Game Design the Miyamoto Way: Flow and Difficulty

These days, it takes two days to read an interview. Maybe this is because there is a lot on the table, and maybe it’s because interviews are 20 pages long (and there are so many of them). The latest Iwata Asks is one of these, a 9 web page-long interview with Shigeru Miyamoto about everything from the history of Mario to the New Super Mario Bros. Wii. The fun thing is, even if you’ve read Davis Sheff, there is still a lot new to learn about the origins of Mario (and it’s a great story anyway). It’s a classic example in how hardware limitations determined content design. (Actually, the only piece that seems immediately missing from the story is the fact that Donkey Kong was designed as a game to replace the Radarscope cabinets that had failed miserably. This is why the board had only one button and couldn’t scroll.)

Miyamoto also has an excellent way of speaking about his craft. And Satoru Iwata is a great speaker who asks some really good questions (that is, after all, his job as Nintendo President). The two go hand in glove. It’s through these conversations that Miyamoto is really able to describe how he makes his games and his philosophy behind his designs: he doesn’t simply state, “This is how I make it because that’s the way it should be done,” he describes the reasoning behind the decision. Even if it’s something abstract like how a propeller should sound or how a game “smells”.

But the core of this statement is actually something he brings up at the end of the interview: difficulty ramps in Mario. Here, Miyamoto argues that a game is better if you have to start the level again because it increases the level of intensity and makes the game more enjoyable. If you have a risk of dying before the final boss, it makes it all the more urgent that you don’t fail. At the same time, Miyamoto states that this means the player gets to play through an easier part of the game to get to that hard part and this means the player gradually gets more skilled at the game as well as a sense of mastery over it.

Modern Warfare 2’s Controversial Introduction

Footage from the introductory level of Modern Warfare 2 has been leaked through various video sources. The game promises to be incredibly controversial from the introductory level alone, which places the player in the role of an undercover agent participating in a terrorist attack on an airport. The game’s publisher, Activision, has been pushing to remove the clips from the web left and right. The clip I saw was through this link.

Infinity Ward, the game’s developer, has released a statement containing the usual information that the clip is from an unauthorized leak of the game and is “not representative of the overall gameplay experience in Modern Warfare 2.” That being said, the game is very close to its November 10 launch, and so the gameplay is likely very close to the final version. Games have been leaked before launch in the past, and this sounds like a similar situation.

The clip is particularly disturbing because it depicts this group of terrorists with automatic weapons mowing down dozens of people at an airport terminal.

Lose/Lose

There are more games today playing around with loss and consequence than back when Gonzalo Frasca designed September 12th as a game that could not be won. The game collective, Sweat, has also produced Fifa Fo Fum! which flips winning and losing on its head (Sweat’s head, Rafael Fajardo, has also produced Seeds of Solitude, another game that uses the concept of an unwinnable scenario). Then, of course, there is my own Giant Tank. All of these games question what winning actually means and what happens when a player is given a task that is impossible given the tools at hand. The end result is that players are expected to question what the game represents based on its goals and rules.

This is not to say that unwinnable games have never existed before – most early arcade games, such as Space Invaders, were unwinnable in the sense that it was impossible to find a final victory screen. Points were earned based on how long the player survived and how much he or she destroyed. This has lead to some interesting interpretations of games like Space Invaders, in which the futility of the war is read into the game (these are jokingly investigated through Retro Sabotage’s Space Invaders collection).

The latest of these games is Zach Gage’s Lose/Lose, and art game that is superficially designed as a retro arcade shooter combining the gameplay of Galaga/Galaxian and their ilk with the special effects of Defender, but with a twist: each space alien you destroy will delete a file from your computer (the extensions of these files are displayed above the explosions). Furthermore, once your spaceship is destroyed, the game will delete itself. (Because of this, you may want to just watch the video of the game in action; eventually, I hope to install this on a system with just the operating system to see what happens when it destroys important Windows files!). This forces us to reconsider our definitions of games as lacking real-world consequences, placing Lose/Lose in the same realm as gambling in games of chance.

