our communication broke down several times, where while we had clearly assigned roles, we didn’t have clearly assigned tasks. Documentation was not always maintained or submitted on time. We didn’t allocate our capacity evenly, so that most of the work fell on one person. The hours on the documentation didn’t match.

Personal Reflection

This course was overall a very frustrating course. A large part of that comes from the month I had, where during my capstone hours I was working to produce a game within the very limited time frame of one month. The work for asset management seemed to almost be using up time I felt I could have spent better elsewhere, which is the feeling I have gotten from many of the classes in this program. I have nothing against the content being taught, but as someone whose goal has been to become a designer, this was yet another course about something other than design.

I don’t see why burnup and burndown and all the other things we learned weren’t taught the same month we learned capacity and scheduling. The information is good, but is it really worth splitting between multiple months? Most of the time that was dedicated to this project and solely to this project (no matter what the lines say) was from our developer building the game. If all the effort is going to building a game, why not just have a class that is specifically about that?

The courses in the degree feel as if they’re splitting the same material over multiple months because they don’t have enough dedicated time during the week to cover it normally. It is unfair to the teachers and unfair to the students.

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Mastery Journal - Post Mortem

Project Overview Over the course of the Prototype and Content Creation class, we had a project where we needed to create a game idea and then iterate its progress from the initial design to a physical prototype to a digital prototype, with three different iterations. The game we designed for this month was “The Wizard Booty”, a strategy game where you play as a wizard preparing traps and spells to defeat any thieves that attempt to break into your tower and steal your treasure.

Physical Prototype The physical prototype was the best iteration for our game. We established the rules and the mechanics intended for the digital version and created our best translation of the rules to a physical board. 

One of the biggest challenges on this phase was to simulate the A.I. of the thief with other players, as a player would have the ability to react to the state of the board in ways that were not intended by the game’s design. Another challenge was the balance of skills vs. chance. This part was a process of trial and error to find the right balance, to give as fair of a chance for both the thieves and the wizard to win while properly simulating the single player challenge that the game was originally designed for. On the other hand, our strength was the physical assets. The assets were custom made for this prototype and gave the impression that the prototype could actually become a proper board game in it of itself.

Digital Prototype When transitioning from the physical to the digital prototype the major change was turning a multi-player table-top to a single player video game. The thief characters became A.I controlled characters that spawn at a set frequency. The first iteration of the digital prototype was a simple single floor level with a single thief running from one end to the other getting killed by any traps that were placed in the stage before play started. The second iteration comprised of a four level stage with respawned thieves and movable traps that could only be placed into the level before play start. It also had a main and options menu, and an exit screen. The third iteration contained three levels (easy, medium, and hard), an in-game UI for selecting traps to be dropped in the level as well as movable staircases and ladders.

Digital Prototype Iteration

Conclusion What we did right We created a variety of art assets under a limited amount of time that created a cohesive theme. What assets we couldn’t create, we were able to find in the unity store. Our UI was clean and understandable in its mockup. The overall look of the mockups were clear and comprehensible. On the design side, we put a lot of effort into making a fun game, thinking of the experience we were creating. We were in constant communication through Skype and WhatsApp.

What we did wrong For our first digital prototype, we didn’t make as much progress as we probably could have, because of a failure to properly utilize the resources at our disposal. We did not know enough about how A.I functionality in unity work/operated to understand what was and what was not possible using 2D characters. Some team members were without tasks during the latter part of the project, and so the work being done was lopsided. We also weren’t as good at managing our time so that we were putting too much time in single tasks. We let the scope get out of hand due to our overconfidence and also didn’t offer help fast enough when the deadline was approaching.

Personal Thoughts

During this project, I served as a designer, a little bit of a producer, and a little bit of a coder. It was my first time using Unity seriously, so my tasks as a programmer were light, but they were well suited to my skill level. Even with that, I needed to ask for help from co-workers outside the team to create the menu system and the interface, but now I know how to do that in the future. I learned a bit about how to use the interface of Unity and am going to continue to practice to increase my skills with it. As a designer, most of my skill went into the initial idea and designing the physical prototype.

Where I had trouble was in fulfilling the role of producer which I often do for our team. Because I was investing so much time in learning Unity (and my own capstone) I didn’t dedicate enough focus to managing the team as I normally did and we worked more or less independently, which caused problems moving forward. While I learned a lot about how to build an interface, if I had perhaps spent more time as a producer (or if someone in our group had focused on that) we might have gotten even more accomplished.

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Mastery Journal: Game Testing Paper

This month, our course was Methods and Users Experience. The course gave a brief overview of a variety of testing methods for determining the usability of games, including biometrics, playtesting, think aloud, and others. For our final project, this mastery journal, we were asked to do a test project where we developed a research question, designed an experiment to test the research question, and documented the process and results to show our methods. This was to give us a better idea of how usability experts would go about their own research. Our group decided to test the emotional changes that occurred when a player experienced a game he had not played before in a genre he claimed to hate. The hypothesis was that if presented with a game in a genre he claimed to hate without actually ever playing, the player would find himself being more positive towards the genre in the post test. This assignment and course contributed to my journey for mastery in giving a more complete view of the process of game design, especially in the realm of usability. I understand better the value of playtesting and the difficulties that come with creating not only an experiment but a valid experiment. In month 2, we learned about validity, but in this month we got a better idea of how it actually plays into research.

