It turns out you can indicate in your game database which games you've finished along with a rating. I started making a pass through my games last night, and realized that I hardly ever finish a game these days. A lot of that has to do with my (lack of) time, but it made me think about "episodic" games, which are starting to appear here and there.

I can consume television pretty easily, in bite-sized chunks over a period of months, and that's really analogous to games once you add a DVR into the equation. Most games today let you save pretty frequently (there's a subject for a whole different blog: save points!), so why don't I consume games the same way I consume television?

Part of it comes from the periodic and predictable nature of a television episode. I know when I sit down to watch LOST that an hour later, I'll be done with that episode. When you sit down to play a (story-driven) game, you have no idea when the current storyline will be resolved. It might be at the end of this level or at the end of the game... but you have no concept of how far you have to go even to the end of the level. I believe that makes it easier to put the controller down and sometimes to never come back to finish.

I believe another factor is conflict resolution. While both games and TV episodes focus on long-term story goals and short-term cliff-hangers, resolution of a cliff-hanger in a game never has the sense of completion you get from a single television episode, unless it's the game's final conflict.

It would be really interesting to model game content more on television content, even for non-episodic games. You could break your main story arc into 20+ story arcs of no more than an hour, each with a satisfying ending. Players would feel more successful, because they were "winning" more frequently, and at the same time they might play longer sessions, because they understand how long they need to play in order to reach that conclusion.

I'll be applying that to quest/goal design in my current project, and I'll post an update once we have some focus tests to see how it feels for players.

I updated the games list to include some of my console titles. Well, Gamecube, Xbox and PS2 games, at least... I'll get to the handheld titles later this week.

I've been choosing a game at random every few days for a mini-review, and today's game is The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for PS2. Two Towers was one of the best movie-licensed games to come out in several years, bolstered by clips from the first two films, and voice work from the original actors. What really made Two Towers stand out, though, was a very high level of polish. Characters, environments, and particle effects all looked outstanding, especially compared to other PS2 titles at the time.

While making the Over the Hedge game at Edge of Reality, we spent some time with Two Towers and the sequel, Return of the King, to see how they handled level design, camera issues, and same-screen multiplayer. OTH had a similar gameplay style, and we had some design/time limitations that required a spline-based camera (rather than full right stick camera control). We chose to look at Lord of the Rings partly because our lead artist (Billy Sullivan) had worked on it and recommended it as an example, but mostly because it's a great example of path-constrained melee gameplay with a spline-based camera.

Much to our surprise, when we really pushed Two Towers, we could get characters off-screen or run past large groups of enemies without fighting them. It was especially evident in multiplayer, where the camera couldn't always handle two players trying to run to opposite ends of a fixed space. We'd assumed these problems had been solved elegantly in Two Towers because we all had enjoyed the game when it came out and didn't remember any issues with it.

That experience showed me that Two Towers had another great element of quality--it sets player expectations and leads you along so well that you usually play the game exactly the way the designers intended. Communicating to players what you want them to do in a way that feels natural (or, even better, like the player figured it out on his own) is a key element to great games, and Two Towers did it so well that a group of game developers who usually try to "game" systems and break them had instead experienced the game the way most players do.

If you haven't played the Two Towers or Return of the King, you can pick them up pretty cheaply. They're great fun, and they feature two-player, same screen co-op, which is a rare find these days.

At a conference recently, there was some discussion about innovation, and it was an interesting contrast. On the one hand, you have media and game developers talking about lack of innovation in today's games. On the other hand, project managers and executives at the conference talked about innovation where it's not needed, and the cost to the project and sometimes to the game itself.

It's an interesting debate. There's a fine line between innovation that improves the game or moves a genre forward, and innovation simply for the sake of trying something new--even if there are existing systems or techniques that would serve the game well.

I remembered the discussion at the conference while I played Painkiller this weekend.


I came across it while building my game list, and remembered how much I enjoyed playing it, although I had gotten distracted and never finished it. Painkiller doesn't innovate in the slightest. OK, to be fair, there are a few new elements with the weapons (like shooting a grenade with a stake to make a rocket), and fighting giant bosses felt pretty fresh. But for the most part, Painkiller takes established FPS genre conventions and reuses them in a way that's fun and interesting.


