Videogamer.com and Other Press
I've been accused a few times of being self-congratulatory. That's because I make a conscious effort to be self-congratulatory because I find it fun. It's my online persona, haven't you figured that out yet? In that spirit, lets look at some press about me.
Here's my interview with videogamer.com about Street Fighter HD Remix. People are pretty riled up over that XBLA size limit even though my answer said "We're doing our best to work within the limits we were given." There was a lot of other tasty stuff in that interview that seemed more quote-worthy than that.
You might also suffer through this thread on boardgamegeek.com. It consists of about two people who have read my book and listened to one of my internet radio interviews and a lot of other people who read the title of my book and assumed what all of the contents must be.
Or this gamasutra article. Interesting (and not bad), but I wish the author reached a deeper level of understanding of the topic. Or maybe I have just read too much science on his exact topic. In any event, I enjoyed the 3rd and 4th words of the article because they are "David Sirlin."
Or you might check out this oldie but goodie. Soren Johnson designed Civ4 and is now working on Spore. What more awesomeness can you really ask for than that? He quotes me here about rock, paper, scissors stuff, but two years ago made a poor analysis of my infamous World of Warcraft article. He says a I made a big mistake and claims "game designers don't get to choose how players have fun." I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, considering I was advocating the game designers offer more ways to have fun rather than fewer ways.
My original point was that rather being exclusive by having only the time-spent ladder, it would be better to have BOTH that ladder and a skill ladder. Now that WoW abolished the old honor system and replaced with a much better arena system, all I can say is, "See, that is what I was talking about." Also, adding solo challenges to an MMO in addition to keeping group challenges is still a win-win. Not sure what Johnson even meant by his comments that people might not play such a game. Of course they would, it's more inclusive (solo or group; time spent grinding for gear OR win arena matches to get it faster) rather than exclusive (group > solo; time > skill). I'm oversimplifying but this is a very dead horse by now, so lets move on. Also, again, Soren sounds super smart generally so I should cut him some slack.
I'll leave you with this thought. In 2006, I won a (coveted!) fictional non-award called the 2006 Robbie Award for most interesting game industry personality. I don't know who Rob Howard is or why his now-defunct site has not been updated in a year and a half, but I was really hoping to win something in 2007. Rob Howard, whoever you are, was I not worthy of anything this time?
--Sirlin
January 31st, 2008 at 9:11 am
Sirlin,
I find your self-congratulatory efforts to be highly amusing. Keep them up! Just be sure to balance them out with a bit of “damn useful and intelligent writing”, otherwise you’ll be “tooting your horn” for no reason.
Also, I’ll add that your writing (heck, you’re existence in general) tends to fall into the “helping more people then you piss off” category. To give context to what I just said, I’ll leave you with a quote:
—————
My favorite part of [Dr. John Demartini’s] talk was when he spoke about fear of rejection. He commented that, “The more people I please, the more people I piss off.” When you go after a big goal, both your level of acceptance and your level of rejection by others will increase. I’ve certainly experienced this in my own life. Every time I make a new blog post that challenges people deeply, some people rise to the challenge and take action (even if they disagree with my views) and then send me the most incredible feedback, while others get defensive and feel a need to push back to protect their fragile shell of excuses. So the more people I help, the more people I piss off. As I continue on this path, both are increasing. But ultimately the acceptance and rejection balance out, which keeps you living on purpose and not getting sidetracking into living for acceptance or for the avoidance of rejection. Just be authentic. You’ll be simultaneously loved and hated no matter what.
~ Steve Pavlina, http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/13-personal-development-speakers-in-3-days/
—————
(Yes, I know I quote/link to/talk about Steve Pavlina too much. I often comment that I also do the same with you, heh. You and Steve just happen to be some of my favorite internet personalities, and you come up with good stuff to boot.)
- Bruce
PS. Please install a Wordpress plugin that lets me format my comments nicely. Either that, or link to the list of the secret formatting tags I can use but know nothing about. Looking at those divider lines I use for quotes makes us all cringe, but damnit, quotation marks just don’t cut it.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:00 am
Bruce, I feel the same way as Steve Pavlina on that. Put another way, “When they throw rocks at you, you know you’re doing something right.” I heard that on the tv show The Practice once. Anything worthwhile is bound to get someone upset, just by the law of averages of people with good ideas/bad ideas.
I love Stephen Colbert, btw. I can’t hold a self-congratulatory candle compared to him. That said, yeah some real content is nice too. My best content is a book I’m planning that’s much deeper than my last, but I’m getting side tracked by trying to learn programming. What a struggle and time sink.
Regarding a way to edit posts, yeah I’ve wanted that for a long time. I tried to install Editor Monkey on here once and it just never really worked. I have it on the to do list of my technical helper once he finishes preparing a very trickily formatted article about Mario Galaxy and finishes preparing my book for the Amazon Kindle. Will try to get a post editor in here after that.
