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And You'll Love It. No matter what anyone says, one of the most fundamentally appealing qualities of social sites like Twitter and Facebook is the notion that people actually care what you're doing or sharing.
When someone 'Likes' your photo album on Facebook, it makes you feel good. It lets you invite anyone on the web to ask you questions, and gives you a platform to answer them. It's your own personal interview. I like good stories in games, but as seasoning, not the main course. Do you game? A lot of designers say they don't have the time.
If you do, what games are you looking forward to in the next year or two? When I have time, I do play a lot of games. I currently have a back log of fourteen games that I can't get to until work slows down. I can't even think about what's coming out in the next year or two; I still have last year's games to play through. Isn't having too much or too firm of a 'concept' in mind when approaching concept art a danger? The initial character designs for Deus Ex: Human Revolution provoked a huge backlash because the New Renaissance concept had overtaken good taste.
It is better to be talked about than ignored. I believe the following: If you enter into creative endeavors cautiously and conservatively, you will create things that are cautious and conservative.
If you enter into creative endeavors aimlessly, you will create things that feel empty and disconnected. I think it is best to be passionate but flexible, to consider mainstream tastes and expectations, but not to be bound by them. You're taking a lot of abuse on this Q and A site, and I can only imagine it's far worse on forums that discuss the games you played a part in making.
I'm sure it's not personal, but how do you not let it get to you? Leonard Boyarsky? Leonard had already left Black Isle by the time I arrived. I try to keep in touch with members of the old crew when I can. Not all of them are in the industry anymore, but if they are, I bump into them every few years.
As large as gaming has become, the industry is still surprisingly small. You mention that you like history books.
Which period exactly, also biographical or more of memoirs i. I am most interested in European history from about the 11th to 18th centuries. I especially like social and religious history. I enjoy reading primary sources as well as secondary overviews of historical trends and aberrations. Most interesting of all are books that cover cross-cultural confusion and miscommunication. How come so many RPGs lately have minigames in place of simple skill checks?
Do they really add anything worthwhile to the game? They add player challenge. Whether or not you consider that to be worthwhile depends on your point of view and probably the quality of the mini game.
Simple skill checks only reward or punish your strategic choices. Outside of manipulating the character's skill rating, there is nothing the player can do to influence the outcome. I don't think I can make a reasonable guess, but my dad is in his 60s and I still would not want to be punched by him. He grew up doing a lot of punching and taking a lot of punching. His nose was broken so many times that he's had breathing problems since he was a young man.
You always talk a lot about role playing video games, which is normal, really, working on them it's your job, but what about tabletop? Do you like them? Any favorite ruleset? Some memorable moments you'd like to share? Generally speaking, I think most tabletop RPG systems are crummy. By their very nature, games on a computer can be systemically tested much more quickly than they could be by hand or on tabletop.
This process tends to separate the wheat from the chaff at a rapid pace. When I GM, I adapt or modify the existing rule set or create my own.
Setting-wise, my favorite is probably Delta Green. What's your opinion on full voice-over for games, especially, you know, role playing games? Do you think they're a necessity? Do they hinder development in your opinion you know, like 'I can't write a dialogue so long because the budget doesn't let us!
It's expensive and can be hard to coordinate. It doesn't really have much of any impact on how we write, though. I have also never had someone come to me with a writing problem involving full voice over or lack thereof.
Why do you think that is? Mainstream tabletop games use many of these things and so do mainstream CRPGs. You said that you have multiple games sitting on your shelf waiting for you to play them some of them even from the last year. What are these games? I would rather create my own IP, but I'm sure the general populace would rather play something that's licensed.
A main problem reviewers have with Alpha Protocol is that it looks like a shooter, but its mechanics are that of an RPG. Do you agree a game should play like it looks on the surface? Is there still a place for stat mechanics in real-time action games? You shouldn't confuse or irritate the player. Note: challenge can occasionally produce some irritation, but is ultimately followed by satisfaction, not angry exhalations of consternation.
