Overkill Games

Some might argue that playtesting is the most important part of game design.  These people may or may not actually be right, but either way, it is a vastly important part of the design process.  Aside from the fact that nobody knows how fun a game is until it gets played, issues you may never have dreamed up will start cropping up on the first run.  You will see not only what bloat can be removed, but also how long the game ultimately takes to play.  These are all important.

The problem is, how do you find playtesters?  This is problematic if you’re a budding developer or an indie publisher with a very limited budget.  However, chances are, you are a gamer yourself with gamer friends.  Call them up and ask if they want to play your new design.  Offer to spring for pizza if they give you a few hours of their time.  Believe it or not, but your friends can make a very good playtesting circle.  Just don’t be a total ass about it.  Make sure that the game is complete enough to actually play.  Try not to rewrite the rules while playing.  More importantly, if you can’t explain the rules at all, be sure to go over the game some before you even present it to them.

The biggest thing is to make it worth their time.  Playtesting can really suck if you get a bad game.  You typically don’t sit and discuss the mechanics of a game after playing it, either.  Gamers, though, love food and will likely be happy to play a few rounds in return for pizza.

Meanwhile, play the game against yourself.  It might feel weird, but it can go a long way toward ensuring that your game isn’t mind-numbingly terrible before you drop it in front of your friends.

No matter who you dig up, make sure that you aren’t constantly bothering them to test some new mechanic.  Don’t eat more than a few hours a week, if that, or they will likely get irritated.  You don’t want to lose playtesters and friends over this sort of thing, do you?

OK, so I settled on a deck of cards and three six-sided dice per player.  That gives the game a little more meat, but now I need to decide on hand size, what the cards do, and what effect the dice have.

So, first off, the game starts with each player taking the kings or queens out of their deck and sitting them down in front of them in a row.  The goal is to eliminate the other player’s royalty.  This is accomplished by fighting with fielded cards.  The cards with numbers (except the ace) have a strength equal to their number.  This can be augmented by spending dice.

Players then begin by shuffling the rest of the cards and drawing five of them.  These are the player’s reserves at the beginning of the game.  They can be fielded in a variety of ways.  The dice are rolled and set aside on whatever numbers came up.  Each player then looks at the bottom card of their deck.  Whoever has the card with the lower value plays first.

As to what the face cards do, they have a variety of effects.

The ace is an assassin card.  It is never fielded normally, but may be played as a turn to eliminate an opponent’s royal of the same suit.  So, the ace of spades will kill the king of queen of spades.  This attack cannot be stopped or prevented by normal fielded cards nor may reserves be played to prevent it, except where noted on other face cards.  Playing an ace makes a player skip their next turn.

The jack is a guard card.  It can be fielded normally and fights with a value of 11.  However, the Jack is unable to attack and, if fielded, can’t be used to stop an ace.  If an ace is played and a player has a jack in reserve, it may be played to prevent the assassination from succeeding.

Kings and queens are royalty.  The goal is to eliminate your opponent’s royal line.  Any time a player has no royalty on the table, they automatically lose.  At the beginning of the game, each player chooses kings or queens and puts all four on the table.  The royalty that was not picked is left in the deck.  A player may use whatever was not chosen to replace eliminated royalty of the same suit.  So, a player that chose queens and loses their queen of clubs may replace her with the king of clubs from their reserves.  Royalty fights with a value of two plus the number of kings and queens the player has lost.  So, a player with two kings that has lost two kings and a queen has their royals fight at five.  Unlike other cards, royals are never shuffled back into the deck for any reason.

Twos and threes have a special ability to die in place of cards of higher value.  If a player has lost a defensive battle, a fielded two or three may be lost in its place.

The game is coming together, but I’m still figuring out just what players are able to do on their turns.  This is fine from a design standpoint, as games can be designed piece by piece until the thing comes together.  I may change parts of this after thinking more about the mechanics, I may not.

OK, before we get too far into thinking about game design, I want to tell you something that will make you understand games much better.

Everything is based on math.  That’s right, games are entirely mathematical.

