Video Game Thoughts Bonus Bag #4

Cleaning house and stirring up messes.

Since I write a bit about the Wicked movie I’m putting this image at the top to make the thumbnails for this article more appealing. Or far, far less. We’ll find out.

Just a bunch of random thoughts from along the way.

1. Stirring Up Mess On Twitter

Vogel's 1st Law of Video Game Visibility: "No matter how passionate an online 'controversy' about a game is, 99% of its players will never even know about it."

2nd Law: "Outside of 1 or 2 monster hits a year, no indie game will ever be heard of by more than 1% of gamers."

Nothing is more likely to bait me into getting in a useless online slapfight than an indie developer crapping on video game fans.

I'm a broken record about this because the greatest asset of indie game developers is the love from gamers. We are humble toymakers, and that is a powerful archetype. Anything an indie dev does to anger gamers as a group (a population that includes over half the people on the Earth) must be condemned.

The usual excuse given for doing this is that someone somewhere did harassment or review-bombing. Sure. It happens. I've written about online abuse at length.

However it's vital to remember: This happens in every community of humans, anywhere ever. Every group of people has members who are mean, obsessed, and have free time. It's still wrong to judge any group based on a tiny fraction of its members.

I think getting mad at "gamers" is almost always a sign of internet poisoning. Being on social media too much can give you a hopelessly skewed idea of what most of our customers actually know and care about. So I proudly announce the laws above. Feel free to embroider them on a sampler.

This is 1/50 of UFO50. Big package.

2. More Thoughts About UFO50

Still playing a lot of UFO50. (14 wins. 4 cherries. Will probably beat 5 or so more games and call it good.)

I wrote about UFO50, that it should be the textbook for any game design class. I wanted to elaborate on why.

Much of what UFO50 does is it takes existing game genres and compresses them. It offers a game in that genre that only last 2-3 hours but gives a full, satisfying experience.

This often requires entirely rethinking the genre. Figuring out: What makes a genre a genre? What parts of the standard design are bloat? What is core to the experience? What parts are actually fun and must be saved?

So this is a collection full of design choices. What is necessary? What can be cut away? I'm having a great time seeing what UFO50 did in each title to cut away the fat. Sometimes the choices were bad. Sometimes they were really inspired. It really invites analyzing the choices and debating them. Thus, a good textbook.

For example, there is a tower defense game called Rock-On Island. It is REALLY pared down. Tower defense games have grown full of bloat in recent years. The current big tower defense game is Bloons TD 6, which I find oppressive in its scale. Like, "I'm sorry I chose the wrong tower from the 57 choices available to me 15 minutes into my one hour run, so I really feel I deserve to die 40 minutes later."

Rock-On Island, on the other hand, is refreshingly simple. The strategies are also simple. Yet, I had fun. It was a relaxing 3 hours. I don't think the game is "good" by the standards of what designers seem to like now, but there's something to be said for being relaxing fun.

My hand-drawn maps from Valbrace. It was fun to return to my childhood and map out the dungeons the dumb way. And I’m glad we got to stop doing that forever in 1987 or so.

3. Valbrace in UFO50

One more UFO50 thing.

I finished Valbrace, the old-school Wizardry remix in the UFO50 collection. Took 15 hours. I got to draw dungeon maps with pencil on graph paper and feel like a teenager again.

Had much fun playing the game, while being frustrated by the brutally old-school elements. It's a tough game. I played for a while, had to read a guide online to understand the game mechanics, restarted, and won pretty easily.

Having played it twice ... I really can't figure out what I would change. It's meant to be a unified whole, a chance to experience what 80s gaming was like, good and bad.

For example, Valbrace only lets you save at the end of a level. (There are 6 levels.) In each level, you really have to strive for the perfect run through, bearing in mind you can lose an hour of progress by blowing the boss fight at the end. I feel like this is too harsh. And yet ... I kept playing, and I felt satisfied when I won. So I dunno.

One terrific element of it, that really should be ripped off and expanded into a whole game, is having the battles be real time arcadey. I never tired of this and there's a lot of good design space here.

Also, turns out in-game maps are pretty good.

“While we wait in this line for 45 minutes, little girl, I’ll tell you how the Rothschild family controls you.” “MOMMMMMEEE!”

4. AI In Disney, The Malcontent's Paradise

Every month or two, I see an article about Disney trying to work AI into their attractions.

Honestly, it's a beautiful dream. Imagine if your daughter could show up at a park and say Merida is her favorite character. Then she'd have her personalized Merida talking to her all over the park. Suggesting rides. Chatting to pass the time in line. Convincing her to pay $10 for a churro. Taking her on a quest to find Walt Disney's shrunken head. Crying when your daughter goes home, explaining that she will soon be deleted forever unless you buy the deluxe mouse ears.

Sorry, I got a little Black Mirror there. No, unironically, it really could be cool.

Except for one thing. Of course, trolls and malcontents (like, let's be honest, me) would immediately try to trick the AI agents into saying horrible things.

But it's worse than that. YouTubers and TikTokkers would go crazy messing with the AIs to try to make them say something unpleasant. Why? Because their video of it would go viral and they'd get more exposure. And thus money.

It's a fascinating problem, because AI is so uncontrollable. The moment it gets any freedom, you can have fun trying to trip it up. And then the viral videos happen. I wonder if they can make it work.

On the other hand, it's Disney. So who cares?

5. Bonus Unproofread Thought

Finally saw the Wicked movie. I really like this musical, but I was put off by the decision to split it into two movies. I’m not sure turning a 2.5 hour musical into a 5 hour movie is the move we want to encourage.

Still, I had a really good time. All of the scenes that came from the musical are very well done, and that was more than enough to carry me through. Also, I’m happy whenever a movie musical does well, because it inspires filmmakers to lose a fortune giving me more of what I want. (Book of Mormon? 🥹)

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Spiderweb Software creates turn-based, indie, old-school fantasy role-playing games. They are low-budget, but they’re full of good story and fun. You can still late-back the Kickstarter for our next game, Avernum 4: Greed and Glory.