Ship launch delayed due to technical malfunction.

interesting topics. so I had this idea. basically the game is a platformer, and as you go through the journal of the main character is read. I figure it would help immerse the player and also be a good system of pushing them in the right direction. Does this seem like it would continue to push the player? I know I am not the greatest writer, and I am aiming for a more pulp feel. any thoughts. I am almost afraid that the player will just be annoyed by all the writing in their way.

While slightly different, the plot for Eternal Darkness (GameCube) was actually fairly close to what you describe.

It was also a game that almost everyone I know (even the text intolerant ones) read as much of the journal as they could, because it was generally pretty awesome, and added a lot to the game's atmosphere.  So yeah!  I think that structure definitely can be carried off well!

[bold]

Re:  Paul Eres's comments

The methods proposed may or may not alienate people who like text in games, but really, that's what this thread is for, right?  Proposing ideas that will make reading text more appealing to some people, and trying to minimize the people it alienates?

Just to throw a pair of datapoints out, while I fit your model [voracious reader, don't usually skip text] a good friend of mine doesn't.  [reads almost as much as I do, and is the one who skips text when he feels the story isn't worth his time investment].

Sure any of these will get obnoxious if overused.  Used with more moderation, and they just heighten effect, as opposed to overwhelming.  You might as well attack bold text, or italic.  As anyone who has ever read comics can attest, text can convey whole extra levels of meaning when the artist is free to draw it in a nonstandard way, in order to highlight some nonstandard aspect of it.  Colored or wiggly text is just the logical evolution of that.

Also, I might be reading too much into it, but your first paragraph reads a tad on the dismissive side, if read with a charitable interpretation.  (and a bit on the insulting side, if not) It is also undermined slightly by the fact that you obviously liked the text in the final fantasy games, (via previous posts in this very thread) and it WAS color coded for your convenience.

I am curious though.  Paul - Have you played Paper Mario?  I'm just wondering if your reaction is based on a general dislike of the idea in the abstract, or actual first-hand experience disliking of the style?

-Montoli, ever charitable

i think triplefox's point was that such behavior is *consistent*. there are some people who consistently skip text in every game they play, and others who consistently don't (as you yourself mentioned). it doesn't matter how good the story is, it's more a function of the player than of the story quality. it's not as if bad stories get skipped more than good stories, it's more that long stories get skipped, no matter what their quality is. no matter how hard you try, no matter how good your story is, there will be people who skip text when they see it, that's just how many people are.

Right, but my point was "you can't lump together all people who skip stories, there are at least two (and probably more) different motivations that leads to this behavior".  One of these motivations, "just doesn't like reading stories in games" is more or less a lost cause.  It's going to be very difficult to get them to care.  But the other, "has decided the story sucks, and is skipping it because they're not getting enough enjoyment out of reading it" is more or less exactly what this thread appears to be trying to address. 

I agree wholeheartedly that you shouldn't break your game for the people that love it, in hopes of reaching the people you don't.  (See:  Prince of Persia:  Warrior Within)  But it IS usually worth examining the motivation of the people who don't like your game, because it's not always a zero-sum situation.  Sometimes there are ways to bring in new people without alienating the existing ones.  Heck, sometimes you're even fixing things that the existing players wanted fixed, but just didn't hate enough to stop playing over.

Heh. I don't know if it's what you're referencing or if you just have a really beefy Ratatta, but there actually was a fairly amusing tactic floating around for a while, called F. E. A. R. (F*cking annoying evil rodent) which involves using a level 1 Rattata to kill a level 100 opponent from full hp...

Heh.  Always liked that one.

I have opinions on this topic.  But discerning them is left as an exercise for the reader.

There are times I really think that Derek's has a legitimate, honest-to-goodness mutant power of having an image available for any occasion.

I seriously expect Professor X to show up on his doorstep any day now and take him away to a magical school.