With few exceptions (platform games, for example), math will factor in somewhere in the design, if in nothing else than the probability of a particular card or die roll happening.  While good games can be designed with little more than the knowledge of basic addition and subtraction, your designs can be much, much better if you know a thing or two about probability.

Even without much math, many games deal heavily with logic.  Chess is a perfect example of this.  Nothing random happens within the rules of the game, but the game is highly logical.  As logic and math are related, knowing about one makes you better at the other.  Fancy that.

The best place to look for understanding the math behind games is probability.  Some point along the design, sit down and think about how probable things are, and how they will affect the game.  This is especially true in games with dice.  If you know little about probability, head down the library and pick up a book, or take a class at the nearest college.  Probability has been analyzed to Hell and back over the course of human history.

But how do you deal with probability within a game?  Simple, really; ask yourself what sort of things you want to have happen often, and what sorts of things you want to be rare.  A game that is based on a roll of 3d6 (three six-sided dice, added together, for those that don’t know) has a heavy weight toward rolls in the 9 to 12 range.  Meanwhile, a roll of 3 or 18 will be uncommon.  A canny designer will put the desired results in the middle, with the rare results on the ends.  What this means is really up to the designer, and there is really no right or wrong way to approach this.

For example, you could place the “best” results on the ends of the range of rolls to give players something to get when they are lucky enough to get that rare roll.  Or, alternately, put the worst things out there.  Some games (RPGs come to mind) put something very good on one end, and something very bad on the other.

As far as games go, there are a multitude of basic game mechanics one can use to create the basis for a game.  This is by no means an exhaustive list, as there are always people coming up with new gimmicks and new mechanics.

Before I discuss these things in detail, I’m going to tell you to head to the nearest library and read up on probability, as everything random in a game will ultimately boil down to that.  Games can be fairly complex and understanding probability will make it much easier to create a functional, balanced game.

Some games use multiple mechanics that interact in various ways. This is perfectly acceptable, though a designer should be warned that the more mechanics involved, the harder the game is to learn, the more difficult it is to balance, and the more cumbersome the rules.  Novice designers working on their first game should stick to one mechanic.

Card Games

Using  a regular, standard deck of cards or a custom set, they are still card games.  Their primary advantage is that there is a set amount of each type of card.  In a standard deck of playing cards, for example, there is one and only one of each type of card.  Each one has the same probability of coming up, assuming that it is not still in the deck.  This can give the designer greater control over how often particular random occurrence can happen within a game.

The disadvantage of cards lies in the fact that players with better knowledge of a custom deck or good card counting skills will have an advantage over others that has nothing to do with raw skill within the game itself.  Games can also be less exciting toward the end game, as the players will have at least some idea over what cards are left within the deck.

Card games are also easier to cheat than some other types of game, as decks can be stacked to one player or another’s advantage, cards may be hidden, or decks may be outright modified to gain an advantage over those unaware of the modification.  Of course, such things can be added to a game to allow a certain amount of “cheating” to alter the outcome of the game.

Games where players compete with the contents of decks of cards where players are paying very careful attention to what cards have been played and what cards are expected to still be available.  This is especially obvious in games where players are allowed to create custom decks, as players only truly learn about the others’ cards as the game progresses.

One of the main considerations in a card game is what happens to cards when they are used.  This I will elaborate on further in a future article.

Dice

Anybody familiar with games has seen this little plastic beauties, as many many games use them.  Though more casual gamers are only familiar with the six-sided cube versions, introducing people to a wider variety of dice is a fairly simple endeavor.

The primary advantage of dice is their randomness. Each time a die is rolled, each number has the same chance of coming up as the other numbers.  This lets designers always have a certain level of unpredictability in the game, as it is entirely possible that the same number can be rolled twelve times in a row.  Unlike card games, potential results are not eliminated, granting no advantage to those that are keeping track of what can no longer happen based on what cards have been played.

Unfortunately, the randomness is also the dice game’s disadvantage.  Designers have less control over the outcome of dice than cards and must make plans for the same unfavorable roll coming up many times in a row.  While this can be dealt with via modifiers to the die rolls, as is common in role-playing games, this can lead to unbalanced situations where one player is entirely unable to claim victory by any means.

