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Runaway

This post has a good explanation of long-term design issues in Ingress, similar to the ones that sunk Shadowbane.

In board game circles it’s referred to as the “runaway leader” effect – winning makes it easier and easier to keep winning. It has a few advantages – it is a more intrinsically realistic dynamic. There are some games, like Monopoly, in which a runaway leader taking over is the entire point of the game in the first place. However, runaway leader positive feedback loops are not viewed as good design for longer games because players tend to dislike games where the outcome is decided very early on but they are obliged to keep playing. While nobody is actually obliged to play Ingress, player attrition rarely helps with the underlying balance issues. Note that a game having a runaway leader effect doesn’t mean that a team in a weaker position cannot ever achieve victories – it just means that the odds are heavily stacked against them.

Like Shadowbane, Ingress is not asymmetric, so the rules are not tilted against either side, but the mechanics do make it easier for the winners to keep winning, which tends to have the effect of driving out the losing team and reducing the influx of new players (on either side, because winning unopposed on an empty field in a virtual world gets boring quickly).

I am debating whether I am interested in continuing to play. I live and work in one of those heavily dominated areas, so if I want a competitive environment, I need to drive an hour away. And people who have farmed in the non-competitive environments do that same drive with their farmed gear.

The rumored third faction only makes the runaway leader effect worse unless there is reason to unite against the winning team. MU in Ingress is like PPT in Guild Wars 2: territorial control is all that matters for the scoreboard.

: Zubon

While the rules of Ingress are balanced, the flavor text spurs the current imbalance towards the Resistance. Oddly, the linked post has a commenter who says this is a good thing because it keeps the game competitive. I’m not sure that person understands what “competitive” means.

Automating Your Intelligence Away

Or, “An Open Letter to Bill Carr, Vice President at Amazon Prime Instant Video.” I woke up to the following e-mail:

Make the Most of Your Prime Membership

I’m sending you this e-mail because you are an Amazon Prime member who has not yet used any of the video benefits that you’ve already paid for. …

Sincerely,
Bill Carr
Vice President
Amazon Prime Instant Video

This is one of the dangers of using automated algorithms and letting your staff sign your name to form letters. From the first sentence, this is false. I am using Amazon Prime Instant Video. I have not used any of the paid rentals, which is presumably what their algorithm keys off, but I have watched several movies and TV shows using Amazon Prime. So their algorithm is broken and is sending false messages that condescendingly explain to customers how to use a service they are already using. That’s amusing or annoying, depending on your mood at the time, and I hit “reply” to let Amazon know they have a problem with their algorithm.

Greetings from Amazon.com.

You’ve written to an e-mail address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. …

Hmm. Mr. Carr, not only is your staff signing your name to form letters from a broken algorithm, they are then sending them from an account that does not accept replies, creating an informational black hole that keeps people from correcting the problem. You have an “unknown known”: your customers are e-mailng you to let you know about a problem, and your customer service system rejects it unless they follow a link to a web form, and I don’t know what happens from there because why would I go through extra work to help when they just rejected my help and I could just hit “delete”?

Okay, one last try, let’s forward the whole exchange to “help@amazon.com”:

Greetings from Amazon.com.

You’ve written to an e-mail address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. …

A hard part of working for a large organization is that someone else’s division can sabotage yours in ways you won’t even find out about through normal channels. And sign your name to it.

: Zubon

[GW2] A Megaserver Divided

The megaserver, which is kind of like an underflow map in Guild Wars 2, has been rolled out across the game. I feel like I’ve had enough time with it to take a shot at talking about it, and so does Mrs. Ravious, whose opinion I will convey. We don’t agree.

I like it. With world boss runs and messing around with Orr, things are lively. It feels really fresh, and is hopping just like those first days of a new Living World update. It’s amazing how adding population to that same, old content can really change the feeling of it.  Continue reading [GW2] A Megaserver Divided

[RR] Two GM-Free Indies – A Hasty Review of Both

It was the worst of times. I had poured my heart and soul into starting a campaign for my group, and no one seemed invested. We had some fantastic times, but for whatever reason everybody seemed happy to just take from the GM. Perhaps it is just my current group. Perhaps it was the game choice. Perhaps it was me. Either way the table was not an imaginative crucible I had wanted it to be.

