LimitlessUnits.com blog of Tony Huynh, Video Game Designer

Posts Tagged ‘video game education’

Low Skill Cap and Luck (RNG) in World of Warcraft PVP

Monday, December 15th, 2008

Wow is built and designed around the casual player
WoW is built from the ground up to be accessible to new players. Blizzard’s VP of game design Rob Pardo described the design philosophy of World of Warcraft as the “donut design.” This is where the outside of the donut consists of the casual players, while the center is where the hardcore players reside. WoW is a game built for casual players with enough depth to draw in the hardcore players. When Blizzard designed the Player-Versus-Player (PVP) system for WoW, this design philosophy carried over and resulted in the inclusion of the global cooldown and luck or random number generator (rng) as WoW players call it.

Neilyo 14.5 Part 1

Neilyo 14.5 Part 2

The global cooldown
While reaction times and the number of inputs does play a factor in World of Warcraft PVP, it is greatly limited by the built in one second global cooldown between inputs. This places a lowered skill cap on how fast a player needs to input commands to be competitive. There are exceptions to this as certain abilities are off the global cooldown, but for most cases this holds true. It does not matter if you have an amazing ability to input commands at a very fast pace, you are limited to the artificial limit imposed.

StarCraft is a good example of a game without such a skill cap. For elite StarCraft players the number of inputs per minute is something to brag about. Some of the players can consistently achieve as high as 500 inputs per minute. These players constantly practice and strive to improve their inputs per minute and their ability to micromanage multiple units.

The global cooldown also lessens the mistakes that players can make. Because a WoW player is limited by the global cooldown and can only input so many commands per minute they are less prone to make mistakes because there are simply fewer decisions and inputs necessary. This makes the game much more accessible to players who are simply incapable of entering 500 commands per minute. The global cooldown supports the casual player by making the game easier for them to be successful. The great advantage of this is that it makes World of Warcraft PVP much more popular and accessible to more people.

Luck gives PVP greater accessibility and helps turn the casual player into the hardcore player
Luck (rng) is a difficult balance in a game like WoW. Too little and the game becomes stale and inaccessible to novice players, too much luck and players become frustrated. However, luck supports the design tenant of the donut by giving less skilled or out-geared players a chance to win or at least make games close.

Luck is valuable because beginners will enjoy the game more when luck allows them to occasionally win against a more seasoned or better-geared opponent. Conversely, if WoW did not have a luck component, a less skill opponent would never win and this constant negative reinforcement will drive away many novice competitors. It is necessary to reward novice players occasionally to keep their participation and push them to get better at the game. For example, the poker variant Texas Hold’em is popular and maintains its popularity because the game rewards new players and keeps them interested in the game by allowing them to win on occasion through luck alone.

Neilyo Interview

Luck increases the skill cap
Without luck (RNG), WoW PVP involving two equally skilled opponents or teams would be a pre-scripted affair whose outcome would be predetermined from the start. The game would play out something like this. The attacker begins with an attack and from then on each player might as well read off of a script and perform the best possible move in succession until the conclusion of the match. While WoW gives players the illusion of a lot of options, there is almost always a best move or path at any given time. If both sides play “perfectly,” the race, class and spec of the characters or the teams’ combination of classes determine the game because certain classes or team matrixes simply outclass others. The only time this pattern can be broken is through human error. For all the negativity that luck in the game of WoW receives, the game without it would be a very straightforward experience without much deviation.

For WoW, luck has the very strange property of actually increasing skill cap. Players need to be able to react to broken patterns not only from human error but also from bad luck. Players need to switch to a different track or branch in the previously mentioned script to adjust for attacks or defensive measures that fail due to bad luck. This keeps matches from degenerating into a stale affair. If a Rogue’s kidney shot (a move that stuns the opponent) fails due to being randomly dodged, he needs to adjust his next series of moves for his now interrupted stun lock. Another example, this time involving a team, is if a Druid’s cyclone, a spell that incapacitates another player, is resisted, the team must now communicate and coordinate another member to use a different ability to continue the incapacitate effect on the opponent. Luck forces teamwork and emphasizes adjustment to failed attacks.

