Part of a recent interview I did with Kieron Gillen just went up on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. I’ll post links when the rest of the interview emerges. Here are some quotes:

RPS: Ballooning team size is a trend which has been well discussed over the last decade, but do you think that’s reversing slightly on the PC now? As long as you set your sights intelligently…

Soren: I’m in an odd position, going from Civ 4 which was a big project, to Spore which is a mammoth project… but it’s just that I think most of the stuff which is going to benefit from smaller teams is going to be stuff comes across the web. We see that all the time now. It’s finally a viable market. Think of Defcon. That game didn’t have art. Which is brilliant.

RPS: Very artfully chosen unart, if you know what I mean.

Soren: It’s a weird feeling – I play the game, and it looks great, because they chose a brilliant style. It doesn’t need art. It just fits their game perfectly. But the interesting thing to me about Defcon is that the size of the game is right. It’s a pretty good game – it’s not quite a brilliant game, but it’s a fun game to play. But you can’t say that it’s too simple or too complex. It reminded me of a lot of RTS’s when I first discovered them a decade ago. Now it’s really difficult with an RTS to…

RPS: Not submit to the endless feature bloat. You have to have all the bullet-points.

Soren: Yeah, you can’t make it without a campaign and scenarios and an editor and cutscenes and all that extra junk. Really, that junk is preventing us from making more interesting games. It’s kind of a paradox. Obviously, people want that junk, and it’s a good thing for those people. And the editors with which people make their own scenarios is great… but that stuff all comes at a cost. I think maybe we’re starting to realise that now. The answer is that the economics get turned entirely around when you don’t have to deal with Best Buy and Wal-Mart and what not.

RPS: People endlessly talk about the declining PC, but the figures never include those specific areas where the PC is expanding – the online sales, MMOs. When we started RPS, for me it was about trying to redefine what a PC Game is to include all that. I’m sure Peggle will be in everyone’s top 10 games this year… but can you imagine a game like Peggle being included in mainstream PC talk a few years ago?

Soren: Or Desktop: Tower Defense. That’s an awesome game too. I play that more than most strategy games I’ve played this year. Which is weird but… what does that mean? So yeah, absolutely. The PC Market is no one thing any more. There’s no sales figures you can look at. The question is simply is “What is the variety coming through? What are the different options available we didn’t have three or four years ago”. For me, PC Gaming should be like Punk Rock – being able to do whatever you want. And people are forgetting that the Punk period isn’t just the Ramones and the Sex Pistols… it’s Talking Heads, Televisions, Patti Smith, Pere Ubu, Gang of Four… this huge variety of stuff because people were making it up as they were going along. It was easy enough to make music that people did what they wanted to. And that’ll always be the advantage of PCs.

RPS: I interviewed Doug Church about what it was like developing when the PC had started being a real gaming platform, circa 92 or whatever. And, basically, when doing Shock they just didn’t know what they were doing. They were original by default. In the following 15 years, like the feature bloat, by learning what works, it also limits you a bit. The people in the mainstream need to work out what ELSE works. But the European teams try stuff which no-one else does, because they don’t know any better. Like the Bohemia Armed-Assault guys, trying forever working on their butterflies…

Soren: That’s games. And it’s funny how much pleasure people can get from little things in games which you’ve never seen before. I know what you mean – think about RTS. What does that term mean? Now it means a very specific thing… but what else is Real time strategy? The first Sim City was real time strategy. Populous was an RTS. Rollercoaster Tycoon is RTS. You could say M.U.L.E. was RTS. Obviously Defcon and Darwinia are. RTS should be the biggest category there is, but right now it’s very, very specific. There are a few triple A titles which are trying to push it – World in Conflict was an interesting take on that. But you need people to come along who aren’t intimidated by all the stuff that exists already in the genre.

Here’s another crazy Asian cube game that you must play. Be sure not to give up as the designers don’t prepare you for the fact that you are using your current “lives” to help your later “lives” succeed.

Valve recently released some very interesting stats, including Death Maps, from HL2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2. What are Death Maps? Well, here’s one from the Gravel Pit map for TF2:

I can attest to dying (and killing) quite a few times near the C node in the lower-left corner. Looks like I’m not the only one.

As a designer, I find the TF2 stats fascinating – I would have loved to see similar info on how people played Civ4. Obviously, some of the results are unsurprising. Scouts get the most captures by a ratio of 2:1 over the next best class, the Pyro. Snipers get the most kills. Medics get the most assists. The points category has a little more balance as it includes a number of factors, but there is still a big spread between the Sniper’s 67 points/hour to the Engineer’s 41. The big question, of course, is what Valve should do with this info when balancing the game.