There's certainly a place for stat mechanics in real-time action games. Just don't make it feel crappy. By this point in time, I think we have enough examples of games that get it right and games that get it wrong that we shouldn't be re-treading the same mistakes.
How come you have all the time to go on formspring and answer questions? Hopefully this means that a certain game is already finished. During crunch I work between 10 and 13 hours a day. I usually answer formspring questions when I wake up or before I go to bed. You said in regards to minigames: "Simple skill checks only reward or punish your strategic choices.
Isn't that the entire point of the RPG genre on a fundamental gameplay level? No, because most interesting aspects of game play in RPGs still require tactical decision making. Imagine if every battle in an RPG were resolved based solely on the statistics of your character.
The battle would simply start and play out based on how you built your character prior to the battle starting. It would be much like watching a Gold Box game with every character set to Q uick. The mixture of strategic and tactical game play is what makes games like the old Gold Box and Infinity Engine games enjoyable.
You build your characters a certain way and then make decisions with those characters "in the moment" to determine success or failure. Even in a real-time combat system like Oblivion, you still have to make tactical decisions to make the most of your strategic character and equipment choices. When a mini-game is well-executed, it's very enjoyable -- though some may argue that at a certain point, it stops being a mini-game and instead becomes a stand-alone method of game play.
I would much rather play with stealth in Oblivion than in any Infinity Engine game. Though Oblivion's perception AI and states are not as robust as Thief's or Splinter Cell's, it's still to me much more enjoyable than pressing a "hide" button and making a bee-line through an area with die rolls determining success or failure. I'm on my second playthrough of AP, and t's obvious that you had to make compromises between stats and "twitch" skill.
How did you decide on where the lines were drawn? I decided that martial arts should start good and get better. At low ranks, it's more of a close-quarters emergency method of dispatching enemies and a stealth kill aid.
At higher ranks, it is a pretty viable method of dealing with most enemies as long as you can get close to them. In some environments, martial arts can be used consistently through a whole level to take out enemies. In others, it has to be used in tandem with stealth or only when enemies rush Mike. I've yet to play a minigame that requires tactical decision making, they're mostly just busywork You're arguing that because minigames you have seen do not require tactical decision making, minigames cannot require tactical decision making.
This is reasoning through induction. Practically speaking, many minigames could be made tactical by introducing a resource that can be optionally spent to facilitate completing the minigame more easily.
In turn, this causes tactical decisions to feed into strategic game play. Frequent use of the consumable may eventually result in a shortage, making subsequent hacking attempts more difficult. A player who wants to rely on the resource may sacrifice more to have it. A player who goes without may find the challenges more difficult, but is able to spend his or her resources elsewhere. By the way, your example strikes me as 'let's make this minigame as unfun as possible, so that the player will be forced to choose between busywork or wasting resources.
I'm not trying to address your personal problems with the Bioshock minigame -- because you didn't state any.
A hacking minigame can be tactical, just as stealth game play can be tactical it isn't in most RPGs and combat can be tactical. Would you rather go back to the old Black Isle days or would you rather stay with Obsidian? Which do you believe is a more important factor in creating a good game: having a strong story and dialogue, or having strong gameplay?
Having strong game play. I think when Lord Gamerson invented games, the best thing he did was put the word "game" in the term "game play". What do you think of 'metaplots'? Or both? Old World of Darkness fiction Good one. Player choice involves what the player is directly involved in. I think the stature and significance of the player's actions has to be measured in the context of other things that are going on.
If mountains are being moved in comparison to what the player is doing, the player's actions may seem insignificant. If the player's actions start out small but then grow in importance and become directly involved with what was previously a high-profile background plot, I think it can create a believable sense of growth and importance.
In any case, I think that presenting an advancing "world" narrative that is reflected in the environment is a good thing. Then you'll play a game even if it's story is worthless, but it's gameplay is good? If so, do you consider those ideas? If not, why not? I feel like they're pointless at times, because devs don't even reply to those mostly.