The specifics of dice systems can vary wildly.  I will cover them more later.

Miniatures Games

Perhaps the most visually interesting are miniatures games.  Rather than just a bunch of rules, numbers, and ideas kept in peoples’ heads, miniatures games have little figures standing around on a miniaturized battle field.  Though the rules are obviously an abstraction of real-life combat (or, alternately, not even based on real-world combat at all), they can be a decent approximation of actual battles.  Historical miniatures games come to mind, where people argue over the precise amount of penetration a 110mm HEAT shell fired by a particular tank.

The primary disadvantage of a miniatures game is expense.  Games that require hundreds of minis can become very expensive, very quickly.  Aside from the expense, transporting giant pile of miniatures can also prove cumbersome, unlike, say, carrying a deck of cards.  They also tend to use the most space of all the game mechanics, leading to further difficulties for the players.

Board Games

Though rarely presented by itself, the board game mechanic is still worth mentioning in its own category.  Each board game has a platform of some sort, which could be a map, a track, or simply a bunch of boxes stuff gets moved around on.  The board is typically unchanging, though the rules may vary depending on the state of things on the board.  Game boards have the main advantage of being a visual representation of the game, as well as giving players a location to track the various happenings within the game.

The main advantage of board games is that they make things such as position of the players, what resources they have available, and what places their activities are likely to move them to next.

The main disadvantage is that the game will likely be unplayable without the board.  Plus, the board must be made, which will often add expense to the game or extra effort in assembly-required situations.

The specifics of board games are beyond the scope of this article, as they vary as much as the boards themselves do.

Here’s how to get the gravy train rolling. With Flash games, you have several options.

Method: Google Ads
Rating: Shitty
Explanation: Plastering Google Ads around your game means you’re hosting it on your own website. Google Ads is shit revenue anyway so at best it will pay for your hosting costs. Assuming anyone plays it, anyway.

Method: Shared Revenue
Rating: Shitty
Explanation: Even worse than Google Ads revenue. The website hosting it generates money from ads then gives you a small percentage of the profits. Unless you generate millions of views, don’t count on making more than $10. If you’re lucky.

Method: Mochi Ads
Rating: Modest
Explanation: Basically Google Ads inside the game file itself. No matter how many sites your game is stolen/hosted on it will always generate revenue. This isn’t the best option because most sponsorships and other deals won’t allow you to have Mochi Ads in addition to their media. I’m not too sure if the cash flow is that great either.

Method: Sponsorship
Rating: Good
Explanation: This is essentially selling ad space in your game to a company for a few hundred dollars or more. Usually entails adding a splash screen, a “play more” button and occasionally an unobtrusive watermark. There may be a little exclusivity at the beginning but within a week or two depending on the company you’ll be free to do whatever the hell you want with it. Some companies to investigate are Armor Games, MoFunZone, and a slew of other sites.
Advice: Make sure you have a complete product to offer before you contact anyone. Having a good reputation helps.

Method: Selling
Rating: Good
Explanation: Hardcore company branding. You’re making their game. This method usually nets a bit more than sponsorship but in exchange it’s usually made site-exclusive and the game’s fate is at their whim, potentially limiting your audience.

How to Find a Sugar Daddy
If you already have a reputation for good, high-scoring games, companies may contact you to offer you opportunities. Make sure you ALWAYS plaster your games with contact and identifying information so companies can find you easily.

You can also e-mail sites directly and ask them if they will sponsor/buy your game.

Failing all else, you can try to find someone on FlashGameLicense.com. Be aware though that they charge a 10% finder’s fee on whatever you make through your sugar daddy.

It occurred to me that, as they say in the writing world, showing is better than telling.  So, in order to demonstrate basic game design concepts as I blather about them, I’m going to apply them to a game I’m designing along the way.  You can follow along at home!

While thinking about concepts, I was thinking on how to make a simple game, with few components, that can be played quickly by two people.  I decided on sticking with a deck of playing cards for each player and a few six-sided dice.

Concept

Remember what I said about a one-sentence concept?  Here’s mine:

A simple game that can be played quickly by two people with a deck of cards and some six-sided dice each.