It's been a long time since we've had a simple FPS game. While game developers continue to try to innovate by adding squad commands, tactics, vehicles, specialized weapons, and other complications, people who want to play a fun game where they just shoot stuff get left behind. I believe the market is ripe for a solid, fun FPS that's simple to play, especially if it has a good license behind it.

We recently moved to San Diego, where I'm now working for Sony Online Entertainment. I finally figured out how to store (and later be able to find) all of my game CDs, and in the process, I found Game Collector, which streamlines cataloging collections of games. I've exported the list and now I'm hosting it here, on my blog.

I'm planning to post comments, notes, memories and mini-reviews of games in my collection a couple times a week, choosing the game of the day at random.

Today, the coin toss brought up Jewels of the Oracle.



Jewels was one of the first "Myst-like" games to hit the market. I put "Myst-like" in quotes because unlike games like Timelapse (and Shadows, the first game I worked on), Jewels isn't really a Myst clone. Sure, it has pre-rendered graphics, but there's no sense of story or characters in Jewels: it is a pure puzzle game. The puzzles were genuinely interesting and challenging. I missed having a story, and I definitely missed exploring an environment, which was always my favorite part of playing Myst.

There were a couple sequels to Jewels, but I suspect each one sold a bit less than the one before it. Myst-clones were becoming more popular, and many had sharper graphics and greater interactivity than the Jewels games. If you enjoy puzzles, it's worth trying to find a used copy.

If you manage to track down a copy, here are some hints and solutions to the puzzles.

Zarf (aka Andrew Plotkin) occasionally writes reviews of games, typically adventure games (or games with strong adventure elements, since true adventure games can be pretty few and far between today). This insightful review of Jewels was the first posted to his website, Zarfhome.

Here's to following through on New Year's resolutions, even in mid-June!

I've been playing a lot of Oblivion, and it's far too large to cover the whole game in a mini-review, so I'll focus on playing as a stealth character. The stealth system in Oblivion is a huge improvement on the stealth gameplay in Morrowind. Light and shadow play a much bigger role, and an icon on your targeting reticule makes it clear when you are (or aren't) concealed.

A successful attack while you are concealed does a significantly higher amount of damage. Stealth melee attacks generally do more damage than ranged attacks, which is a good reflection of the risk involved (it's a lot more difficult to get in melee range while remaining hidden).

In addition, the two main stealth-related quest lines (Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood) have rich and varied quests that prove to be among the most interesting in the game with unique and really interesting rewards.

Despite all of the positive elements that make playing a stealth character much more rewarding in Oblivion than it was in Morrowind, there is a downside. Stealth is the only one of the main three paths (warrior, stealth, or mage) that requires you to have elements from the other two paths. Late in the game, my character's skills were sharp enough that she could get several ranged attacks in against enemies before they spotted her, and two or three attacks usually killed even the strongest enemy.

Early in the game, though, after one ranged attack, the enemy turned and immediately spotted my character, then rushed her (along with all of his enemy buddies). Sometimes I could back-pedal while frantically shooting, but usually the enemy closed range and I had to resort to melee or magical attacks. If you create a pure stealth character, that means you can be pretty much screwed, unless you choose to sink points early in the game into stats that don't actually represent the direction you'd like to take your character (such as Destruction spells or Blade).

This has the effect of delaying development of your stealth skills, which keeps them less useful as you continue to play the game. The more you play, the more you gain levels and the harder the enemies get, and the more you end up relying on magic and melee rather than stealth in order to survive. The need for alternate (non-stealth) attacks and defense makes it hard to build your stealth character to the point that he can rely mostly on stealth for his survival.

As a result, many less experienced players who might enjoy playing a stealthy character are likely to get killed repeatedly and either give up on the character or give up on Oblivion. A potential solution would be to ramp enemy stealth detection along with the level of the enemy. Let low level players get several stealth shots off against enemies near their own level before they get spotted, the way higher level players can. This not only lets them improve and invest in their stealth skills more easily, but it also makes stealth something that is more immediately rewarding and fun.

...than to start on the one thing that really matters to you.