Game of Design

I had what felt like a big though yesterday. It was one of those times where you think “Wow. Just. Wow. That was one of the biggest thoughts I’ve had in my entire life.” Now, I didn’t actually know if it was all that profound. But I wanted to run around and tell everyone:

The role of business is to make people’s lives better.

Growing up in the liberal parts of this world, I’ve always had an uneasy understanding of business. I respected market forces. But I’ve never thought they were as good as everyone thought that was, either. They seemed to be causing a lot of problems. The goal of business was just to make money, chase the bottom line, please the shareholders, and people usually got hurt in the process. Corporation exemplifies this view point perfectly.

But business does two more things as well: it improves society and it fulfills individual’s dreams. In fact, it’s the arguably best process on the planet for both. Because of competition and the market economy, businesses have created products and services that help everyone lead better lives - lives that are easier, simpler, and more enjoyable. And businesses also create opportunities for people to spend their lives doing what they like. They not only enables artists and musicians and daredevils and all sorts of crazy “non-productive” jobs, they helps people like me to find others who share common life goals and to achieve them. We have co-workers because of businesses, not because of our goals.

Now the market still isn’t perfect. All you have to do to see this is go to a Third World country and look for the U.S. factories. Wealth creation is not directly related to improving its worker’s lives or society. But business is an improvement - given time competition will indirectly prune out businesses that don’t take care of their workers well, and higher qualities of life will make workers more selective. Technology slowly ease pains and eliminates menial jobs that are forced on people who fall through the cracks.

Maybe it’s a glass half-full outtake on a glass half-empty, but somehow it makes me feel better.

So I got Age of Conan a couple of weeks ago, and finally decided to try it out. I went through the collective craziness that was the installation, to discover that while I could run the game, it couldn’t stream art in fast enough for me to see what was going on. It wasn’t that big a deal to me, so I figured I’d add a second gig of memory to my machine to see if it helped, and then I’d let it go.

Whoops.

As far as I can tell that second stick of memory fried the board. Over the course of the weekend I’ve ended up basically replacing every part, one by one, as I’ve discovered I can’t reuse it for one twatty reason or another. And I still haven’t actually managed to put anything together yet. I’m kind of scared to, honestly.

I love PC gaming. PC gaming, in a sense, will always be where my heart is. The games that got me where I am today will always be PC games, and in many ways it is still the best platform to work on. But, my God, it is a crappy platform to work with. The sheer number of failures possible at each stage boggles the mind, the wallet, and a huge amount of time:

1. The hardware has to work.  Every component that doesn’t work has to be replaced, if you can even figure out which pieces are the problem.  Spend $100 for each part.
2. The hardware has to be put together correctly.  If something isn’t seated correctly, go back to step 1.
3. The hardware has to be heated and powered properly.  If not, go back to step 1.
4. The OS has to work.  I haven’t tried moving Windows around since they set up all the security locks, so it could mean another copy.  Spend $100.
5. The software has to be installed.
6. The software has to be patched.
7. The computer must have hardware capable of running the software at a decent speed.  If not, go back to step 1.

Notice the amount of time and money between step 1 and step 7.  7 steps, hundreds of dollars, and days of work just to figure out if you can use a piece of software!  Or you could just spend 3x as much on a pre-built system.  And if ultimately you decide it wasn’t worth it, you can’t return the software, because it’s opened.  Or you could just buy a console.  Plug it into your TV, insert disc, profit.  Wow.  When you buy a piece of software, the price tag shouldn’t read:  $50-$1500, use at your own risk.

I know, I’m preaching to the choir here, but it’s easy to forget how ridiculous it is to assume anyone will engage in this kind of maintenance.  There’s a reason the lowest common denominator for games is the browser game.  No computer these days fails to run a flash game.  It doesn’t even need the CD drive, which is good, because that’s not standardized either (see most laptops).  Why hasn’t someone, Microsoft, Dell, Gateway, AMD, IBM, heck Apple, anyone with clout, seriously tried to turn the PC into a closed system?   You know, that thing that’s made consoles so successful.  Given the savings of mass production without customization, software that was guaranteed to run well on all systems would be a godsend.  One ranking that would tell me that it would work, not just the useless “Windows score” in Vista, something that’s a true guarantee that I knew when I bought the machine.  A “Dell 2″ or higher.  A Playstation 3.  PC specs are pretty standardized these days anyways, despite the intense craziness involved in setting them up.  All you really need is the CPU+memory and the video card.  And as a software producer, I’d love it because it just might bring back all those lost, confused customers that have stopped buying PC games for some obvious reason.  Given the amount of money spent in either PC build failures or package markups, it seems like there’s a lot of money to be made.  I’d buy one.

I’m in a defining mood this year, apparently.

For a long time I’ve thought there were two kinds of games, and they were approached in construction two completely different ways. Mechanics games are the mechanics driven, repeatable, shorter games, like Poker and Tetris, that derive their design from some new concepts. They are easy to spot - their PR tends to focus on these exciting new interactions. Story games are driven by their flavor. They are experience based, have a narrative arc and an ending, tend to steal their mechanics from mechanics games and polish them up. Their PR tends to focus on their characters and setting. Pretty much every big game you’ve ever heard of - Grand Theft Auto, Halo, World of Warcraft, Axis and Allies - is a story game. For a long time, I’ve thought this distinction was useful for the same reason that the PR is different - it helps you identify where you have to focus and what you have to succeed with.

But as time has gone on, this distinction has become less and less, well distinctive. It seems like the biggest distinguishing factor is no longer story or gameplay, it’s money. If your budget is over $500,000, you’re probably a story game. Portal by all rights should have been a mechanics game. It wasn’t. The prequel Narbacular Drop was. Portal was the polished up, story driven version, and it was awesome. We all loves us some story games. But we in the video game industry have lost something that still drives the majority of the market today. People love their simplicity, their mechanics exploration, and their replayability as well. Puzzle Quest, Bejeweled, and Solitaire are popular for a reason too. In a sense, story games are trying to transcend the medium, but in the process we can lose sight of where we started.

But we’re getting better. The key decision point I watch is when that “The End” screen disappears and we’re back at the main menu. If we’ve done our jobs well, story and mechanics together, players will pick “New Game” again every time. The ritual that has defined games for thousands of years.

Update: This blog reminded me of Soren’s Smart vs. Adversarial AI, and how it ties back into these concepts.  I’m thinking his Smart/Fun is directly tied to story games and Adversarial/Good is tied to mechanics games.  This model shifts most multiplayer games into the mechanics genres, which I think is all right.  Look at multiplayer game advertising.

In the stating the obvious column…

I just spent the last two hours reading the web. For free. I then hit a link and listened to Glen Hansard and Markta Irglov’s fantastic Oscar performance. For free. It didn’t seem too different to me. Just one form of data translated into another. I suppose I could go hit Popcap if I felt like a game jaunt. The Internet has ruined all forms of ubiquitous media profiteering. The money will continue to be focused in the large treatises of the mediums. Although, I haven’t felt like reading a novel in months.