The rules branch out from there, but that’s the basic idea.  As for more elaboration, my ultimate goal is to have the game be fairly competitive, with the players trading off actions, knocking cards to a discard pile, and rolling dice for a bit of extra randomness.

So, before I talk too much about mechanics, here’s my idea for the basic rules of the game: each player has a deck of cards and a small number (I’m thinking three) six-sided dice.  At the beginning of the game, the players will search their deck for one of the kings and place it on the table.  The goal will be to eliminate the other player’s king.  Exactly how this is accomplished I’ll figure out later, but the basic idea of the rules is that the players will have a hand of cards and a row of “fielded” cards.  The fielded cards can attack or defend, with face cards having a variety of special effects.  The dice will be involved somehow.

Some cards (the Ace, for example) may be fielded, or held in the hand for various effects.  As in, the ace can be used for a very powerful fielded card, or be played as an assassin.  Jacks could prevent assassins from working, or be fielded as a commander or something.

These are the basics.  I’ll think about mechanics later.

So there you have it, a basic idea.  The original, starting idea doesn’t even need to be a complete set of rules, have mechanics, or even a fleshed out victory condition.  You can (and probably will) mess around with these things later.

Flash game players are some of the most self-entitled, ADD-ridden fucks on the internet. And why shouldn’t they be? If your game sucks, who gives a shit? There are millions of others to choose from, for free. Here are some tips to not drive them away as fast.

Truth: Nobody reads anything.
How to deal: Simplicity.
You could put the controls in blazing 500pt font and splatter arrows all over pointing to what to do and there will still be plenty of idiots out there who will be confused and quit playing. If your game takes more than a sentence or three to explain it likely won’t do as well as a simpler game.

Truth: Nostalgia is an easy ticket to views.
How to deal: Include it.
People like the familiar. You could make the greatest epic of all time but you can bet your ass that if you starred Link or Mario it would get ten thousand times the views four times faster. Since it’s already copyright infringement, you may want to be careful on how you make money from it. Ads and sponsorships are great. Companies may be reluctant to pay outright for it.

Truth: Men are horny. Always.
How to deal: Oversexualize that shit.
Odds are that you’re posting to a popular portal like Newgrounds or Kongregate. These places are filled with prepubescent boys just waiting to bust a nut. If you can give them something pretty to orgasm to, you’ll quickly become famous since you’re getting your games associated with ecstasy. You may be known as a creepy porn peddler, but hey, it pays the bills.

Truth: Attention spans are short.
How to deal: Cut things short.
If you have cutscenes, make them skippable. If you have an intro, make it skippable. Hell, if you have anything that isn’t playing, make it skippable. People are there to play games, not watch movies. Keep instructions to a simplistic minimum. 15 seconds from loaded to playing is too long.

Truth: Not everyone uses the same keyboard.
How to deal: Offer customizable controls. It’s not that hard.
It doesn’t matter if you like your control scheme or not. Chances are, there are plenty of people out there that fucking hate it and wish you were dead. Offer the customization option to pacify them.

Truth: Some people don’t want to hear your shitty music or sound effects.
How to deal: Off button for music/sound.
This will come up a lot if you leave it out. Even if your game is perfect, people will still find something to bitch about. Make sure this isn’t one of those things.

Truth: You’re trying to entertain everyone.
How to deal: Appeal to the lowest common denominator.
This is why you see so many fucking zombie and ninja games and games with gore and titties. Everyone likes them. Include them too. Shit and dick jokes are a bonus.

Truth: There are people out there with less than perfect vision.
How to deal: Make your text easy to read. Assholes.
I’ve closed out of many games because the idiot designers didn’t know how to make things readable. If you have plaid text on a rainbow background I’m pretty sure there’s a special place in Hell reserved just for you.

Like an artist must choose which medium he wants to create in, so you must choose your method of creating your game. Below is a handy list of starting points depending on your experience with coding, complete with links.

