Day 30: It's a wrap... I aimed for the sun and hit a pigeon

I started the month with the best of intentions. 30 posts about 30 games in 30 days. Then I revised it to 31 in 31 when I realized that August has 31 days.

Alas, my sights were set too high.

I officially credit myself with 23 "units" of blogging over 29 days. In that span, I covered:

• 19 games that received full treatment of their first hour or two (or demo/trial mode). These ranged from Console to PC to Web to Mobile.
• 9 games that received brief treatment while covering other topics (2 game platforms, one experimental game portfolio).
• 2 game platforms (one that allowed creation and user distribution of user generated content).
• 1 social application that has a meta game for content creators.

So, why did I stop short? I finally lost the battle to work. I brought on a great new client and it turned out that they needed more work than I originally estimated. Good for the pocketbook. Bad for the blogging because I can't talk about client work.

I still plan to get back to Kodu and/or some other game content generation tools this month. I won't promise 30 posts in 30 days, but I will keep active.

Thanks to all the folks who left comments -- I'll keep in touch and I look forward to seeing the next versions of your great, inspiring games.

Day 28: Call of Duty 4

I know, I know. The game has been out forever. But as I mentioned in a previous post, I've been saving Call of Duty 4 for a rainy day.

As expected from previous posts, it delivered an awesome user experience right from moment one. It's clear that the team spent a lot of time defining what the first 5 minutes, 30 minutes, and hour of game play would be like for players of all ability levels.

Well, all ability levels except for players who have never played a console FPS before. I talked more deeply about this issue in some of my writings about Portal. I'm left to wonder: When does it make sense for game developers to design for complete newbies to a genre. In the case of Portal, it saddened me that my wife (then fiancee) who loves puzzle games could not play the game because the intro was calibrated for folks who'd played FPS before. There were no stepping-stones tutorials for players who were unfamiliar with console controllers and who had a tough time right thumbing between camera controls and face button actions.

In some ways, as a sequel (in this case, the 3rd sequel) I guess having a "complete newbie" tutorial doesn't make much sense. Why provide additional content given that most people who can't already play console FPS are already so scared of the genre that they hadn't tried the first 3 iterations.

I guess I wish there were some in-between games that introduced FPS type game mechanics and controls to people fearful of the genre so that they could learn and practice the basics of moving, looking, moving while looking, and then performing actions while moving and looking.

All that said, I guess it's also possible that some folks simply don't like the idea or feeling of interacting via a controller in a 3d space -- and simply making them more comfortable with the controls won't make them interested in this kind of game play. But I find this somewhat hard to accept given some of the work I did on Rise of Nations in which we brought in non-gamers (folks who had never even right-clicked a mouse before) and built learn-to-play tutorials around their strenghts and weaknesses. With a lot of work we were able to get these folks up to speed and able to play and enjoy the game. Of course, we never found out whether these folks would ever *buy* a game like Rise of Nations for themselves.

Back to COD 4.

As I mentioned in my previous brief posting about the game, I felt that the learn-to-play component of the game pretty much took the bar from the original Halo experience and raised it higher. The behavioral self-assessment of difficulty level was great, the prompts were subtle and well placed, and this was all done in an entertaining manner within the fiction of the game.

One of the best things, from a user experience perspective, that this game does is recognize that in the chaos of combat it is difficult to figure out what's going on, remember what my goals are, and figure out what to do next. Accordingly, the game has a number of feedback systems designed to propel the player along through game play.

• Feedback is given to the player via various modalities. There are briefings between missions that foreshadow what the player should expect (these are short, well paced, and skippable). Current objective text appears on the HUD. Weapon fire (by friendlies and enemies) is very noticeable and helps point the player in the right direction. Weapon fire intensity/deadliness is exaggerated so that players can quickly determine choke points. Friendly units reinforce this learning by calling out key threats "Look out for the RPG on the 2nd floor". Player deaths are treated as teaching devices: The player "sees" the enemy who shot him, or the player gets an explanation of how to detect and avoid grenades and exploding vehicles.
• Feedback modality is governed by whether the game is in full-on chaos mode or in the middle of a break in the action. In the heat of combat there is no time to read objective text or listen to long helpful suggestions. Chatter is brief and to the point. Generally speaking chatter is also concrete and specific: There is less "beware of RPG fire, it's dangerous" and more "RPG on the second floor" followed by a streak of smoke and explosion that illustrates the point. Pauses in the action are used for more exposition and to set expectations for the upcoming action.
• Feedback is responsive to current obstacles and player success or failure in overcoming those obstacles. Feedback is most useful when it is concrete and specific to what is currently happening in the game and how successful your current actions are (or are not). The game is determined to help the player succeed by providing constant engaging, immersive, understandable, actionable, and predictable feedback.

Worst case scenario? The "Start" button pauses the game and lists current completed and open objectives. The game recognizes that when players pause the action they're often trying to get their bearings and figure out "what next?"