The idea of game balance is a tricky one because many people assume that, in a well-balanced game, all options should be equally valid. Rock, Paper, Scissor is the classic example of an “equally balanced” game, and bringing it up allows me to reference Sirlin’s excellent article on why RPS is a terrible game:

A simple rock, paper, scissors (RPS) system of direct counters is a perfectly solid and legitimate basis for a strategy game provided that the rock, paper, and scissors offer unequal risk/rewards.

Consider a strictly equal game of RPS. We’ll play 10 rounds of the game, with a $1 bet on each round. Which move should you choose? It makes absolutely no difference whether you choose rock, paper, or scissors. You’ll be playing a pure guess. Since your move will be a pure guess, I can’t incorporate your expected move into my strategy, partly because I have no basis to expect you to play one move or another, and partly because I really can’t have any strategy to begin with.

Now consider the same game of RPS with unequal payoffs. If you win with rock, you win $10. If you win with scissors, you win $3. If you win with paper, you win $1. Which move do you play? You clearly want to play rock, since it has the highest payoff. I know you want to play rock. You know I know you know, and so on. Playing rock is such an obvious thing to do, you must realize I’ll counter it ever time. But I can’t counter it (with paper) EVERY time, since then you could play scissors at will for a free $3. In fact, playing scissors is pretty darn sneaky. It counters paper—the weakest move. Why would you expect me to do the weakest move? Are you expecting me to play paper just to counter your powerful rock? Why wouldn’t I just play rock myself and risk the tie? You’re expecting me to be sneaky by playing paper, and you’re being doubly sneaky by countering with scissors. What you don’t realize is that I was triply sneaky and I played the original obvious move of rock to beat you.

In other words, there is no such thing as an “equally balanced” game which is still fun and not just random. Instead, fun games tend to have a “free market” of balance, which ebbs and flows based on the desirability of certain decisions. Scouts and engineers are always going to be important because they are, respectively, the purest offensive and defensive classes. Indeed, these two classes are also the two most popular. However, the Spy can use the sapper to destroy an Engineer’s turret pretty easily, and Pyros are good at lighting Scouts on fire. The Heavy gets the most kills but – as a slow mover – is vulnerable to the Sniper, who is in turn is vulnerable to the Demoman’s grenades. And so on.

The key is that the circle is not complete. Many of the counter units – the Demo, the Pyro, the Spy – do not have counters themselves because there is less incentive to play them in a vacuum. In Sirlin’s words, the classes offer “unequal risk/rewards.” If you play an Engineer, and no one on the other side is playing a Spy, your team is going to have great defense. On the other hand, as more and more people pick Engineers, the more attractive the Spy will become. Nonetheless, the most important goal is to have good defense, not to just be able to screw with the Engineers.

So, we are back at the question of what Valve should do with the stats. By definition, the counter units should never be more popular than the classes they are countering. Thus, it’s ok that the Engineer is twice as popular as the Spy. On the other hand, Valve should certainly learn something from these stats… but exactly what is a bit of a mystery.

So this happened over the weekend. As both Activision and Blizzard/Sierra have been corporate conglomerates for a long time, this move is unlikely to change much for the developers under the new umbrella company. However, one interesting side note here is that the Guitar Hero franchise is now owned by the world’s largest music publisher. I guess we won’t be seeing any U2, Prince, Guns N’ Roses, or (yeah, probably just dreaming here…) Velvet Underground masters on Rock Band anytime soon.

I recently finished The Long Tail, which posits that the Internet is changing the entertainment business by making the sale of niche products viable. In other words, iTunes can derive significant revenue from the extra million tracks it keeps around compared to a bricks and mortar retailer. This effect has yet to make a significant dent in the gaming market – although Live Arcade, Virtual Console, GameTap, and Steam are all quite promising – often because older titles aren’t in a standardized format, unlike older film, music, and words.

Nonetheless, an important Long Tail effect is occurring within the games industry, just along a different axis. It is the long tail of online gamers. For publishers of standard boxed games, the world outside of North America, Western Europe, and Japan – approximately 5 billion people – might as well not exist because of rampant and accepted piracy (see previous post). However, piracy is a near non-issue for online gaming because players have to connect with the game’s servers in order to get the real experience. Further, pricing can be easily adjusted for local markets so that WoW costs one thing in China and a very different thing in the U.S. The essence of this shift is that these 5 billion people are now on the map. I’ve personally seen Internet cafes in countries like Lebanon and Brazil filled with people playing WoW. I’m sure this pattern is repeating itself the world over.

Usually the Long Tail concept describes ignored media or products, which have small audiences but cumulatively add up to a big number. The vast majority of the 5 billion people outside the retail game market are not going to start playing online game, but if a tiny fraction of them does, it would still add up to a big number.