Experience Level: Complete Noob
Description: If you think a script is something actors read, this is you. You have no experience in coding and you have no idea what an “if statement” is.
Suggested Programs: The Games Factory 2 by Clickteam or Game Maker 8 by YoYo Games.
The Games Factory 2: Excellent for those new to the game development, uh, game. Personally, I found it much easier to use and more intuitive than Game Maker 8. Fuck Game Maker. There, I said it.

Experience Level: Weekend Programmer
Description: You know your way around some basic code. You know what classes are, what inheritance means, and how to use loops efficiently. However, you don’t know much beyond that.
Suggested Programs: Adobe Flash (AS2)
Flash has the widest, most easily accessible audience out of all of these choices. If your goal is quick cash or notoriety on the web, Flash is where it’s at.

Experience Level: Professional Programmer
Description: You probably majored in CS or even work with code somehow. Compilers make you hard.
Suggested Programs: Adobe Flash (AS3) or Microsoft XNA (C#)
Flash’s AS3 is a step up from AS2 in that it was designed with programmers in mind, thus allowing for much more flexibility and power. Microsoft’s XNA platform can export to both XBOX and Windows.

Other Programs
There are other programs out there that I haven’t tried myself. You may find them acceptable. Or not.

Pygame: From what I understand, this is recommended by mega-dorks and neckbeards. They know what they’re talking about so if you’re on the experienced side of the spectrum or the thought of Linux makes you spooge, go ahead and dive in.

While I was thinking about what to post about in my first post in a blog about games, I figured, why not start at the very beginning?  So, today, I’m going to talk to you about starting your first game and how to go about doing it.

But, the first thing I want to tell you, is your first game is going to suck.  It will be an unbalanced wreck with overly simple or unbelievably clunky rules.  It might not even be all that much fun to play.  Should this discourage you?  No, it should not.  In fact, you should never hide that first bad game.  Once you think it is, at least, playable, invite your gamer buddies over to play it with a bribe of pizza and ask them to write down everything that sucked about the game.

Why are you doing this?  It’s simple, really.  Your worst critics are giving you the best advice.  Read every thing they say about the game that is bad and ask yourself “How can I keep this out of my next game?”

So, now that we have that aside, the question is, how do you start?  Simple; with a concept.

Before you even start making a game, you should have an idea of what you are trying to accomplish.  It should be one sentence long.  You can branch out from there.  Also, never panic if the end result is radically different than what you originally intended.  Your goal should be to make a fun game to play.  That’s why we play games, right?  Fun!

A good concept can be tough to come by.  Write down several, and then keep coming up with new ones.  Look at the one that intrigues you the most.  As to what makes a good concept, that’s up to you, really.  There is no real final rule to what makes a good concept, or even a good game.  As soon as somebody has an idea about that kind of thing, somebody else will come along and blow it out of the water with something different and much more amazing.

So, instead, let’s talk about bad concepts.  If your idea is “Like *insert game here* but…” scrap it right now.  Let other ideas inspire you.  Feel free to borrow a mechanic here and there, but never start your design with somebody else’s game.  You are making YOUR game, not MINE.  If you look at a concept and think “There is no way I can make that fun” again, scrap it.  If it a game doesn’t even interest its designer, it’s likely going to be bad.  More importantly, if you design a game that you don’t like to play, it will die during design, as making games involves playing the thing until you’re sick of it.

After you have your basic concept, start thinking about mechanics.  Are you going to do a card game?  A board game?  Is it an RPG you are shooting for?  Figure out the basics of how the game is going to work.  Decide on cards, dice, boards, and the like.  Try to avoid very exotic mechanics, as well.  For example, nobody owns a 30-sided die these days.  If you want to make a game that uses them, plan on some people not wanting to play it, as those can be hard to find.  It will also take you less time, effort, and money to test a game that you need to buy less stuff for.  Your first game shouldn’t empty your bank account.

In fact, it is probably best if your first game can be played with stuff either taken out of other games or that can be scraped together out of anybody’s house.  Not only will this make it easier on you, but it will make it easier to get interest in you and your game.  Consider; if you post it on the internet, and people can download the rules and then play without buying anything, they are a lot more likely to give it a try.

For the time being, tinker with concepts.  I’ll talk about mechanics more later.