Feels like lots of people writing for nothing sometimes. In your metaplots answer you warn against the player feeling insigificant, but do you feel that that is necessarily a bad thing? Are games forced into being a Dick Fantasy for players? It is only a bad thing if the world's narrative is what is making the player feel insignificant.
A game that focuses heavily on one character's personal struggle can be intensely focused on just that, with very little background narrative, and I think that's fine. If the world puts a lot of attention and emphasis on big things happening in the world and you're not really part of it, I think that can be problematic. The things Ezio does are intertwined with and in some cases cause the major events of the setting, but ultimately Ezio is driven by a very personal motive: revenge.
Not really. Did you work on Mask of the Betrayer? One of Obsidian's best games. All of the writing, quests, and other stuff that people really liked about MotB was done by other people. Let's say that, hypothetically, someone offered you a job at a proper studio instead of Obsidian. Would you take it? Hypothetically they would have to start out by not denigrating the people I've spent the majority of my career working with.
Is it true that it never rains in southern california? I've often heard that kind of talk before. A friend of mine who used to work in game design says that the biggest problem with roleplaying game stories is that developers mistake writing more for writing better and that other genres are better suited for interactive storytelling.
What do you think. If the central narrative is meaningfully interactive, I would classify it as an RPG. That is, I consider interactive storytelling to be the primary defining characteristic of RPGs.
I don't disagree that some designers write too much, but I think that's an indictment of specific content, not the fundamentals behind the genre. Bioware gets a lot of flack for recycling the same plot structure a lot. Do you think it's a creative vice to recycle that much, or is it alright to reuse the plotting so long as the dialogue, characters and worldbuilding are fresh?
I approach storytelling from the perspective of theme and conflict first and work backward from that. The way I look at it, you have to try to satisfy your audience and hopefully yourself along the way.
If you can get up in the morning, look at yourself in the mirror, and earnestly believe that you're doing the best you can to meet both of those goals, keep going. Are you more on the "photorealism" or the "cartoony" side when it comes to graphics in computer games?
I think that the visual aesthetics of a game should be driven by what you're trying to accomplish with them. Heavy Rain is really trying to present a very grounded, subdued world where subtlety can carry a lot of weight. Okami creates a fantastic painted world because it's rooted heavily in myth and abstracted imaginary landscapes. Use your fundamental concept of the world and game to visualize the world you are going to create, consider how your characters fit into and move through that world, and let that vision -- even if it is indistinct -- drive the visual aesthetics.
On your comment on interactive storytelling: You would not consider old dungeon crawlers as RPGs, then? And do not many adventure games center around interactive storytelling? I would consider them RPGs by the definitions of their time. If so, what do you think of it based on what you've heard? I have not, and Google is not turning up any matches. If it's something that turns conversation into a game that is a not mundane and b requires some sort of tactical or strategic thought beyond "pick the right response", I will probably like the basic idea.
Serious question tyme! Who would win in a boxing match between a Dinosaur and Charlie Chaplin? Do you feel like RPGs should only be done in the third-person or isometric perspectives or does it not matter? I think it matters for the specific game, but I don't think perspective is a defining characteristic of RPGs. Perspective is something that should be considered in the context of what you are attempting to accomplish or achieve. Can you elaborate on why contemporary RPGs are defined as interactive narrative?
AP would have been enhanced as an RPG if there were dialogue skills. How about Devil May Cry 4? Ninja Gaiden? Call of Duty 4? All of these games feature the gaining of experience points or equivalent to unlock new abilities. Advancement of character abilities is not unique to RPGs -- certainly not in the 21st century, anyway. Most of the criticisms of AP have to do with the elements that aren't role-playing related.
