Game Update
Spent quite a long time working through the flanking issue with my mentor Chris. We were almost done and so I stayed up a little longer to put the finishing touches on the problem. It was a portion of the script that we hadn’t accounted for and so far it seems to be working. I just need to make sure that there aren’t any problems in a full stage situation. There’s a possibility that we may have accidentally set new positions permanently after the combat.
I missed last weeks blog entry due to taking a quick week of vacation. It gave me some time to think about the game and I ran a back up which is always a good idea as well. I need to play a build and take some new pictures with all the great new particle effects we’ve built. Hopefully I won’t run into any other really problematic bugs.
Another idea I had which may be difficult (maybe impossible) to implement would be playing the game from both ends. What I mean by that is playing the game as a liberating army and having the game record your armies movements and then playing it from the perspective of the defending empire. I’ve really started to warm up to the idea of seeing both sides of a conflict and this would really amp up what we would offer with this game. Given the state of factions across media, politics, etc… this seems like something that could be really interesting. The idea is to show that both sides of a conflict have their issues. Everyone loses in a war time situation.
Personal Update
I was able to visit a place that I love with my girlfriend over my time off after dropping off my children for the summer. It was a lot of fun to show her some places that I remember the last time I was there. It was surprising how many places we tried to go to that were closed though. The 2020 virus really wreaked havoc on businesses all over. Probably five different places were completely shut down. Additionally, we seem to be in a labor shortage which means it was difficult for a lot of places to keep up with orders.
I’ve been watching the markets a lot lately too. AMC stock has my attention and I’m wondering just how high it’s going to go. I just started investing during the pandemic and so everything that’s happening in the investment financial sector is really interesting to me. Talk of “naked shorts” and all the retail investors vs the establishment mutual funds has been really crazy. I wouldn’t say that I understand all of it. I’m hoping this will drive policy changes in the markets to make things better for everyone.
Game Development Insight - Competitive Elo Part 2
Two weeks ago I left off before talking about typical Elo where players start with a score and then take points away from others when they win. This week I’m going to talk about systems that tried a different approach in order to encourage more game playing and not less. Often players under Elo will achieve a point total and then protect their points by not playing.
Wizards of the Coast introduced a new system for Magic the Gathering. It was a system in which players could only earn points and not lose them. Players points would reset to zero each season. At first this seems like a great solution. Play games, earn points and get some benefits like first or second round bypasses in major tournaments etc… The issues that arise are that this benefits players that have the time to play more, pay more, travel more, and devote more time to the game. Not to say that players that devote a lot of time to a game shouldn’t be rewarded, but it creates a system of haves and have nots.
I’ve seen a lot of dark pattern behavior around this system. Dark patterns are what game developers call “a pattern that is deliberately added to a game to cause an unwanted negative experience for the player with a positive outcome for the game developer” (citation - darkpattern.games). Specifically I would cite this type of competitive system as grinding. It creates situations in which the best player isn’t always represented, instead we often see players that are simply able to sink more time or money into the game.
One of the most frustrating things that I saw at tournaments was during pre-release tournaments more points were handed to players just for attending. So in order to “game the system” players would sign up for multiple pre-release tournaments in the same city, show up collect their cards and drop before starting round 1. I mentioned this problem to other players and they ensured me that it wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be as the points they would get wouldn’t matter compared to someone that won a major tournament with 100 players. The issue to me is that they purchased their points, and didn’t play to earn them. I understand the importance of having participation points for players that are just starting out, but this seemed like an abuse of the good will inherent to the system.
This system benefits the company of course, because more gaming means players are more compelled to spend more money on cards. The system also creates a situation in which players with more money are at an extreme advantage. It’s possible that this is one of the things that card games and video games could learn from the world of sports. There are some sports in which the cost to play are pretty high like hockey, but many others like soccer, football, baseball, and basketball have relatively low barriers to entry. On that note I would say that chess and games that aren’t expandable fit this category well which makes them more accessible and fair. The trick as a company is how to make money continually on a game like chess. How many chess boards does someone really need? It’s likely the focus should be more on paid tournament play with cash pay outs, but the issue with that is that it falls under gambling laws which is also a big issue.
There’s never going to be a perfect solution, but I think that it’s worth opening up a discussion about it to at least think about some solutions.