My copy of Civilization IV shipped today. I’m pretty psyched about that. The Civilization franchise has always been one of my favorites. I am especially looking forward to trying out the multiplayer. Back in middle school I spent many an hour playing CivNet on the school computers during lunch.

I’ve been thinking some more about the the topic of player empowerment. I stated pretty broadly in a previous post that I thought empowering the player is what makes a game great. There are certain genres that may need a bit more explanation. While it’s easy to see how a player is empowered in a strategy game, it is more difficult to see how someone might be empowered in a puzzle game or a massively-multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG).

In certain genres the empowerment of the player is outside the game world. That is to say, the player himself is empowered by doing well. In a game like Tetris, the player is empowered by the rewards they receive (score, access to new levels) rather than being empowered within the game world. Puzzle games also empower the player by rewarding the correct decisions they make. This type of empowerment is fundamentally different and requires less suspension of disbelief, which is why it is more often used in casual games. It is easier for many people to understand who are unable or choose not to fully immerse themselves in the world of a game. For this reason it is also often identified with older games, which were forced to be more abstract by technological limitations.

Attempting to analyze the empowerment of players in MMORPGS yields an interesting conclusion. In an MMORPG, most of the decisions the player makes affect the character, rather than the world of the game. Therefore, it may be useful to think of the character as the world of the game (or at least the play space of the player). An MMORPG then is a game where the goal is creating an alternative identity and the player empowerment comes in the form of decisions that guide the shape of the character. In a sense, each player is playing their own separate game, though they are able to interact with the other players while doing so.

Player empowerment is fundamental to great games. Though it may not be immediately obvious, this is true of all genres of games.

I’m back from my weekend of revelry and I’ve been doing a lot more thinking about the topic of player empowerment. So I’ll have some real content to post when the magical writing fairy comes and turns my outline into a post.

Not much to report today. I’m going out of town this weekend. I’ll be back Sunday afternoon, but until then there probably won’t be much progress on Diplomacy and I probably won’t update the blog either.

The algorithm for solving Diplomacy moves is proving to be quite difficult! I am approximately one third of the way complete, but I will probably not finish it for a few days. I’m about two months into this whole Diplomacy thing and I’m beginning to think this was a more reasonable project for three people, rather than just myself. This project alone basically amounts to a second full time job. At least testing has begun on the interface.

Diplomacy 2.0 uses AJAX design techniques to create a rich client experience. The code on the back end (server side) is written in PHP, which interfaces with a MySQL database. The front end (client side) code is Javascript. If you count SQL and HTML, there are a total of four different languages being used in this project alone. More to come later on the architecture (or lack thereof) of the project.

Jack Thompson is a ridiculous man. For those who don’t know, he is a lawyer who has built his career on fighting “obscenity” in media. Since 1999 his efforts have been mostly focused on violent videogames, which he claims are training simulations for murderers. He is noted for his over the top rhetoric in interviews and his own writings. He has, on three separate occasions, compared the head of the ESA to Goebbels, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein. He has also called the bestselling PC game of all time, The Sims, a training ground for paedophiles.

While I would normally not devote my time to thinking about such a dim-witted hatemonger, for fear of lending him a false legitimacy; something he did recently infuriated me. Jack Thompson designed a videogame. Not just any videogame, a brutally violent videogame. His rationale was this: the videogame industry does not care about the violence in games because that violence does not cause people to attack videogame executives. (Mr. Thompson believes that playing a game where you attack a police officer will cause you to attack police officers in real life.) I encourage you to read the description of his game, which he believed no one in the industry would create because it “targets” the industry. Oh, and to top it all off? He said he’d donate $10,000 to charity if someone made the game.*

Predictably, several people did make his game. Just as predictably, he backed out of his committment to donate to charity. Some good did come out of this whole incident. For one, Penny Arcade has stepped up and donated the $10,000 that Jack Thompson wouldn’t. Jack Thompson definitely crossed the line this time; and he may yet pay for it. Already NIMF “has issued an open letter to Thompson condemning his use of biased and vitriolic tactics and asking him to refrain from implying that the Institute supports him and his work in any way.”** With any luck, this will spell the end of an ambulance-chasing career that’s been carried way too far.

* - Not just any charity… the charity of Paul Eibeler’s choosing. Paul is the chairman of Take-Two Interactive, the makers of Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt, two of Mr. Thompson’s favorite straw men.

** - Wikipedia

Edit: Jack Thompson is now under investigation by the Florida Bar association.

Diplomacy is now open for testing. It’s still in a very rough state, but it’s almost playable. If you’re willing to put up with a very buggy product, it’s almost feature complete. It should be evolving rapidly until I have a release candidate. I am quite sick of the Diplomacy code. I’m ready to move on to my next project.

