Peter Lübeck

UPDATE: My suggested communication system was picked as one of the top contributions for the challenge.

Every few weeks, the guys over at GameCareerGuide presents a game design challenge to their readers. The latest challenge is to “Design a social interaction system for a massively multiplayer game featuring friendly characters who can’t understand each other”. I have never felt that I have had the time to participate in these events before, but this time I thought I should give it a try.

The communication system I am proposing sacrifices precision and versatility in favor of speed, accessibility, ease-of-use and interaction feedback. By using a library of universal symbols, accessible through an intuitive graphical user interface, players will be able to convey messages quickly and smoothly.

By pressing and holding a hot-key, a spiral of icons is invoked on the screen. When you rotate the analogue stick the symbols light up and scale up as you pass them. The spiral is repeating, so when you get to the end, the symbol that was first in line will seamlessly follow the last symbol. This makes it quick and easy to browse all of the symbols and there is no limit as to how many symbols you can put into it.

To choose a symbol, just press the action button. After pressing the action button the symbol is displayed in a specific area of the screen, and you can continue browsing. You can sequence symbols in order to create more complex messages. Because of the intuitive interface, players will be able to put together complex sequences of symbols in a matter of seconds.

The symbols consists of traditional and game related symbols. For example, each area in the game can have its own symbol. These could also have contextual meta actions/features attached to them, like co-ordinates or a marker for that area.

When you have chosen a symbol you can add a modifier to it in order to make your message more clear. A modifier can for example be positive or negative, and when chosen the color of the symbol changes to represent your choice. Instead of color modifiers could also be illustrated with prefix icons, like a thumbs up or happy smiley for positive. You can also add modifiers to an entire sequence, e.g. make it a question.

Depending on the number of available modifiers they can either have their own hot-keys, or you could access them through a similar, but smaller, interface as the one used to select symbols.

When you have put together a finished sequence of symbols with modifiers, you press a button and the sequence is displayed over the head of your avatar or in a specific chat window. Depending on the nature of the game, you could also have a realtime system where symbols are displayed after one another as you select them.

Using stimulating sounds and visual indicators, the interaction feedback of the interface can be made satisfying and rewarding. You will be able to motivate players to use the system by simply applying traditional interaction design methodologies to the user interface.

Even though the above description is for console, the system is basically platform and genre independent, and can be modified to work with almost any game.

I attended the Nordic Game Conference in Malmö on the 19th and 20th of May. Although the conference didn’t quite live up to my expectations, it still managed to infuse me with some interesting thoughts and ideas. One of these ideas is something I have been thinking of on and off for the past few years. It is about the long term user investment/involvement in video games of different types, genres and scope.

I guess it would be wrong to say that it is new, but at least it resurfaced now when I had to sit through a couple of less than great lectures. In an attempt to turn my idea into something more concrete I came up with some definitions that might allow me to make my point.

High vs. Low Investment: Basically what this means is how much the game demands from the player, in terms of problem solving, lateral thinking, social interaction as well as skill-based aspects like timing and precision.

Long vs. Short Term: The scope and scale of the game. This is not just a measure of total time spent with the game, but more of a general indication of play time, average session time, scenario scope etc.

So now that I have these things defined, what do I make of them? Well, I put together this neat little chart in which I tried to place a number of different games according to these criteria.

The games I have used as references are Boingo, Peggle, Tetris, N+, World of Goo, Braid, Team Fortress 2, Diablo 2, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, Utopia, World of Warcraft and EVE Online. The observant reader might also have noticed that Facebook is in the mix as well. While it is not a game per say, the user interaction makes it a valid example for my little study.

Basically what I am trying to point out is the current lack of games that are long term high investments, and I am also wondering if there is a market for such games. I will not go into detail of each and every game on the chart, but by describing the extremes I hope to be able to make it clear enough for my point to be made.

To get a feel for the chart and it’s contents I will start off on the opposite side of the long term high investment games, namely the short term low investment games, as illustrated in the bottom left part of the chart. Games like Peggle, Tetris, and of course my own contribution Boingo, does not demand a lot of time or other kinds of investment from the player. Although I do not like to use the term, these games are probably best known as casual games.

While one might argue that World of Warcraft is very much a long term high investment game, it is my opinion that it is not. Although players at this point have spent several years developing characters and getting better equipment, the mission/quest structure is short term, and in my opinion also quite shallow. Sure, there have been larger scale scenarios where people have worked together in order to overcome some grand obstacle. But the core of the game, the thing that player spend 90% of their time with, is a short term, shallow, arcade-like gaming experience.

EVE Online on the other hand is definitely long term, and it is not just because of the time-based skill progression system. EVE Online has a completely different core than World of Warcraft, and it encourages long term investments in the world and its events. Just look at this news report from when the first Titan Class vessels was constructed within EVE, during the course of eight months. It is just mind boggling that something like that has happened inside the confines of a digital world, and it is one of the best examples in existence of long term high investment gameplay.

That said, EVE is overall not as high of an investment as World of Warcraft, it even allows players to continue leveling up their characters with a minimum amount of interaction. You can basically play the game passively, and still be an important part of the world. I guess that is one of the reasons the game appeals to an older demographic than many other games.

So what of the long term high investment games? Perhaps I should give an example of what I mean to further illustrate my point. Using the above described definitions and criteria I could argue that Left 4 Dead is kind of high investment. The game requires players to have a high level of mechanical skill, as well as an understanding of social interaction, communication and co-operation. Imagine that you take Left 4 Dead and push it up to the right on the chart. To make a co-operative zombie game that is more long term and high investment, you need to establish a long term co-operative relationship with your allies, and with the game world.

So, if you mix Left 4 Dead with Dead Rising, and push the boundaries of the scope of the scenario, what do you get? I am thinking a living online world that is active around the clock. Players play in groups of 4-6 people that are taking shelter in a big mall, and you need to work together in order to survive the zombie hordes. For you to survive in the long run you need to find a safe room and establish a perimeter. You also need to gather necessary resources and equipment in order to survive sickness, hunger and other challenges. This is a long term scenario, challenging players to survive, not for ten minutes but for several months.

During this time, players are encouraged to find their own creative solutions to their problems, and thus creating their own missions/quests. You might want to get a refrigerator in order to be able to store food more effectively, so you set out into the zombie infested mall with your team. Two people carry the refrigerator while the other team members protect them from zombies. The bigger the refrigerator, the more food can be stored, but the more difficult it becomes to get it to the safe room.

After a period of time you might want to relocate the safe room to another place of the mall in order to get closer access to necessary resources. In doing so you might encounter another player group, and depending on their good nature they might either welcome your party, or they might try to drive you away in order to maintain their current rule of the area. This can be the source of long term player vs. player conflicts that are spawned out of necessity, people fighting each other for access to resources.

This might not be a perfect example of a long term high investment game, since it is based on existing games, but I believe that I explained my definitions at least. So, is there room for long term investment games in the current game climate, or is this something that might appear later on, when the games industry has become more established and accepted as culture?

I personally really would like to play games of this type. I do not fancy the shallow arcade-like experiences offered by game like World of Warcraft, and I am looking for something that actually involves me on a long term emotional basis. Sadly, I am afraid that the current climate, and the ever adolescent games industry, won’t allow for these type of games to be enjoyed, let alone developed.

What do you readers think? Am I totally lost in my reasoning? Are there already games like this out there?

Drop me a comment if you have something to say about this subject!