Gaming as a Skill

As you may or may not be aware of, there is a lot of debate and going back and forth among the people of our society on the concept of people gaming, what gaming does, and how it affects us.
There's a lot of ways to try to answer this abstract question, but I feel there's only one facet of it I can really cover well.
I'd like to talk a bit about the talents that individuals learn from playing games. I will give specific examples, and more general ones to give you a good idea of what I'm getting at.

This topic was inspired by Jane McGonigal's TED Talk about how gaming can make a better world.




I often have heard of children, teens, and even adults who receive a lot of criticism for their enjoyment of games. I've heard a lot of responses from skeptical individuals toward these people that sound like this:

"There's so many more productive things you could be doing."

"When will these ever help you in the real world?"

"It's unhealthy for you, you should be playing outside."

"This won't help you get a good career!"

Imagine that you hear things like this each day, and you constantly receive this skepticism and ridicule from people who don't understand what makes gaming such a beneficial activity. You would not feel very good about gaming at that point. I'm sure if you're anything like me you'd tell them you don't care and continue playing the games. Good.

Games teach a lot of valuable skills and lessons. These skills and lessons are able to manifest within our material world, regardless of if they manifest well in the digital world. I'll use myself as an example of this, to better illustrate my point. I will use several game examples for each skill I learned from playing games, and explain how it taught me that skill.

One of the skills able to be obtained easiest from games is the skill of cooperation. Cooperation doesn't seem like a hard skill to learn, but given the competitive nature of society in a lot of dynamics it can be pretty grueling to try and be the team player.
The games that taught me cooperation are far and wide, but I will list five of the biggest influences on this element.

1. Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
2. World of Warcraft
3. Minecraft
4. Halo 2
5. Warframe

These games are all pretty different from one another in terms of gameplay. But each one helped solidify the element of cooperation within my mind for achieving my goals. Each of these games have trials and obstacles within them to guide a player and show them the power of working together. Whether this was online with other players, or offline with a team of different characters, it still taught the same important dynamic of the strength of teamwork.

The second skill I learned from games was leadership. Oftentimes it is not understood how someone can become an effective leader. But in games, we as gamers witness characters in the story who are powerful leaders, as well as witness other players who lead their teams well. Through this observation, or participation in leading others within a game, we learn how to lead an effort with others better than normal.
The games that taught me this skill the best would be the following:

1. Counterstrike: Source
2. World of Warcraft
3. EVE Online
4. Runescape
5. Neverwinter Nights

There were a lot of people I met along the way in these games and a lot of teams I led or was a part of throughout my experience. I rarely ever encountered someone leading a team badly. There are plenty of games nowadays that rely more on teamwork and leadership than these games do. I'm mostly referring to the giant influx of MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games such as League of Legends, SMITE, Heroes of Newerth, DOTA, etc.
Through the playing of these games, I've learned a lot about how to effectively manage working alongside or above others. I can manage workflow better. I can give better feedback and help the improvement of those I'm leading more effectively.

The last skill I'll address here, and probably the most important one, is friendship. I learned how to communicate, bond, and interact with people easier through playing games. The ability to bond with people and make connections is probably one of the most important skills in today's society. We are constantly at a need to expand our network, to get our name out there, and to show people that we are interesting and worth spending time with.

I won't list any games for this last skill since I can barely think of any games that don't teach this skill that I play. I think every game teaches this, or at least encourages the player to develop this skill. I have so many friends I make just from playing games that I never have a lack of people to talk to or interact with.

You hear often in our society about people who can't work with others, who can't lead effectively, and who don't have any friends. Wouldn't this world be better if everybody obtained these skills?

Atomize

After talking about game design and different dynamics of it within the last few months, it seemed pertinent to then put up a rough draft of a game I thought up personally.
The game is called Atomize, it's a top-down 2D puzzle game with the potential for story dynamics and (in the future) user-created levels for others to play through.

At the current stage of fleshing out the game, it only has a linear level design with complex, yet simple, puzzles to navigate through with the character: Atom.
Atom has no dialogue in the game, and essentially the dialogue of Atom is more displayed through its actions in the levels.

I did my best to make some of the puzzles thus far defy normal human intuition, and so far most of those who have tested it have taken quite some time to figure out the easy ways of getting passed the puzzles.

There is a lot I'd like to add to this game, but for the moment its physical system (collisions, hit detection, doors/gates) are in a clunky developmental stage, and I need to make a lot of improvements to the feel of the game so that it's possible to make the game more forgiving in terms of some of the earlier levels and puzzles.
I will likely continue updating this blog with any continued progress I make on Atomize.