I started poking around and came upon two new GM-free games built around crucibles of imagination. Both games are virtual one shots. The first was Our Last Best Hope a game where the players go on an adventure to save mankind from a mankind-ending threat. The second was Microscope, which is a world-building game. I bought Our Last Best Hope in the latest Bundle of Holding, which has quit a few great indie games in their “humble” bundle. Continue reading [RR] Two GM-Free Indies – A Hasty Review of Both

Intentional Gaming

Upon reflection, I cannot help but come to the conclusion that much of my gaming time has been time spent poorly. The question driving this is, “Am I really enjoying this or just looking for something to do?” I find that much of my gaming time has been driven by habit, increasing numbers on a screen because that is what you do in this game, and working on arbitrary checklists. Like the epiphany about social media games, this is a realization of just how strongly our primate brains can provide a drive to continue without much in the way of value or enjoyment.

The metaphor that immediately comes to mind is sitting down in front of the television so see what is on. This is how you lose an entire evening without having the sense that you did or even watched much; there is always something on, or at least about to come on or just about done or hey let’s see if this is any good… It is similarly easy to sit down in front of the computer after work and check Facebook, your RSS feeds, follow a few links, check in on a few games, watch some YouTube videos, look through Amazon’s new recommendations for you…

I was considering limiting myself to X hours of gaming per week, but I have settled on a different metaphor: only eat when you are hungry. Don’t eat out of habit or boredom or just open the fridge to see what looks good; only open the fridge when you are hungry. Therefore: only sit down at the computer when you have something in mind to do. And then stand up and walk away from the computer, rather than doing the equivalent of flipping through channels. If I see something that looks like fun while I’m there, great, but if I am just looking for something to do, I can draw an experience point bar on a whiteboard and give myself points for housework. “1000 dishes washed: achievement!” And I’m going to watch Dr. Who. I hear good things.

I’ll let you know how this goes. I may be posting more or less; some of my most prolific posting sprees came from times when I was not gaming much, but that might have been because I was sitting at the computer and looking for something to do.

: Zubon

I could use more happiness and intention in my career, too. I don’t suppose any of you work on the business side of Disney Parks or Resorts? I’m thinking of jumping industries but my professional network is in my current industry.

[TT] Asymmetric PvP

Let’s take a break from the Dominion-centric Tabletop Tuesday. People who are interested are probably already reading Dominion-specific sites. Dominion is on one extreme of a continuum in that every player starts with exactly the same resources and options. Some games like Risk or StarCraft give everyone the same option pool to start but then provide different starting points, or different victory conditions like Illuminati.

At the opposite extreme you have games that offer asymmetric options: vastly different starting resources, methods of playing, rules, and/or victory conditions. Balance here is difficult to do well, especially since a playstyle that works well for one side may not work at all for another, but a successful asymmetric game is a really great experience with multiple experiences built in.
Continue reading [TT] Asymmetric PvP

Accessibility and Excellence

Popularity is not a guarantee that something is either good or lowest common denominator crap, but it sure is profitable.

Pop music is heartbreaking cuz I’ll write a lovely visual poetic piece and then have to tear it apart and dumb it down. Writing for the masses is a bitch sometimes.
— Bonnie McKee

Bonnie McKee’s first album was surprisingly sophisticated and had almost no commercial success. It remains one of my favorites. She then went on to write pop hits for Katy Perry and others, with sales four or more orders of magnitude higher than her own. Ms. McKee learned something that Blizzard did: accessibility drives sales.
Continue reading Accessibility and Excellence

Manipulation Through Conspicuous Non-Manipulation

I was watching Once Upon a Time recently, and it was just not selling a death scene. It should have been a significant death, but I never much liked the character, writers frequently kill characters who have completed their plot arcs, and there was another character on-screen who was recently resurrected. How does the show deal with the lack of emotional resonance? Cue the sad music.