Actually, I thought they patched it a while back so that both teams would have exactly the same map?  Or at least the same placement of resources?  (I know they have the same random placement of Tanks and witches between both rounds at least?)

http://twitter.com/cruitine

I didn't really think my life would be very interesting so instead on Twitter I pretend to be a paranormal private eye...

That is... that is pretty great, actually.

game design philosophies are usually temporary conceits that only those who haven't finished many games believe in, because they haven't yet tested them against the wide variety of situations that occur when developing games, and because different audiences like different types of games and it's so difficult to have any generalized statements that would be useful in making games better for all audiences, rather it's best to have principles that work more strongly for your specific audience; so given specification to my particular audience and what i enjoy in games,

I find this paragraph to be quite incomprehensible.  You're saying that you don't think people who have finished multiple games have philosophies any more?  You don't think Miyamoto, or Kojima, for example, have definite philosophies about how to go about making games?  In spite of the fact that both have given GDC Keynotes in which they talk about their philosophies?

I'll certainly grant you that most people revise their philosophies about game design after experience.  Just like how, you know, most things change your view and shape your philosophy when you go from "never done it before" to "seasoned veteran".  But to suggest that somehow people's philosophies are wiped away when they become better informed, well... certainly goes against all the data points I have on the topic, at least.  (Heck, I find it incomprehensible that Paul Eres doesn't have a game design philosophy, considering how often we get into arguments over storytelling techniques and its place in game design.  Is it possible we are talking about different things when we say "philosophy?")

QTEs wouldn't bother me so much if it were actually possible to perform half the things that happen in them in normal gameplay. Random button mashing QTEs in the middle of Sonic Unleashed? That doesn't even make sense! Though the new Prince of Persia game had a sort of partial QTE battle system that I thought worked pretty well; wasn't so much control sacrificed as to make it feel like I was watching a movie while pressing random button combinations. It was also supposedly a throwback to the old PoP DOS games, which is cool.

I feel much the same way!  One of the big contrasts for me was comparing Prince of Persia 2 fights with Ninja Gaiden (xbox) fights.  They both had you doing crazy stuff that looked awesome, but the big difference was that in Ninja Gaiden you could do it whenever or wherever you wanted because it was just part of the game, and not some scripted sequence for a particular enemy.  I think I prefer that over quicktime events...


Re: Prince Of Persia events as a throwback...   I played the old DOS prince of persia games (since I had a computer at the time, and back then they were NEW prince of persia games...)  But I don't remember any quicktime events, or anything remotely like them, unless it was in the hideous "Prince of Persia 3d" game that no one liked.

Yeah.  I know what you mean.  A lot of it is gut feel.  A lot of the rest is trying to learn from mistakes that I've seen games make. (some mine, some other peoples'...)  The remainder is unabashed, starry-eyed idealism.

But hey, making lists is fun, so who am I to argue?  Making it forced me to sit down and think "ok, what exactly does my process look like" so it was probably a nice exercise if nothing else.

Me too.  I had to boot it up, and it dictated that while I typed. :D

[never]

Ok ok, I couldn't really leave it at just one.  But I couldn't resist posting that one by itself.  Here's the longer (and hence less witty) version:

• If the user does something they expect to work, then it should either work, or make it very clear to the user why it didn't work.  (Mostly talking about interface design here)
• As a designer, get used to the idea that you don't know what is fun, and aren't able to objectively tell what parts of your game are good.  Be detached enough from your ideas that if people tell you something isn't fun, you're able to believe them.
  
  • Playtest (preferably with people you don't know, or who aren't friends/family, who are more likely to tell you what you want to hear) to find out what parts are really fun.
    