There's obviously a lot more going on with COD 4 than just the quality of feedback, but really this is the element that stands out the most to me so far. Without engaging, understandable, actionable, and predictable feedback systems it would be impossible to have such a fun and immersive learn-as-you-play experience. No heavy handed prompts or text billboards are needed.

All this writing about COD 4 makes me want to put down the keyboard and resume my campaign. At least until Batman: Arkham Asylum arrives.

15,000 Gamer Points

Woohoo!

Just hit my next Gamer Point milestone. I was getting close and feeling a little burned out. I had been saving Call of Duty 4 for just such an occasion. I knew it would be good based on it's pretty awesome initial experience and some fun multiplayer.

I was not disappointed.

More thoughts on it tomorrow before Batman: Arkham Asylum shows up.

Day 27: Konami Play

I've been playing a bunch of social and casual games from the "native biggies" like Zynga, Playfish, Playdom, etc. Then there are the casual games portals who are also jumping on the social bandwagon (like Real, Big Fish Games, Oberon).

The big traditional publishers have also been getting into the social game. I haven't paid as much attention to these offerings, but Konami Play currently caught my attention based on a posting I saw on Indie Social Games (a great site).

The first thing to note is that searching for "Konami" or "Konami Play" on Facebook yields zero helpful results. Even clicking on the Konami Fan site doesn't help -- there's no mention of Konami Play or link to a relevant website. Perhaps there has just been a soft launch that will be followed up with an official campaign (notifications to fans of Konami, links to the portal, etc).

NOTE: Later on I discovered a link to the "Konami-Play" fan page -- but it still doesn't show up in any Facebook search results at the time of this writing.

Luckily I had a direct link to the external website from the blog posting and went straight to the portal page.

The portal page is a little cluttered and claustrophobic. Basically it suffers from the "I need to expose you to everything all at once" syndrome that many olde-schoole portals seem to do. It's hard to argue with success, but as an initial experience it's pretty overwhelming.

On the plus side, there is a "featured games" slide show that appears in a large bucket above the fold. The "play now" button is a tiny and easy to miss call to action, but the fact that you can jump right into a game from the home page is a big plus.

Jumping into a game was easy. More importantly, I did NOT have to register or log in. I could just start playing. Get me into the game in as pain-free manner as possible -- and if I'm having fun I'll bother to register/share/etc.

The games (and Konami) are oriented to the more retro gamer (Track and Field, Double Dribble) and more recent console offerings (Metal Gear Solid, DDR). To the extent that they are fun and have leaderboards, these games seem like a natural fit for Facebook's ecosystem.

Unfortunately, the game experiences themselves, are uneven. I got right into Frogger and played a bit of Double Dribble, but found Track and Field to be calibrated too hard for me to make progress in and was completely unable to figure out how to play Loco Roco 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4.

As it turns out, I lucked into Frogger first. Unfortunately there didn't seem to be any way for me to post results of my game to my news feed. There is a chat room for all Facebook users who are currently logged in and viewing/playing Frogger, but the actual sharing of a story with my friends is not contained in the normal game play flow. I can play as many games as I want and never be prompted to share the results with my friends. There are buttons labeled "Share" and "Challenge Friends" that appear outside the game window, but these are weak calls to action compared with a "You just scored 7,000 points in Frogger and unlocked the 'top fly eater' achievement... Publish to your friends?" prompt in between games.

The login/register/connect with Facebook pipeline could also use some tuning:

• The home page does have a couple of "Connect with Facebook" buttons, which is good. But it's unclear why I would do such a thing to begin with. All the pictures of people are strangers to me -- and it's unclear why I'd sign in to a website before I figured out whether it provided personal and/or social utility.
• Once I launch a game, my only call to action to "get social" with the game is buried under a really unfriendly button labeled "register". No one wants to register at this point. However, after I play a game or two of DDR I may decide that I'd like to share this information with my friends on Facebook. The problem is that I'd never think "register"... I might, however, click a clearly labeled "share with your Facebook friends" button. As I mentioned above, this call to action should be included in the "game over" flow.
• If I do think to click the "register" button, it does take me to a "scary registration page". The easy, one click "Connect with Facebook" option is kind of hidden on the right side of the page and might not be noticed before the visitor backs out or leaves the site altogether. Interested in learning more about improving sign-up/registration? Check out Bokardo's deck.
• Clicking on the "Connect with Facebook" button actually deadends the user at a boring "account" page. If I choose to read my profile information, I learn that I'm given some strange User Name and my only option is "Edit" (not sure why I'd do this -- and the edit page is rather scary) or Invite Friends. Note that my original intention was to play a game -- a game that I have no way of finding from this deadend page...
• At this point I want to log out. Logging out actually logs me out of both Konami Play and Facebook. I'm not sure if this is a requirement for Facebook Connect partners, but it does seem strange that I need to be logged out of Facebook when I only want to be logged out of Konami Play.

