DEFENDER of the Favicon is a port of the original DEFENDER by Eugene Jarvis. This version, through webdev voodoo, was made to sit in the space reserved for Favicons in browsers: a mere 16×16 pixels!

Agreed, this version is much simpler than the original DEFENDER, which could mean that Mr Jarvis had already used his available space in a very optimized fashion. Nevertheless, this minimal version manages to capture the general feel of the game un just a fraction of the original space, which is quite commendable.

I strongly suggest you play this version and then play the original somewhere, in order to compare them.

From the article:

Usually these prototypes are never seen by the public, but we thought some of the more intrepid players out there might enjoy playing around with a few of our early Spore prototypes. Keep in mind these are not tested, supported or even easily explained.

I have tested this prototype, and it’s really not player friendly. However, since I started making video games, I’ve manipulated countless prototypes or small “code toys” quickly hacked together to prove a certain point or to test an idea. These objects end up being stronger references to the team than every document you will ever be able to write, and yet they are systematically forgotten after the game has shipped.

Some weeks ago, I attended Ralph Baer’s talk at Paris GDC. One of his main concerns was that the video game industry had no memory at all. We’re so distracted by the speed sequels follow each other and new consoles come out that we have no time to look back. Design documents are either left to rot in some old backup drive in the archives of some company or jealously guarded by designers afraid of people stealing their magic or whatever.

Releasing an early prototype like the Spore team just did not only requires a lot of guts, it is also a way of making History available to everyone. Along the same lines, I would be delighted to buy printed version of my favorite games’s design documents for studying and collecting.

Okay, so maybe I’m a game design freak, but I think it’s very important to have some record of the development process of the game, which ideas were left out, which drastic decisions were taken, etc. Such documents provide a wealth of knowledge for the aspiring or confirmed designer, and yet they are kept hidden in the basement like deformed children.

I believe the entire video game industry would benefit from a simple legal deposit scheme. Shipped a game? send a copy of your design document(s) to a competent organism. Once online, you can specify whether you want the document to be public or just let it wait out until no-one owns the rights anymore. I see nothing but benefits from this approach: better games by avoiding common mistakes, putting an end to constantly reinventing the wheel, but most of all, this method might actually advance the form of the design document, making it a tool useful to everyone instead of just an afterthought.

Who could be trusted with such a task? Why not the IGDA? There’s already a SIG dedicated to preservation!

I don’t want to sound alarmist, but I would like to finish this rant on a warning to every game designer out there: “Share all the documents you can now, you might regret it in 20 years”.

That was Ralph Baer talking about the documents to the Brown Box. If it happened to him, it WILL happend to us if we don’t do something about it.

What I intended to talk about earlier this week was about the latest crop of projects to come out of ENJMIN. Every year around the end of June, first year students demo their interactive pieces to the public.

This year, a grand total of seventeen works were presented. Not all of them are downloadable yet, I’ll update the list as they hit the web. Read further for the full list.

• Premier Contact
• Bleu Marine
• Bêtes Noires
• Tepeyollotl
• DUNYA
• Kid Nap
• Terre Adelie
• God blessed
• Oscar
• Lost Golgoths
• A La Conquete De L’Univers
• Puzzle Wars
• Zombids
• Candy Factory
• Epitaphe
• Fatal Error
• Aquaeductus

But then, reading it again, I wasn’t so sure it could be called a constraint. Player agency is a variable you can adjust while designing, but it has no real, tangible value you can set as reference. You can say “This game gives me more choice than this one”, but it’s hard giving both games a value you can compare mathematically.

While at school, we discussed narration structures linked to graph theory. For arborescent narrative games, it is easy to measure the amount of narrative choice given to the player, you just count the nodes. However, there is sometimes another layer, non-narrative and non-arborescent which can’t be measured this easily. Play.

In play, as in life, we actually are constantly making successive, small trivial choices. So numerous and insignificant in fact, that we’re not even aware of them. And since you didn’t know about it, are you really making a choice after all?

Maybe the first step to measuring choice would be to settle on a level of granularity. Sid Meier’s “interesting” adjective is right-on, but can’t be used due to its inherent subjectivity. Someone could spend hours wondering what to wear, while someone else might just want to wear the same clothes the rest of their lives. You are given this exact same choice in Grand Theft Auto. I guess the developers must have found it interesting enough to implement it, but I usually skip it. I just don’t care.

The word “interesting” is a good shortcut, but raises many problems if you try to build a theory around it. If you changed the word, would that change the measurability of choice in games? What if I decided to focus on meaningful choices instead?