Luck mitigates some of the balance issues
WoW is a far cry from being balanced and with so many abilities and classes and team combinations possible it likely never will be. Luck helps to mitigate some of these issues by giving lower tier classes or class combinations a chance against higher tier class or team combinations. Let’s say a Warrior, Warlock and Druid team dominates a Rogue, Mage and Priest team (whether it does or not is immaterial to this discussion) luck can help to turn the tide and the dominated team can actually pull off a win over the dominate team. When a weaker class matrix can occasionally overcome a dominant one, it helps to mask the fact that the game is not balanced.

WoW’s shift to the hardcore
Games over the course of time tend to eliminate luck and cater more and more towards the hardcore. WoW is not the exception to this rule. The shift to a lessened duration of stuns instead of an outright resist percentage and the removal of Mace induced random stuns are examples of this.

Conclusion
The World of Warcraft design philosophy of catering to the casual player is supported by the global cooldown and built in luck element of PVP combat. These pillars of the design keep the game popular and accessible to a wider audience and mask many of the balance issues in the game. Luck also has the effect of spicing up the game and increasing the skill cap as players and teammates must adjust to failed attacks. Lastly, if you are a hardcore player that does not like luck in your games, the World of Warcraft has already changed in your favor and over time will continue to move in this direction.

Tags: accessibility, blog, casual gamer, Comparison, donut design, game design balance, game play, gameplay mechanics, global cooldown, hardcore gamer, limitless units, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, Low Skill Cap and Luck (RNG) in World of Warcraft PVP, low skill skill, luck, luck in pvp design, MMO, mmorpg, player versus player, PVP, pvp balance, pvp mechanics, random number generator, riposte101, RNG, rng in wow pvp, tony huynh, video game design, video game education, World of Warcraft, wow, wow pvp mechanics, wow skill cap
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Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 2

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

These are the video games that have defined their genre. They are the standard by which all other games in their category are judged. This is part 2 of this list.

Click here to go back to Part 1 of this list.

Best RTS of All Time
StarCraft (1998)
Platform: PC
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Starcraft has withstood the test of time like no other game before or after it. It is a game that is easy to pick up, but is so deep that even after a decade, millions of players are still developing new strategies and continue to evolve the gameplay. The ability for players to easily save and share replays of games was instrumental in elevating the techniques and strategies being used. The replay feature allowed players to be able to study games and learn from their mistakes and even watch their opponent’s strategies and adopt or adapt to them.

Despite StarCraft’s three completely unique races, it is the most balanced RTS ever created. All three races had completely unique units and equally skilled opponents would have very even chances of winning and could employ numerous different strategies to do so. Countless tournaments in the decade since the game’s release have proven StarCraft’s balanced gameplay. Blizzard has the best track record of any developer to continue to support a game well after release and StarCraft is no exception. Blizzard continues to release occasional patches and balance tweaks that keep the game fresh. This has been necessary as players continually push the gameplay balance with the discovery of new strategies. Despite the evolving gameplay in StarCraft, the game continues to be remarkable in how balanced the three races are as new strategies for one race are countered by new strategies created for their opposing factions. Here is a site dedicated to Starcraft replays.

No entry about StarCraft can go without the mention of the South Korean attachment to the game. StarCraft is a televised national sport in South Korea. The game has corporate endorsed teams of professional players. The players are big personalities and celebrities who are recognized and worshiped by their huge following of adoring fans. StarCraft tournaments are nationally televised events with slick production values and play-by-play announcers or “shoutcasters” as they are called. Here are some of the GOMTV tournaments translated into English. They are very interesting to watch even if you only know the rudiments of the game.

StarCraft, in spite of its age, is the most relevant and popular RTS today. There can be no doubt that it is the greatest game of its genre.

Best Action-RPG of All Time
Diablo 2 (2000)
Platform: PC
Developer: Blizzard North
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo 2: the Mouse Killer. Diablo 2 and its predecessor Diablo have likely destroyed more mice than any other game in existence. I owned an expensive gaming mouse and when Diablo’s million click gameplay destroyed it, I ran out to the store and quickly replaced it with a steady succession of $2 mice and kept my replacement expensive mouse well away from the game.

Diablo and its successor single-handedly invented the action-RPG genre. Dozens of “Diablo” clones continue to be produced, but to this day none can match up to Diablo 2. The randomly generated dungeons, loot, and monsters in Diablo 2 keep the game fresh even after dozens of play-throughs. Diablo 2 remains popular on Blizzards free online service Battle.net because of its addictive easy to pickup gameplay, randomly generated content and Blizzard’s patented brand of long-lasting support and updates to the title.

