Cliffski's Blog

The press and publishers often try to split gamers into two groups, the hardcore and the casual. Here are rough descriptions:

Hardcore gamers play serious games, deep games, and they play a LOT. They have a lot of time, and they get invested into games. They play mods, they read strategy guides, they are probably 14 year old boys. They like zombies and killing stuff. They play games like Skyrim, Call of Duty, Men of War, Starcraft. Their favorite color is dark brown, stained with the blood of orcs.

Casual gamers play fun cute games. They play simple games, and only in short chunks. They cannot cope with 2 mouse buttons, or reading instructions. They hate violence. They are all 40+ soccer moms and they like kittens and cooking. They play games like farmville and peggle, and match-3 games. Their favorite color is the fluffy white of a pony’s mane, draped across a basket of flowers.

But of course this is bullshit.

I am *time poor* when it comes to games, but I love deep hardcore serious strategy stuff, with orcs and blood, and ok, maybe the odd kitten, but it’s a kitten with razor sharp claws who battles his enemies and earns steam achievements.

What I think game designers may have missed, is that the 14 year old hardcore starcraft players of yore, are now 30+ with kids. maybe even 40+ like me. They understand and love serious hardcore games but are time poor. Right now I genuinely play more battlefield 3 than anno because anno takes longer to load for me.

What they want, perhaps… is bite sized hardcore? I present to you, the first draft of

THE BITE SIZED HARDCORE MANIFESTO.

What we demand is…

1) No pandering to casual gaming stereotypes. No gratuitous kittens or ‘cute’ cuddly characters.

2) No time wasting. No splash screens, intros, or FMV. We have 30 minutes tonight for gaming. Ensure all 30 minutes have us interacting with the game.

3) No Grind. We have day jobs. leave the grind to the kids in the F2P MMOs where it belongs. Give me decent, varying content, without filler. And don’t reward grind either, with bonus achievements for time played, or 1,000 low level rats clubbed.

4) No nickel+diming. We have proper jobs and disposable income. If the game is good, we will buy outright. Don’t keep breakign immersion to try and sell us $0.05 worth of magic pixie dust.

5) No oversimplification. We can cope with 2 mouse buttons, maybe even 3, and a wheel. We can cope with right clicking, tech trees, customisable units and mods.

6) No mandatory training levels or tutorials that cover the obvious. This is my 245th first person shooter. I can guess that WSAD moves, the mouse looks, and the mouse shoots. At the very least, let me skip tutorial stuff I don’t need.

7) Don’t patronize us. We shouldn’t get an achievement for hitting the jump key, or told we are awesome soldiers for hitting a tin can. Leave that crap for kids in kindergarten.

8) Be original. We have gamed before. We have fought in many a crate-strewn corridoor, and killed many a rat and returned their hides to someone who is too lazy to do it themselves. We have heard many tales of lost kingdoms and evil wizards. Surprise us. Please.
What needs adding?

I bought skyrim, partly because I did enjoy oblivion, partly because skyrim got great reviews and any decent game dev should know what people are buying and enjoying.

So far, It’s pretty good, but I’m not bowled over. I don’t see it as any major (or even minor) change or improvement from Oblivion. Maybe I haven’t played it enough yet? There are a number of minor things that make me smile, more than disappoint, such as all of the guards sounding like schwarzenegger, and all the women assuming I want to sleep with them. That’s my normal expression, I swear!

More seriously, the game does not seem to have moved on at all, in the field of interaction with NPC’s, which is a big surprise. It’s 2011 now (nearly 2012), so we still need almost static NPC’s that act pretty much like ‘gossip+quest+lifestory vending machines’.
Coding a much more adaptive and context sensitive system shouldn’t be hard. I find it very unlikely that there is a major problem from either a game design or code POV, in having every NPC store some data abut their attitude to you, plus a list of recent events, plus reaction to your appearance.

Almost all games have NPC’s that are staggeringly stupid. You can sneak up to them at midnight, having never met them, with your sword drawn, wearing a black cloak and holding a two handed sword, and as long as you press ‘E’, they will say something like
“My name is zarg, I’ve been farming here all my life, things aren’t so bad really.”
WTF?
We *can* do better than this. On an indie game, with a tiny budget and one coder, we can do better, so why a game with the budget of skyrim cannot, is beyond me. Unless….

It’s voice acting isn’t it? Lets be honest. We cannot afford to have 500 different lines fo dialog for that character, because the assumption is that all games need to be ‘fully voiced’. This is CRIPPLING to AI. I bet the
AI coders on skyrim grind their teeth like maniacs, knowing that the simplest and cheapest text adventures can have twenty times more immersive character interaction that the trillion dollar AAA hit game skyrim.

Is it *really* so vital to have voice acting for all NPC’s? I find most acting in movies to be tragic, let alone acting in games. I would be much happier if ‘lesser’ NPCs had just text, (maybe some simlish mumbling?) but they actually said something relevant and believable.

Immersion is NOT just graphics and sounds. If it was, who would buy books? Sometimes dialog really matters, and in an epic RPG it is vital. Skyrim has (like most games) prioritised screenshots & trailer clips over actual immersion, at least when it comes to AI.

You probably all thing I’m wrong, the game scored massively highly and sold by the crateload. What do you think? Is it just me that wants to smack the NPC’s and say “I only just met you, you f**king robot!”.