For starters, you would need to define the context of the choice, as meaning is most of all a matter of context. This is easy: the context is the game as a whole. If you want a closer frame, take a play session, or a single level.

If we were to say that a choice is meaningful if it affects the outcome of the game, we might then infer that, for story-driven games with one ending, choices are meaningless since the outcome will be the same (or contained within pre-rendered possibilities, in the case of multiple endings) no matter what choice you make.

Whereas for sports-like games (including multiplayer videogames), a given choice has direct influence over the outcome of the game or play session, so much that if you have a recording of the session, you can pinpoint every choice made by each player and accurately say wether that choice was a step towards victory or defeat.

This is all very nebulous, of course. Measures are always made after an event has happened, and what I would like to find is a way of predicting an amount of meaningful choices. Yet, seeing as meaning is defined by the outcome of the game (the context), It would seem we are running in circles…

I think Mr. Bateman’s conclusion is valid. The term “a series of interesting choices” was a term adapted to strategy/sandbox type of games and shouldn’t be applied to every game we can think of. Also, seeing as choice is a completely subjective matter, it is very hard to predict and measure, and cannot be considered a valid constraint to game design.

I’ve just proved myself wrong. Neat!

If space determines how many game elements the game can hold and how they can be arranged, it is by control that a game action is carried out, changing the state of one or several game elements.

Control possibilities affect the way we interact with a given game system. Changing the associated control scheme (a subset of input possibilities) of a given game modifies it directly. The nature of this modification can be objective (the rule system is modified) and/or subjective (our perception of the game is modified).

Every game has an incompressible associated control scheme, where each possible recognized input offered by the scheme has an associated game object or state. In mathematical terms, the relation between controls and game objects is injective, i.e. for every element of the control domain, there is at most one associated element in the game domain, while there can be elements in the game domain with no corresponding element in the control domain.

Okay, so I might have gotten a little bit too enthusiastic with the math there. Basically, it’s a fancy way to say that a game’s control scheme allows you to interact with a limited number of game objects at a given moment. Games never give full control of game objects to a single player, because then it stops being a game to become a toy.

Video games are a very good laboratory to study constrained control, as inputs are noise-free, whereas in the physical world, passive non-game objects can interfere with the accomplishment of a game action. There are two main archetypes of input methods: continuous (mouses and joysticks) and discrete (buttons).

(Actually, “continuous” control methods are not really continuous, they are discrete input methods with many different possible states. However for simplicity’s sake, we will admit that from a human point of view, these devices appear to be continuous.)

But since real life is continuous, why even bother with those limited, boring old buttons, then? There’s a very good reason to that. The main benefit of discrete inputs is that they are very simple to understand. Our brains are very skilled at handling binary logic, not so much fuzzy logic. Imagine you want to fire a gun in a shooting game. Compare these two trails of thought: “if I press this, I will fire” and “the more I push on this thing, the more likely I am to fire”. Which one seems simpler?

Furthermore, early computer games have shown that continuity and simulated continuity are barely indistinguishable. All arcade joysticks, like the one shown above, had in fact only eight possible directions. To move around in the original Doom, you only needed the four arrow keys. In every modern FPS game on the PC, as complex and extense as they are, you get a very fine control of avatar movement by using only four buttons (the staple WASD keys) and one analog input. In Halo 3, you control your avatar with two analog inputs.

Again, the path I’m walking here has already been tread. It has been extensively demonstrated that most games can be controlled by using only one discrete input. I could point you to a fine Gamasutra article on “One Button Games” from some years ago, or the recent GameCarreerGuide Game Design Challenge on one button shooters.

My point here is that control is an effective and primordial constraint indissociable from the concept of “game”. The very moment we accept to limit our own actions to the actions allowed by a system of rules to achieve a non-trivial goal, we are playing a game.

And yes, I’ve been reading Huizinga.

Likeliness for a media backlash and general racial and religious controversy around this game: 100%

Likeliness that many people won’t get past the first level of interpretation when playing: 100%

Actually, this looks only like cheap provocation, whereas September 12th was a little more nuanced in its delivery of the same message. Its just too easy to interpret this game the wrong way…

Update: The story ended up pulled from IndieGames.com, after generating a storm of negative comments and racist flames. I think it managed to stay up for, what… two, three hours? I guess my 100%s weren’t that off.

Anyways, you can still follow the controversy over at the Something Awful forums.

The reason I’ve been away from the blog lately is because I was attending the Paris GDC event, held at the “Coeur Défense” conference center. Let me tell you about it a little!