–Sirlin
January 31st, 2008 at 10:21 am
Obviously self-serving, but has there been any consideration given to letting the XBLA and PSN versions be different? I mean, I assume there is still going to be a PSN version even though it’s not mentioned in that particular article. That is, if the XBLA download size limit is an issue, why not cut what you need to fit into that limit, and let the PSN version take advantage of having a larger download size? I understand that you would probably want both to be identical, but I think it’s kind of silly to downgrade the experience just because Microsoft likes to rigidly adhere to stuff like that. I mean, Puzzle Fighter doesn’t have cross-platform online play, right? I rather doubt this will, either? Considering current sales figures, I doubt there’s even much of a point of publishing this for PSN if you can’t play cross-platform online (assuming they are identical). That’s just another reason to get it on XBLA instead. If the PSN version had full 1080p source for everything (if that has to be cut from the XBLA version, along with whatever else), that might give folks at least a little more incentive to buy it on PSN. If they’re going to sit there with no comp b/c everyone is on XBLA, it may as well look better. ;O
January 31st, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Learning programming at your advanced age should be interesting. Any particular reason you are doing that? Just because you are a do-it-yourself type of guy?
January 31st, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Your interviews and articles are always a blast to read, Sirlin. Keep up the good fight!
January 31st, 2008 at 11:26 pm
What language are you starting with to learn to program?
February 1st, 2008 at 1:38 am
I still don’t understand why you think unbalanced payoff is somehow a magic ingredient that will make Rock/Paper/Scissors special. You can look at, for example, the original games used by Moola.com - one of which is precisely a Rock/Paper/Scissors with variable payoff. It’s really still not a very interesting game.
February 1st, 2008 at 2:47 am
The point isn’t about rock/paper/scissors itself. That game remains too simple to become lasting and fun even after those modifications. But, as a basis for good design concepts, it’s really a powerful tool for anyone trying to learn game design. Look at any fighting game ever made, and you’ll find the attack/block/throw concept is pretty much rock/paper/scissors with variable payoff. It happens that the inclusion or more than just one attack and throw, as well as deeper gameplay concepts within that first one such as the use of high, mid, or low when attacking is necessary to give the game enough depth to be enjoyable.
But, for anyone who wants to design a fighting game, not understanding the basic concept of why rock/paper/scissors with unequal risk/reward is a valuable idea means you’ll be doomed to failure.
February 1st, 2008 at 2:57 am
If unequal payoffs in RPS is the first secret sauce, then I wrote all about the second secret sauce one year ago in my article about my Yomi card game. Too bad I’ve been holding on to it unpublished for a year so the article can coincide with your ability to buy something. It turns out the developing a card game, like everything else, has way more steps than you’d ever believe and takes longer than you can even imagine. I have a meeting at this year’s GDC that might crack things open for me though.
February 1st, 2008 at 6:57 am
“I still don’t understand why you think unbalanced payoff is somehow a magic ingredient that will make Rock/Paper/Scissors special.”
In the context of RPS itself it really isn’t. However if you tie it to lifebars and such I think it gets more interesting. For example you may be at the point where one Rock attack kills your opponent and one Paper doesn’t. For the opponent letting you land a Rock is then infinite payoff for you, regardless of the numbers attached.
To ground this in reality, ever notice that in Tekken people only use the basic low kicks as the last hit or two to finish off opponents? That’s because with a short life bar their utility grows because the downside, low damage, doesn’t matter any more. They kill the opponent just as well as a deathfist. Unabalanced payoff allows for this sort of variable payoff.
In the end most things are optimization problems, the key is avoiding simple and static ones.
February 1st, 2008 at 8:19 am
David, apparently this Rob Howard person has a new website, and actually made an update to it today, thought i’d let you know. http://www.therobzone.com/
February 1st, 2008 at 10:31 am
Hi Sirlin, I had a question about that videogamer.com interview. You’re quote about PPPK combos in VF is stirring up a small tornado in some VF communities. First off, most people believe you’re quote is just incorrect… that is, people report having checked in the game, and determined that PPPPK (an extra P), will always produce the final kick for both pai and lau. Second, the only known relevant quote from Yu Suzuki that’s been found so far was actually a statement that in VF2 PPPK required only 3 Ps, or the kick wouldn’t come out, and in VF3, PPPPK would always still produce the kick. This was a system wide change, and every new VF release so far has seen similar changes that vastly reduced execution requirements. So, yeah… just wondering if you could comment on that, for the benefit of quieting down some rather silly criticism you’ve been getting.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I’m with Hiruke. I think if the ps3 is capable of handling a “deeper” version of the game so to speak, then why not make it so?
Are there even plans to release it on PS3?
February 1st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
FYI theres a thread about you on the virtuafighter.com forums at the moment
February 1st, 2008 at 4:10 pm
PoisonDagger: Well said.
Claytus: I’m quite sure Yu Suzuki said that in a printed interview. I showed it to several people at the time. It might have been in a physical magazine though, so I don’t know how we’d find it now in the internet age. Possibly Next Generation Magazine, not sure. I read NextGen often at the time. Surely someone can find that quote somewhere.
February 1st, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Claytus: I just read the thread on VF.com. What a bunch of disrespectful people who have no idea what they are talking about. Now, Myke says my statement about pppk is factually wrong. I haven’t tested it, but I’m still quite sure of this quote from the designer. Not sure what to say about that.
But Manjimaru and Sebo have preposterous claims about me that they should be ashamed of. I can’t believe anyone could take my statement about PPPK to have anything to do with how I play the game. Does it mean I PPPK a lot? Does it mean I play Lau? I was pointing out a design philosophy I disagree with. It’s telling that they’d make a simple thing like that a little bit harder, rather than a little bit easier (assuming the PPPK is like that…I was only quoting the designer, I don’t actually play Lau). And of course I played at a decently high level in years past. Sorias’s guesses about me are all correct. I did play at a level where more and more defensive options were needed and it is a strain on execution.