Because Lose/Lose effectively punishes the player while simultaneously rewarding points, the game questions what it means to be rewarded in a game in which we destroy things. It is interesting to note that the aliens will never fire on the player (though they will destroy the player’s ship on contact). This in turn questions the implicit goal of ‘destroy everything’; once we do this, we may even go so far as to desire to understand the nature of these alien creatures. By giving real-world consequences to a videogame, Gage has with Lose/Lose directly addressed the issue of consequences to violence, though perhaps not as graphically as John Klima’s “Go Fish” or Wafaa Bilal’s Domestic Tensions.)

Additionally, Lose/Lose questions the value of digital artifacts by suggesting that information and the vast accumulation of digital artifacts on our hundreds-of-gigabytes-large hard drives have value as do physical objects, but also suggests that we accumulate so much abstract information, we may no longer understand what it is actually worth.

As art, Lose/Lose of course never directly answers these questions, but instead leaves it up to the player to decide. By asking the player to place his or her own data at risk as a consequence of playing this game, Gage more effectively places the contemplation of these questions onto the shoulders of the player. If my absolute refusal to play this game on my computer is any indication, this level of reflection may be either spontaneously shunned by the would-be player or indeed reflected upon. Either way, the art has elicited a reaction (even if that is rejection), meaning the piece has proved its effectiveness in that regard alone.

MIT’s Personas

MIT’s research students have produced a digital art work that uses data mining to comment on data mining. The program, called Personas, generates a profile based on what it can find about you on the web. Personas is presented as a techno-god machine, calculating your personality based on what it finds about you on the web. The results and how they are displayed are ambiguous, including statements like ‘aggression’ and ‘illegal’, illustrating how much percentage of these fill up your persona.

The data is purposefully left ambiguous to illustrate how data mining is used by companies and governments to build profiles of people based on algorithms. Particular topics are color-coded differently (politics is black), adding to the ambiguity. It can be interpreted in many ways, and often that interpretation includes information from a person other than yourself. The data makes it scary because it is unclear how the information is defined in each category (video games comes under ’sports’, for instance), and it is also unclear who might use a profile like this (the Orwellian police system?).

It also produces hilarious results and the blinking lights makes it a fascinating time-waster it is an algorithmic one-way communication. Or to use a quote from another game critic, if games-fun = a light switch, then games-interaction = Personas. This has lead Personas to become a quickly spreading meme and a successful digital art piece, with particular resonance with social networking groups (I heard about this through a Facebook friend rather than a digital artist).

Handwriting and the Way We Think

A recent report demonstrates that cursive handwriting is on the decline. More people are composing on computers and more teachers are only accepting typed papers; I personally haven’t written in cursive for about ten years and do a fine job with print. While I am inclined to simply wave nostalgically goodbye to excellent penmanship, there are significant changes that occur when we switch from a writing to a typing culture.

First off, as Marshall McLuhan illustrated in the Gutenberg Galaxy, our thought processes altered dramatically when we shifted from an oral culture to a written culture. The simple act of writing things down changed the ways we thought by using a book as an extension of memory, a change that became more dramatic the more literate people became and the more widespread the book. The result was the book, as an extension of the memory, altered our ability to remember by having us rely on knowledge stored in books, privileging the ability to write over the ability to speak, and composition styles through handwriting and editing rather than mental construction. While Walter Benjamin lamented the loss of oral culture in “The Storyteller”, McLuhan saw the change as something to not just embrace but to be aware of its effects.

Similarly, the shift from handwriting to typewriting alters the way we think. We delete our mistakes, leaving no trace behind and cut and paste whole pages of text with ease. We have spellcheckers that not only make it easier for us to correctly spell words, but are easier to misuse and actually hurt spelling. We have new vocabulary resulting from typos and Internet shorthand. We stare at a monitor and replace the tactility of the pen with the mechanical punch of the keys; writer’s cramp is a disease replaced by eye strain. Some of us may actually compose faster (typing above 70 words a minute is a skill for success?). But the primary change is that because computers allow us to compose nonlinearly and arrange information with nonlinearity, we are beginning to think more and more nonlinear.