Take Travian, a Web-based PHP strategy game which has attracted huge international audiences by localizing to as many languages as possible. Checking the “Total Players” category on each country’s server, there are big numbers from some unexpected places:

• 160,000 Poles
• 130,000 Russians
• 320,000 Czechs
• 90,000 Slovakians
• 300,000 Turks

That’s a lot of people, and they have over 30 other localized servers, including ones for Chile, Portugal, Norway, Slovenia, and even Bosnia. It’s a whole new world!

When you can have a PolyStation?

Believe it or not, it doesn’t actually take CD’s. It’s actually a cartridge system. I saw this fine bit of trademark infringement while checking out a local game stand in Brazil, which is rife with piracy. Tons of PS2 and PC games were available for about $5 each, on CD’s burnt and labeled by hand. I couldn’t actually find Civ4 in the big pile of PC games and was unsure whether to feel good or bad about that. There is only a fledgling retail games business in Brazil – Sony won’t even sell legitimate PS2’s there – so it’s hard to fault gamers too much for relying on these shops. Nonetheless, the piracy is absolutely crippling the chances of Brazilian game developers to bootstrap themselves up by selling within their native market. The developers and students I talked to at the conference were jealous of the copyright protection we enjoy in the U.S. Most of them are turning to either mobile or online games as it is their only chance.

The SBGames Conference was a great experience. Many universities around the country are building game development programs, and the students have a strong entrepreneurial spirit. Brazilian developers have significant challenges to face, but I wish them the best of luck. It was a wonderful country to visit, with friendly people and great food. Brazilians sure do love soccer. Here is a picture from the baggage claim in Sao Paulo Airport.

Normally, the TV over the baggage claim shows the number of the flight and the origin city. Not in Brazil, though – they’d rather watch a local soccer match!

One question everyone in the games industry hears a lot is “How do I break in?” Typically, these types of questions can be split into two categories:

• How do I get a job making games?
• How do I get to be a game designer?

A number of industry vets have written up pointers on the first question. However, the second question is trickier. The typical answer is that no one gets to start as a game designer; it’s simply too competitive of a field and requires too much experience.

Well, that’s a matter of perspective. Jonathan Mak certainly is starting his career as a game designer. If you’re not able to go it alone, however, I think the question of how to become a game designer deserves a real answer.

First, I need to ask a question: Have you ever made a game (mods, scenarios, and board/card games count)?

If you answered no, then you should ask yourself if you really have what it takes to be a game designer. Painters start drawing when they are young. Musicians learn to play instruments in grade school. Writers start to write. Actors act. Directors direct. Young game designers make games. If it’s a passion – and it has to be a passion for you to succeed – then designing games is something that you have to do, not just want to do.

Designing games is not the same thing as playing them. The group of people in the world who enjoy making games is much, much smaller than the group of people who enjoy playing them. Everyone has to get a job eventually, so if you think playing games is fun, then designing them must be a pretty cool career, right? Not if you don’t love making them enough to spend 2-3 years of your life perfecting a single game concept, and not if you aren’t strong enough to learn from all the criticism which will be heaped on your design ideas.

Having said all that, here are some general tips on how to become a game designer.

1. Learn to Program

Games are a very broad category, often encompassing multiple art forms at once (words, music, visuals, etc.) Some games have strong story elements. Some are almost pure abstractions. However, the one aspect they all share is that they are based on algorithms. Code is the language of games, and a designer who knows how to code is always going to attract more attention than one who does not. Further, coding will allow you to make your own mods and prototypes that you can trumpet on your cover letter. Prospective designers without technical abilities are just like anyone else who thinks they can design games, stuck in the endless loop of needing experience to get a job and vice-versa. It’s possible to make that work, but the odds are not in your favor.

2. Join a Mod Team

It’s a given that you will be making games yourself that you can show off to potential employers (here are three simple games that I made before getting my first job). The next step is to join a mod team, offering your talents and spare time to help as best you can. There are two big advantages to working with a team. First, companies value teamwork highly, so being able to show that you made positive contributions in a team environment is a big plus. It doesn’t even matter if you were a leader or a follower, just that you were able to collectively pursue a single vision. Second, the modding world is getting more and more competitive, so team-built mods have a much better chance of attracting notice in the wider gaming community. Fall from Heaven is the most popular Civ4 mod, and it’s wiki lists 14 major contributors. Game developers check out mods all the time; imagine your odds if the person reading your resume has actually played your mod!

3. Expand your Influences

Back in school, I used to dread writing. Writing the world’s millionth essay on fate, injustice and sacrifice in A Tale of Two Cities felt more like drudgery than anything else. Now, of course, my attitude towards writing is much different – I am a blogger after all. It’s not necessarily that I now love to write, but I do love to write about game design. The trick is having something to write about. The same is true for game design. Games don’t exist in a vacuum; they need to share a historical or fictional context with their audience. Sid often says that all of his games are inspired by picture books he read when he was young, books on pirates or railroads or Civil War battles. I was truly inspired to work on Civ because of my love for history, and I am sure that I would have been far less successful as a designer if I started working in a context that interested me little (like, say, car racing). Your games can only be interesting if you have interests. Thus, expose yourself to as much of the world as possible. Read the Economist. Watch Casablanca. Travel to Japan. Play Settlers of Catan. Go to the Met. Join a soccer team. Study psychology. Listen to Kind of Blue. Video games alone will not be enough.