Re: my double standard about Guilty Gear. Does GGXX have waaaaaaaay too much execution required, often for no reason? Answer: yes it does. No double standard there. Forcing me to do 3-frame FRC followed by a character specific combo every time I do Potemkin Buster just to be competitive is stupid. It serves no strategic purpose, it’s just a tax I have to pay in training mode to get to the real game.
I’d like especially call out Manjimaru in that thread for the most embarrassing statements of the year, and we’re only one month into 2008. He actually said this:
“He [Sirlin] ssentially wants to ‘dumb down’ fighting games and allow easily repeatable unbeatable strategies etc. I don’t think I’m alone thinking thats bad.”
I’ve now written two article specifically about how easier controls “smarten up” fighting games, not dumb them down. One is the SSF2T HD Remix FAQ on Capcom’s site and mine, and the other is the very videogamer.com interview he’s referring to. Next, he says I want easily repeatable and unbeatable strategies. What the FUCK does he think I do every single day at workb? I have been removing those from SF for the last several months. Everywhere I can, I’m taking out loops or making them less effective, and trying to add more guessing games (such as the many created by Ryu’s fake fireball, for just one example). How can this guy even go on posting on the internet anymore?
VF is great. I’ve said that like a hundred times. Some people seem to think I don’t know the first thing about that game, but guess again. VF2 and VF3 were almost full time jobs for me at the time. And that said, anyone who thinks VF doesn’t have very high execution requirements has lost all perspective on what that even means. I’d think you guys would want a game that’s as deep and wonderful as VF, but that is even more accessible to new players. I don’t see how anyone could possibly disagree with that. Maybe there is a fear that if only joe scrub could do all the moves he wanted, you’d lose to him? Surely not, because the mental game is so deep, you have no trouble winning…but you’d have more comp, the game would make more money, etc.
–Sirlin
February 1st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Um…this seems like a really bad example to hang your hat on. Sirlin you seem to have a knack for making good points then sabotaging them with bad examples.
PPPK or PPPPK? Who cares! What kind of a spastic retard presses the button an extra time?
Pressing buttons with precise timings in precise combinations, yes that’s an execution barrier. Pressing one button 3 times in a row…not really lol. It does seem like dumbing down to me if you are designing for a monkey with epilepsy.
I would also challenge you to look at a character like King in Tekken. His multithrows require a lot of execution and aren’t even that good! Would the game be better if you could do them much easier? I’m not sure. His multithrows function as sort of a fun reward and side project. Improving at things feels good, including improving at technical execution.
I agree with your overall point but PPPK? Does *that* really need to be made easier?
February 1st, 2008 at 5:33 pm
It’s a great example. Something as simple as PPPK was made intentionally harder. If they made even the simplest thing harder on purpose, then can you even imagine how hard the harder stuff would be? Do you think I’m in the SF code every day making simple things a little harder for the hell of it? Also, it’s easier to make the point to the non-experts with a simple example than explaining evading throw escapes or senbon punches or something. Also, I didn’t happen to have read a quote from the game’s designer about evading throw escapes as I did on PPPK.
Again, can you even imagine if I announced that I made low short, short, short require stricter timing in SF? I mean, with a little practice you won’t miss it, so I figured I’d make it harder. That *is* an important example because it speaks to the mindset of the whole thing. (Obvious note: no, I did not make short, short, short harder.)
February 1st, 2008 at 11:39 pm
I just, JUST started to really try and play VF5…and it really does seem like it is painfully, ridiculously difficult to do what should be pathetically simple combos. I started playing as the Judo zombie, and the simplest combos really are intensely difficult to do. And yes, I would indeed say that this DOES hold back the game to some degree. I’m not going to say it’s a bad game, but it obviously has a learning curve that can only become so ridiculous through effort on the developer’s part.
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:30 am
I understand that at higher levels, fighting games tend towards Rock/Paper/Scissors with variable payoff, but that’s IMHO not really a big factor in what makes them interesting. Fighting games probably wouldn’t be much less interesting if the payoff on attack/throw/block were perfectly balanced.
Things that make for interesting games interesting are:
A large and subtle state space to explore
For example, the positioning stuff that Sirlin talks about, the timer, as well as the timer and the life bars. Even more than that, exploiting the engine and game mechanics to try to understand the rules, finding ways to exploit things, learning combos, learning how to recognize the ‘tells’ of various moves.
The presence of dominated actions
There are many, many things you can do in a fighting game that are foolish because there are other things you can do that will be better no matter what the opponent does. In the analogy, this might qualify as Rock/Paper/Scissors/Stupid.
The challenge of execution under pressure
There are clearly interface issues with computers, but many people enjoy the mechanical challenges of fighting games. There is a fine line, but there are plenty of long standing popular games that are basically all about mechanical execution like bowling or pool.
The entertainment factor
People like flashing lights and things that go boom, and that the machine grunts, groans, and screams like it’s having an orgasm - much the same way that slot machines do when they pay out. I’m probably dating myself, but I recall people watching the infamous flying toaster screen saver for minutes on end, or, for that matter, watching all of the animations in battle chess.
Social Interaction and Competition.
These are pretty fundamental human nature.
Variable payoff, can, of course, contribute to the size and subtlety of the game state.