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Mastery Journal: Research Paper on Loneliness

Introduction

In the field of storytelling, games have a unique advantage over most of the other forms. In a book, a play, a film or a song, the storyteller must draw the audience into the story by having them empathize and engage mentally and emotionally with the characters and the world. While the audience may relate to a character in one of those works, however, there is a divide between the two that is inherent to those mediums. In games, however, the audience take an active role in developing the story being told. Loneliness, a game by Jordan Magnuson (2011), seeks to create a player-driven narrative experience, where the audience explores the theme of “feeling alone when surrounded by a sea of others” and creates their own personal story and relationship with that experience without any dialogue and almost no words (Floyd & Portnow, 2012).

Conveying the Theme of Loneliness

Aesthetics To help convey the feelings of loneliness, Magnuson made some very important aesthetic choices. There is no visual difference between the player character (a small black square) and any of the individual squares in the crowds that you encounter. This lack of visual distinction, one would think, would make the player feel less alone as they appear the same as all the other “people”. However, because of the way the aesthetics meet the mechanics this is not the case. When the player’s black square approaches a crowd of black squares, the crowd seems to be magnetically repelled away from the player before disappearing into nothing. This visual reaction, this ‘rejection’, stings more strongly because the player is visibly identical yet still an outsider. The colors are drab, only blacks, grays, and whites which make the whole game world feel more lifeless and less exciting, which in turn forces the player’s attention towards the way their avatar and the crowds move. The crowds can move in all sorts of interesting ways: spirals, zigzags, up and down, side to side, etc. The player, however, is far more limited. They can move any way across the screen but when they move forward, they reach a certain point and are then blocked. This gives the sensation that there is a barrier between the player and everyone else. No matter how hard the player strives to push past that limit, they cannot (Magnuson, 2011).

When the screen starts to turn to black at the end and the controls are seized from the player, it almost feels as if they are walking off a cliff or falling into an abyss. The game ends with the only words used in the entire game, explaining the inspiration (Magnuson, 2011). This ending is even more effective from a design decision as the player has just watched the world essentially swallow them into the blackness, reinforcing the fact that they should feel small, that loneliness makes a person feel small.

Mechanics Touched upon above, the mechanics used here are what allow each player to create their own story and experience. Though rather simple, the way they tie into the theme and reinforce the aesthetics is rather intricate. In this game, the player is limited to only being able to move left and right and back and forward (though as mentioned in aesthetics, there is a hard limit of how far forward they may move). This restriction makes the players feel constrained. One interesting design choice was to give the player control over the vertical movement of the crowds. They control how fast the crowds approach and can even move the crowds backwards, as if they were shying away from the interaction. (Magnuson, 2011). These two simple ideas, the limited control you have over your own movement but the control over the crowds’ wild movement, provide many different encounters that are unique to each player. At the end, when control is taken away, the player feels helpless and lost. How they react to the enveloping dark screen depends on their experience in the story.

Story Each iteration of this game tells a different story, all without words or complex visuals. Because the player is controlling both the crowds and their own avatar, they decide the personality of their black square (Floyd & Portnow, 2012). The game excels at forcing decisions from the player about how they choose to behave, whether they struggle futilely to join a crowd in spite of the obvious pattern or whether they stop trying (AmelMag, 2011). The player can also refuse to move forward, halting the game’s progress, but that would still be their own story (Floyd & Portnow, 2012). The story emerges from the meeting of the aesthetics and mechanics with the player themselves. The game doesn’t ask the player to be lonely, it asks them “How do you deal with loneliness? How do you address the pattern of rejection that leads to those feelings?” It serves as a gateway into the mind of a lonely person rather than necessarily making the player feel lonely or sad themselves.

Technology The game’s technology as a flash game slightly reinforces its theme though to a much lesser extent. Flash games are accessible by everyone who has access to a web browser. By putting this game up for free in a system that everyone has access to, Magnuson is saying that this is not just something his Korean students experience; it is something everyone experiences (Magnuson, 2011).

Strengths and Weaknesses

The game is not perfect. While the theme it is trying to convey is clear, there are some aspects that reduce the effectiveness of its delivery. The sound choice is distracting at times. Given the length of the game, the auditory build up is too fast. Once it is at its loudest, it stays at that level until the end of the game. For a game where the graphics and mechanics are meant to portray the player’s avatar as more subdued, it creates a bit of dissonance. The length of it also is a weakness, because after a certain point there is little new information being given to the player. It becomes less of an experience and more of a social experiment to see whether they act as a loner or if they continue to try to approach the groups. These elements detract from the holistic experience.

However, the game more than compensates for its weaknesses in what it does right. Touched upon above, the game excels at visually conveying the mood and theme. Through the mechanics, color choice, and abstract visual representation, the theme is conveyed magnificently. It is approachable and understandable by anyone, not just people who play video games. The imagery it uses as the crowds fade away when you try to join them perfectly encapsulates a certain experience that many people have at least once in their lifetime: The sensation of being completely alone when surrounded by other people. The ending reinforces the theme as the player loses control over their avatar and the screen goes black. These techniques make for a strong experience.

Conclusion

This game utilizes the unique storytelling aspect of video games to invite the player to take their share of responsibility in the storytelling process. With only its mechanics and aesthetics and the players output, it tells a complete evocative narrative.

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It all started with a Wheel (Narrative Through Mechanics, part 1)

In a previous blog post, I recounted the adventures of my players in an Exalted one shot, where they became heroes of the Realm and saved the Exalted version of Julius Caesar from her ides of March. I teased that I was going to talk about a one shot session that did not go quite as well. Rather than simply talk about a session that I felt did not live up to its potential (on my part, not the players’), I wanted to compare it to a more successful session in a different system entirely.

