On Sequels, Part 2 - Continuity and Cliches

If you recall, last time I talked about three ways to create a fairly satisfying sequel, but what I want to talk more about to day is how sequels deal with continuity and sometimes fall into very cliché territory.  Sequels are sometimes planned from the very beginning, the first story existing as it’s own self-contained work, but leaving a couple dangling plot threads.  See: Star Wars, A New Hope.  At the end of Star Wars, Luke has gone through the hero’s journey, he’s left behind the regular world and entered that of the Jedi, he proved he does not need the constant tutoring of his master, and succeeds in defeating the great evil.  He is rewarded for his victory, and everything seems well.  But we know Darth Vader is still alive, we know that there must be the confrontation between he and Luke.  There is more story to tell, and it’s major story, but we get our happy ending and the initial plot finishes.  Think of how major a plot thread is left dangling by Vader’s existence.  Keep in mind, I’m not saying that’s bad, I’m saying it’s the right way to do it.

Too often, games, more than any other medium, leave useless, meaningless dangling plot threads at their ends, hoping to have the game end on a cliffhanger rather than a real dénouement.  To throw out a good contrast we’ll take .hack//G.U. (I know, bear with me), and Kingdom Hearts II (Already a sequel, I know, but this flaw is on excellent display).

In case you couldn’t guess from me discussing the end of these games, SPOILER WARNING.

I’ll start with Kingdom Hearts II, because it revels in exactly the problem I’m talking about.  Kingdom Hearts Duex has its own (mostly) self-contained story that you can play through without worry about what came before, although you may not get the full experience but whatever.  The ending kills all the baddies, keeps all the goodies, and only leaves a couple insignificant dangling plots that you probably don’t need to worry about anyway.  So what about after all that?  Do we see the characters return to perfect sunshine and smiles Island?  Is everything resolved and their life set back on track?  Actually, yeah.  OR IS IT?  No, not really, because we see the character get… gasp!  A letter from King Mickey, requesting their help.  It’s time for adventure again!  Everything is wonderful and the next game totally isn’t a cash grab!

Anime: The Game

On contrast, we have the end of .hack//G.U. Volume 1: Rebirth.  That “Volume 1” tells us very quickly that the game clearly will be headed for sequel territory, and we expect a cliffhanger ending.  And what happens?  We defeat our big bad, our character clearly grows as a person and finishes the initial task he set out to do.  Except during this journey we learned of an even greater enemy and a greater chain of events, bigger than just that character’s journey, although it’s still about that, too.  But at the end of the first volume, we see that element truly rear its ugly head, we end of a cliffhanger of possible death and we know that the story must continue from here.

The problem here has almost everything to do with stakes.  Kingdom Hearts has none.  We as an audience can be interested in what this letter from the King says, we can want to know about it, but there’s no reason to.  All of the villains we had any reason to care about are long gone, all of the character’s lives are happy, and no one event really lingers in our minds.  It’s like the writers were told at the very end of production “Oh, we’re going to make a sequel, write that in, would you?”  and all they could do was weep at their desk for 15 minutes as they realized either everything they worked on would have to be changed, or there would be a sad and meaningless cliffhanger for the next game.  .hack works in this area, because we already know all about the two villains we’ve had to deal with and will have to continue dealing with.  One is defeated to give us our ending, our climax, and the other exists to continue the story, to make us remember the greater threat.  More time is probably spent on the bigger enemy, and it gives us much more reason to give a damn about another game.

Oh Bioware, my love...  Come and take me away.

While that’s probably one of the biggest clichés for video game endings, there’s another problem entirely when it comes to continuity.  Games are in a unique position here, because other media only really needs to maintain specific story elements, whereas games are also under the burden of deciding what to do with their game mechanics.  Bioware takes a lot more flak than I wish they did for this, because with series like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, they appeal to a gamer culture that often tends to learn a system down to its very core.  So when Bioware talks about changing the gameplay and removing RPG elements, or changing the dialogue system, they’re going to receive criticism, one way or another.  For the record, I like the gameplay in Dragon Age I & II, though I prefer the dialogue method of the first.

Many people would say that this isn’t really a problem for games, changing an interactive element of the game doesn’t lead to continuity problems like changes to story can, but I disagree, and I think we need to pay more attention to how gameplay influences the feel of a game.  While Dragon Age Origin’s battles may have felt boring to some people, or had not enough applicable strategy, they were battles I could understand happening.  I turn to Dragon Age II and I see my character (Rogue) leaping unreasonable distance, teleporting around the battlefield, and attacking less by swinging a weapon and more by doing an improvised gymnastics routine.  Which is fine, I like feeling as awesome as that makes me feel, but those moments were extremely rare in the first game, limited only to moments when you defeated a particularly strong enemy.  It gives a large contrast in the feelings of the game.  In Dragon Age, I knew I needed that army to fight against the Blight, to deal with the Archdemon.  But In Dragon Age II, I feel I could take a few armies with each hand.  Again, that’s not a bad thing, but it’s something to be aware of.