For now though, it's back to the internet, to search around for GML methods to help the game feel smoother.

The Outsider

Title Screen

Backstory - Zombie Outbreak! Surprise! Some guy managed to make a safe city-like place where survivors gather and now they do the best they can to stay alive. One of these things is creating a group known as the "Outsiders" people who venture beyond the walls in order to help keep water/electricity going and gather food or other supplies. Most "Outsiders" need to be agile and able to do the task assigned to them. "Outsiders" select one person to be their contact for back at the city. This is a personal decision that each "Outsider" makes themselves. It's been about a year and a half since the beginning of the real outbreak (when things really started rolling downhill).

You play as: Richard - Only child, both parents died at the hands of zombies. In order to cope with how shitty things are, he ends up turning everything into a joke and becomes an asshole to everyone! He's very self-centered and is very good at what he does: hunt and kill zombies. He's very agile and dependable for these missions, hence why he became an Outsider.

Zombies - They're zombies. They shamble and some jog (no runners though)... depending on how recently they've been infected/turned, the faster they are, with "joggers" being very recently infected. Most, however, are "shamblers" at this point due to it being a significant amount of time since their turning. It's been speculated by the Dr. that zombies have this natural predatory instinct towards humans and animals close to humans (cats, dogs, etc.). They don't need to eat but eating seems to rejuvenate them (make them revert to an earlier stage of post-infection allowing them to run faster). They don't feel anything but seem to react to sound and sight and, in rare cases, smell.

While still early in development, I hope that, in time, The Outsider will become much more complete so I can have something under my belt to be proud of!

Genders, Culture, and the Gaming Community

          Having recently watched one of Anita Sarkeesian videos I've noticed something very strange about her video. She does point out that games do tend to have gender stereotypes and tropes fairly often, but she never actually talked about what we, as the community and developers, can do about it.
          One theory I had about it is that it stems from our culture. The way we perceive women, games, and how those two are "supposed to be tied together" all comes from the way we grew up with them. I think that one thing we can do, as a community, to stop the mass tropes and stereotypes from being a problem is to stop making it a problem and topic for our children. If they don't automatically think of make-up and the color pink associated with girls, then they (should they become developers) will stop thinking that girls should be defined by these characteristics alone.
          Another theory I had was to stop using gender as markers in games altogether. I'm fairly sure that the developers will still be able to let the gamers know who is what gender based on factors other than pink bows and make-up. Such as with the koopa kids in the Nintendo+Mario universe, letting the developers use names, attitude, and even name pronouns such as "he" and "she" could be used to help distinguish gender without the need for stereotypes or tropes.

A Developer-type Look at Five Games (There Will Be Blog)

Here we are again, reviewing games.
This should be a bit different though. I normally will review a game as if I were a player, not as if I were a designer. In these reviews, I will make an attempt at reviewing the design aspects of the game, rather than how good it made me feel to play it. (Or bad, thanks Dungeon Siege III)

That being said, let's take a look at these little indie games I took a look at, shall we?

1 : dys4ia (Playable Here)

Dys4ia is a wonderful game designed to tell the experiences of the designer in their transition in life using hormones to become the gender they identify as. The game has lots of short and brief mini-game-esque segues as it tells the tale of anguish, depression and often uncomfortable points before things can get better.

The title!

From a design standpoint, this game does an excellent job at conveying the confusion and frustration of the author as it is played through, with each "stage" within the story potentially being much different than its previous one. Each small level shows a small dynamic of the whole story, and each one also has a completely different control scheme generally than the previous part. One moment it may be a pong-esque minigame, the next it may be a game where you are trying to catch falling objects or any other variety of basic gameplay dynamics. It was a very creative and engaging design to the game to keep the player guessing at what they would be doing next.

Pong-type gameplay mechanic in action.

This game had an excellent message and voice behind it. The narrative structure was well done and fit into each miniature piece of the game in a sort of organized chaos that showed the player the turmoil of feelings the designer faced when going through their transition with hormones. Very few games convey any such message, and I believe this is a very unique and important aspect of this game that sets it apart from most others.

2 : I Want To Be The Guy (Playable Here)

I Want To Be The Guy is quite an interesting game. A lot of players find this game very infuriating, yet they keep playing it. Games that have this dynamic are very interesting on account that they are not catering exactly to making the experience enjoyable for a player. But, the game does manage to hook players into enjoying it in their own way. 

The beginning...

I would classify this game as a challenge game. The player, you, is put through a very unforgiving set of deadly traps and other extravaganza, and within the very first seconds of the game, you are most likely being brutally smashed into bits. Like so:

The bits you get smashed into.