February 2nd, 2008 at 2:07 am
NateTG, please try playing these games before you comment… Soul Calibur is highly criticized for doing exactly what you said, that is, not properly balancing the rock/paper/scissors aspect of attacking. As a result, tournament level play in the game usually consists of nothing but spamming Sophitia’s (I think?) 2B attack, which is faster and safer than nearly any other attack in the game, and starts a 75% damage combo, or something to that effect. Without these proper design elements, there’s no game left to play.
Sirlin: I am Sorias, if that explains some things. I’d also say go easy on Manjimaru… so far he’s tended to share very similar ideas with me on game design principles (which tends to mean he agrees with you as well), and he’s been able to express those ideas in writing better than me as well, in general. I believe he’s a native polish speaker, or something, and has never heard of you before outside of reading what sebo had to say in that thread.
February 2nd, 2008 at 2:55 am
Claytus, well ok. Maybe Manjimaru just went wrong in the few posts I read. I’ll take your word for it that he’s generally reasonable. And WOW, you’re Sorias! Ha, awesome.
spudly: So you’re starting to see the learning curve I was talking about in VF. I think the reason it’s like that is to kind of approximate a real martial art. Lots and lots of practice is required to execute properly, so you have to devote yourself to it and train. I kind of bought into this being cool for a while and I can see the appeal of it, especially in Japan, but now I just wish I could get to the yomi’ing. ;)
PoisonDagger: I really did like your point about intrinsic rewards earlier. I should have said that in the interview, in fact.
February 2nd, 2008 at 3:29 am
“anyone who thinks VF doesn’t have very high execution requirements has lost all perspective on what that even means.”
VF has some characters with hard to execute moves (akira, mostly), but it’s really unfair to call this a “requirement”. All you need in order to be deadly with characters like lau is single direction moves like 2p, 6p, 8p; simple throws (46P+G is hard? c’mon); and a single simple combo: P4PP (or, yes, PPPPPPPPPPPPPP2K, since you can mash the move). Compare this to the execution that is absolutely necessary to play basic shoto characters, or execute most bread & butter combos, in 2d games.
As for the defensive side of things, Itazan has proven that you can win tournaments with single throw escapes and yomi; not everyone does evade-quadruple-throw-escape-guard all day.
“bunch of disrespectful people”
There were definitely some disrespectful comments in that thread. There were also a bunch of people fairly respectfully saying “sirlins a smart guy and knows a lot, but he’s mistaken on this one.” VF players can be pretty anal; they probably perceive high-profile comments about the game that contain (possibly mistaken) facts as direspectful. You may be a VF head, or an ex-VF head, and are usually complimentary about the game, but it would still be to your advantage to fact-check.
“I just wish I could get to the yomi’ing.”
Lots of people (myself included) agree with you on this. Apparently AM2 does as well, which is why there are easy-mode versions of akira’s canned combos for VF5.
February 2nd, 2008 at 5:12 am
“NateTG, please try playing these games before you comment… Soul Calibur is highly criticized for doing exactly what you said, that is, not properly balancing the rock/paper/scissors aspect of attacking. As a result, tournament level play in the game usually consists of nothing but spamming Sophitia’s (I think?) 2B attack, which is faster and safer than nearly any other attack in the game, and starts a 75% damage combo, or something to that effect. Without these proper design elements, there’s no game left to play.”
– Claytus
While I’ll freely admit that I’m not a competitive-level fighting game player, and that I’m not familiar with Soul Calibur (or any of a litany of other fighting games), I don’t see how what you describe contradicts my posts in any way.
I posted that dominated, that is, bad, tactics are something that make a game more interesting because they increase the effect of skill on the game. The presence of a single dominant tactic (super-good) is clearly not a good thing.
In fact, if we look at this 2B attack in Soul Calibur in the context of throw/block/attack, it’s clearly an example of an *uneven* payoff. (Although I doubt it’s the sort of thing that Sirlin has in mind when he writes that.) The fact that it makes the game uncompetitive or unfun supports the assertion that uneven payoff isn’t necessarily a good thing.
February 2nd, 2008 at 5:42 am
Maybe I misread what you said. If you use perfectly balanced payoffs (i.e. orignal rock/paper/scissors), there’s an even worse problem. That is, in essence, that completely random attacks often becomes a winning strategy. Playing randomly should make you “guess right”, roughly as often as you “guess wrong”… but if payoffs are completely even, then you can leave the result of the game to luck, just randomly choose attacks, and you’ll end doing alright. Using uneven payoffs means random guesses should always lose to repeated use of the “strongest” option. It just actually enforces the need for strategic play. It’s equally as degenerate as my 2B example, it’s just the opposite extreme, options too balanced, rather than options not balanced enough.
February 2nd, 2008 at 7:20 am
Theres a difference between mirrored/symmetrical payoffs (same risk and reward for each option) and balanced/imbalanced payoff (balanced = high risk for high reward, low risk for low reward. imbalanced = low risk high reward options usually). Mirrored and imbalanced payoffs are both bad, but are distinct separate problems. Asymmetrical balanced payoffs are where the good stuff is :D
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:59 am
Sirlin said:
“Does GGXX have waaaaaaaay too much execution required, often for no reason? Answer: yes it does. No double standard there. Forcing me to do 3-frame FRC followed by a character specific combo every time I do Potemkin Buster just to be competitive is stupid. It serves no strategic purpose, it’s just a tax I have to pay in training mode to get to the real game.”
Quoted for truth!