Personally, I don't think the DSS system would be improved with the addition of dialogue skills. How come you and the guys at Obsidian never bother to correct all these journalists who keep crediting Obsidian designers as the "creators of Fallout". None of the creators work there, you guys shouldn't steal their credit. They usually don't say "the creators of Fallout" but something like "some of the creators of the original games", which is true for Feargus, Avellone, Menze, ScottE, Aaron Brown, and Chris Jones.
I would consider the xp aspects of the games you mentioned to be RPG systems, yes. But they are first and foremost action games, as your twitch-skill trumps the strategic planning from developing stats. Whereas in a "true" RPG, this is not the case. You said you've done writing for games too? Didn't know that, I always assumed you weren't a story designer since I've never heard anything about your writing no offense intended.
So what games have you done writing for and what parts did you write? The only two major characters I've done have been Isair and Madae in Icewind Dale 2, and they weren't particularly good. They don't have to be black and white views, but if you're going to classify things based on criteria, those criteria should be consistent.
But it's clear to me what the RPG elements are. Oblivion, diplomatically speaking, is not very good at being an RPG. I think you misunderstood. I don't have any difficulty classifying them because I don't intrinsically link styles of combat with the RPG genre. I classify games as RPGs based on their interactive storytelling. More specifically, if you have the ability to define and express your character s personality in a way that significantly alters the development of the story, it's an RPG.
If you don't have that ability, it's not. It has stat-heavy equipment, XP, levels, classes, unlockable classes, and perks. What about Oblivion and Morrowind, as they do not allow storytelling or personality choices? You can do well easily in COD4 without unlockables. Not ME.
I don't consider the Diablo games to be RPGs. They are action games with character advancement and equipment upgrading. It doesn't make them better or worse games because of how I classify them. Furthermore, while it is necessary to be clear in classifying what constitutes as an essential element of a genre, actual implementation usually combines multiple genre elements and thus need not be easily classified. Popular example: Action-Adventures. I may just be dense, but when someone tells me that a game is an action-adventure game, it gives me no clear idea of what to expect.
What the hell is with this rhetoric? So you're telling me that if stats are not exclusive to RPGs then they are not necessary if the story is "interactive"? The average text adventure has a more "interactive" story than the average RPG. What about that?
Text adventure games typically don't allow you allow you to define and express your character's personality in a way that meaningfully changes the development of the story. An interactive story, to me, means more than just going through it via player input. Would that mean text adventures are RPGs? There are RPG systems that don't use dice to resolve conflicts.
Most notably, Amber uses straight statistic comparisons. Marvel Universe uses bids of resources to resolve conflicts. I don't know if that constitutes a "proper" stat system to you, but has always seemed well fleshed out to me. Seriously, this is embarrassing to read. So, you consider a game an RPG if it lets you define your pc's personality in a way that "significantly alters the story".
There must be very few games you call RPGs then, since most only offer the illusion of choice and the story stays the same. Yes, not that many. I think that offering the illusion of choice is bad for any game. I'm fine with being put on rails in games. Please just don't give me ten ways to be redirected into the same outcome. To be clearer, I think it's fine if RPGs plot lines wind up in a similar place.
But many RPG plot lines are made up of a lot of little relationships, small quests, and character conflicts that you can resolve as you see fit. That is what I think is interesting and find rewarding. If that's not the subject, then we have come to an impasse in the argument. I've only been trying to advocate my position; sorry if it came across wrong. You once said you were interested in a Fallout spin-off based during the resource wars.
Does this idea still interest you? Because it sounds like it would be awesome. Maybe that's just me, though. Since we're on the subject of what makes an RPG or not, what do you think of games that have role playing options but force the player to use the developer's own protagonist instead of letting us make our own like Planescape Torment, or Alpha Protocol?
But if I'm stuck with a pre-defined appearance, that can also work. I know Brazil is the top-ranked, but I'm thinking Depending on how they move out of the group stage, they could wind up playing each other as early as the first round of stage 2.