3. Planetoid 2 (Playable Here)

Planetoid is a delightful empire-expanding game. At first I was a bit daunted by a few of the control inconsistencies in it. But the game has a lot of dynamics to it that are interesting. The game revolves around you starting as a race, and with your few little adorable square cubes, you must expand across the solar system.

My guys fraternizing with our neighbors, the aliens.

Some of the controls are a bit wonky, but the gameplay itself is enjoyable in a sort of passive or abnegation-based form of relaxation. You kind of just observe your little squares managing themselves, and occasionally you'll build some things to help them expand, then send them on their merry little expeditions to planets.

The act of building new planets and interacting with the aliens you may encounter can be an interesting little cultural experience. While the game itself can take some time to heat up in terms of the speed of play, it can provide a good shutoff valve for your brain while you just watch the little people go about their business.

Overall, I liked the conquest and exploration aspect of planetoid a lot, though there could be a bit more explanation of what certain objects in the game do.

4. Canabalt (Playable Here)

I had no idea what I was coming in to when I started Canabalt up for the first time. I had heard nothing of it ever. What I found was very surprising. Canabalt is essentially a racing game, except it's just you, and you're trying to outrun lord knows what (we'll assume world-destroying machines). However, what ever you may be running from isn't much of a threat, the real threat is you are a mortal, normal human aside from your ability to run inhumanly fast for long distances without so much as a sip of water.

Normally, that would all be well and good right?

Splat.

Wrong. The problem with running absurdly fast as a regular person, is you will literally collide with something, and then decimate yourself from the impact. Or in the majority of my early playtests through this game, running and jumping too high, hitting a wall instead of the convenient glass window I was supposed to crash through, and then falling to my death.

Crashing through windows, always satisfying.

This game is great fun, and the design choices for it are very interesting. Not many games have such a small palette of colors, the monochrome tone of this gives an atmosphere of a melancholic or apocalyptic scene. Also, as your character is running, you often will see large creatures or machinations in the background wreaking havoc on the city, as well as planes flying down and crashing. 

What ever is happening to the world, you have to escape somehow. It's great that just the atmosphere alone in the game urges the player to hurry, and to get away faster.

This is a fantastic game, and the atmosphere in it really helps the narration of the goal to the player.

5. You Have to Burn the Rope (Playable Here)

I think this game confused me the first time I played it. The game conveys itself very well. By "conveys" I mean "tells you exactly what to do." The obviousness of the game itself is almost humorous. But what really takes the cake about this game is that you are serenaded with this catchy little tune at the end when you beat it. I'll let you see that for yourself when you beat it.

I have to what?

From playing so many games that incorporate the concepts of lies, intrigue and/or espionage, this game left me very suspicious for quite a while. I spent a good deal of time in the game being absolutely stupid. I didn't follow the orders. I didn't burn the rope. I didn't win the game.

Eventually, I had to give in and try, nothing else was working. My weapons, as they said, were powerless.

Fine, I'll try the torch...

So I gave in, and now I'm here trying to burn this rope. The controls were simple to grasp, and pretty much every button was the standard attack button. I think one of the parts that amused me the most about this game was that I was thinking about how many other boss fights I've been through that had this same mechanic, but it just wasn't vocalized as much.

Think about it, a lot of boss battles in games involve some obscure way of dealing with them. In some Metroid bosses you have to aim at weak spots, I get it. Bosses like the Bed of Chaos from Dark Souls require you to only go to certain weak zones and break the parts, the rest of the boss isn't kill-able by your skill alone. This kind of drove an idea home in my mind after a while. Why do we make final bosses like this? Why do we make it so they have to be fought a special way to be defeated? We can't use the skills we learned through the game to fight them? Why not?

This doesn't apply to all games. But the games that they do apply to are numerous in quantity. You may want to consider it next time you're making a boss for a game.

So there you have it! There's the five games I look a glimpse at and did my best to play through. They were excellent, and I can't really say I didn't like any of them. They were all great.

If you've played a strange game that you think illustrates something important, leave its name (and a link to where to get it, if you want to be helpful) in a comment. If you like, explain what thought-provoking element it has within it, as well.

Til' next time.

Game Review Marathon!

Recently I have been doing some research on games. A good friend of mine had a small list of short games that he recommended! Here's a couple that I managed to pick up and try out!