This translates into a new set of skills for not only creating information but also in consuming information and becoming information-literate. When Vannevar Bush, in “The Way We Think”, proposed the memex, a device that would later inspire the computer, he realized it was important that we not simply record information but that we make it easier for people to access it. What typewriting has done is made us rely more on the memex network at our fingertips, the Internet, without really understanding how to use it, how to locate reliable sources, how to evaluate sources, and how to access all sides of an issue. Which isn’t to say that “Google is Making Us Stupid” as the Atlantic wondered, but rather it is altering the ways in which we must think, including shortening our attention spans.

If all that sounds heady, there is a more practical reason why we should be interested in the shift to typewriting, and that is the longevity of the information we are creating. While we have Benjamin Franklin’s journal from his trip to France over two hundred years ago, we have an incredibly hard time accessing digital documents generated only twenty years ago due to media decay, changes in format, and obsolescence of older technology. Websites appear and disappear daily, information is altered with Orwellian unnerve, and search engines pull up different hits each day. While it may be easy for us to access this information, its ephemeral nature and lack of concrete tactility are weaknesses that must be overcome if we are to successfully shift to a typewritten culture and expect what we create to be as sound as Benjamin Franklin’s journal.

More on 3D TV?

Sony recently debuted a few games running in full 3D using glasses and a special HDTV at the Consumer Electronics Show. As I’ve stated below, I’m not convinced these are going to stick (especially with the 2011 and 2012 arrival dates). The effects of Toy Story and Avatar in 3D are going to be quite interesting, so I’ll wait and see what kind of impact these have on films of the next three years. But I doubt it will become a dominant medium simply because it requires people to put on glasses.

On the other hand, the head tracking on the Wii might show its head in Project Natal using head recognition software in the video camera. Of course, this same technology could integrated with a webcam or even Sony’s EyeToy to create a head tracking experience for single-user games and computers – and what is more single-user than a laptop?

Contra Rebirth

Contra Rebirth came out on Monday for WiiWare, and it is fantastic. Contra is a classic run ‘n gun shooter that I’ve talked about in my work before and also created a machinima about. Contra Rebirth takes the old formula and brings it back with quite a bit of humor and insanity to boot, which is very interesting considering how the Metal Slug series borrowed Contra-style action and infused it with humor. In a sense, Contra is now borrowing from a series that was inspired by it! The series has essentially shed the seriousness that was present in Shattered Soldiers and Contra 4 and went back to its core: these games are just fun to play and don’t have to take themselves seriously.

Just to give a sense of the humor, the game is packed from cutscenes with ridiculous dialogue and situations to zany bosses and over-the-top action sequences. It includes a herd of giant robotic camels; Contra’s other hero, Lance Bean, dressed in drag; a Cho Aniki-esque giant statue boss; a stampede of wild aliens – even the Galactic President looks like Che Guevara! And the game had me with the exploding logo for the title screen.

Of course, this isn’t to say there is no challenge: the Contra games have always been known for their difficulty, and Rebirth is no different. The game is heavily pattern-based, but this means playing through several times in order to clear it. But even though you will die many times, the game gives infinite continues and has continue points, making it similar to Metal Slug – Konami has done their homework. The game gives a nod to its difficulty by reminding us of the many Contras lost during the course of the game. And in the end, Bill Rizer also goes back into stasis to ‘rest in peace’.

I feel the audio and visual aesthetics also require a nod. The audio replicates the early chiptunes of Konami’s arcades and the MSX while the graphics borrow the pallette used in Contra 3. All of this points back to nostalgia while simultaneously pushing Contra forward through the release of humor.

Contra Rebirth is short, sweet, and the infinite credits gives it instantaneous pick up and play; the humor plus the ease of play adds to its replay value. In many ways, it was a Contra game I was looking for, even if I do wish it had an extra level or two. It’s not going to win any art contests or make us think about ourselves. But that’s not what its point is, and its design is a polishing of an old, classic style. It’s something to sit back and play with a smile that helps forget everything, at least for awhile.