In many ways, Diablo 2 laid down the groundwork for World of Warcraft. From the branching tiered tree of talents, the UI, to the randomly generated set of colored loot, World of Warcraft owes much of its success to Diablo 2.

Best 3D Fighter of All Time
SoulCalibur (1999)
Platform: DreamCast
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

SoulCalibur Box Art

There was some internal debate between this game and Virtual Fighter 2, but in the end I have to give it to SoulCalibur for the following reasons.

SoulCalibur introduced three revolutionary gameplay mechanics.
1. Eight-Way-Run
The introduction of the eight-way-run gave very intuitive control over the player characters. It is a feature that truly opened up the 3D fighter to the third dimension. Whereas previous games functioned for the most part in 2D, with the only lateral movement coming from a short sidestep, SoulCalibur allowed the player to circle, or continuously move in any of the eight directions. The game controlled how you would expect and was incredibly intuitive.

2. Increased Move buffer
The move buffer is the window of timing that a player had while executing a move before the next controller input was accepted and executed. In both Virtual Fighter and Tekken, while a character is performing a move, the player needed to wait until a move had finished before inputting another move, otherwise the command input would not be accepted. This forced players to be very exact with the timing and execution of moves. SoulCalibur’s increased move buffer allowed players to input and string their attacks without waiting for a move to finish. The command would be accepted and after a move completes the next inputted player command would be executed. The move buffer coupled with the eight-way-run gave new players responsive controls and maneuvers that were simple to execute and impressive to behold. The mechanics of SoulCalibur opened a traditionally hardcore genre to a much wider audience.

3. Guard Impact
SoulCalibur is a part of a rare collection of games that opened the genre up to a less hardcore audience, while still maintaining all of the deep gameplay that a hardcore player expects. Each of SoulCalibur’s characters had deep move sets, air juggles and combos that allowed the expert player to easily set them apart from the novice player. The inclusion of the Guard Impact counter put SoulCalibur well out of the reach of its competition. The Guard Impact is performed either high or low and deflects incoming attacks. If the opponent performs a high attack at the same time that you perform a high Guard Impact it would deflect the attack while at the same time stunning the attacker and not allowing them to perform any other moves besides a counter guard impact for a short period of time. This would allow for really ridiculous strings of Guard Impacts as the attacker would try to mix up their angles of attacks and add delays before executing an attack in an effort to breach the defender’s Guard Impact defenses.

No other fighter encompasses the ebb and flow of combat like SoulCalibur. No words can fully describe the feeling of a long string of guard impact reversals between two good players. While SoulCalibur did not invent the 3D fighter, its mechanics made it truly 3D and introduced the genre to many new players. SoulCalibur was so far ahead of its time that in four iterations and nearly ten years the gameplay has remained nearly identical to the original with only a few minor tweaks.

Best RPG of All Time
Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)
Platform: PC
Developer: BioWare
Publisher: Black Isle Studios, Interplay

Baldur’s Gate II is an epic, timeless masterpiece that marks the last of the truly great RPGs. It sort of makes me sad going back and revisiting this game, because this game book ended a great style of games that developers today will likely never return to. They really do not makes games like this anymore.

Baldur’s Gate II is the last title to use the AD&D second edition rule set and was so accurate that I found the AD&D Player’s Handbook indispensable and constantly open and on my lap as I pored over it to find the best way to min/max my characters.

The story and writing for the game really shines. There is a great deal of text in the game, however it is really well written and the story plays out as if you are reading a great novel. The storyline is so good that even this game’s epic side quests easily outclass most other full RPGs’ main story lines.

The decisions players made in Baldur’s Gate II carried real weight and affected the outcome of future events. Many modern day RPGs distill choice down to good or evil. The player in Baldur’s Gate II had to make decisions that were often gray. The complex characters would support your decisions, offer their advice and even discuss events amongst themselves. With the numerous combinations of characters that the player could select to be apart of their party, this attention to detail was amazing. The player could choose to start up romantic relationships with members of the opposite sex with many of the characters in their party. The writing for these segments were very well done and often memorable. Baldur’s Gate II is one of those few titles that kept you up and playing until 4AM because you had to find out what happened next.