The music tells you how you are supposed to feel about the scene. Continue reading Manipulation Through Conspicuous Non-Manipulation

Casual Incentives

Most games have learned that players respond better to incentives than penalties, even when they are mathematically equivalent. Instead of having a hunger debuff, food provides a buff, and all the content is balanced with the assumption that you are using food buffs. One World of Warcraft design included a bonus to XP when you started playing, decaying to neutral and then a penalty over time; this was changed to a Well Rested buff that does exactly the same thing, where playing without the buff means earning XP at the old penalty rate.

The latter is an example of the common incentive to play periodically for a moderate amount of time rather than trying to go from level 1 to the cap in one massive binge. Playing in moderation is better for your health, the game’s community, and the long term health of the game. Examples of systems that support this are daily rewards and bonuses that accumulate during offline time like the xp bonus in WoW or LotRO or the explicit “offline time” in A Tale in the Desert. The core idea here is providing a bonus the first time you do something today, which makes the first time very rewarding and creates an implicit penalty for farming.

The implementation of the Zen Garden in Plants vs. Zombies 2 is an interesting example. You have 6 to 12 flowerpots. You plant a sprout in each that gradually grows to become a boost. (“Gradually” means hours, although that can be shortened.) A boost gives that plant a large bonus for one round.

In practice, that means your first few rounds of play include at least one boosted plant. With some care, you could have a really awesome round in which every plant is boosted. You will crush that round and laugh in the zombies’ faces. And then you are back to normal. You re-plant your sprouts and either do something else or keep playing normally.

The Far Future world, introduced with the Zen Garden, seems to be balanced assuming you will be using some boosts. This both creates chances for highly skilled players to face greater challenges and provides more casual players with a boost to get past that.

: Zubon

Which is not to imply that casuals are unskilled, but we expect the hardcore to get better with all that time they spend. Being “hardcore” in Plants vs. Zombies is an atypical life decision.

Cargo Cults and Clones

Refering to something as a cargo cult means that it is repeating the external appearances but ignoring what makes it work. It is a form of magical thinking, that the ritual is what is important. The mental image you should get is someone on a Pacific island after WWII, trying to summon an airplane full of supplies by stamping out a “runway” in the dirt and wearing a “headset” made from coconuts, phonetically reciting landing orders and hoping the planes arrive. The important notion here is not copying but going through the motions and seriously expecting it to work. (See also cargo cult science, Feynman’s popularization of the meme.)

Copying works if you copy the right things. Your cheap knock-off may be missing some features or polish, but there is a market for cheap knock-offs. A taco or t-shirt is still a taco or t-shirt. In gaming, we often politely refer to them as genres, although some are still “Diablo clones.” (MOBAs recently made the transition to genre from “another DotA”.) Other games “borrow” motifs or characters, so we have fads of zombie games, brown “realism,” and a smaller number of snarky, passive-aggressive robots. “WoW with lightsabers” actually sounded like an extremely lucrative idea.

We get into gaming cargo cults when developers or producers have no idea why they are copying things. The market leader has X in the game, so put X in the game. And they seriously expect to make a lot of money, not to make a cheap knock-off. See the infamous keyring. See anytime an executive gives an interview that boils down to “you have to copy WoW to win.” (Those seem to have tapered off.)

Funny thing is, copying can lead to improvement. While there is a first mover advantage, seeing where the first mover tripped can help you get further. (This is where Blizzard has been known to excel.) Maybe the essential feature is not what the original developers thought, and the game works well in spite of, not because of, some core aspect. Are forced downtime, forced grouping, or unrestricted PvP assets or mistakes? We have games gambling on each side of that. Is the economy the heart of the game or an unfortunate distraction? How good is the gameplay when you strip it to its core? The real meta-game is seeing what works in making games.

: Zubon