RC is a great idea. It allows for diverse combos and guessing games since it can be performed on any frame, provided that an attack hits. An early RC on a Dragon Punch move, for example, creates a different situation than a late one. FRC, however, takes the brilliance of the RC and throws it out the window. They can only be executed on 1-3 particular frames of a select few moves. This does very little to improve combo diversity and guessing games (because we *know* that Gunflame’s FRC is on frame 14-15), and makes FRC yet another artificial barrier to the real game.
The only reason why I put up with such a filter is because GGXX is such a well balanced game with a diverse character set.
~Z
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:55 am
<<Maybe I misread what you said. If you use perfectly balanced payoffs (i.e. orignal rock/paper/scissors), there’s an even worse problem. That is, in essence, that completely random attacks often becomes a winning strategy. Playing randomly should make you “guess right”, roughly as often as you “guess wrong”…>>
Let’s say that we skew the payoffs on rock/paper/scissors are so that the appropriate ratio for picking each is now 1:1:2 instead of 1:1:1. There’s nothing special about choosing completely random at one rather than another. (Humans aren’t particularly good at being random in any case.)
If you can predict your opponent in any way other than the opponent will pick at random at the right ratio then you can exploit the opponent. If you don’t have such a prediction, the correct way to play is going to be break even in the long run.
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Yes, you are right. RPS is a simple game no matter how you adjust the numbers. There will always be an obvious and constant best strategy.
Having different strategies with different risks and rewards, even *unbalanced*risks and rewards, can be the basis for a good game but it’s probably a mistake to consider that RPS++ because RPS is *always* a bad game. It’s not interesting no matter how you tweak it.
February 2nd, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Manjimaru is actually finnish and a good friend of mine (and undoubtly one of the best Akira players in the Nordic). He has indeed read Sirlin’s articles and I like to point out that he and I among several others fighting game enthusiasts do respect you and your views on competitive gaming.
I think that one thing has been left out. From what I’ve heard (note: I started playing VF with VF4Evo and I don’t know much about earlier versions) is that VF has been made considerably easier as the series went on. As mentioned, even the infamous Akira has easier versions of some of his moves/combos. Of course the “true” versions are still there and practicing and using those in match, in my opinion, is one part of measuring a) player’s skill and b) the so called deepness of the game (so yeah, I think that some things in fighting games could and should be hard, what is considered hard and what is just plain stupid is debatable…) “Hard things” do add (some) deepness, because if you can do some things that your opponent can’t, you (might…) have an edge because you most likely can deal out more damage every time you get opportunity. Of course this is only a small part of the game (as Sirlin emphasizes) and “the opportunity to deal out damage” might not ever come if your opponent reads you better and understands other aspects of the game better. Then you just get beaten despite the supercombo you had in store…
So, I do think that basic things in Virtua Fighter are, indeed, simpler than in most other fighting games. Especially when compared to 2d-fighters (note: I also play 3rd Strike, though I suck…). Of course when things like multiple throw escapes with evades and guards and things such like come into play, it gets a little more difficult. But mostly things like that just require speed (and reading your opponent) more than timing, which actually applies to most combos as well due the buffering (input the combo as fast as possible and it usually comes out). VF5 has however introduced many combos that require strict timing (usually delay, can’t smash) and/or just frames but basic juggles are still there. I still stand behind my opinion that most 2d-fighters are indeed a way more difficult than VF, if we are just comparing the inputs needed to whoop your opponent…
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:15 pm
I don’t think that even the 3 frame FRCs in GG are pointlessly strict. They’re strict for good reason, and in a lot of cases, even if it WOULD let you cancel, it’d be either broken as hell or completely useless. But there’s a big difference between being able to do a Gunflame FRC into a Dustloop in GGXX and being able to do Goh’s PKG, 43P, 6P combo.
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
FRC’s are pointlessly strict. I understand that, in certain moves, the freedom to cancel them at any point would be bad to the game, but… Why having to press two buttons in an interval of 2-3 frames? They could simply make it so that, as long as you press those two buttons between the start of the move and the time that 2-3 frame window would end, the cancel occurs. That way, it can only happen in a certain moment, but is much easier to do.
February 3rd, 2008 at 1:06 am
As long as you’re making HD Remix the best it can possibly be, then I feel you’re fully justified in feeling good about yourself, online or off. I like your style.
February 3rd, 2008 at 4:13 am
Are they strict? Yes. Pointlessly strict? No.
Virtua Fighter has pointlessly strict execution demands, because essentially every single combo, no matter how seemingly simple, requires incredible practice to be able to pull off consistently. With GG and the FRCs, these aren’t simplistic moves that are getting pulled off. And regardless, even if we DO remove FRCs (or making them significantly easier), the simple fact is that there are still going to be seriously heavy execution requirements anyway. Even if you take out the FRC, how easy is it to time a sidewinder to get the clean hit repeatedly? What about Slayer’s air combos? Even if you take out the FRCs, everything else in the game still has serious execution requirements that are just as hard or harder than FRCs, which couldn’t be changed without making the game just plain silly.
February 3rd, 2008 at 4:23 am
Good point, Spud, there is indeed alot of precise timing in fighting games; I think Sirlin’s major gripe is the timing needed when there is no interactivity with the opponent (i.e. during a combo or during the animation of a move)
I wonder if Sirlin would like to see “safe jump ins” like those in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo also “automated” so they do not have to be timed.
