Category: game design

I always thought these looked kinda cool, and the people working there didn’t get enough of the glory

A lot of people have said to me they think it’s a bad idea to allow cheaters to edit files for a multiplayer game, especially my next game. Let me clarify:

The next game *will have a multiplayer element to it*. To some extent. But not in the way you generally get in multiplayer games.

Although you will have free reign to edit files for modding purposes, there will be no way to ‘beat’ another player by doing so.

I might introduce some element of file checking and CRC gubbins at some stage, but I want a hugely moddable game, and if you let people mod stuff its hard to then prevent them cheating unless there is a central server blah blah, and I don’t want all the hassle and cost associated with that.

I’m not making an FPS style game where the normal worries about aimbots are a concern. When I explain how the multiplayer bit works, you will see what I mean :D

Could it be that the best way to deal with jerks in online games is to just make their efforts futile by doing way entirely with the idea of anonymous massively multiplayer competition?

That’s what I reckon, and here are my expanded thoughts on the topic.

I’ve learned a lot from the success of Kudos, from making kudos Rock legend and Kudos 2. Especially Kudos 2. Those 3 games have taught me what polish really means, how to ship a product once it’s finished, rather than when I’ve had enough, and how to make games easy to learn and balanced enough for most players to enjoy right out of the box.

But most of the casual games out there bore me to tears. I want games that make me THINK. Not in a predictable, mechanical way like sudoku. Not just give my eyes some boring seek and find workout such as in the hidden object games. And certainly not in the click-fest time management sense.

I want a game that makes me think creatively. that challenges me to think outside the box, to evolve strategies and plans and tactics.

that’s what I hoped Kudos and Democracy did. Democracy was mroe clearly a strategy game, but Kudos was one too. My next game is all about strategy. Not TACTICS. That’s what most RTS games are about. This one will be about STRATEGY. But it will be (hopefully) as polished and accessible as the casual games.

When I worked at Elixir and Lionhead I often got really distressed over how much artwork got thrown away. It seemed mad to spend so much time and money on getting artwork, only to ditch it and start again. Some of this was just typical inefficiency, but some of it becomes more understandable the longer you work in games.

games are very visual things. We can rant about game play vs graphics all we like, but the first impression of 99% of games is visual. It’s REALLY hard work to slog away 10 hours a day, every day on a game that actually looks really bad. Most coder art is really bad, so in order to get an idea of whether or not the game will feel any good, and to inspire you to work hard and believe in the current game, it’s important to have something that looks nice as soon as you can.

There are two approaches to this. One is to spend a lot more time than you usually do on really polishing your ‘coder art’. I’ve spent some time doing this. I know my way around photoshop, and I’ve read hundreds of tutorials over the years on how to do all sorts of arty things. I still do some of the artwork for my games (less and less of it each game. The problem with doing this is it takes up a lot of time.

The alternative is to pay an artist to do some work before you really know what style you want, or if you will keep it. This can bexcellent, because they can prompt you into a new direction, or just turn out higher quality stuff, but it also obviously costs money. Indie games are done on a shoestring. Wasting money on artwork you know you will not ship with the game is scary. But right now, looking at my mystery new game and it’s crappy coder art, I am tempted to spend a few dollars and get a proper artist to mock up some basic stuff for me…