The two games I’m comparing are Hunter the Vigil by Onyx Path/White Wolf (A fine game in its own right, I would highly recommend it to players who want to play any sort of monster hunter) and The One Ring by Crucible 7. In both these games I was/am the GM. In both, my goal was to start the session with a mystery and slight combat, before heading into a siege situations (think Zulu. For those who never saw that movie, think Helms Deep, I suppose.)

Now the thing you’ll learn about me as I post more to my blog is that I run a lot of different games, often more than one at a time. For the longest time I solely ran New World of Darkness systems, which uses the Storyteller system, a d10 (10-sided die) system for those who are interested. Its strength over its competitors tends to be the ease with which it handles non-combat situations, especially social behaviors. The original (classic) World of Darkness was one of the first lines to be truly successful pushing a system that emphasized the narrative aspects of RPGs.

I currently run four games: Vampire the Requiem, Changeling the Lost, Exalted (this one is done through pen and paper on a forum), and The One Ring. Vampire, Changeling, and Exalted are all d10 games, and VtR and CtL are both lines in the world of darkness. It’s a lot and sometimes one game gets put on hiatus due to scheduling issues, but they are all pretty active. My Vampire game has been going on for a little under three years and is nearing its end, hopefully by the end of this year. I have six players in that game: Kullervo, Xeno (who you may remember from my Exalted game), Aela, Lurker, Cae, and Crim.

·       Kullervo plays a mad scientist style vampire named Agro

·       Xeno plays a pimp turned vampire who is being trained as a spirit hunter named Count

·       Aela plays a camgirl vampire who practices the occult named Sakari

·       Lurker plays a jazz saxophonist vampire named Lee

·       Cae plays a rich vampire who likes to pull the strings of the NPCs and PCs alike named Victor Crassus

·       Crim plays a…It’s complicated. Crim plays Alanna

In that game, there is a group of Vampire Hunters who has troubled the group since very near the beginning. Though they started antagonistic, due to certain events over the course of these three years, the Hunters created a relationship with the vampires to fight larger threats, specifically with Xeno’s vampire, Count. Now, I had teased the players that the Hunters were doing something cool and mysterious off screen. The players all seemed interested in learning more about what was going on with their generally shaky allies and I had the idea of allowing them to play the hunters for one session to explore that story. I was going to need to put Vampire on hiatus because of my school schedule anyway, so it seemed a nice way to create a break.

There were five established hunters (Well, technically six, but one had become a Mage over the course of the campaign and was not available for the players to choose from) and six players, so Kullervo had to build a hunter from scratch. They all had two weeks and a lot of experience points to dump into these sheets. The aliases of the Hunters all matched face cards, as that had always been there theme.

·       Kullervo, who created a hunter from scratch, played “Knave”, a tracker specialist

·       Xeno played “Jack”, who was the jack of all trades handy man and field leader, still an active beat cop

·       Aela played “Queen”, who was the medic of the team and forensic specialist/mortician

·       Lurker played “Ace”, who was the sniper specialist (and in fact had killed Lurker’s first character in two shots, though it was Lurker’s admitted fault)

·       Cae played “King”, the computer and technology specialist and team leader, who was not a cop or army guy (about the only one)

·       Crim played “Knight, the vampire hating boxing specialist with an anger problem who was formerly a cop before getting kicked off for emotional instability

·       The final Hunter was played by myself, a mage who still associated with her old team, Tracy “Joker” Owens, who is a detective for the police force

Aela was not able to make it for the session, so they only had five people plus Joker...the plan was to split the hunters into two groups. Queen, Jack, and Knave would go to town with Tracy to meet one of her contacts about the macguffin, while Knight, Ace, and King stayed behind at the Lighthouse, their base of operations. While the away team was learning more about the macguffin and getting clues, the home team would be under assault from agents of the God Machine. They would need to survive long enough for the away team to return back to base and for Tracy to finish her mystical ritual.

The Macguffin in question was a Bronze Wheel that had been established by Lurker’s original character very early in the campaign. The Wheel was said to have been lost by some great power and was a gear in a larger machine. Out of character, my players all know about Onyx Path’s lore for the God Machine, a mysterious entity that seems to have unlimited power and whose servants are mechanical spirits called Angels. They knew going in that this wheel was associated with the God Machine and built their characters accordingly.

To avoid making this too long, I’m breaking the post up into three. Now that you have the backstory heavily summarized with characters and terms introduced, I’ll run through the events of the Hunter game itself. The third post will be the similar story that I ran in The One Ring a month and a half later.

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Project and Team Management

At the end of my first month here at Full Sail, my assignment was to create a timeline that laid out my expectations for this program and strategies I would use to meet those expectations. Now as many project managers know and as one of the first things we learned in this class, while it is certainly important to MAKE a timeline and expectations, it’s just as important to be able to adapt. I write this blog post while participating in a game jam on campus, a team effort involving a few of my classmates, so I’ll share some of the observations I’ve had about the process of our team in relation to ideas we’ve learned in class.

When I made my timeline for month 1, my goals were to come out knowing how to balance a project budget, make a reasonable schedule, and know how to properly motivate a team. When I thought of a budget back in week 1, I thought purely in terms of the obvious resources and their costs. The budget for a game jam would be $0, right? After all we have Unreal engine for free, our artist Stephen Jones already had Maya on his computer and its student version is free. I might have walked away from this project thinking that games were cheap to make. Given my use of the subjunctive voice, it should be obvious the opposite is true. This class taught me to think about budgets in a different way. Now when I make a budget, I’m including things like the cost of energy drinks for a team, gas to run out and buy food, how much the programs would normally cost and how much money we can spend on pre-made assets. Outside of costs, I now also think of the “relationship budget”. This artist is making me a logo for free, how will I show him I appreciate him and help him in turn? This musician is making my title theme, the least I can do is bring them some food. The budget is no longer just my inhuman resources, but my human ones as well.