What Janet Murray and PopSci Forgot to Mention

Recently I’ve been digging into Janet Murray’s classic Hamlet on the Holodeck. The book is quite interesting even though it is now over a decade old. Obviously Murray would have a lot more to say about World of Warcraft and Second Life, but what she has to say about MUDs still stands true for this modern software. The most interesting bit of criticism that I think gets lost in these ideal representations of the future, such as those imagined by PopSci’s Future Of on the Discovery Channel, mainly the problems of cost, scale, and integration.

Essentially, tech like the Virtusphere may look really cool (and it’s kind of embarrassing they can’t debut it for something more interesting than an FPS game), but it’s not going to come to the home any time soon. For one thing, there’s the problem of space: the Virtusphere simply takes up too much space in the home and can only be used by a single user (even the Holodeck appears to have been civic and likely booked for group or individual use rather than something you’d find in every crewman’s quarters).

We’ve been talking about virtual reality for more than two decades now. Computers have improved immensely in this time frame, but the cost of doing VR is still too high for it to become ubiquitous. Much of the technologies Murray mentions (Imax, video rollercoasters, virtual reality, 3D movies) have had very limited impact and are usually limited to theme parks or specially built theaters. I find it interesting that 3D film in particular, which was around for such ‘classics’ as Jaws 3D (1983) and the Virtual Boy (1996) is finding a new resurgence through the likes of James Cameron’s Avatar and Wii Head Tracking. The fact that 3D film has been on-again-off-again for over 20 years doesn’t make me expect it will be around to stay, but the ‘halfway tech’ of 3D glasses has potential through its low-cost, add-on nature.

I find technology like the Switchables from MIT to be MUCH more interesting. This technology is small, it’s portable, and it’s (hopefully) cheap. The devices have small LCD screens, are connected to each other through infrared, have accelerometers to detect movement, and sense the presence of other devices to interact with them (the only thing that seems to be missing is a small webcam). It’s the type of technology the folks at Wired identify as “good enough tech” or that Gumpei Yokoi identified as “lateral thinking of withered technology” (of which the Game Boy and the Wii are epitomes). In PopSci, they demonstrated a music dj program and word games on the Switchables, giving plenty of opportunity for games, creation, and learning. I suspect the hardware would really get off the ground if this technology could be built for extremely cheap and was treated as open-source hardware like the arduino (there is no way even the brilliant folks at MIT could be as creative as hundreds of hardware hackers). It is technology like this that has the potential for the greatest impact because of its low cost and portability as well as its ability to turn users into creators.

As much as we might want to have technology that reproduces the holy grail of new media, the holodeck, I think it is beneficial for us to step back and ask ourselves who we are making the technology for. Do we want a holodeck that has to be booked for group use or do we want something small, portable, and available in everyone’s living room? These are two scales of technology, with the former relying primarily on spectacle and group experience, and the latter more individual but also potentially ubiquitous. Both scales have potential and importance to society (humans love group spectacle), but I tend to side with the technology that is most accessible.

Virtual Boy: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

When most gamers hear about the Virtual Boy, they immediately deride it, saying what an awful piece of hardware it is and how it was the worst design Nintendo ever made (even worse than going with cartridges on the N64). However, none of these people have actually picked up and played a Virtual Boy (or at least one that actually works). As a result, the opinions of the general gaming populace are based on hearsay rather than first-hand experience. Taking a second look at the Virtual Boy seems particularly relevant in this day and age when we have a resurgence in 3D video in film and computers (what is this, the 1970s with Jaws 3D?).

I’ve got a VB and I like it a lot. This isn’t to say it’s a perfect piece of hardware, but it does mean that the VB gets a much worse rap than it actually deserves. The VB’s failures can be summed up as ergonomics issues and user interface issues. Its successes come from use of 3D displays to create new gameplay.

First off, many people will cite the statement that the Virtual Boy will cause you to go blind. While it is true that the VB will cause eye strain if used for extended periods (depending on the individual, usually after 30 minutes of constant use or less), the VB will only cause eye damage to children 7 years and younger who have developing eyes. Eye strain becomes easier if the hardware is malfunctioning (out of focus, misaligned mirrors, etc).