February 3rd, 2008 at 6:43 am
“Virtua Fighter has pointlessly strict execution demands, because essentially every single combo, no matter how seemingly simple, requires incredible practice to be able to pull off consistently.”
This is just blatantly false, especially in VF5:
P6PK is a nearly universal combo ender for Brad.
6PP is a universal combo ender for Wolf’s knee and other crumples (asuming you just aren’t just abusing lag by low-throwing )
P4PP is a nearly universal combo ender for Lau (again, assuming you arent just mashing PPPPPPPPPPPPPP2K)
etc etc.
It’s not like there’s any huge damage difference between universal combos and character / stance specific combos anymore either - we’re talking 1% lifebar difference in many cases, not 10%
If you need “incredible practice” to hold 1 direction and push 3 buttons . . . again, this supposed execution difficulty completely pales by comparison with something as basic as an ST shoryuken.
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:15 am
@spunky: The issue with VF is that it requires strict timing for seemingly simple things, which Sirlin provided a quote by the designer, saying this was intentional. That’s the only gripe, and it’s due. Lots of fighting games have hard combos. Hey, that’s the game, and there aren’t any good ones where you can do 17 hits effortlessly (unless it’s some kind of super…). But VF has three hit combos that require a near-equal amount of practice to gain proficiency with.
@Cody: I have no idea wtf you’re talking about (I’m new to VF). But the fact is, when I picked up Goh and I was confronted with a long list of three hit combos that I couldn’t even get close to actually doing at will with many hours of practice, I would’ve been put off by the game if I wasn’t terribly persistent. It may have been a bit of an overstatement to say “essentially every single combo” but the fact is that it’s terribly difficult to do a lot of things that should practically be a given.
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:24 pm
————–
Sirlin said:
“My best content is a book I’m planning that’s much deeper than my last, but I’m getting side tracked by trying to learn programming. What a struggle and time sink.”
————–
Sirlin, you really need to get a whole lot of cash together so you can pay experts to do coding for you so you have time to focus on things that leverage your already well-developed strengths.
I really should type up that email I was going to send you since it covers this topic (although admittedly, I don’t have any answers, just observations to share and leads that may be helpful).
You’re doing a lot of great things, and IMO, you have potential for much more greatness, but you’re stuck in a medium (programming, game dev, etc) that isn’t a good fit for what you’re good at. Games are great, but they take a lot of time and money, and there are also lots of people (and systems run and/or created by those people) that have resistance to the type of ideas you’d like to express through games.
I’m also pleased to hear that you’re doing more planning for your book. I remember you talked about what it will be about a while back. I’m really interested to hear what you have to say on the topic.
Ever since reading your articles on writing and some of the books you recommended on writing I’ve come to appreciate your writing and clear thinking so much more. It’s a rarity these days (and yes, I know my writing here isn’t great, but I don’t have time to write better atm. I am actively working on improving my writing. Strunk and White really got to me in Elements and Style).
————–
Sirlin said:
“Regarding a way to edit posts, yeah I’ve wanted that for a long time. I tried to install Editor Monkey on here once and it just never really worked. I have it on the to do list of my technical helper once he finishes preparing a very trickily formatted article about Mario Galaxy and finishes preparing my book for the Amazon Kindle. Will try to get a post editor in here after that.”
————–
Wow, good move on getting your book on Kindle. It has oodles of potential and good thinking from what I’ve seen of it. Amazon win the future.
————–
Sirlin said:
“I’d think you guys would want a game that’s as deep and wonderful as VF, but that is even more accessible to new players. I don’t see how anyone could possibly disagree with that.”
————–
I’ve a friend who plays Alpha 2 on GGPO who is well aware of the mind games in fighting games, but prefers to play them for the “execution”. To clarify, he likes playing them to do tricky button combos and derives satisfaction from the execution of the moves and seeing them show on screen.
That thinking blows my mind and I think he’s playing a very different game to what everyone else is, but I think you’d be surprised to learn how many players play fighting games for things other then the excellent mind games they offer.
My advice: Ignore them, let them play other games, and you focus on doing all of the 1337 stuff you’re doing with fighting games. You have the right ideas, and we have other developers to cater to the execution whores.
I bet that last sentence is going to offend someone, heh.
————–
Sirlin said:
“PoisonDagger: I really did like your point about intrinsic rewards earlier. I should have said that in the interview, in fact.”
————–
Damnit, I want to read what PoisonDagger said. For some reason I can’t see his comments on this page, in both Firefox 2.0 and in Internet Explorer 6.
Sirlin, you may want to get your technical helper to take a look at the comments on your site. I’ve seen you reply to comments that don’t exist before, and I’ve also seen comments on certain pages that seem to be related to completely different articles. No idea why this’d be happening. But that’s just a minor point, really. I’d focus on more important stuff first.
- Bruce
PS. In reviewing what I wrote here, I seem to come across as very pro-Sirlin, heh. I just find it hard not to be like that when Sirlin’s doing such a damn good job at doing a lot of things right. It’s nice to be appreciated, and I think people would do well to appreciate those who do things well on a more regular basis. Alas, most people aren’t aware of what “something done well” looks like or would rather just criticise. In the words of Bear Grylls: “Not ideal.”