In class we discussed the DiSC personality types often. We would do character studies of real people and try to decide how they scored in the four different groups: Dominance, Influence, Steadfast, Conscientious. My two highest scoring groups were dominance and influence. Influence didn’t surprise me, but the fact that I scored high in dominance did. I never really saw myself as that personality type, but several classmates around me said they were not surprised at all. Hearing that helped me understand not only my own personality a little better, but also how others saw me. Recognizing this disconnect led me to pay more attention to my own social cues. Going into this game jam, I had a very different idea of what I wanted to do for our project and I knew exactly what my role on the team was going to be: Story and level design. Before the jam started, we as a group found out that Wei-Wei was going to be participating in the jam with us (We had invited him before but were not sure if he was actually joining the team). Wei-Wei also wanted to do story and level design. Rather than fight him over the direction or force the game to be what I had in mind, I tossed out the ideas I had and we worked together to come up with something that was actually very different but satisfying for us both. Our methods of creating were different, but rather than having our personalities clash, we were able to work together. Understanding how people tend to behave really helps in knowing how to motivate them.

As for scheduling and timelines, wellllllll...

This blog is still neglected, but I’m updating my webnovel, Cities Eternal, twice a week with my friend. We’re keeping to that schedule and haven’t missed an update day yet, and we already have 20 chapters posted. Similarly to the budget, this class taught me how to look at schedules and timelines. Rather than just say “Have this done by this time”, breaking the work into steps makes it much easier to keep to schedules as well as adapt them when they need to be changed. If I had any advice for making a schedule it’s this: Budget in some time to be put aside for the project in an unspecified way. If you meet your timeline, then great you have more free time than you thought. If you don’t, you’ll be grateful you had that buffer. I find that reduces my stress a lot, and I plan to always keep that in the back of my head when writing out schedules.

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Industry Research

The Importance of Agency In my last blog post, I touched on this topic. The interactive nature of games allows for greater emotional investment in the player than in any other medium…potentially. Movies, literature, music and the like are all well-established mediums. They have a long catalog of successful techniques to which refer. A good movie or book takes you out of yourself and puts you into their world. Video games, by their very nature, have an inherent advantage to this. Every time you play a game, you are roleplaying as the main character. Games are still a young medium all things considered and their potential as a storytelling medium becomes only greater as technology improves. The things that happen to the main character are happening to you as well.

However, not every video game is able to deliver on this experience. Sometimes, a player feels disengaged with the narrative in which his character is taking part. Sometimes, I don’t care if my player avatar lives or dies, and I know I’m not alone. This usually happens when I feel constricted by the options presented to me in the game (both directly and through gameplay) or when I feel myself being yanked as a leash as it were by the designer. A study done by Dillman Crpentier, Rogers, and Barnard in 2015 showed that a player will often time create a connection with their avatar and feel responsible for their wellbeing, often because their choices create consequences. If I feel that my character is acting either stupidly or that the events in the game are happening arbitrarily in relation to my input, the relationship breaks. In this way, the more agency I have over my avatar’s actions, the more I feel responsible for them and want them to either succeed or avoid harm, depending on the situation.

Designers often mistake interactive storytelling and player agency for branching storylines, usually dictated by obvious choices. Player agency, the way the player shapes the story of the game, is everything they do. Yes, giving them a choice to save one character over another, or to do a paragon choice over a renegade one is part of it. However, even something as simple as the ability to jump over obstacles, or to approach a level in multiple ways, or just the weapon I select all contribute to my sense of agency. A linear story can still be interactive in video games, after all. 

The Benefits of Gaming Before the increased popularity of roleplaying games, studies were often done to link gamers with deviant personality traits. The researchers were looking to prove that roleplaying was harmful to the development of a person’s psyche and encouraged them to become things like Satanists or criminals. More recent studies, like the ones done by Adams in 2013 and Betz in 2011, tend not to focus on the harm of roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons, but instead their positive aspects. In fact, many studies have been made in response to the negative research that show that roleplaying often fulfills many needs of different people.

Betz did a study in 2011 to determine whether roleplaying had social and psychological benefits by satisfying needs. These were some of the findings. Roleplaying, because it is by its nature a group event, gives players practice is forming social bonds and maintain relationships. Contrary to the popular image of gamers as anti-social loners, gaming often requires a high level of social interaction, especially in tabletop gaming. In the process of gaming, and with the support of your group (an unhealthy gaming group is just as harmful as any other unhealthy group), you get to experience extraordinary spontaneous dangers and challenges, while at the same time enjoying the benefit of the routine. In this way, it satisfies a great need of people. We like routine but too much of it and we feel ourselves pushed to do something dangerous or exciting. It’s built into our chemistry.

Perhaps more importantly, especially for this class, roleplaying games can teach many important team and leadership lessons. In a roleplaying game, usually there is a challenge that cannot be overcome by a single person. All the players must work together to defeat the villain. Successful gaming groups tend to form bonds of friendship that make them want to help each other. This requires a lot of open communication, to the point where even the DM, the supposedly ultimate authority, will often make the process democratic and be open to suggestions from his players, as shown in the 2013 study done by Adams.

Gaming is fun, yes, but it can teach us so much about managing teams and being leaders in whatever field we choose. The same personality issues arise in an adventuring party of six as they do in the workplace. The creativity and problem solving necessary to be successful in a game can be applied anywhere. Part of my goal as designer is to teach that fact.