Much of the eyestrain is caused from focusing on red monochrome images in a darkened space. The eye isn’t used to this, so while it looks cool, you can’t stare at it for extended periods without rest. Had the unit been designed to allow more light in, this would probably be less of an issue. But it is the biggest problem with the system.

The second is ergonomics. Simply put, to stare into the VB isn’t so much a strain on your eyes as it is on your neck. The VB tripod is so small it was clearly designed for young people and short people – NOT 6′ tall adults. The tripod’s height is also not adjustable (it’s poorly made plastic). As a result, if you don’t have a tall stack of books, an adjustable table or chair, then you’ll get a neck cramp. (How I’ve been using it is propping the tripod on my chest and leaning back. This isn’t as much a strain, but it’s far better than anything else. Trouble is, you can’t laugh or the system will go out of balance! Couple this with the fact that the system is top-heavy and doesn’t immediately indicate how it should be mounted… This is strike two, and it’s one that could have been easily fixed with a better tripod or a head mount.

The third major issue is the UI for adjusting the system. Even though Nintendo tells you to adjust it every single time you power it on, it gives no directions in the BIOS as to how one should actually go about doing this. After the warnings screen, there are four blocks with ‘VB’ on them in each corner of the screen. In the center is a big square with ‘Virtual Boy’ written on it. To adjust the screen, you have to turn a knob and use the slider on the top of the system, and it’s not easy to tell that the four squares are in focus as it should be. This is something that could have been fixed with instructions within the system itself.

A minor issue is the design of the dust covers for the cartridges. While the system supposedly has self-cleaning cartridges (a definite plus), the dust covers are exactly the same width as the cartridge slot, meaning it is easy to stick a cartridge in with the dust cover attached. If this happens, the cover will get stuck in the system and you’ll need a screwdriver to prod it out. Interesting enough, there is a slot on top of the system for holding the dust covers…

I will also say that the volume knob is unreasonably loud. It goes from soft to something that must be over 80 decibels (enough to damage your ears). The game controller cable also seems a bit shorter than it needs to be.

Finally, we have the problem of hardware failure with the LED ribbon cables, as mentioned in the previous post.

Those issues aside, why is the Virtual Boy actually worth playing and talking about? The big thing the Virtual Boy does is it projects two separate images, one at each eye. This allows it to produce an actual 3D image, kind of like what you’d see in a Magic Eye or stereoscope (or 3D glasses). As a result, screenshots DO NOT do the actual image justice – it would be like looking at a 3D image without the 3D glasses. Conversely, it’s the difference between a regular television and a television with head tracking.

So the images are simply really cool to look at, in a retro-future kind of way. They actually pop out of the screen and move around rather than just 2D images on a flat plane. The novelty makes the games a bit more fun to play, and I assume this will be the case when head tracking TVs are released.

Some of the games take advantage of this, treating the 3D images not as a gimmick but as part of play. In Virtual Boy Wario Land and Mario Clash, this involves walking into the background of the screen as well as enemies and obstacles moving between the background, sprite layer, and foreground.

Again, these screens simply do not do the system justice.

It’s interesting to note that the backgrounds in Wario Land were used in Super Paper Mario – despite the fact that none of the developers ever worked on Wario Land, they must have been familiar with it:

Virtual Boy Wario Land

(Oddly enough, nobody has screens of the background levels in Super Paper Mario!). It’s nice to see that the Virtual Boy is still put to some good use at Nintendo.

The gameplay isn’t exactly something that’s impossible on regular hardware – the real advantage comes from the 3D displays, which look really cool. The hardware is certainly superior to the GameBoy and Gameboy Color, but below that of the Gameboy Advance.

Given the technology used to make the Virtual Boy, it is probably possible to design something better using today’s technology that doesn’t have the eye issues and ergonomics that plague the original. The system is certainly worth picking up and shouldn’t be immediately dismissed as completely without redemption as it usually is. Nintendo’s red-headed stepchild in some ways simply feels like it was too far ahead of its time and a little too quickly shipped to market… If you don’t want to track down the original hardware, there are some emulators out there. Make sure you get some 3D glasses to go with it, though the experience still won’t be the same as the real thing…

There is a lot more great information on the system on Virtual-Boy.org.

