So, with most console development, all a player will ever see is a finished game, or a very late beta. As a result, with most games, during development, you build a set of rules, you build everything that goes around ‘em, and at the very end, when the game’s released, you can figure out if people like playing the game you’ve built.
We’re trying something new. With our newest project, we’ve spent a lot of time building the infrastructure, and we have some long-term goals, but one of the things that’s been the most interesting is that some of the simplest mechanisms have turned out to be the most fun.
When you say “user-generated content”, what people mean these days is that they give users tools to build levels and then distribute them to a bunch of people. These are often incredibly complex to build – things like Little Big Planet & ModNations Racers have tool systems that are elegant, but have a HUGE number of rules & restrictions.
But what we’ve found with this project is that we haven’t given people ridiculously complicated stuff. We’ve given them extraordinarily simple stuff – things with such basic rules that they can be summarized in a sentence or two – and then we see how they end up playing with them. It ends up being like a giant sandbox. Or a box of Lego before they started introducing those really specialized pieces. Players are given the freedom to play, and when they do that, they can let their imagination run wild.
It’s then up to us to enable the players to keep building on that fun. It’s a really backwards way of developing, compared to how console developers are used to working, but in essence, it’s sort of like being back on a playground, making things up as you go.
Or a Virtual Online Multiplayer Persistant Lite-Brite Board overlaying a map of the continental US…
Very cool development process! In very different ways it gives both the developers and the players a glimpse of the future.
What I really like about this Blog post/your company is this statement: “we have some long-term goals.” Some people get bogged down with the details within a project, and lose sight of the ultimate goal; Self Aware consistently moves forward while “fixing.” Not easy for a company of any size, but especially a startup like yours.
That’s a good point Andre, but there’s also a fine line with being creative with a basic tool set, exploring all the different ways to interact with the environment and getting bored with sandbox and deciding to go back inside and watch cartoons.
There’s also a couple additional risks that you have with this type of development:
1. Introduction of large game changing dynamics late might frustrate and alienate beta testers. As an example when the restaurants started showing up, and replaced plants in flecktions, and in essence changed the rule: “all hexes are equal” . Granted that is really a trivial matter, but if there were all of sudden a new rule: Oaks don’t grow well in California, there’d be some upset fleckers
2. A completely different risk is that your game becomes too daunting/ complex for the new user to get into. Beta testers are spoon fed each additional feature slowly, so there’s lots of time to explore and understand the nuances of each additional tool. And developers watching these advanced experts can be lulled into a feedback loop where expert players easily grasp a new gaming device, but a new user would be lost in the woods (possibly literally in Fleck)
Regardless, I’m enjoying this ride on the development train.
Basil – I think the key is simply continuing to expand the toolset, but not necessarily making the individual tools themselves more complex until they’ve proven that they’re fun.
That is, Fleck is a giant canvas to build any manner of interaction at this point – so is something like planting fun? It would seem so, given its current reception. But we started with a very simple version of it to try it out.
We’d talked about doing real-time weather, having certain plants only available in certain areas, or to have them thrive in certain areas, and there’s definitely something in the designer wonky part of my mind that says that’d be *better* – but at the same time, nothing matches the feedback we’ve gotten from people already *playing* with the system and figuring out what’s important.
The risks are quite real. If we change up too much stuff, we’re *definitely* going to alienate people, and that’s something we’re conscious of. But that’s the balance we have to strike, and then take responsibility for – we may make people mad for a short period of time, but we have to keep the longer-term goals in mind. We’ll be doing our best to keep people happy, though.
re: the complexity issue – basically, the way we’re approaching that is that at this point, the game is relatively simple, so everything’s available to a player at the start. Once we reach some level of complexity, though, we’re going to definitely have to unlock things gradually. That’s fine, though – it gives people time to familiarize themselves with each part of the game, and keeps injecting new things into the experience as it develops. I’m confident we can deal with that.
re: Andre’s point – yes, we have some long-term goals. It’s funny – I was having a discussion about Taste vs. Data with a friend of mine over lunch, and it addresses exactly this point. Probably worth a post in itself – but basically that while certain aspects of game development are data-driven & collaborative, there are other parts of it that are very much driven by the vision of people who are passionate about something & have something to say.