I want to be the Guy (IWTBTG):
IWTBTG, created by Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly, is a quirky game that'll send your blood pressure through the roof! This game will test your skills to the limits and will test your patience even more. Being to the point where difficult and challenging are understatements to describe this game, IWTBTG is a 2D platformer with very simple controls and a goal that's easy to say but harder done: reach the end. There are cameos and references everywhere in the game but be sure to keep on your toes. One very important concept to know about this game, though: There is no health. You take any damage and you die. It's available for download and play for free! But be warned, it'll make you want to flip your table like if you were the Hulk!

 Passage:
Passage is a 2D developed by Jason Rohrer. A very simple game that only utilizes the arrow-buttons for controls, the game's key strength lies in symbolism. The game starts off with the protagonist on the left side of the screen and unable to see very far to the right, with a lot of pixels blending in together but can choose to go in one of two directions: Right or Down. Should the player choose to go right, they will find themselves now attached to a girl (presumably to mean marriage) and the two now act as a single unit. This, however, poses a problem that the player that went down does not have to worry about. With the man and woman now acting as a single entity, their combined width doesn't allow them access to areas further down that the single man would have been able to access and obtain additional treasure. After a while, the man and woman begin to show signs of aging and eventually, both succumb to their old age and die. Passage's symbolism is that life is what you make of it, whether you should make a mad-dash towards the end and skip all the treasures, refuse to get married and get all the treasure you can, or make the best that you can with your love. How you play is up to you. Passage is available for free download.


There is only one level (TIOOL):
TIOOL, made my John (No last name given email address: jmtb02@hotmail.com) is a very interesting game where, like the title says, there is really only one level. This allowed John to make the game larger, not by changing the level, but by changing the mechanics of the game itself and for allowing different ways for the game to be played (and the level to be completed). The core mechanic for the game revolves around adaptability and change. Changing the mechanics and having the player adapt to those changes! This game is available for play for free online.

Fantastic Contraption (Note: this game was not on the list presented by my friend but I feel like it should be and would fit in well):
Fantastic Contraption is a 2D online puzzle game made by a large team of people at fantasticcontraption.com. The reason why I believe this game should be on the list of games is because of the mechanic is creativity. There is never just one specific way to reach the goal. People have made catapults, battering rams, and simple moving machines all to achieve the same goal. With the power of creation and creativity at your hands, your imagination is the limit with how you achieve your goal in this game. It is available for free play at fantasticconraption.com.

Judith:
Judith, made by Terry Cavanaugh, is a 2D first person game that emphasizes control. I won't spoil any parts of the game, but I will say that you will need to play until the end of the game in order to fully understand what is meant by "emphasizes control". An interesting concept that I enjoyed about the game is that you play from 2 different points of view. This presents an interesting way to tell a story that has two parts that come together in a very nice way. This game is very short (probably 15 minutes) and is a available online for download to play!

Some other games I have seen in action (but have not actually played) include:
Don't Shit Yourself:
A very short text based game (with some pictures) that encourages the player to end the game in many different ways to find all of the game's achievements.

Dys4ia:
An interesting game that provides some insight on the challenges of changing genders through its gameplay! The game emphasises teaching to help show its players a new viewpoint through the game itself.

Burn the Rope:
This game is very short (can last under a minute) but the main attraction with the game is the credits! Sometimes, the best part of the game isn't the gameplay or the mechanics itself but instead, the music or atmosphere.

Prototype Postulation Practice

The Game

Sorry you lost it.

Over the past few weeks I’ve gone through some light brain activity coming up with ideas for games. I’m pretty... Slow. At least when it comes to designing a working game, even more so if it will be a fun game.
That being said, please accept my condolences for this experiment you’ll be participating in if you try this little game.
The game is called At Odds. It’s a very simple game, with pretty simple rules. Which I’ll explain later. First, here is what you’ll need to construct the game yourself. All the pieces should be relatively easy to find in a house that has games lying around.

You will need:

• A deck of cards. (Make sure to remove all the cards with numbers Ace - 3 and 9 - King, you can even just keep one card from 4-8 in a small pile, up to you.)
• Three to five dice. Depending on the quickness you want from the game. More dice leads to a faster game. Generally I use four.
• Paper to keep score! One sheet should be fine.
• (Optional) A dice cup or other surface for rolling dice. I know plenty of folks who can’t roll dice to save their life without rolling them off of the table. Save some back pain and additional squats by using a dice cup!

The cards!

The dice!

The finished product!

The end result.