I was looking at what blogs are out there in the realm of game design. I spent a few hours browsing around a blog devoted to board games. I also read a few of the recent posts on Gamecraft, which were pretty interesting. My favorite game-related blog out there in the blogosphere right now is probably Games * Design * Art * Culture. I am really looking forward to seeing what that guy does with his new project Manifesto Games.

What makes a great game? I am not an expert in game design, but I posit the following: a great game puts power in the hands of the player. All aspects of the game serve to make the player feel they have power and can influence something in the game. This is what divides games from other media, notably film. Games are special, in that they can present a creative experience to the user that would be impossible with other media.

Engrossing games in any genre have in common that they make the user feel they are powerful within the game world. I mean this not in the sense that they give the player a lot of spells or abilities, but rather in the sense that they put the player in a role that allows them real influence over the path the game takes. Ineffective games, conversely, fail to convey the sense that the user is impacting the outcome of the game.

The greatness of a game is not discrete; it exists on a continuum. Most gamers would have a hard time disputing the greatness of certain games: the Civilization franchise, the Sim franchises, the Grand Theft Auto franchise, the Half-Life franchise, etc.; but most games fall somewhere between Half-Life and Deer Hunter 17. The more the game empowers the player, the closer it will be toward the Half-Life end of the spectrum.

All aspects of the game have to empower the player for it to be a truly great game. Even the aesthetic elements of a game, like its graphics, serve to empower the player. For example, the player will feel more empowered when making a moral decision in the game if the graphics reflect the choice. Lionhead Studios has realized this and has built three games touting this as a/the major feature. (Black and White, Black and White 2, and Fable) Take Fable for example: the fact that the world around your avatar visually changes to reflect the moral decisions of the player gives an immediate feeling of empowerment. It lends a certain weight to the player’s choices which is often missing in electronic role-playing games. Many games, especially first-person shooters are often defined by how photorealistic their graphics are, with each generation of games upping the ante. This also empowers the player, by making the world the game creates more believable, which in turn makes the results of the player’s choices more meaningful.

The most compelling way to emphasize the player’s empowerment is to allow them to use their own creativity and/or problem-solving skills in the game. Many games in many genres have done this effectively (notably strategy games), but I would like to focus on two genres in particular: so-called “sandbox” games and first-person shooters.

Sandbox games represent an entire genre based around empowering the player to create. Sandbox games usually have open-ended gameplay and feature construction as a prominent game mechanic. As such, they do not typically present objectives for the player to complete, so much as they create a sandbox for the player to play in. The Sim games (The Sims, SimCity, etc.) are the typical example of a sandbox game, but there are others; Rollercoaster Tycoon and Civilization are two good examples. In a sandbox game players are usually not trying to beat the game or progress to the next level, instead they are creating something impressive. Even The Sims encourages players to create stories using the game as a tool. This kind of creative play is what makes a great game. There have been a lot of knockoffs of these types of games, due to the overwhelming popularity of franchises like Rollercoaster Tycoon and The Sims. Unfortunately, most of these knockoffs don’t quite understand the creative aspect of the gameplay and they too often make the game objective based, where the player must work toward the next level.

The first-person shooter genre might not immediately come to mind as a genre that empowers players to think creatively, but some successful first-person shooters have done just that, with great success. Deus Ex comes to mind as one example of a shooter that rewarded players for thinking about alternative solutions to a problem. Another, more recent, example is Half-Life 2. HL2 incorporated one of the most realistic physics simulation engines ever put in a game. This enabled the designers to create levels which could only be beaten through some creative thinking on the player’s behalf. It also empowered the player to impact the world in more ways than any other shooter which came before it. In fact, simply interacting with the world proved to be so much fun that a third-party mod was produced, called Garry’s Mod, that was based on non-violent sandbox-like gameplay.

Finally, I would like to mention a much maligned game that, I think, represents a high point in video game acheivement. I am talking about the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Since the first iteration of the series, GTA has broken the mold of how a player should interact with a game. Rather than forcing a player into a channel, GTA strives to provide the player as much freedom as possible, laying out a whole world for the player to interact with. There is a linear story there, to be sure, but the player is in no way confined to the bounds of that story. By enabling the player to interact with the world when, where, and how they want to, they are empowered.

The best games in every genre empower players and enable them to make meaningful decisions within the game. By enabling players to play creatively, the game becomes much more engrossing. Many of the greatest games have been those that gave the player the most freedom to interact with the game. I hope that we will see more games along the lines of GTA, Half-Life 2, and SimCity in the years to come.