To be clearer with that question: AP for example gives us a lot of role playing options but Mike's personality is often that of a sarcastic guy regardless of our dialogue picks and the player isn't able to change that.
So would you still call that an RPG? Are you on of the few Americans who actually know something about football, or are you jumping on some world cup bandwagons, PS good game last week, USA played well, even if they did draw due to a bit of a fluke.
I know a bit about football, but I don't regularly follow clubs. I am a bit of a bandwagon jumper when the World Cup comes on. The big deal is that you're basically denying the RPG classification to a huge number of games while potentially giving it to others that have nothing else besides "interactive storytelling". Many professional writers approach games as though they are films. The limitations that apply to films do not apply to games and vice versa. Writing for games requires a level of vocational knowledge that many professional writers in my experience are not willing to develop.
There are exceptions, of course e. Rhianna Pratchett. What impressed you? What didn't? Both as a gamer that doesn't have time to play and as a developer who spent all his time doing interviews, I'm going to assume. It looked interesting, like an evolution of the college campus favorite "Circle of Death" assassin games. Otherwise, all I did at E3 was give presentations and interviews.
Why do so many games have characters with gigantic ugly shoulder pads on their armor? I don't get it. I can't answer the aesthetic concerns, but large shapes help define easily distinguishable silhouettes for characters.
Silhouettes that read well at a distance are often an important element of developing distinctive characters. It's also useful for game play since it helps the player quickly identify characters in an environment. Putting this on FB and Twitter since so many people are asking me: unfortunately, I don't know.
The shirts were provided by Bethesda. How do you feel about gamers' tendency to give all credit for a game's success to one designer instead of the whole design team e. In some cases the game being lauded may have turned out well in spite of the worst efforts of the most high-profile person associated with it.
Does formspring have death penalty for ignoring pointless questions? Or what actually get shown is just the tip of an iceberg? I have unanswered questions including this one. This tally excludes ones I have already deleted. You be the judge. I do not tuck in t-shirts or shirts with straight hems. I tuck in shirts that have dress shirt hems because I am not a barbarian. Why do that? No one talks like that. When people want to talk about something else, they just bring the topic up.
Short version: it's an organizational convention. It is much easier, structurally, to do this than it is to a load up every node with all possible questions or b guess at what the player might want to talk about in any given node.
Dialogue trees are fundamentally oriented around two types of data: nodes or topics and replies. Beneath any given node, the designer will typically place replies that are relevant to what's being discussed.
These are sub-topics or branches of that topic. At the root level are the major topics. To help the player navigate by preventing an enormous list of potential topics , designers will typically allow the player to go two or three node layers deep with two to four options per node layer.
If the player wants to talk about something else especially if it is completely off-topic from what's currently being discussed , the player will include an option like, "Let's talk about something else. The player can then delve down into those basic topics and branch off.
Which system do you prefer for skill checks: direct comparison I've always called it threshold or dice rolls? Do you feel that it's forgivable for a RPG to be worse at a gameplay element than another game more dedicated to it because it's a RPG and does other things?
The question partially applies to other genres as well such as FPS's with poor vehicle combat. It can be marginally worse, certainly. It just shouldn't feel bad. It can also be "worse" in breadth but just as good in depth, which I think is also perfectly reasonable.
Let's say a game wanted to have most of the stealth elements of Thief. It has the AI, the light, the sound including audio occlusion , but it doesn't have extinguishable lights, water arrows, rope arrows, moss arrows, or any of that jazz.
If the AI, light, sound, etc. You said writers in the industry require a level of vocational knowledge. I know that I want to become either a video game writer or game designer someday. Can you tell me a little more about what you mean, and how you'd recommend acquiring these skills? This can change many aspects of the narrative, including plot sequence and pacing. They can kill characters, change the outcome of a quest, skip steps in the storyline, etc. It's important for writers to understand the mechanics players use in games and how they experience the story.