Wearing a Virtual Mask I’ve talked a lot about roleplaying games, but I think it’s time to discuss a bit of the psychology behind it. People roleplay for many reasons, and to do this you must craft a persona to play as. The act of creating a persona often allows people to explore aspects of themselves that they would normally be unable to express otherwise. In virtual environments, like most MMORPGs and Second Life, people will create idealized versions of themselves. In these environments they can be the person they dream of being without the fear of facing a social stigma. The freedom this provides can be both beneficial as well as harmful, though that tends to have more to do with the person than the virtual world itself.

As I said, oftentimes people use roleplaying personas as reflections of different parts of their own psyches. While we as people like to summarize our personalities to two or three traits, those we consider dominant, there are so many other facets of our personality that often go unrecognized. Our fantasies, our dreams, knowledge we have acquired that we rarely have time to use all funnel into the personas crafted in virtual worlds. The 2006 study done by Elliot showed that people who consider themselves physically undesirable on average will put more emphasis on their physical appearances in games. Those who feel their life is lacking excitement are more likely to act in ways that would gain attention. There are many stories told in personal blogs of people who discovered a side of them they didn’t know existed or had locked away in their minds for years, until it came out in their online persona.

However, at times these personas can create a dissonance between a person’s virtual identity and their real world identity. If they cannot successfully bridge the gap between their two personas, understand that the two acts are both an expression of their true selves, it creates trouble. Sometimes people escape from their own problems by hiding between their digital personas. Other times, they abandon their online selves to avoid embarrassment or the destruction of their real lives. Relationships that start in virtual space evoke real emotions, and when things start to become too ‘real’, what started as “roleplay” becomes far more complicated and dramatic.

A world designer’s job is to make their fictional world feel as real as they can. Players should try to use their digital personas to become more aware of themselves, though it is not an easy thing to do.

Roleplaying Renaissance Tabletop gaming has been undergoing a change in the last few years. As many companies are shifting their models from printed books to pdf downloads, the sales of books (as well as the general hobby games market) has increased. In the 2014 article by Ankeny, he states that despite the increasing technology, more people are turning to board games, card games, and pen and paper roleplaying games than ever before. Why is this?

I believe the answer derives from the three previous topics. All these games tend to offer a great deal of strategy that emphasizes player agency a great deal. What’s more, many of the new board games are minimizing the randomness that is associated with the medium and are emphasizing player choice. These games also require groups of people to play and usually face to face in person, something which is becoming less frequent in a heavily tech-based world. You’re sitting down with your friends and family and playing a game rather than talking through the computer or phone, or watching a movie together but not interacting. It fills that need.

People are also getting far more comfortable with the idea of roleplaying thanks to the internet, which has allowed people who are interested but don’t know anything about tabletops to talk with hobbyists and achieve lots of information. With the growing acceptance of video games among the general populace, the stigma attached to being a gamer is lessening and people who would have been shamed out of trying a hobby before are now more likely to give it a try. People are also far more comfortable with the idea of roleplaying thanks to the wider audience for video games. When they get the itch to really play their virtual avatar more, tabletop pen and paper is there waiting for them. These are fully interactive games where they can control their avatar without the limitations given to them in a video game.

Most importantly, and the reason why I love tabletop gaming, it is creative fun. I love being able to create a unique story for my avatar and develop them based on their experiences and the choices I make. I love video games that use elements of tabletop game design, and I think the industry could always use more of those highly interactive storytelling games.

Library References (those that can’t be hyperlinked)

Adams, A. S. (2013). Needs Met Through Role-Playing Games: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of Dungeons & Dragons. Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal Of Qualitative Communication Research, 12, 69-86. 

Ankeny, J. (2014). Role of the dice. Entrepreneur, 42(12), 59.

Betz, U. K. (2011). What fantasy role-playing games can teach your children (or even you). British Journal Of Educational Technology, 42(6), E117-E121. 

Dillman Carpentier, F. R., Rogers, R. P. & Barnard L. (2015). Eliciting behavior from interactive narratives: Isolating the role of agency in connecting with and modeling characters. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. 59(1), 76-93.

Elliott, S. (2006). Not-so-split personalities. Computer Gaming World, 260, 16-17. 

[hammerandthundergames-blog]

The new faces of stories

People loves stories. Stories are magical things that allow us to put ourselves in the minds of others, safely experiencing the thrilling adventures as they are woven before us. Everyone tells stories, though the methods used and the stories told are as different as each person on the planet. Every culture across the world has its stories and its storytellers. They are often held in high esteem, as creators of art, for all art does in fact tell its own story. Many times art tells multiple stories, and therein lies the greatest secret in the “Art of Storytelling”. The storyteller is only part of the equation. Storytelling is inherently an interactive process, and with the advent of the digital age, it has only become more so. The way stories are being told is changing and storytellers are adapting in turn.

I said that everyone is a storyteller. Most people associate storytelling with fictional narratives. They happen to people who aren’t you, and you aren’t the center of many, many different small stories. But the truth is, every day we live out stories. We want to be part of stories, and it is this desire that drives people to gaming. Video games (in fact, all games) are an interactive medium in their nature, and in my opinion, they show where the future of storytelling lies. In games, you, the player, are an active agent in the experience. Without the player, there is no story. This applies to all games, from sports to checkers. Imagine a soccer game, score tied, with only a minute left on the clock. The center passes you the ball. You kick; you score; you win the game and the crowd cheers. Chances are you, that player in that game, is going to tell others about his amazing feat. They’re now a storyteller.

Narrative in video game, when it is effective, makes you feel like that player on the soccer field. You feel as if you are the character in the game, experiencing the story first hand. In truth, you ARE. Stories only matter when the characters’ choices have consequences, because that drives the linear narrative. When choices seem to bear no consequences, people lose interest in stories. In video games, the player is actually making these choices and dealing with the consequences as they arise. They have become the character, it is their story now. It is their own experience, created by the emotions they feel and that is unique to them.