4. Work on Interface or AI

Assuming you can get your foot into the door at a game company (and do whatever it takes – Beyond the Sword co-designer Jon Shafer got his start at Firaxis because he just started documenting our Civ4 Python code on his own), getting to be an actual game designer is still not an easy task. However, there are two areas of game development that are not strictly thought of as “game design” but actually are: AI and interface. Personally, my path into game design came from working as an AI programmer on Civ3 . Because artificial intelligence – controlling the behavior of non-human agents in the game world – is so inseparable from gameplay, it is impossible to work on AI without having daily interaction with the designers. If you do a good job and make it clear that you are ready to accept extra responsibilities, it’s just a matter of time before you start working on the game rules themselves. This relation is even more true for interface work, which is on the very forefront of the user’s experience. Simply put, interface design is game design. The best part of the “interface track” to game design is that very few game developers want to work on the interface. Experienced programmers and artists often view interface work as being beneath them and only suitable for junior developers. Use this prejudice to your advantage and volunteer for the job. I guarantee there are a multitude of development houses right now looking for developers excited to work on interface design.

5. Design an Expansion Pack

Another nice side path into game design is working on expansion packs. The stakes are inevitably lower for these products, and your company’s official designers are probably already planning the Next Big Thing. Expansion packs are great opportunities to step forward and declare you ambition to be a designer. Companies want to see their employees develop into designers as these positions are usually the hardest to fill via hiring; expansion packs provide great, low-risk opportunities to train them internally. (I am surprised at how common it is for companies to farm out expansion packs to external developers; if a company has no junior developers itching for a chance to prove themselves as game designers, perhaps it has been hiring the wrong kind of people?) Working on the design for an expansion pack also has a huge benefit for you. Namely, you won’t be dealing with the challenge of “finding the fun” from a blank slate, which can create crippling pressure for a new designer hoping to prove herself. Instead, you can simply keep iterating the design, applying lessons learned from the game now being in the hands of of thousands and thousands of players.

6. Focus on Feeback

Game design is part talent and part skill. Noah Falstein has postulated that a disproportionate number of designers are INTJ’s, which suggests that some personalities are better suited to game design than others. (I too am an INTJ, especially strong on the N and J…) However, talent won’t get you all the way there; you’ll need to develop your design skills, and there is only one way to do that: listening to user feedback. My design education didn’t really begin until October 30, 2001, the day Civ3 was released, when many of my assumptions about how the game played out were proven completely false. A game is not an inert set of algorithms, it is a shared experience existing somewhere between the developers and the players. Unless you are constantly exposing your game to an audience, your game design is only theory. Push for your game to have private pre-alpha testing as much as possible – your design skills will only grow stronger with each successive exposure.

7. Study Primary Materials

Game design is a new field, and our universities are just beginning to grapple with how it should be taught. For the moment, the best option is to access as much primary material as possible. Sign up for Google Reader and subscribe to all the developer blogs as you can find. (You can start with Raph Koster’s blog and just work recursively.) Volunteer to work at GDC and then sit in on developer sessions. Listen to the audio commentary on the Orange Box. Read as many designer interviews as you can find; Richard Rouse III’s Game Design: Theory and Practice has excellent, lengthy interviews with Sid Meier, Will Wright, Doug Church, Steve Meretzky, Ed Logg, Jordan Mechner, and Chris Crawford. Speaking of Chris, his 1982 book The Art of Computer Game Design is, remarkably, still relevant today. (However, I would recommend starting with his more recent book, Chris Crawford on Game Design.)

8. Be Humble

This final suggestion is more of a philosophical one, especially as a number of, shall we say, counter-examples exist. However, I strong believe that personal humility is a key attribute for success in today’s game industry. A designer must accept that a majority of his ideas are not going to work. Further, game designers are always going to be bombarded with suggestions from the rest of the development team, some being gems and some not so much. Your job as a game designer is not to follow your muse or your ego to make the game “your way.” Your job is to choose a vision but also to let your team guide you there. Designers need to be humble listeners, not persuasive orators. Here’s a simple rule-of-thumb: if you ever find yourself explaining to someone why a prototyped game mechanic is fun, then your game might be in big trouble. Designers still need to be assertive and confident – or else no one will ever take your ideas seriously – but humility will give you the clarity to see things as they are, not how you wish them to be.