Baldur’s Gate II’s countless optional side quests, different combinations of characters and meaningful decision-making created almost unlimited replay value.

This is the definitive role-playing experience.

Click here to go back to Part 1 of this list.

Tags: Baldur's Gate 2, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Best Games of All Time by Genre, best video games ever, blog, Comparison, Diablo 2, favorite games, Guard Impact, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, riposte101, RTS, Soul Calibur, SoulCalibur, Starcraft, tony huynh, top games, video game education, Video Games, World of Warcraft
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Call of Duty: World at War Through the Eyes of a Game Designer

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

I played through the single-player campaign of Treyarch’s Call of Duty: World at War over the long Thanksgiving weekend and again decided to compile my notes. As this is not a review of Call of Duty: World at War and more of a collection of my notes organized in a more readable format, it will contain some spoilers. You have been warned.

I have got to tell you that going in I was very skeptical considering I was less than impressed with Treyarch’s last outing in the series, Call of Duty 3.

Call of Duty: World at War brings the series back to its traditional setting of World War II. I am torn by this decision as I enjoyed the more freeform story that a modern setting afforded Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The modern setting allowed Infinity Ward more flexibility in their locations, missions and story. The developers even introduced a villain and made him perform evil acts so that the villain evoked an emotional response from the player. There was suspense in the outcome of the game as the way the game could end was in question. These sorts of conventions are more difficult or even impossible in a historic setting like World War II, where the player enters the game knowing that the allies win and how they win. Still World War II allows for very epic scenarios.

In the following sections I will outline the levels and events in the game that left a more lasting impression on me.

The first mission was easily the worst mission in the game. The level traps the player into really tight corridors. Invisible walls hem the player in preventing the player from entering areas of the level that are seemingly blocked by small bushes and knee high rocks that the player should be able to easily traverse. Worst still is the fact that very little cover is available in these tight corridors and because it is so tight in sections, it prevents almost all lateral movement. The end result is a player that is left out in the open with no cover and no place to move. I also really dislike the convention of placing enemies in places where the player is unable to travel. It is in many ways lazy and I feel cheated that a 3-foot wall or small plant is preventing me from a performing a flank or even approach the enemy position. By the conclusion of the first chapter I was almost ready to turn the game off and never revisit it. I am glad I continued.

The game really starts to pick up at the start of the Russian campaign. The Russian campaign begins with a sniper mission called Vendetta. The start of the mission is nearly a direct copy of one of the scenes from Enemy at the Gates. As you gain consciousness surrounded by a stack of bodies inside of a destroyed fountain. You crawl to make your way to the edge of the fountain and are given a sniper rifle by a fellow survivor. Here you spot a group of Germans and must wait for planes to fly overhead to mask the noise of the sniper rifle before opening fire. Later in the level, while inside of a building you are spotted by Germans just outside. They pour fire through the windows of the building with flamethrowers and you must go into the prone position and learn to crawl to avoid the streams of fire. While crawling a bookcase that falls overhead was a simple, but very nice touch. There is also a sniper versus sniper segment further in the mission that was very well executed as well.

The tank level, while breaking up the pacing, was not fun. It consisted entirely of sitting at range and firing over and over at targets. If you came too close you would be punished by being pelted by Panzerfäuste carrying infantry or other tanks and quickly destroyed.

The Black Cat mission was one of the more memorable. It involves the player manning the turrets of a “Black Cat” PBY Catalina plane. Although the gameplay is 100% scripted, the running back and forth through the plane to switch to another turret was very exciting. In one scripted event, just as you sit down at your seat to man the turret, a Japanese Zero crashes into the water right in front of you. The mission is littered with exciting moments and there is always something to shoot.

Later in the Russian campaign you are asked to storm a German occupied city. As you prepare to storm the city, your troops line up in front of you forcing you to stop and watch a bombing of the building ahead. The group then charges through the fields screaming battle cries. I just thought this was a great gating mechanism that greatly increased the chance that the player will see the scripted event of the bombing happening and get the rush of charging across a field under fire.

In one of the American Pacific campaign missions, you fight your way up a hill and you arrive at a nice vista shot to close the level. Amazing vistas are a great way to reward the player for reaching a goal.