Stories will be around forever. We love them too much to stop the art of storytelling, but the way we look at stories and storytelling is already changing. The increasing popularity of video games, of tabletop games, of alternate reality games, of game based learning, of GAMES gives us a glimpse of where it will go next.

[hammerandthundergames-blog]

Team Dynamics in Mastery

This semester was a busy one. In addition to my personal projects related to designing a tabletop game (more on that in the coming month) as well as writing a web novel (Cities Eternal, I will provide a link at the end of the post), I was taking the class Research and Team Dynamics with Professor Kennedy. At first glance, the title leads to the assumption that this is far more of an academic class than a class on game design, but I learned quite a lot both in theory and practical techniques for group behavior, an important facet for a game designer in the industry and ALSO for a Game Master who has to organize his players, produce content they all want to play, and keep personalities from clashing.

One thing I understand far better now is the benefit in drawing others into my projects. When I am working solo on a project, I can often reach a point that feels insurmountable and get discouraged to the point where I put the project aside. My folders are filled with projects that I honestly intend to return to and finish but for now collect dust. As a group, we had a project to pitch a game idea and create a presentation to ‘sell’ it as it were. The purpose of the project wasn’t to make a game, but to make us more aware of team dynamics by being self-aware and self-critical. I started to notice certain behaviors more from my teammates that would justify the theories we were learning in class. I think we all began to notice this, and it allowed us to change our methods of operation when they no longer worked.

Together, we not only came up with an idea for a game, but we put together a prototype with enough gameplay to demonstrate our concept. That entire process took a month. I started using the techniques that I saw working with our team and tried to implement them with my virtual tabletop group, adjusting the methods to account for the different characters of the two groups, and the different reason for forming. One of my mastery goals on the timeline was to create a tabletop. It still is a goal. However, I have brought on two friends of mine to help me with testing and development. Both these friends feel interested in contributing to the setting and they are more experienced in systems that I don’t know, providing a different knowledge base and skill experience. What’s more, I pitched them three different ideas, all of which I already had started to work on, though without devoting my full attention to any. They agreed on the project they wanted to help me with more and now feel invested in its progress. For the webnovel project, a two person team, I started to use methods learned in the text book to handle our virtual communication, to overcome many of the hassles that are inherent in virtual teamwork. We have frequent skype conversations and brainstorming sessions, usually through IMs but occasionally video as well.

What this course really taught me and what I will try to apply the most to my mastery journey is that teams are necessary things but a poorly managed team will only lead to problems. If I am doing a project with a team, I need to make sure we are all on the same page before we go forward and that we all are happy with the choices made, or if not happy then at least making sure that people don’t feel pressured into agreeing just because they’re afraid they’ll suffer social consequences if they refuse. There is also no harm in setting a timetable or interrupting a conversation after it’s veered off course and try to regain everyone’s focus.

Most importantly, I learned the importance of subteams. When everyone is focused on everything, they cannot spend their energy as efficiently as when their responsibilities are divided into subgroups. Our project really moved forward once we divided our team into three different subteams and I think that’s a very useful lesson to have learned.

As promised, here is the link to my webnovel: https://www.jukepop.com/home/read/9042?chapter=0

[hammerandthundergames-blog]

Children of the Dragons

A little over a week ago, I ran a one-shot tabletop session for my friends using the Exalted system published by White Wolf, now Onyx Path. I’m preparing for a long running campaign using that same system, but it’s mechanics are more intricate and complicated than their other setting, “World of Darkness.” I wanted to make sure I had the feel right for the game I plan to run, so I decided to run this one-shot to get more familiar. I’ve heard horror stories of Exalted done poorly from my friends, and I am determined to do it well.

In the standard Exalted game, you play as the glorious shining heroes of the Solar Exalted, whose souls and powers are returning after generations of being imprisoned. The setting uses reincarnation, so basically the souls (for simplicity) of the ancient Solars were locked away after they went a bit crazy with their power. In the place of the Solar empire, the Terrestrial Exalted, the Dragonblooded, rose to power and established their own Realm under the authority of a woman known as the Scarlet Empress. The Solars and their mates and second in commands, the Lunar Exalted, were deemed Anathemas and enemies of the world, Creation. The Terrestrials hunted down these powerful beings whenever they appeared, wherever they could. In the setting’s history, she’s recently disappeared and the Realm is on the brink of civil war.

With that quick, brief, and overly simplified background out of the way, allow me to detail the events of the one shot.

We play over Skype and most of us have never met in person, so I’ll be referring to my players by their online personas: Xeno, Al, Rev. I told the three of them that they were going to be playing Dragonblooded soldiers in the army of the general, Tepet Ejava, the Roseblack. Ejava is one of the more popular figures in Realm society, though the daughter of the Scarlet Empress herself, Mnemon, has enough power and influence to make Ejava stay away from the capital. Instead, Ejava works to strengthen the loyalty of her Vermilion Legion in the lands south of the Realm.

They also were told that they had previously been a group of five, but the Vermilion Legion had been attacked by a Lunar anathema and its army of beasts and bandits, and one of their circle members, an exalt from the house of Mnemon, had died. In the confusion of the ambush, his body had been left on the field of battle. Ejava tasked the four remaining circle members to retrieve the body, as it is their duty as Dragonblooded.