It's different from the typical movie's two hour captive audience experience. Playing games, especially RPGs, is a good first start to understanding how games work. Additionally, I would recommend that anyone who is interested in doing game writing should try making a very small mod.
In addition to doing the basics of level layout and game play, script interactive conversations or cutscenes. Not many, just a few. I thought a bit more on our discussion. Then, I'm interested in why you consider an interactive narrative in an RPG. DMs adapt and change the story based on the outcome of the player's actions. Ultima games started to experiment with player choice and morality around Ultima IV.
I may be forgetting some important precursor, but I believe the original Fallout was the first RPG that allowed the player a "judgment-free" way to play the game as anything ranging from a saint to a horrible monster -- with appropriate reactions to that behavior. Concurrently, other "non-RPG" games e. Don't get me wrong; I like character statistics and advancement.
I think they should be part of all sorts of games, and I appreciate it whenever I can get it. But when it comes to the sort of games I help make that are going to be called "RPG", it's important to me that we always do our best to actively support the player's ability to the sort of character they want to make -- with a heavy focus on personality reactivity. That's a hard question to answer. Esme may be my current favorite.
Can you give some insight on how much input the "worker bees" have on the creative process in game making? Is it like the movies where a grip or cameraman just follows orders, or does everyone within Obsidian contribute to the creative genesis of a title?
Everyone can contribute, either by offering new ideas or by giving critiques on what we're making, but there is still a hierarchy to how decisions are made. The source of inspiration or feedback should not have much, if any, impact on how it is evaluated. I love folk songs, but I don't like that recording.
I think my dislike for it is due to it being mostly in her upper register, where she is constantly straining and practically yelling through the entire song. It's a pretty bare-bones system, mechanically. I understand that's sort of the point, but I always felt it had balance issues in part because it is so abstract.
Probability is obfuscated for a lot of people and you're still rolling a boatload of dice. As a GM, it can be hard to tweak probability with dice pools because of the math involved. I'd like to think so, though I'd guess the only handheld platform that has significant overlap with fans of those games is the mobile phone. That is, I'm sure you could make a lot of those sort of games on handheld platforms, but I'm not sure that the audience is there.
How do you perceive difficulty in RPGs? Is it just a matter of fights, hard levelling up? Or is it mainly a matter of complexity of relations between NPCs, hard moral decisions, logic puzzles and other non-violent aspects? I think difficulty and agony are two separate things or should be in games. Combat and "contested" game play should be oriented around challenge, of which difficulty is an important element. The focus is on figuring a way through a problem. This can be a puzzle, logical or otherwise, through which there are a finite amount of designed paths, or it can be something like combat, with a theoretically infinite number of strategic and tactical approaches.
When it comes to making moral decisions, ethical decisions, or character decisions with NPCs, I believe the focus should be on agony in the classical sense. The struggle is to make the choice, not to succeed or fail. If you're guessing blindly, success and failure aren't particularly interesting. In many cases, it's boring or infuriating.
The reason why stories like Antigone and the Oresteia are interesting to some is because their characters are trapped between two equally good and bad choices. Orestes makes the choice to avenge his father's death by murdering his mother, but in doing so is pursued by the Furies for his filial betrayal. Let's say you're writing an RPG with a traditional member party, a camp or stronghold area, all that stuff.
How do you do companion dialogue? Player-intiatiated at camp? Any time in the field? When triggered by environment or quest? Or a mix? When it's appropriate and not irritating to the player.
I think it helps when companions initiate conversation based off of something the player is also experiencing. If the character just launches into a topic at an inappropriate time, it can annoy players and distract them from whatever subject the companion is talking about. The platform saw a rapid growth on its launch: 1 million users in less than two months.
It allowed people to anonymously ask questions and send messages to other users without having to sign up. Feel lost when doing customer interviews? In this free video series, learn effective customer research strategies proven to deliver results. Cyberbullying came to the level that several teen suicides were linked to the bullying that took place on the site.
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