One of the departures from previous games in the series that I liked was the way the game made you feel heroic especially in the Russian campaign. Previous Call of Duties put you in the roll of a grunt soldier that was treated no different from any of the other soldiers. In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare the player meant so little that the developers went so far as to kill the player’s character.

Some of the situations where the game made you feel like a hero were:

The Russian commander giving you a rest on the back of a tank for your performance, while ordering another grunt to walk.
The Russian commander also kept reminding you of all the harrowing circumstances you had lived through and that as long as you lived the Russian army could not be broken.
The Russian commander also gives you the honor of planting the Russian flag to signify victory over your German adversaries calling you out specifically for your heroics.

I am also glad to see Treyarch got rid of the quick time event hand-to-hand battles that you had no control over when they occurred from Call of Duty 3 and replaced them with a single knife button press and only if the enemy comes within range of you. This gives the player the ability to prevent these events from occurring by not allowing enemies to get within range. Although the frustration of these events have lessened by being able to prevent them from happening, when they do occur they can be frustrating because the game clock continues and this often leads to grenades landing on you that you can have no chance to escape from.

Issues I saw and improvements I would have liked to see in the game:

Enemy AI will occasionally just stand there ignoring the player or you will see two AI from opposing factions standing back to back ignoring each other while they engage more distant targets.
It is about time CoD fix their AI’s animations. The IK or something is off, they just occasionally get crossed up while moving and it looks very wrong.
The flamethrower was completely overpowered. It made any of the levels that it existed in a complete joke. You just fan it around and everybody instantly dies. It also has unlimited ammo. At least the developers limited the flamethrower to a few select missions.
Enemy guns should do more damage and grenades should do less. I could just stand there and be nearly impervious to fire on the Regular difficulty. Where as grenades are instant death over a very wide radius. Grenades accounted for 90% of my deaths. If the player moved forward and a grenade is already on the ground, the grenade icon would appear before instantly detonating and giving the player no warning before dying. These deaths feel very cheap. This could be resolved by reducing the instant death radius of grenades (falloff of damage), while at the same time increasing the damage of enemy guns against the player. This would place more value on the use of cover.
The achievements come few and far between in the solo campaign. Ideally an achievement should be handed out after every mission completed even if it is a small one in point value to keep the player motivated. It is like Warren Spector says, “have you patted your player on the back lately?”

Despite these issues, Call of Duty: World at War snuck up on me and surprised me with the quality of the campaign. The game starts off slow and the weapons are mostly familiar if you have played Call of Duty 1-3, but the game slowly builds momentum and ends on a very high note.

My thoughts and impressions of the game were based off of a play through of the solo campaign set at Regular (the suggested) difficulty on the Xbox 360 platform.

Tags: blog, Call of Duty: World at War Through the Eyes of a Game D, CoD, CoD4, CoD5, game design, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, Modern Warfare, PC, PS3, review, riposte101, tony huynh, video game design, video game education, X360, Xbox 360
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10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 2

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

These are the ten heroes of video game design. They have been responsible for games that have forever changed the medium and consequently the video game industry as a whole is indebted to them. Also included in this list is a career highlight list for each designer, a bit about how they personally influenced me as a designer and some fun trivia about them. This is part 2 of this list.

To go to Part 1 of this list click here.

5. Sid Meier
Sid Meier picture
The owner of my favorite game design quote:

“Gameplay is defined as a series of interesting choices.”

Every time a new Civilization comes out it ends up ruining any productivity of mine for months on end. They are so good and addictive I actually try to stay away from them because I know I will get nothing done as soon as I start playing them.

Also do you remember those keyboard key guides that you had to lay over on top of your keyboard that to came with F-15 and F-19? Those were complicated games.