Xeno, Rev, Al, and one NPC head off as ordered. Along the way, they run into an old monk who seems to know a bit too much about them. He tells them he knows a way through the desert valley to avoid walking right into a beastman patrol. This was the first choice the players had to make. The monk was in actuality another type of Exalted, known as a Sidereal Exalted. He was telling the truth, because his goal was to see the Lunar Exalt put down. Had they taken his offer he would have let them skip an encounter. The amount of time they spent on their mission would determine how much helped they received at the end, but the players were unaware of this hidden mechanic. Instead of taking his offer, they chose to fight.

The battle was designed to be a cakewalk. Like I said, it was my first time running Exalted so I knew I needed to be familiar with its combat style. Part of the system’s appeal is that it is designed to reward player creativity in their description of actions. This is called stunting. The better your description the more bonus dice you receive. I missed many chances to reward their behavior because I was so focused on the combat. Regardless, the encounter served its purpose well. It made the players feel powerful, while it gave me time to learn the combat in actual play.

After dispatching the beastmen, Xeno, Al, Rev, and Kelsi (the NPC) came upon the field of battle. They all began investigating. Rev found the body of their slain circle member and a journal in his robes, while Al found a set of tracks leading away from the field. They looked like a large animal, but walking on two feet. It appeared to be the tracks of the Lunar anathema.

The journal revealed that their friend had been a spy for house Mnemon. He had been sent to infiltrate the Vermilion Legion and arrange for Ejava’s assassination. One important factor to keep in mind for the Lunar anathema is their ability to shape shift. It was implied that the Lunar had replaced one of Ejava’s guards in the combat and the general was unaware. Here came another choice. Did they rush back to camp or try to track down the tracks of the lunar?

Al wanted to follow the tracks he found, while Xeno and Rev wanted to rush back to camp. Had they followed Al’s tracks, they would have wasted time to reach Ejava and warn her. She would have been unable to help the party in the final battle. They would have, however, encountered the guardswoman who had been transformed to look like the Lunar and been forced to fight her.

Because they rushed back to camp, they were able to shout out a warning to Ejava, allowing her to dodge the assassin’s blade. They arrived in the nick of time, as is befitting this kind of story, and together they managed to put down the Lunar Exalt, though it was a close victory. It took almost a quarter of the session for their five versus one to end, but in the end they became heroes of the Realm. They were the four dragonblooded who took down an Anathema without an army.

Overall, I felt the session went very well. I had planned for five hours though in practice it took six and a little more. I learned that I need to pay more attention to stunts, so it gave me room to improve. Most importantly, I felt its flow was spot on. It never felt like the players were just being rushed from scene to scene, but that everything joined together. It was a simple story with a twist that paid off spectacularly and whats more, my players worked together to take down a boss that very nearly killed them all. I didn’t hold back any punches, they were just both very lucky and very coordinated, as Dragonblooded should be.

It was a very satisfying game. Though next time I’ll talk about a game that was a bit less satisfying that I ran recently. It also uses a white wolf game, Hunter the Vigil.

[hammerandthundergames-blog]

Mastery Journal Timeline

To see a video of the timeline presentation, please follow this link. https://youtu.be/MFaRKa1WzXs

Mastery: Personal Development and Leadership 

Course Goals: I will have learned the mindset and attitude it takes to become a Master. Strategies: Reading Robert Greene’s book, making lifestyle changes to become a healthier person, working on my flaws actively (such as by overcoming shyness by pushing myself to go to club meetings and events)

I will understand what is required of me in this program. Strategies: Show up for class every day, do the homework on time, volunteer and attend GPS events

I will have a plan for the future months. Strategies: Create a timeline (Check!), create social media accounts, network

Research in Team Dynamics

Course Goals: I will have the skills necessary to assemble a team for a project. Strategies: Organize events for my friends with an intention to do something, build something, make something; get practice balancing my game group’s schedules, meet new people to bring them onto teams

I will be able to lead a team. Strategies: Take the lead in my game group and run a campaign, volunteer to help run a club event, join other people’s groups to learn from them

I will recognize emotional issues between team members while I can still address them. Strategies: Watch behavior and try to recognize patterns, help friends make their problems easier rather than just comfort them, practice watching how I speak to avoid miscommunications

Project & Team Management

Course Goals: I will be able to predict and balance a project budget. Strategies: Practice by making my own food budget and stick to it, look up other company and project’s budgets to get an idea of what is resource intensive and what is not, write project plans for my various personal projects for practice

I will be able to make a reasonable project schedule. Strategies: Make deadlines for my projects and meet them, schedule my week so I can keep my time managed, post at least twice on this journal for updates so that I can hold myself accountable

I will be able to motivate a team. Strategies: Get my game group to try a new system they’re not completely sold on (The One Ring Roleplaying Game), work to motivate myself so that I can believably motivate others, learn how to offer different carrots to different people

Game Design

Course Goals: I will have an understanding of the basic of game design theory. Strategies: Read, watch, and play video games and video game design blogs and journals, write blog posts critiquing design choices of video games, post the encounter designs I create for my campaigns.

I will have created a new ruleset for a tabletop system. Strategies: Study an existing system and adapt it to suit my needs, use my experience to create an original system, convert one system’s ideas to another. Project idea: Design a mech game that would accurately represent the Drifting concept from Pacific Rim.