In many aspects less gargantuan than its american cousin(s), this conference was a quieter and more focused one. The conferences were divided in five tracks and occupied only six rooms of the conference center, with attendance hovering around 500 to 1000 people. This actually made it very easy to see exactly who and what you wanted, without having to choose between two simultaneous conferences you absolutely want to see, but who are in different buildings and probably already camped by hundreds of people. So finally I am pretty satisfied, as I managed to see everything I planned on seeing, plus some good unplanned surprises.

On monday morning, I attended Ralph Baer’s demo of the original brown box, the game console for “Ping Pong”. This was really an awesome way to kick off the conference, as Ralph is really a living piece of videogame history. He himself regretted that the gaming industry had no memory at all, often relying in imprecise knowledge passed around verbally. According to him, design documents for games or consoles should always be carefully and systematically preserved.

Along many other golden nuggets of game history, he showed us this video, an demo for the brown box made in 1969:

He was accompanied by his friend David, an early collector of game history who had helped Ralph recover the original documents for the brown box, who had been stored in a warehouse following a patent lawsuit. They hooked up the box to the projector and proceeded to play Ping Pong, at which Ralph totally rocked.

Ralph admitted he did not play much games now, except with his grandchildren. He also reminded the audience that he held over 170 patents worldwide, including the game Simon. SIMON!!

Right after Ralph, the creators of Little Big Planet, Alex Evans and Mark Healey took the stage to give a keynote presentation on user-created content in games. Their presentation was awesome, since they had prepared a LBP level for it, walking, running and driving through it to support their speech. They spoke mainly about how they developed the game and how they were planning to really put user-generated content in the core of the game experience, since small teams can’t afford to create much content themselves. For a more detailed version of what was said there, I suggest you head to the summary on Gamasutra (check out the title of the second paragraph!)

Later that day, Chris Kline spoke about how the development process for Bioshock was. This was a great talk and I think it really was necessary to people to have a little more insight on the title’s development process. Due to its awesome critical reception, people seem to think that the development was smooth and painless, and generally it’s quite the opposite, especially for good games. For a summary of the talk, again Gamasutra.

I had to do a little more booth work on Tuesday, as my school, the ENJMIN, was one of the conference’s sponsors, but I’m very glad I managed to see the Q&A session between Jamil Moledina and Blizzard’s V.P. of design, Rob Pardo. There’s really not a lot of possible things to comment, so for the last time, i’ll just link to the Gamasutra transcript of the talk.

Overall, a great conference, left me completely exhausted and eager to come back next year, so that’s a good thing.

Oh and thank you, Gamasutra!

However, a more important (and actually true) first is less often mentioned - CivRev is the first Civ since the original to be designed and programmed directly by Sid. Every line of game and AI code (and probably quite a bit more) inside the game was written by Sid himself, for all three versions: 360, PS3, and DS.

I believe it’s great that just one man (even if it’s “just” Sid Meier) is able to program the game for three platforms at once. It is almost as if he acted like a modder of his own game.

Also, if you take in consideration the date CivRev was announced, now that we know only one person programmed the gameplay for two radically different platforms (more like two actually, seeing how the PS3 and Xbox are pretty much oversized computers), man, was that fast development or what!

Really, I would love seeing more of this: spend less time creating assets and more time creating gameplay! Please?

via: DESIGNER NOTES » Blog Archive » Sid’s Revolution

The requirements for entering the event were to submit a playable video game whose resolution had to be equal to or less than 256×256 pixels. The event received many brilliant submissions, amongst which were indie hits Passage, Bloody Zombies and Mr Heart Loves You Very Much.

This has “spatial constraint” written all over it!

The convenient thing about gamma 256 is that resolution was the only constraint being put forward. It was also required for all games to be playable using an xbox 360 controller, which is so complex it allows thousands of different uses. There was also the intrinsic time constraint of the deadline for the entries, but it was pretty permissive, giving entrants a few months to complete their games.

The most obvious effect of such a constraint is the very obvious “retro” aesthetic most entries share. Historically, older games tend to have lower screen resolution than newer ones, as resolution increases along with graphical processing power and screen cost. Limited resolution inevitably suggested “retro” to the creators who are long-time players, some of which deliberately made pixels bigger to make them apparent, at the cost of effective resolution.