Career Highlights
1. F-15 Strike Eagle
2. F-19 Stealth Fighter
3. Railroad Tycoon
4. Sid Meier’s Pirates!
5. Civilization

4. Warren Spector
Warren Spector picture

“Hell no we didn’t achieve what we were striving for on Deus Ex. What you do is you aim for the moon so you end up hitting Hawaii or something. If you aim for Hawaii you end up in Keokuk, Iowa or something, you know?” – Warren Spector

Warren Spector’s rules of game design in his postmortem of Deus Ex laid down the starting bumpers for me as a game designer.

a. Always show the goal. Players should see their next goal (or encounter an intriguing mystery) before they can achieve (or explain) it.

b. Problems not puzzles. It’s an obstacle course, not a jigsaw puzzle. Game situations should make logical sense and solutions should never depend on reading the designer’s mind. And there should always be more than one way to get past a game obstacle. Always.

c. No forced failure. Failure isn’t fun. Getting knocked unconscious and waking up in a strange place or finding yourself standing over dead bodies while holding a smoking gun can be cool story elements, but situations the player has no chance to react to are bad. Used sparingly, to drive a story forward, O.K. Don’t overuse!

d. It’s the people, stupid. Role-playing is about interacting with other people in a variety of ways (not just combat… not just conversation…).

e. Players do; NPCs watch. It’s no fun to watch an NPC do something cool. If it’s a cool thing, let the player do it. If it’s a boring or mundane thing, don’t even let the player think about it — let an NPC do it.

f. Have you patted your player on the back today? Constant rewards will drive players onward. Make sure you reward players regularly. And make sure the rewards get more impressive as the game goes on.

g. Players get smarter so games get harder. Make sure game difficulty escalates as players become more accustomed to your interface and more familiar with your world. Make sure you reward the player by making him or her more powerful as the game goes on.

h. Think 3D. A 3D map cannot be laid out on graph paper. It has to take into account things over the player’s head and under the player’s feet. If there’s no need to look up and down — constantly — make a 2D game!

i. Are You Connected? Maps in a 3D game world must feature massive interconnectivity. Tunnels that go direct from Point A to Point B are bad; loops (horizontal and vertical) and areas with multiple entrance and exit points are good.

Career Highlights
1. Wing Commander
2. Ultima Underworld I and II
3. Thief: The Dark Project
4. System Shock
5. Deus Ex

3. Peter Molyneux
Peter Molyneux picture
This man made me feel like a god. Peter Molyneux is the father of the god game. To his credit are some of my favorite games of all time. Populous was the quintessential god game, Syndicate was way ahead of its time (see my write up of Syndicate here), and Dungeon Keeper turned video game conventions upside-down by casting the player in the role of the villain.

Beyond being one of the greatest designers in history, he has what few designers have, an uncanny ability to sell. In fact he is so notorious with his tall tales; few take his proclamations without a grain of salt nowadays. Despite being skeptical whenever the man opens his mouth, I end up buying whatever the man is shilling because he has an infectious enthusiasm and a way about his personality and demeanor that convinces you that each and every game of his is going to revolutionize the world. With well-over two decades in this industry, Molyneux still remains relentlessly relevant. This is amazing in and of itself. This is a video of him selling you on the dog in Fable 2.

After watching that how can you not like the guy?

Career Highlights
1. Populous
2. Syndicate
3. Magic Carpet
4. Dungeon Keeper
5. Fable

2. Will Wright
Will Wright picture
In many ways Will Wright is the antithesis of Miyamoto, you can easily imagine Will Wright growing up, staying in doors playing board games, analyzing their systems, and building model airplanes, cars and boats. Where the two are the same are their creative drives to make games that give the user new experiences. Will Wright sums up his own methodology for making games better than I could have:

“Well, one thing I’ve always really enjoyed is making things. Out of whatever. It started with modeling as a kid, building models… I think when I started doing games I really wanted to carry that to the next step, to the player, so that you give the player a tool so that they can create things. And then you give them some context for that creation.”

Will Wright’s speeches are always entertaining as well as inspiring. It’s incredible how his research and thought process for his games come about. As I could not embed the first video, you will have to click on the link in order to watch:
GDC 2008 – An Evening with Will Wright

This is a second shorter video of another speach he made at TED.
Will Wright: Toys That Make Worlds

Some additional reading:
Will Wright fan site

The history and hobby tabs were fascinating reads for those with the time and inclination.

Fun Fact from the “Game Master” article in the New Yorker: “Wright was a former Robot Wars champion in the Berkeley-based robotics workshop, the Stupid Fun Club. One of Wright’s bots, designed with the help of Wright’s daughter Cassidy, “Kitty Puff Puff”, fought against its opponents by sticking a roll of gauze onto its armature and circling around them, encapsulating them and denying them movement. The technique, “cocooning”, was eventually banned.”