If you want to create a sequel, ask yourself why.  Is it because you want to use the same kind of gameplay?  You better make sure you have hints of a new story in the first game, or think up an entirely new one, and always be aware of the feeling of your game.  The choices you make about what a player can do will ripple through every aspect of their experience, and thinking you can achieve the same feelings by making players have different experiences is just as flawed as it sounds.


Also: get the first version of the setup and rules for my board game, Elemental Gate, here.

Elemental Gate V 1.0

Hello everyone, I’m happy to present my first widely available work in progress, Elemental Gate, a 4 player board game.  Please give it a try and tell me how I can make the next version better, which I will post when completed.  There is an end to my work on this game; I’ve set my own deadline, and I don’t intend to waver from it.  When that day comes, it’ll be as done as it ever will, and I’ll have moved on to other projects.  But for the time being, please give some time to help me make Elemental Gate a truly good game.

You can get the game rules and setup instructions here.

Thanks for reading.

On Where to Begin

Well I talk a lot, and not just here.  I often have trouble shutting up in day-to-day life.  I’m told it can be annoying, but if you’re like me, you understand that some topics are just going to keep you going, and I don’t blame you at all.  But occasionally one must realize the sense in making sure they actually talk about the really important stuff.  If you’re like me, you’re not a successful game designer, working out of Ubisoft, Valve, or (One day, gods willing) Bioware.  You don’t have to put in the long hours and sleepless night designer are burdened and blessed with, and you don’t have a team implementing your ideas, helping you every step of the way.  No, if you’re like me, you have yourself, your friends, whatever game pieces you can pick up from goodwill, and a free video game creator program.

But maybe you don’t have that.  Gaming is a love of yours, so you have games, but you don’t know where to find the proper stuff to make games.  Well, I'm no aficionado, not yet, but I can tell you where I get my best help and all the pushes in the right directions.

What's that?  You don't want to study for
hours upon hours?  Aw, poor baby.  Let's
back up the Wambulance.

First off, let’s pretend you don’t have any programming skills.  Well, they’ll definitely be helpful later, so start learning yourself a language.  Game designers work more in Perl and Python than C++, so far as I’ve heard, so those may be your best bets.  In addition, to get started on game stuff right away, or more quickly, there is Game Maker (Windows) and Game Salad (Mac).

Actually, I should stop right here and tell you:  Watch this video.  Then watch the rest of their videos.  Twice.

Done?  Good.

Anyway, let’s say that you want to know some more specifics of design, you want something practical and detailed.  Know that almost regardless of what you decide to study, it will fall victim to an author’s bias.  You’re creating art, and art is always subjective.  The main two books I’ve enjoyed reading are Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design, and The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design.  Level Up is a book full of practical game theory.  It’s a book that can get you to really look at individual bits of your game and analyze them thoroughly, whether you’re making a 1 player side-scroller or 4 player smash-up, Level Up can give the extra details you’ll want.  The Ultimate Guide is more tuned toward the troubles of making a game in the industry and understanding how game writing works.  I believe these two books work wonderfully together because of their very different goals.  The Ultimate Guide will give you an idea of how the aspect like art and writing fit into the design of the game, and Level Up gives the polish to that design.

But you don’t have the money for books.  Okay, that sucks, yes.  I know the feeling.  Boy, do I ever.  So look to the left of this post.  See that “Additional Reading” stuff.  It’s not there for show.  Those links represent some of the most helpful information I’ve found.  Design Robot is unfortunately on hiatus right now, and I’ve already plugged Extra Credits.  Gregory Weir has made some very fun and amusing games, and has a lot to say about the indie side of the gaming world.  David Sirlin’s site is your one stop shop for balancing your game and learning the psychology of multiplayer games.  Teaching Game Design chronicles a teacher’s tasks in bringing important design lessons to the world, and gives an experienced eye on the medium’s trends.  Lastly, the Game Overthinker.  I just like him, he puts up ideas I often find I conflict with (especially the idea that game creators are “toy makers”) but he does so in an intelligent and thought provoking way worthy of consideration.

So that’s a bunch of reading and listening to do, but you want to know what to do on almost no budget, with little programming knowledge and not enough skill to get your game ideas across in Game Make or Game Salad.  Well, there are a couple things you can do.  Practice writing Game Design Documents for your ideas.  Even if they never go anywhere, it’s good to show that you have the ability to write these sometimes very long winded, very thorough documents.  Try to write documents while imagining varying sizes of teams.  For instance, a team of 100 people or a team of 10.  Your games will differ quite a bit, and it will get you thinking about what truly matters in your game.

And in all seriousness, head to goodwill, head to garage and yard sales, head to Value Village.  Find old board games, whether all the pieces are there or not, you can get some parts to work with.  I’ve always found that actually having parts makes the process much, much easier.

That's right, play with these guys.  Nerds are a great
learning tool.  And let's face it: You are one.