February 4th, 2008 at 12:06 am
Sorry for going somewhat off-topic, in regards to execution, do you feel sf4 should adopt the command changes you’re implementing in sthd? Why or why not? There’s currently a fairly heated debate on the subject at srk. Far as I’m concerned, all of your reasoning for the changes in st applies just as well to sf4.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:06 am
@SpudlyFF8fan - If you mean to say “Goh’s combos are hard for me”, then just say “Goh’s combos are hard for me”. Goh is basically a zombie version of Akira, and yes, some of his seemingly simple combos or moves are tricky for various reasons.
There’s no reason to make false statements; there are plenty of things in VF that any reasonable person will admit _are_ actually difficult to execute. Complain about them, sure.
But trying to claim that _all_ of the combos in the game, or the game’s basic attacks _in general_, are unusually difficult to execute compared to other fighting games is barking up the wrong tree. The basic game in VF is jab, low punch, elbow, and throw, all of which can executed with at most a single direction plus a button ( or two buttons pressed simultaneously if you aren’t using controller bindings ).
I’m one of those people who could never get consistent enough execution for anything other than charge characters in SF. You _must_ be able to srk on demand in order to play ryu or ken; you don’t have to SPoD or basara on demand in order to play akira or goh. VF is _easy_ to execute by comparison, that’s a big reason I play it.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:18 am
Regarding PoisonDagger’s comments not showing up, I just looked into this and I see no record of those comments anywhere in my backend. They must have been not only marked as spam but also purged, which is very strange. He often uses a different IP so I can’t even really whitelist his IP. I don’t know how to solve this, and that’s pretty frustrating that his comments are gone.
Bruce: first of all, your writing seems fine. I’m always able to understand it, it has substance, and is reasonably concise. I wish I could give you an edit button for your posts though, heh.
Also Bruce, I’ve been thinking about your comments on what I should be doing. On the one hand, I hopefully have a lot of years left, and there is still time to learn a new set of skills such as programming or at least scripting. I’ve been looking at the Unity game engine which looks good for indie stuff. I like what I’ve seen a lot, but when I looked at that scripting system, I had trouble understanding it. So then I studied javascript just barely, and then C# a fair amount, and I’m at least able to read those Unity scripts better now.
I’ve noticed other people don’t have the same reaction as me, but when I see other people’s success I often feel pretty miserable that I wasn’t able to do whatever they did. Indie games like Flow or Darwinia or Puzzle Pirates put a lot of the regular game industry to shame. And most especially, the game called Passage is like a death blow. When I see that, I have to wonder why I didn’t do something like that already. It’s not even technically hard, yet it has a lot of value. So in the spirit of expanding one’ skills, I figured I should (finally) try to learn this stuff myself.
It’s really similar to me in those English classes all those years ago. I hated those classes and never really wrote anything worthwhile in any of them apparently, but I learned how to write somewhere along the way, so now I can use that skill. And now I’m barely learning scripting stuff which is about as painful as the English classes were, but maybe someday in the future I could just make something once the craft part comes easier.
On the other hand, the reason I stopped my research for my next book is because of this. (And Bruce, I can guarantee you will like that book.) Admittedly the path to writing a book is much, much shorter than the path of implementing a game for me (even though writing is damn hard). It would be nice to oversee others doing what I think we should be doing at a game company, but I’ve said that one too many years now. I even turned down a job as creative director of a publisher recently, if you can believe that, because it looked like there’d be too much emphasis on very short dev cycles rather than quality games, so it called into question (for me) the entire point of doing the job.
So yeah, owning a game company would be great. Someone hook me up with that. In the meantime I’ll half write a book and half learn scripting so that I’ll finish neither task. Sound good? Ha!
And I will release this damned Yomi card game someday even if it kills me.
–Sirlin
February 4th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Why not make friends with people who can program, and come up with a project that is attractive to them? (Or at least, doesn’t bankrupt them)
Learning new skills later in life is cool and noble but getting to the stage where you can program something like Puzzle Pirates is going to take years.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Since there’s talk of execution, I really like the concept of making the moves easier to perform in SSF2T:HD, just because I know it will help me convince a lot of friends who don’t normally play fighters to try it out. Fighters have gotten to a point where picking one up, especially in the midst of players who are more experienced, is a very intimidating prospect. Easing a little bit is nice, just to make the genre as a whole less alienating (which in turn gives the communities more support because they seem approachable).
There is some context to this, however. While the American market as a whole will find this welcoming, I hardly think developers for a game like Guilty Gear will put this into practice if their market doesn’t mind learning their FRC’s. (Before I continue.. no, I will not turn this into a Japanese vs. American player thing… I am comparing markets.) I’m hoping to get your thoughts from this perspective, Sirlin. Even though I’m not Japanese myself, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable assumption that their players find a lot of pride in being able to execute as they do, and remember their character-specific combos. Discovering crazier links with Slayer, or even stupider Potemkin combos, or new Eddie setups may be a part of their method of engaging the game and immersing themselves as players.
Now I know you like this series a lot, and I do as well. If anything, I’d like to see GGAC get better exposure here in NorCal. But I want to know if you think the features like FRC’s and whatever individual method each character has to deal tons of damage, while appealing to its core group, is alienating some new players that might otherwise pick up GG? If so, what would you do if you were in the position of the Japanese designers? And is there a way that the American players can be motivated into “stepping up their game” in a non-intimidating fashion?
