A while since my last post...

...I know, I know...

But I'm in a quandry you see. I'm in the process of getting funding for a start-up... or at least putting the initial elements down on paper in order to build a business plan.

So things have been pretty busy.

Be back soon.

Name change!

This is fairly typical of me. But I was never happy with the name I chose for this blog when I first set it up. So I've now changed it. But for how long?

It's been a cutler-three days since I last posted. But coming today... a bunch of thoughts I had whilst playing Hellgate. Bet you can't wait.

What's the point of it all?

I'll be trying to achieve two things with this blog. Firstly, I'll be critiquing games I'm playing or have played, and as a result of that I will then be positing ideas for improvement.

I'll also be doing a third thing, which is talking generally about ideas I have for games.

So for my next post I'll be taking a closer look at Hellgate.

Bye for now.

Mission trees - cause & effect

I've been talking a lot about mission design recently. And I know I'm setting myself up for an example. Don't worry, it's coming. I'll post in the near future a whole mission tree showing how missions should lead on from one another, and how mission success and failure should present different possibilities to the player.

And I'll also illustrate how these mission trees can be generated with a degree of randomness, so that a whole army of mission scriptors need not be employed by games companies.

I'll reveal all, soon.

More on missions...

The thing is, with game design, the more you can create an atmosphere of interaction with the gameworld, the more enthralling the game will be. The more the players will feel like they are directly contributing to the greater outcome.

For MMOs I would say this is essential.

Hellgate doesn't really achieve this. The single player storyline is fairly typical, ultimately contrived, presents no real opportunity of failure and offers a railroaded principle mission stream.

The only vague surprise is Murmur's acquisition of dark power at the end. The game would have been so much more if the missions you achieved or failed altered the necessary direction you could take.

Imagine if one of the arrogant NPCs turned against you, because of your success? But wouldn't turn against you if you failed one of their missions? Just mocked you instead.

That would work well.

Essentially what I'm talking about here is greater degree of cause and effect in missions.

Something I wanted from the GTA3s, is a greater degree of public response to my actions within the gameworld. I'll give you an example. If I kill twenty or more of a particular type of citizen, it would be great to hear a news flash on the radio warning citizens of Liberty City that a serial killer is on the loose targeting whichever type you killed.

The technology is there already, the police radio says things like 'last seen driving eastbound in a blue...' whatever. And this works really well, giving the player an impression that they are interacting with a real living city. My message to Rockstar North: Do it more. Do it more.