Lastly, get your friends to play.  Gather them up to test out your game and let you know what they think.  Make sure they’ll be honest and open about it, and boy, make sure you’re able to take criticism.  If you aren’t, you’re in the wrong business, pal.  Also, understand that your friends are probably not game designers.  Try to separate the true problems of the game from the ones they complain about when they’re losing.  And of course, recognize that your game isn’t that good.  Probably.  Like every artist, you have to run before your can walk, and the critiques of others can always help you move forward.

Speaking of…

In addition to all this hopefully helpful advice, I’ll be doing another post in a few minutes to announce the first version of my board game: Elemental Gate.  This is a definite work in progress, and I’d be more than happy to receive all kinds of critiques surrounding it.  I’m already starting to twist and change aspects of the game, but I’d love to hear more if anyone’s willing to share.  Thanks to everyone who reads, and thanks to those who tell me why I suck.

On Chance

Sorry, been busy for a couple weeks here, moving and job searching in my summer home and whatnot.  It has given me some good time to ponder a new topic, and I think I like this one quite a bit.  It may end up a little longer than usual, so bear with me if you can.

Let’s start out with a game comparison.  Two games for the Game Boy Advance: Final Fantasy: Tactics Advance and Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones.  Both are turn based strategy/RPG games, though there are obviously a large number of differences between them.  In both, a display window will open when you decide to attack indicating your chance to hit and probable damage.  These are certainly a good indicator for the player, and despite their implementation, have never thrown me out of the experience because I’ve always loved to feel like a general making calculated decisions in an epic war.  Here’s where the most important difference lies: If FF:TA says the character will deal 12 damage, that character could deal anywhere from 6-18 damage, but if in FE:SS the display says 12 damage, the character will always deal 12 damage.

Still awesome, play it.

There is a fundamental flaw in what Tactics is attempting to do with this display and the actual specifics of the attacks that are dealt.  Surly, the purpose of the display window is to allows the player to think their attacks through and understand the effectiveness of their strategies.  But the unreliability of the information hurts that immensely.  As Yahtzee put it “… when you put random chance into combat mechanics, all strategy has been thrown out the window, then scraped off the ground and used to pick up the broken glass.”

So we reach the meat of the article: the presentation of chance.  I don’t mean things like the chance of you understanding a puzzle or the chance of hitting a hammer-on in Guitar Hero VS Rock Band.  No, what I’m talking about are the chances players depend on.  You won’t see this in all genres.  A grenade is never a dud in Modern Warfare, for example.  The place I find this is most visible, and most prevalent, is board games.  Try to remember the board games you’ve played before: Trouble, Life, Candyland, there was no skill involved in those games, you were at the mercy of the dice (or spinner), almost entirely.

I don’t believe this should be the case, in board games or videogames.  Now, in board games it’s generally a multiplayer affair, which makes in more difficult to balance among four players without relying on chance.  I’m working on a board game right now, and it’s very difficult to even out every player without relying on chance.  So far, I think the best strategy I’ve found is to give the players the option of chance, to allow them their risks, but also make sure they have set numbers they can control more or fall back on.  This may sound quite complicated and yes, it will never be as easy as Life or Candyland was, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to learn or play smoothly.  The key is “Easy to learn, hard to master.”  That rule does not apply to itself.

But lets look at chance in video games a little more.  How about Mario Party?  I think that link sums up what a lot of people think about it.  I was once playing a game of Mario Party 8 (don’t do it) with some friends, one of whom was becoming incredibly angry because he felt like the rolls of his die were screwing him over at every turn.  he would lose all his coins, miss the star, fall on the red spaces, and so on.  He was swearing and sweating and just generally pissed off with the whole game.  Then the ending came and the game decided to give all three bonus stars to him, and so he won the round.  But he still wasn’t happy because he never felt like he did anything that made him win, and that becomes the important thing about chance.

It may be awesome, but it's in no way your fault.

If you’ve played Dungeons & Dragons, you can surly understand the fun of roll a natural 20, or the disgrace in rolling a natural 1.  It’s fun, and yet entirely based on chance, isn’t it?  No, because you can affect the outcome.  As long as a player has influence over their character and abilities, you can be fairly assured they will be more satisfied with their experience.

So, to go back to FF:TA, is it necessarily unsatisfying for its random aspects?  A little.  When it means the difference between a kill and another round, the chance has misled too far, especially in a game all about the tactics and strategy.  You have to understand the level of precision the players expect from the style of game and cater to that as you can.  The best games and board games are ones that understand the chances the players need to take, and implement them in ways that pray wonderfully on the player’s emotions or on tactical thinking.  A great example exists in the Battlestar Galactica board game, where the goal can be reached more quickly at the possible loss of vital resources.  Do you give your enemies the upper hand for a chance at nearing the end of the game and victory?  It’s a hard decision to make, especially when one of your allies isn’t an ally at all (Hint: Play it).

So at the end of the day, chance, like everything else, has its place, but it must be carefully applied.  In video games, it tends to need to be more behind the scenes so players don’t notice it, and in board games it’s the carefully applied unsure nature of equality, the element that gives hope to that one Risk soldier against an army of ten.  Chance is the dice roll that could save your life or end your opponent’s, and wherever it is, be sure the players involved understand exactly fits into play.