Career Highlights
1. SimCity
2. Sims
3. Spore

1. Shigeru Miyamoto
Shigeru Miyamoto picture

“I think I can make an entirely new game experience, and if I can’t do it, some other game designer will.”

If you read the Will Wright entry, I tipped my hand on the #1 game designer, not that there could be any other choice.

If there is a face of gaming, it would be Shigeru Miyamoto. I would describe him as the Stan Lee of video games. After Atari’s collapse, everybody thought games were a fad that would go the way of the hula-hoop, but Nintendo made sure video games would have a bright future. Shigeru Miyamoto was at the forefront of the revival.

As much as anybody, Miyamoto’s creations influenced my childhood. I remember working my ass off doing chores and begging to get an NES so I could play Super Mario Bros. It took two successive Christmases of doing chores everyday and eating my vegetables before my parents finally got the system for me. That Christmas morning is my happiest childhood memory.

As you can probably tell, Miyamoto’s childhood story is a lot more interesting than mine. His upbringing is worth mentioning because it was so influential in his video game creations.

According to Miyamotoshrine.com

“Shigeru Miyamoto was born and raised in a rural community near his current home of Kyoto, Japan. Miyamoto was humbled by the natural world surrounding him. Add to that the lack of a television set growing up, and you have a boy whose sense of adventure and imagination was limited only to what his own mind could produce.

Miyamoto would often explore his natural surroundings in Sonebe to bide the time. Rice fields, canyons, grassy hills, waterways. the ideal setting for such an adventurous young man. Then one fateful day, Miyamoto made a discovery that would later resonate in his future endeavors, as would many things from his childhood. Shigeru had discovered a hole in the ground. Not just any hole, but a large hole. Upon closer inspection it was obvious that this hole was actually something more. It was in fact, the opening to a cave.

Young Miyamoto returned several times before building up enough courage to enter. Armed with only a lantern, he ventured deep inside until he came to another hole that led to another section of the cave. This was breathtaking for such a young man. Unforgettable even. And Miyamoto certainly never forgot.”

This sense of wonderment and exploration of a magical world translates so well in his games. Knowing his past it is easy to see where Legend of Zelda sprang out of Miyamoto’s childhood experiences.

I will never forget his GDC 2007 speech that I attended that implored aspiring game developers to occasionally put down their video games and to go outside to learn more about and explore the world around them. It was such a breath of fresh air to listen to him.

Career Highlights
1. Donkey Kong
2. Super Mario Brothers
3. Legend of Zelda
4. Nintendogs
5. Wii Fit

Go to Part 1 of this list.

Tags: 10 Greatest Video Game Designers, blog, Comparison, game design, Game designer career highlights, limitless units, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, Peter Molyneux, riposte101, Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, ten best game designers, tony huynh, top game designers, video game design, video game education, Warren Spector, Will Wright
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10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 1

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

10. Tim Schaffer
Schaffer picture
The consummate storyteller. Tim Schaffer’s talk titled: Adventures in Character Design detailed his method of research in creating characters was a big inspiration to me.

Here are some of the notes I took while listening to the podcast so you don’t have to:

Characters should be wish fulfillment. This doesn’t mean they can’t be goofy, or nerdy, or losers. There are lots of ways to make characters that are fun to play. Guybrush might not be a badass, but he always has a comeback.

Create supporting NPCs as you would the ideal road trip buddies. Making them annoying, offputting, needlessly stupid or generally hateful and then sticking the player with them through the whole game is just sadistic.

Write the player character as you would a character in a movie, a character that a good actor would jump at playing.

Backstory. Making up pasts for every single one of your characters, big ones or not, makes it insanely easy to imbue them with neat little traits by pulling from the past you’ve created.

Steal stuff, but steal it right. Steal stuff from life, especially. From your own life, from your friends’, from crazy things hobos tell you on the street. And steal stuff from other fiction, but don’t steal the surface junk. Steal what makes good things good. So if you’re stealing from GTA, stealing the hookers and mobsters and violence is missing the point. Steal the fun, the open-ended gameplay, the facetious attitudes.