Resurrecting a Virtual Boy

A few weeks back, I picked up a Virtual Boy. The retailer said it had been ‘tested thoroughly’ but as soon as I get it back, it starts getting glitched graphics in the right display. Sometimes this isn’t a problem, but recently it went to the point of unplayability so I decided to get to work on repairing it.

The trouble is, in addition to having poorly designed ergonomics, the VB has some poorly designed hardware inside, mainly the ribbon cables that connect to the LED projectors. These cables are not very tightly connected and so loosen over time (even if it’s kept in storage), resulting in glitched graphics. To tell which LED panel is the culprit, close one eye and then the other. You’ll have to repair whichever one(s) is glitchy.

There is very little information on the web on how to repair a Virtual Boy. Most of it can be found on the forums of Digital Press, but this is mostly hearsay. One website goes into some detail, but they leave out a few key parts.

The main thing to know is that the VB uses 4.5mm security screws. It also has really deep, really narrow holes for some of the screws. You can use a dremel or a file to whittle down a flathead screwdriver or buy a 4.5mm Gamebit and modify it so it will fit in the holes (I had limited success with the flathead technique). Filing down the Gamebit was a bit easier, but it was impossible to cut a notch at the base for a screwdriver. Using regular files and even a hacksaw just didn’t work, so I ended up asking the neighbor for use of his dremel.

What they DON’T tell you is that you should REALLY make sure you file down that Gamebit REALLY WELL. Otherwise, it will get stuck in the hole like what happened to me. If this happens, you have to take a small, narrow file and cut a notch into the side, making sure to get into the notch you drilled in with the dremel. Once you’ve got enough room, you can grab that sucker with a needlenose and pull it out. You’ll damage the case, but that’s less important than getting the thing to work (at least IMO). You can test the bit by dropping it lightly into a hole. If it doesn’t go in easily, file it down again! I also hear you can get powerful magnet screwdrivers. I haven’t tried one myself, but I know you can get really good magnets if you pull apart an old hard drive!

I replaced all the security screws with 4×1/2 Phillips head sheet metal screws from Ace Hardware (about $3.70 for a box of 100). No electronics stores seem to carry similar kinds of screws and the customer service is poor at best. As these have sharp tips, I take the file and flatten them out.

Inside the system you have to check the LED PCB and ribbon assemblies. The glitchy displays should have glue loosened like in these pictures (I found it funny the manufacturer put blue dots on each of the assemblies to indicate which was left and which was right). The glue keeps the connections from the cable with the PCB. This glue fails over time due to poor hardware design and torsion on the ribbon and the ribbon will eventually bend off.

The three methods for fixing this are 1) ‘the oven trick’, 2) solder it together, 3) use tape. Not feeling confident with my soldering abilities, I eventually decided on ‘the oven trick’ which involves preheating the oven to 190-200 degrees and then sticking the PCB assembly in for about 2 minutes, just enough to soften the glue (I hear some people do it with a clothes iron). In theory, you’re supposed to pull the thing out and rub the glue so it sticks to the ribbon. Works better on paper because you’re not taking into account the hot PCB burning your fingers! (I also tried using a clamp, but that didn’t work). Both the ‘oven trick’ and the soldering technique are described in this article.

I eventually gave up and decided to use tape. Packing tape seems to work fine. The tape is applied first on the back of the PCB (the side opposite the glue) and then the ends are wrapped around the front over the glue. You want a really thin strip that covers the area with the glue and the part where the plastic touches the base. If the tape is placed tightly and evenly and without any wrinkles, it can work just as well as regluing it.

You’ll probably want to keep the system disassembled until you can test the cable out – otherwise it’s a real pain to take out the 12 screws after you just put the whole thing back together!

Next, pop in a game and test the alignment of the mirrors by pressing Left, B, Down, A, Up on the right D-Pad. I honestly don’t know how you’d fix it if it was unaligned, but this probably involves reseating the lenses with the system running.

Next post: why the Virtual Boy isn’t that bad (and the areas where it really DOES suck).