  • Don't be afraid to change designs after you actually see people playing it.
  • The user is never wrong about how they feel.  If a player says "This game is too hard/complicated/whatever", the answer is not "no it's not, see, because of X".  X may or may not exist, but it doesn't change the fact that the user feels that way right now and your game should have done a better job of making them not feel that.  (Unless that's what you're going for.)
• If you find yourself wasting time playing your own game, then that probably means you are doing something right.  Keep that part!
• It is better to start with a small prototype game with a kernel of fun in it, and grow that into something bigger, than it is to make a big game, and hope that you'll be able to make it fun after you set up the whole thing.  There are very few games that can't be effectively prototyped - prototype early and often before you invest significant technology or resources to make sure you're on the right track.
• Don't feel like the game needs to be long to be good.  A short succinct experience is better than a long one that should have been short, but was padded for longer playtime.
• Stories that the user makes while playing are the ones they'll remember more than the ones you try to tell them deliberately.
  
  • Tricking them to telling themselves the story you want them to hear is incredibly powerful if you can pull it off
• Show, don't tell.
• Whenever you do something, consider the ratio of bang for buck.  Focus on the parts where you're likely to increase the user experience the most for the least amount of effort.  Ex:  It's not worth spending a week tuning the particles of an explosion that only happens once, for less than a second.  It probably IS worth spending a week tuning the explosions that happen every time an enemy dies in your game though, since the user will be seeing it constantly.
• Focus on the awesome bits.  Play to the strengths of whatever resources you have, be they technology, team resources, time, whatever.  If there is something you want to put in your game that you don't think you can make awesome, skip it, and fill in with the parts that you DO know you can make awesome.  The user won't care that part X is crappy because it was harder than part Y, they'll only care that it was crappy.
• Games are an interactive medium.  No other artistic medium gets to do the things we can do!  Milk that for all it is worth!
• Games don't have to be high art to be awesome.
• Games are capable of being high art, which is awesome.

-Montoli

Sure, I'll bite:

• Brevity is the soul of wit.

A certain subset of players will actively try to ignore dialogue until you can demonstrate otherwise that it's worthwhile to pay attention. For these moody, red-faced, hyperactive players, the only goal is to "beat the game" and that means speeding through everything as fast as possible. So before you can do anything else with the text of your story you have to win them over; they're your toughest audience.

To be fair, plenty of them don't see it as worthwhile to pay attention because they simply aren't enjoying the game's story.  (Rather than because they don't care about any stories.)  They have the goal "get as much fun out of the game as possible", and they simply skip the text because they're trying to enjoy the other parts of the game, having determined that they think the story sucks.  (either as a whole, or the part that they are currently in)  As has been mentioned numerous times, many games do have pretty crappy stories.

While I personally play games as a compulsive "I must read every scrap of text the designers put in" kind of search, I have plenty of friends who I'll watch playing games, and they'll be like "yeah, yeah, [skip skip skip] you don't trust the princess, and I'm supposed to suspect her instead of the obviously evil chancellor, whatever, can we please get on with the game?"

Re: text effects, if you haven't played any of Paper Mario:  The thousand year door, then I REALLY recommend having a look at it.  The text boxes are round, and shaped like speech bubbles.  The text has all sorts of crazy effects on it that are both eye-catching, and convey meaning more succinctly than anything else I could think of.  I agree, that sort of presentation difference goes a long way towards increasing the impact of text.

Never heard of killing floor either.  But yeah.  L4D is a great multiplayer experience, if you have friends to share it with.  (Ideally in the same room.  Optimum setup seems to be lan-party with the lights off, so everyone can yell at each other when your plans inevitably go horribly wrong.)

Rock Pegasus sounds like a furry porno

No, pretty sure it's a MegaMan X boss, if anything.

I bet if you beat it, you get the rock-cannon or something.

If he's out, I can take over Chief of Navigation.

I'll join.  Although I'm confused about roles.  Are we to the point we can start picking roles that have already been taken?  (Since I'm not seeing any that aren't filled?)

Anyway, if so, I'll go for (chief?) Engineer Montoli.  (If things haven't been all filled up yet, then just stick me wherever is useful.

You can call me Montoli.