Pretty simple, right? Right.
You know what else is simple? The rules of the game (okay maybe not):

• Whoever rolls the lowest on a d6 (six-sided die) goes first. Choose which order players play starting from that player amicably.
• The first player takes a face-down card from the deck and places it face-up in the center of the playing area. Repeat this process each time the first player’s turn comes up. 
• Each turn, that player rolls all the dice (however many you chose to have) then tallies up the amount. Afterward, get the quotient of your roll and the card (the amount of times your card divides evenly into the roll). Ignore the remainder. 
• For example, if I rolled 22 and my card is a seven, I have 3 sevens. This number you have is your points from that turn. With the previous example, I would get 3 points. 
• A player wins if they get a previously agreed-upon amount, in this case I usually stick with 13 since it’s odd and unlucky. 
• (Optional - Can make game longer) If a player would surpass the victory point threshold with one roll, they are instead bumped back to the beginning score plus the number of extra points they gained over 13. (12 pts + 4 roll = 3 points) 

This is pretty much the end of the normal part of my post. Below is a play log and report of how the development of the game progressed as I was working on its intricacies (what few there were).

Game Development Log

Play Log 9/13

The game "Seven" was created among Eduardo, Nick, Tiffany and I. Seven involved dealing each player random hands of cards, and having players take turns to play down their possible combinations that added up to 7 or subtracted down to -7. Solid game, good idea. Played very well.

Seven, in action!

Rules were implemented to enable players to acquire more points when they could play their whole hand to make a seven, and through other ideas.

Play Log 9/18

The game I tried this time was... Hum. I forgot the name of it now. Bother. But Daniel and I tried it out and fleshed out some of the conceptual ideas as we went along. It was a race-to-the-finish game involving powerups which were randomly added across the imaginary track. Players could get items to make them move further each turn, pull other players back, and even make other players or yourself reroll their movement roll.

It was quite enjoyable, and got me thinking about how to implement dice into a game I wanted to create. Mainly, At Odds.

The play went well, and we had some headway in trimming the rules as the playtests went on:

- Initial Rules:

- Revamped Rules #1:

(You know. I actually couldn't find my screenie of the 2nd draft of rules probably because I'm beautiful and overwrote them on accident when saving the screenie. Drat. The second one here should be missing rule 4 , 5 and 6.)

- Revamped Rules #2:

Play Log 9/30

After playing Catharsis, Word Wars, and Cavern Conundrum (and my game), I got a bit of inspiration. I haven't developed this game nearly as much as I would like to make it into a more fun and surprising game. As it is, it's too up to chance and has too little room for strategy, which is what I would like it to have a heavier basis around.

Development of At Odds:

The idea for my game stemmed from when Eduardo, Nick, Tiffany and I came up with the game "Seven." I have a fascination with prime numbers and odd numbers. So I wanted to do something different, I like chance games as well, so I felt dice should be incorporated.

Playtest 1 - Playtest with three players:

P1 roll - 6,6,4,4,2 = 22 : card -- 7 = 3 point(s)
P2 roll - 6,6,6,5,2 = 25 : card -- 3 = 0 point(s) (eight 3's)
P3 roll - 1,1,1,5,5 = 13 : card -- 8 = 1 point(s)

Progress Per Turn:
P1 : 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0
P2 : 0, 1, 3, 1, 1, 0
P3 : 1, 1, 0, 0, 5, 15 Winner!Assessment: 
Player 3 obviously wins when all five dice roll 15 when they get the Ace. The game obviously needs to be adjusted so instant-win mechanics are not as prominent.


Changelog:

• Removed all Aces, even numbered cards, and face cards.
• Cut down the dice being rolled to four.
• Players maintain a pulled card each round instead of each player. e.g. : P1 pulls a 7, each player rolls for 7s before a new card is chosen, to promote equality.

Playtest 2 - Next Session:


Progress Per Turn:
P1: 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0
P2: 5, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 5 Winner!
P3: 5, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 3, --


Assessment:
This game went much smoother and quicker than previously now that players didn't get stuck on absurdly high cards that were difficult to roll for. I need to think of a new mechanic for disabling the higher rolls like 5, like making low card matches worth less points. Will contemplate this and make changes. The changes to card deployment are much more friendly to players now. Will contemplate keeping a certain amount of even cards in just in case.


Changelog: 

• Re-added even cards 4 through 8.
• Removed cards less than 4 from the playing deck.

Playtest 3 - Last Session:

Progress Per Turn:

P1: 1, 0, 1, 0, 3, 1, 1

P2: 0, 3, 1, 0, 3, 5, 1 Winner!

Final Assessment:

The game works very well, it took little to no explanation of the rules for my new subject to play it efficiently. Since it's a game of chance, there isn't so much skill involved as other games, so one does not need to learn how to play quite as much. I felt like I needed to prolong the flow of the game for smaller amounts of players. Perhaps I will work on more mechanics to lengthen two-player games in the future.