I will have a project plan for a video game project. Strategies: Play around with software like Unreal, create a few environments to understand the tool, post world building blogs

Methods and User Experience

Course Goals: I will test and improve my tabletop project. Strategies: Run the system for my friends in a short game and get their feedback, have another friend run it while I observe and see how quickly the players get it and how clear the rules are to him, share the rules with various communities on the internet for feedback

I will understand how to judge ease of User Experience. Strategies: Practice creating framework for tests for games, define what I find makes a game engaging, get practice working in the UX lab

I will create an interface for my video game project using information from this course. Strategies: Try out various different approaches and get feedback from friends, work with my classmates to see how they approach the problem, research how other designers decide what their interface should be like

Game Production Tools

Course Goals: I will have learned how to use Maya 3D (self-study). Strategies: Continue practicing with this software until I feel I am comfortable with it, create an environment for it, use it to create character art, explore the limits of the software

I will be skilled in the use of project software. Strategies: Use the software for all my projects rather than just the school one, keep practicing meeting the deadlines, watch tutorials on how to use the software

I will have a REFINED project schedule. Strategies: Update this timeline, adapt deadlines and predictions to match new understandings, focus on one project primarily to practice a production schedule

Prototyping And Content Creation

Course Goals: I will have a completed prototype of a tabletop project to post here. Strategies: Run multiple test scenarios, challenge my own assumptions of how the rules should work and try something different to see if it works better, refine the concept to make it sleek and easy to use

I will have refined my writing schedule to make it more efficient. Strategies: Set a time to write every day and avoid distractions, practice meeting a word count, be consistent

I will put together a group to test my prototype. Strategies: Use my established game group, pitch my system to people at the Tabletop Club, put an ad on Connect

Quality Assurance

Course Goals: I will implement the feedback I receive from testing my prototype. Strategies: Sort useless feedback from useful, rethink design choices based on critique, test older versions to see if something that I changed actually worked

I will have my name in the credits as a tester. Strategies: Volunteer at the UX lab, work contacts to get a chance to be part of a testing off campus, work with the clients of Full Sail to try and reduce bugs based on feedback

I will have my video game project (name TBD) at a point where it can be tested. Strategies: Ask students to play it and use techniques learned in class to get feedback, analyze my tabletop games to see what were positive responses from my players there to design the video game, run many tests to try to have it playable before testing

Asset Management

Course Goals: I will have a network of people with whom I can exchange content creations and assets. Strategies: Meet people in other departments, work my personal network, respond to ads for people who need a designer to build up working relationships

I will have built up a file of assets to use in my game. Strategies: Develop art assets with Maya and Photoshop, search for free use assets and keep tabs on them

I will have a greater knowledge of the issues that reoccur in the lifestyle of a game. Strategies: Watch interviews with game developers talking about production cycles, take part in a game project, participate in multiple game jams

Game Usability and Testing

Course Goals: I will create a tutorial to engage and educate. Strategies: Experience multiple tutorials to see what worked and what didn’t, challenge my assumptions on what needs to be taught and what can be inferred, play a classmate’s game and help them with a tutorial

I will take an undeveloped idea and make it something usable. Strategies: Keep an idea journal with short notes as I go through my program, constantly have people test the game to tell me if they can play it, work with others on the project

I will publish a complete version of my tabletop project. Strategies: Have it played by strangers who won’t be worried about offending me, practice overhauling it multiple times to see what works and what plays better, write an account of a session I ran with the system to showcase it

Game Project Practicum

Course Goals: I will have worked on a professional game development team and have my name in the credits. Strategies: Respond to any opportunity when companies advertise on Full Sail, go to conferences, follow industry professionals on twitter and LinkedIn

I will have everything needed to sell myself to industry professionals. Strategies: Have a fully updated resume, have a fully updated LinkedIn page, be talking with people already, have a professional persona built up ahead of time

I will be ready to complete my capstone. Strategies: Meet deadlines, don’t fall behind, always be willing to ask to help, spend a lot of time outside of class getting familiar with programs I don’t know and meeting other content creators across campus

Production Research Capstone

Course Goals: I will have a portfolio ready. Strategies: Keep clear documentation and records of all my projects, have it neat and organized, learn online portfolio software

I will have a job lined up for after I graduate. Strategies: Send out resumes to any openings I find, don’t be shy, work my contacts and be professional, talk to career services

I will have a career plan laid out. Strategies: Work with career services to get in contact with professionals, figure out what sort of games I want to make, plan ahead and be prepared for any interview, know where I want to go so I don’t forget why I have to start somewhere

[hammerandthundergames-blog]

Cities Eternal

Two of my friends and I are writing a collaborative novel called “The Cities Eternal”. We published on JukePop yesterday.

You can read the first few entries here! https://www.jukepop.com/home/read/9042?chapter=2&sl=639

We will have weekly updates, with at least one chapter. We hope to also post weekly journal entries exploring and teaching certain concepts to our world.

[hammerandthundergames-blog]

The Man Behind the Mask

My name is Ben, though I often go by the internet handle of Red Haired Thor (No, I don’t have red hair, it’s a long story) and I’m a game design masters student at Full Sail University. This blog serves as a journal of my projects and works as a public portfolio.

I have received two bachelors degrees: one in classical history, the other in economics. I also received a minor in Latin. In 2013, I spent a year abroad in Israel on a volunteer program teaching English to Ethiopian-Israelis, both adults and children. My job experiences range from working as a cashier at a wine and liquor shop, to working as a telemarketing salesman selling wine for Laithwaites Wines and others, to recording and editing a video in OpenSim for an IBM project.

I am an avid tabletop gamer, aspiring writer, and storytelling is my hobby. I enjoy creating fantastical and futuristic worlds for others to explore through play. This led me to decide to pursue my goal of becoming a video game designer. I’ve always loved video games. I love playing them, I love discussing them, and I love dissecting them to find out what elements worked and what didn’t.

So follow me on this journey, as I post my content on this blog. I plan to post write ups of games I’m running for friends, posts and critiques on game mechanics, and things like that. And what’s more…

I’m a Thunder God in disguise, so be careful. Or I’ll smite you with my hammer. Kracka-boooom.