Metrics

Metrics, Metrics, Metrics. Go read xkcd.com!

I’ve been doing a bit of general level design study recently – theory and practice, both in traditional print media and via the internet. One of the things that’s mentioned again and again is the level designer’s responsibility for resource placement. For some reason, when someone mentions resource placement, my mind immediately jumps to the ‘Metroidvania‘ sub-genre. Generally, the character in these sorts of games start out with a basic set of abilities, and are free to explore the world. Eventually, the player begins to notice areas that are visible but that the character can’t currently reach – maybe they are higher than the character can jump, or are behind a barrier the character can’t destroy, etc. These obstacles are overcome by the acquisition of resources (usually some kind of equipment) that give the character new abilities that allow them to reach those previously inaccessible areas. These resources are carefully placed as rewards for overcoming a challenge such as defeating a boss, solving a puzzle, or traversing some particularly difficult terrain. One might say then that, from a level design perspective, the most important skills for these types of games are 1) resource placement, 2) resource acquisition challenges, and 3) visibly unreachable area placement. Number 2 is just your basic challenge-reward cycle that we see in so many other games, but this sub-genre focuses more heavily on numbers 1 & 3 than almost any other type of game does. In fact, some games (Knytt Stories comes to mind) almost dispense with number 2 completely, to the point where the only real challenge to finding the resources is exploring everywhere that you can currently access. This kind of edge case made my mind wander a bit, as doing level design for a great game of this kind strikes me as thrilling but extremely challenging.

Although there are a number of Metroidvania games out there and each has its fans, there’s a startling consensus among gamers as to which ones are really great and which ones are simply good (the downright poor ones are largely ignored). For me, it’s always seemed that the pacing was the largest component, almost as though the ratio of resource collection to visibly unreachable areas was one of the deciding factors. Too few unreachable areas between ability acquisition and the game becomes a standard linear game (a great genre in itself, but that’s another discussion), too many and it threatens to overwhelm the player’s ability to recall those areas later, after gaining the requisite skill to venture there.

This thought, in turn, made me wonder: Are there any metrics for this? I’d love to know what is the ‘right’ number of visibly unreachable areas to present to the player before giving them a new resource. Has anyone tabulated the average number of unreachable areas you see in Super Metroid between each resource acquisition? How about number of screens with these unreachable areas versus total number of screens the player currently has access to? I wonder if there are ‘correct’ ratios for these metrics that genre-defining games like Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night have managed to hit upon, and whether they arrived at them by accident, iteration (seems most likely), or by having access to similar metrics from other games?

… And Where is that Punchline, Again?

This makes me want to scream. There is so much misinformation here by every member of the mainstream press. It seems like every other sentence out of their mouths I want to say ‘no, you are wrong’ ‘that’s simply not the case’ or ‘you are misinformed’. It’s irresponsible journalism. Even as bad as it is, I’m thankful in that this reminds me: don’t believe everything that you hear. Go out and research it for yourself.

Can’t they just go back to hating rock’n'roll? At least that was a form of expression that thrived on this kind of attention.

Waiting for the Punchline

This is a joke, right? I try my best to remain ignorant to the fact that you can fly off the handle regarding topics that you don’t even take the time to educate yourself on and be taken seriously/get paid. But sometimes, it reaches such profoundly stupid proportions that I can no longer look the other way.

(For those who aren’t aware, the game in question, Mass Effect, is rated ‘M for mature’ and features one optional thirty-second sex scene in a twelve hour game. And you see nothing more than a bare female bottom, briefly.)

Parallel Food & Film

I received Pixar’s excellent Ratatouille for Christmas (thanks again, you know who you are!) and spent part of this evening trolling through the special features. Included is a 14 minute documentary with director Brad Bird and chef Thomas Keller titled Fine Food & Film. Although the two men are not interacting, the documentary edits together interview footage as they (separately) expound on their philosophies of creation, each echoing the other through the unique lens of their career. “The mistake that a lot of people make is thinking that you can force ideas to come. You can’t, really. All you can do is observe what kind of environment puts you in a creative state of mind, and then try to create that environment,” says Bird, while Keller tells us “You clean a salmon everyday for ten or fifteen years… it becomes a part of who you are. At that point, you can start to think about, not cleaning the salmon, but ‘what am I going to do with the salmon after I clean it?’” Both are certainly important lessons for anyone who wants to create for a living: you can’t force creativity, just arrange yourself to receive it; learn the basics by rote and you can start to focus on the higher levels of creativity. It’s not hard to see that there is a lot of overlap in artistic endeavors, but I was actually amazed during the shots where you could simply see these two men going about their daily job responsibilities. They often looked quite a lot like game developers. I was struck by the thought of cooking, animating, and game development as kind of parallel universes.

Call it education
It was somewhere inbetween
You gave me some sound advice
But i wasn’t listening

Not Yo Mamma’s Blog / 普通なブログで〜す

俺がインターネットの世界に観光の時には、時々誰かのブログにコメントしますわ。偶に、このブログに帰るリンクを残す。そのリンクをクリックする人に：「実には、これは普通なブログですけど、よろしくおねがいします」って。何か俺が好きな事だけで書くわ。ごめん、目的なしの用に。

As I wander about the internet, depositing my comments on other people’s blogs, I sometimes wonder what they might think if they wander back across the links to this page. If any of you are reading this, then I have this to say to you: No, this is not a professional page. Just a blog of things I find interesting. I hope you find it interesting too, but I don’t pretend to think you’ll find it particularly edifying. To all of you who do write blogs that make me think (and post comments), I say to you: thank you!

Cheers, all.

Dirty Music Coming Clean

For those interested in what happened with respect to music getting released digitally directly by the artists, here’s a quick update: Radiohead’s new album is getting CD release this year and is currently available from the iTMS (where payment is required) as the money it brought in was apparently not sufficient. Trent Reznor has dropped a bit of a bombshell in his January 3rd post about how few people chose to pay for Saul Williams’ The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust. I paid for the Saul Williams album, but not for Radiohead’s In Rainbows, which took a goodly amount of time to ’set in’ for me. I plan to purchase it at some point, but past experience in these situations has shown that sometimes I don’t ever get around to it.

First, I’m interested to see an honest breakdown of artist costs versus the amount they received. I don’t doubt Trent’s comment that ‘no one is getting rich of this record’, but I’d like to see the balance sheet in actual dollar amounts. Second, it was interesting to see these experiments play out, but I must admit that I’m a bit disheartened by the outcome. And still interested to see what will happen next.

First Post / アケオメ！２００８や！

明けましておめでとうございます！今年の春ぐらいに日本に外遊したいの。七日ぐらいできるかな？それと俺のゲーム会社の夢なレベルデザイン仕事に入るために、頑張るワ！皆の応援が要るの！これからよろしくおねがいしますね！

2008 is upon us, and my goals are pretty slimmed down. I’m back in the states, I’m gainfully employed, I’m saving money at a reasonable rate, I’m taking vacations as time permits. Now I just need to work on my level design portfolio a bit more. Encouragement welcome!

Happy New Year, everyone!