Career Highlights
1. The Secret of Monkey Island
2. Day of the Tentacle
3. Grim Fandango
4. Psychonauts

9. Ken Levine
Levine picture

Ken Levine speaks to the nerd in all of us.
Ken Levine: PAX 08 Keynote Part 1

Ken Levine: PAX 08 Keynote Part 2

Ken Levine: PAX 08 Keynote Part 3

Here is a really good write up of Levine’s 2008 GDC talk.
Empowering Players to Care About Your Stupid Story

What we realized at some point doing the narrator is not a cutscene, it’s not live digital characters, it’s not lip-synching… it’s the world. What is the thing we render best in video games? The world, all the benefits of graphics… this incredibly detailed world. What is your player honestly engaged in most of the time? Think about most games — the warehouses, the sewers, the office buildings… think about the missed opportunities there, in the primary experience, to give the player narrative.

Career Highlights
1. Thief: The Dark Project
2. System Shock 2
3. BioShock

8. Yu Suzuki
Suzuki picture
Suzuki was the Miyamoto of Sega. The first fighting game in 3D was no clumsy effort like you would expect from developers trying to cope with an extra dimension, it was polished, complex and beautiful. Yu Suzuki is the man to thank for the Virtual Fighter series.

The man had the clout and vision to really swing for the fences. Shenmue cost an astounding 70 million USD to make and is the second most expensive game ever created (only recently surpassed by GTAIV’s 100 million USD). Shenmue was a martial-art action RPG game that Suzuki dubbed “FREE” (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment). It featured “Free Questing” the ability to explore the city of Yokosuka speaking with the populace to obtain clues and further the narrative or the player can simply roam around the city and not advance the narrative and engage in a number of mini-game-like activities. These included Space Harrier, Hang On, darts and snooker. You could also complete a number of side quests and take on jobs to earn money. The game also featured a fully-fleshed out “Free Battle” system. This was a game similar to the side-scrolling Golden Axe only with the complex move set brought over from Virtual Fighter. Not only that the player could learn additional new moves as the game progressed.

Shenmue was the most visually stunning game at its time of release and featured a full day/night cycle with dynamically changing weather. The Passport feature took advantage of the Dreamcast’s internet connection and allowed players to upload their high scores in the variety of mini-games to online leaderboards.

Plus, goddamn I loved my Dreamcast.

Career Highlights
1. Hang On
2. Space Harrier
3. After Burner
4. Virtual Racing
5. Virtual Fighter
6 Shenmue

7. Hironobu Sakaguchi
Sakaguchi picture
Hironobu Sakaguchi saved Square Soft. During 1987 Square Soft was close to bankruptcy. The game was titled “Final” Fantasy because if the title failed it would be the end of Square Soft. Needless to say, Final Fantasy was released and Square is still around.

The first time I played Final Fantasy I thought finally, somebody made the first real D&D game. Final Fantasy VI (III in America) is the only game I can remember that made me really care about 2D sprites.

Hironobu Sakaguchi’s team up with Akira Toriyama led to Chrono Trigger, which remains one of my favorite RPGs of all time.

Career Highlights
1. Final Fantasy – Final Fantasy X-2
2. Final Fantasy Tactics
3. Chrono Trigger

6. Richard “Lord British” Garriot
Garriot picture
Richard Garriot is the creator of the Ultima Series and the founder of Origin Systems. He would have a hand in every Ultima game through Ultima Online, which being one of the first graphical MUDs ushered in the new era of MMORPGs.

Ultima 4 was the first game that had a sense of morality. The player had to obtain various virtues in order to beat the game. While the player could commit any evil act they chose to (murder, theft, boasting, etc…) they were punished through a morality system that would prevent the player from obtaining virtues, which were necessary to beating the game. This concept of good versus evil and morality versus immorality was a new concept in gaming that would heavily influence future games.

In Ultima 6, did anybody else collect every cannon in the world and stuff them all into one castle like I did? It is a tragedy that Ultima has faded away. If there is one game series I would like to have a revival it would be Ultima.

At NCSoft, Garriot gave us, City of Heroes, City of Villains before the commercially unsuccessful Tabula Rasa.

This is a video interview where Garriot describes the innovations in his games better than I can.

Career Highlights
1. Ultima 1 – Ultima Online

Click here to see Part 2 of this list.

Tags: 10 Greatest Video Game Designers, blog, Comparison, game design, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Ken Levine, limitless units, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, Lord British, Richard Garriot, riposte101, ten best game designers, Tim Schaffer, tony huynh, video game design, video game education, Yu Suzuki
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