To summarize, I may not be the fan that Konami is looking for. Maybe I'm just too old and bad at games or don't care enough about some of their core IP offerings to ever become a passionate player of these games.

But, I still do like Frogger and played it on XBLA and tried to beat the highscores of my friends. And I'm still willing to try new games and share my results/thoughts with my friends to the extent that it's easy to discover these games via existing social network channels (for me, this means Facebook or Twitter) and that game results are fed into interesting and entertaining stories by default (as opposed to having to figure out how to share them outside the normal "play->game over->try again" loop).

I look forward to see how Konami Play evolves over time -- and how other external game publishers and portals continue to integrate into existing social networks.

Day 26: Part 3, Arkham Asylum and WET demos.

I tried two very different demos with two very different initial experiences that both left me intrigued and curious about getting my hands on the full retail versions of the games.

First off: WET. This is the kind of game that I want to like. It offers the fantasy of cool gun play, over-the-top action sequences, set on a cheesy wire-fu movie set. What I was hoping for was Stranglehold but... fun.

Unfortunately, the initial experience was a mess. I was dropped into billboard prompt tutorials that were easy to fail. And fail. And fail.

Part of the problem was that the controls being introduced were quite difficult to execute: They mostly involved manipulating the Right Trigger, Right Thumbstick, and Face Buttons. Moving your right thumb quickly between Thumbstick (for fine grained aiming) and Face Buttons (for mashing) is very hard to do.

Another part of the problem was that the aiming model was confusing. The reticle did not seem to auto-lock on targets, but shots fired seemed mostly to hit targets. It felt exceptionally hard to aim during slow-mo gun play, but then aiming didn't seem to matter because bullets just kind of found targets.

When this was coupled with the fact that the tutorial tasks were very easy to fail within a few seconds, the deck was stacked against the player feeling any sense of competence.

Sure, it's a demo. Players were only provided with a limited amount of content and needed to be rushed up to speed. Hopefully the weapons and special moves are layered on a little more sensibly in the retail version. Ideally players would have opportunities to practice and master core mechanics through well paced challenges.

Although I found the grainy film art style of the opening sequence a bit distracting -- and even nauseating in places -- I loved some of the other art direction choices. The silhouetted background level was fantastic and really provided for some cool stylized violence that I haven't seen before in a game. The guys in bright white shirts and black pants coupled with the red of the background and blood effects really drew me into the game in a way that I haven't experienced since some of the crazy and brilliant levels in Psychonauts.

The final sequence in the demo combined some QTE events with a fantastic car-to-car combat sequence. It made me think of what the Wheelman demo should have been -- and even gave Ninja Blade a run for its money in terms of the sheer insanity of some of the sequences.

After a rough start, the WET demo took me for a wild ride and left me wanting more. Because of the poor initial experience and the fact that combat felt very mash-y and not very strategic, I do worry that the game will end up feeling unpolished and that combat might get a little repetitive. I'm definitely adding it to my Gamefly Q.

On the other hand, Batman: Arkham Asylum provided an exceptionally polished demo that felt good right from the very start. The controls were almost as complex as those in WET, but they were introduced in a way that made the game approachable and fun. I felt like Batman right from the get-go.

Instead of large obtrusive billboard hints, smaller onscreen help prompts triggered at key moments (e.g., "X to strike opponent"). Combat proceded from simple punches to counters and takedowns at a reasonable pace. Moreover, at least during the demo, there were on screen tool tips that reminded players of some of the cooler combat moves that Batman could perform.

One of the more interesting decisions was to calibrate controls such that the player always felt cool. There was no manual aiming of basic melee attacks; ranged attacks had a lot of target assist, and special moves required very little aiming and were pretty much fire and forget (ensure the enemy or target is in your site and then press the appropriate button). The tactical and strategic feel comes from using a mixture of stealth and sleuthing in order to outwit enemies who are too powerful to take on via a frontal assault.

My main concern after playing the demo was that the game would be too much of a one trick pony: Hop around from high ledge to high ledge and swoop down on unsuspecting loners who get separated from their squad. A secondary concern was how boss battles would play out: It seemed unlikely that I'd be able to grapple with the rather large monster/creature that the Joker unleashed on me just as the demo ended.

Those concerns aside, I did get sucked right into the story. I love the prison/asylum as a setting for a horror/action adventure game (or movie), and I immediately thought of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay and The Darkness, two games I enjoyed immensely.

Interestingly, when I think about whether to buy or rent this game, I find myself leaning more towards buying it. Why? For the same reason that I bought Bioshock. I loved the demo, and because I saw a bunch of my friends playing through it via Xbox Live, it made me think that it must be worth owning and playing right away as opposed to waiting for a rental.

The power of the social network compells me.