Hit the Apex

I recently compiled a rough list of what players consider to be some of the best multiplayer maps ever created in an attempt to look for patterns, “rules”, common themes or anything else that might stand out as the secret ingredient to creating a great skirmish environment. I had originally thought that, if anything, I might see commonalities in things like the number of entry points into a room or their general flow (circular, linear or otherwise), but as soon as you ignore sub-genres and just look at any great shooter map in general, most of the similarities immediately fly out the window. When you step back and look at maps like Q3DM17, de_dust, Blood Gulch and Strike at Karkand and are forced to ignore structural comparisons, the core thing that makes these maps great stands out: predictability.

That is, all of the really great maps excel at making the player always feel like they’re in control of the situation, whether they are or not. Read more…

Game length is a fairly interesting facet of design as it’s one of the most complained about but least praised aspects of many games, by both critics and consumers alike. How many times have you heard someone say that the length of a game is great? It happens, but it’s rare. Maybe it’s one of those things that you don’t appreciate until it’s wrong.

Interestingly, we hear people complain that games are too short all the time. Read more…

Games these days probably average between 8 to 10 hours in length, give or take, not including any sort of multiplayer component. A fair number of releases get flack for their length, especially if they’re on the lower end of my guesstimated average. Regardless, that’s 8+ hours of interactive content where you’re constantly manipulating a character, vehicle or some such on the screen, and most of the time your interactions can be explained with a single page in an instruction manual.

In other words, that’s 8-10 hours of performing the same basic actions over and over and over again. Read more…

Back at the 2003 or 2004 DICE convention in Las Vegas (I can’t remember which one off-hand), Bill Roper (no relation, or so we think) gave a speech on rewarding the player and how properly doing so can keep people not only interested in your game in general, but also net you that “just 10 more minutes” addiction that keeps people up until 5am at night playing your game. Basically, the goal is to become Sid Meier (my words, but Bill was probably thinking this as well).

It was a fascinating speech where he basically talked about how giving players loot in addition to cash and experience is what really makes this work because you never know what you’re going to get. Read more…

Note: This content was originally posted to an older blog of mine, and has since been relocated here. Any broken links or unclear references are likely the result of this relocation.

So as my first design “challenge” of sorts, I’m going to talk about how I’d make an RTS for cell phones. Not the iPhone, G1, Palm Pre or anything respectable like that. I’m talking about the 423,652,234,863,276 handsets out there that only have enough keys to dial numbers with and a screen the size of a book of matches. Impossible you say? No, although the end result probably wouldn’t be fun. But at least it’s interesting to think about. Read more…

Note: This content was originally posted to an older blog of mine, and has since been relocated here. Any broken links or unclear references are likely the result of this relocation.

If you’ve read my last couple updates, you’ll know that I’m focusing my blog as a somewhat out-of-the-box game design exercise. Last time I talked about making an RTS for a cell phone, and this time I’m sticking with a portable talkie device, but I’m going with the iPhone. So, how would I make a baseball game on the iPhone? Read more…