Please consider the Passage resolution values, as provided by the author:

Image size: 100×16 (100×12 play surface with a 4-pixel scoreboard above)
Aspect ratio: 25:4
Display size: 600×96 (for 640×480 fullscreen letterbox mode)

This is a very good illustration of what I had stated in the previous article about spatial constraints. The author effectively makes a distinction between two resolution values: the game resolution (”Image size”) and the display resolution. Even if his display resolution is larger than the allowed 256×256, it was obvious for everyone that the actual resolution was smaller. Following this, a 1-pixel game displayed in fullscreen wouldn’t change the fact that the game resolution is 1.

Also, since limiting the resolution limits the amount of simultaneous information the game can display, most games on the competition have concentrated on a single mechanic, each game concept being easily summed up in a single sentence. Some examples:

Doomed Planet by Nick Sheets: “Abduct Earthlings without getting shot down!”

Dive by namako team: “Dive as deep as you can, getting air from friendly sea creatures and avoiding squids and sharks.”

Dodge Club by James Montagna: “Don’t get bumped.”

Bloody Zombies by Petri Purho: “Mow down zombies and use their blood to get around.”

Sunset Runner by Daniel Guert: “Save your friend from being squished by a very long train.”

(source: gamma 256 site)

As for the time constraint, limited space is often used for contests, since it’s fairly easy to understand and measure. An example amongst many is CODEAR, an argentinian contest to make banner-sized games.

When I refer to space, I talk about the spatial attribute of the Magic Circle of play. As (the translator of) J. Huizinga put it:

All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. Just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the ‘consecrated spot’ cannot be formally distinguished from the play-ground. The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc., are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart. (in Homo Ludens, 1955)

In a nutshell, the amount of space this magic circle covers can be measured as the physical zone in which are contained all game objects in each of their possible states. As the game objects go through their different states, a boundary emerges, effectively separating the “game-world” from the “normal-world”. Many games do not require for this boundary to be materialized, but most do for practical purposes. In that case, the boundary becomes herself a game object. As an example, it is very easy to measure the space occupied a game of “Rock, paper, scissors”, even if there is no obvious boundary. It would also be possible to play a game of chess without a checkered board, but then the manipulation of the game objects would consume too much time and would be detrimental to play. The chess board is not required to play chess, but it identifies the different possible states and embodies the boundaries of play in such an elegant way that it became indispensable to the game.

Gaming, like every other human activity, is inherently constrained in space. Even games that seem boundless, like pervasive games, are in fact bound by our own spatial limits. Would you be willing to get on a bus, a train or a plane, just to carry out a single game action? You set the boundary at the limit of your own possibilities. The ultimate boundary is our current inability to leave the surface of our planet. The world is our ultimate playground (for now).

On the other side of the spectrum, each game has a required minimum amount of space to be playable. This amount is determined by our own average human scale and manipulation possibilities. For board games, the mere size of your fingers limits how small pieces can become, sports and physical games are limited by the size and endurance of your body and video games are limited by your eyesight. Even if you augment your senses and abilities using mechanical methods, you’re just scaling up a small space to make it accessible.

All games require a certain amount of space to represent the current state of their objects. The player cannot play without knowing the current state of the objects he manipulates.

Following this, all games are limited by space in the amount of information they can hold at once, thus implying the general rule stating that “smaller games tend to be simpler than larger ones”.

Every game space is (implicitly or explicitly) divided in several discrete sections. Each of these sections can be occupied by one or many game objects, effectively becoming a container of game state information. This rational division of a continuous space can be called the “resolution” of said space, in the same way a computer screen (continuous surface) is rationally divided into pixels (discrete sections). As an example, Rock, Paper, Scissors has a resolution of 2, Tic-Tac-Toe a resolution of 3×3, Chess is 8×8, etc. The complexity of a game can be understood trough its resolution value.

Resolution explains the above rule in a very simple manner: the smaller the available space becomes, the harder it is to divide it into functional sections.

Video games still follow this rule, albeit in an indirect way. Modern screens have a high resolution value, with up to millions of functional elements (pixels) able to be in millions of different states (colors). This amount of information is so dense, video games actually use many elements to represent one virtual, functional element. Your character in a 3D game, for example, is composed on-screen with thousands of pixels, yet when you play, you don’t care about the individual pixels, you see a character moving in a given space. This virtual space, like the “real” space, is also divided into functional sections and thus has a resolution of its own.

A computer screen is actually a very good tool for experimenting with space, since it provides you with a fairly large amount of space you can program its behavior very precisely. Thanks to pixel density and scrolling, you could also represent spaces smaller or larger than the screen.

How would a 1-pixel game look like? What is the largest game you can make?