February 4th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Josh: I wouldn’t give 2 seconds thought to revamping FRCs if I were in charge. You know I think execution for the sake of it is stupid. Guilty Gear, like Street Fighter, would still be a great game if the hard-for-hard’s sake stuff was all toned down. Listening too closely to the core group just leads to a smaller and smaller market. The Resident Evil series had this problem and reinventing it with RE4 was what they had to do. In an interview, the designer even says that they deliberately went against their core fans’ requests because listening to them would lead to fewer and fewer fans each version (even though the remaining fans would be happy).
James M: I agree with everything you said, yes that would be logical. But considering I never managed to make it work after a dozen of tries over the years, it’s hard to believe that the “just get some programmer friends to work on something and finish it” plan is going to really pan out. I tried it with an adventure game, like 3 puzzle games, and two card games (one of which still has hope) and I don’t have much to show for it other than my design documents.
Add to that the things I designed that didn’t get made at various companies I worked at and you have two platform games, a flying shooter, a top down shooter, two puzzle games, and *four* fighting games. Note to wise guys: nothing on that last list was axed due to anything design related, it’s always some high-level business thing or company losing funding or other thing out of no where like that. But in any case, it’s hard to get anything done.
February 5th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Sirlin, as an ex-VF head myself, I was shocked to hear Yu Suzuki saying “Lau is a skill character”, but it’s totally true whether or not Lau can actually do PPPPPPK. Like all 3D fighters, VF has some characters with arbitrarily high execution requirements, in an attempt to recapture the SF2 “Wow you can combo into shoryuken!” magic.
There’s an important distinction here between casual difficulty and hardcore difficulty that I think is causing this misunderstanding. For casual players, VF is pretty easy. I know one lady who played for 20 hours without knowing any combos, smacking people around purely on direction+button mixups. For hardcore players, VF is right up there with Guilty Gear or MvC2 in terms of punishing the player. 3 frames is simply too small of a window to make players do anything on a regular basis, unless they are receiving a lot of help (like a bar being slowly filled). The emphasis on diagonals ruins anyone playing on a modern controller.
I applaud your lower-execution philosophy in STHD, and I wish every game would implement it across the board. Heck, even aiming is a more fulfilling skill than practicing some asinine combo!
February 5th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Since my earlier comment got deleted, I decided to rewrite the whole thing. I think most of it is word for word, somehow:
I thought that the videogamer.com interview was really good. The best part was about why SF is relevant in the current generation of gaming.
I think the problem of prevalent “time>skill” in games can be attributed to gamers not valuing intrinsic motivation. When I first started playing Counter-Strike, I didn’t play to get good scores or whatnot. I played to improve and to enjoy any accomplishments I made. I didn’t care if I got killed by the same guy 15 times, as long as I could consistently get better at killing him. Everybody else on public servers play to maintain their meaningless kill/death ratios (scores are irrelevant unless it’s two organized teams against each other), and they get all upset when they die a few times. Of course, the gaming media scores games based on extrinsic goals, even when they displace the even-more-valuable intrinsic motivations for playing competitive games.
Even as a competitive CS player, I 100% agree with your views on why 1v1 competition is valuable. I’m personally always afraid of “riding the roster” on my team - even when everyone thinks I’m pulling my weight, I have my own intrinsic motivations for embarking on a self-improvement path. Whenever I’m not practicing with the team, I train on my own.
February 5th, 2008 at 3:40 am
You can certainly write something that’s completely incorrect without a million and a half spelling errors, Cody, but reading comprehension doesn’t seem to be one of your strong suits. I already said that I made an overstatement (often referred to a literary technique called “hyperbole”) when I said that EVERY combo in VF is ridiculously difficult to do…but that still doesn’t change the fact that there are still a long list of things in VF that are ridiculously difficult to do, for no particular reason. And you simply can’t deny that.
February 5th, 2008 at 3:56 am
I wasn’t gonna say anything before, spud, but I think you’re going a little too far. Originally you were complaining about Goh, who’s known as a strong jabbing character, with very few combos. You can almost exclusively use “PP” when you launch people, and still do pretty well… there’s just some slightly stronger combos that are possible, but are specific to which launcher you used, and which character you’re fighting. This isn’t like GG where the difference between a 3-hit and a 17-hit combo is so dramatic that someone who knows the later will always beat someone only using the former just due to attrition.
Also, what are the “long list” of things that are “ridiculously difficult”. The most difficult thing is probably hit throws, which I think give a longer execution window than your average FRC, and always correspond to the moment when your attack hits your opponent, not some arbitrary other time that has to be learned on a move specific basis.
Yeah, there’s a couple traditional difficult moves, SPoD, 1-frame knee… but AM2 has gone out of there way to make those moves completely unnecessary compared to extremely easy to perform moves. Youhou is Akira’s new uppercut, and almost completely replaces the 1-frame knee. And SPoD was nerfed so hard that even the people who don’t find the execution difficult almost never use it.
February 5th, 2008 at 5:33 am
Hey Sirlin, I just wanted to let you know that if you really want to learn how to program, then I think you made a good choice by starting with C#. It allows you to use most of the modern paradigms in programming, and yet it’s quite a bit quicker and easier to work with than C++. It’s also capable enough for you to create a production-quality game for Windows. I haven’t kept up with the XNA development on the 360, but I assume that it will continue to become more practical there as well. So, if I were you, I’d definitely stick with C# until there’s a really a good reason to switch.
When I first started in this industry I was an artist. And like you, after several years, I became tired of being reliant on others to make things happen. It became an exercise in frustration trying to get the programmers to implement various features in the games I was working on. So I decided to learn programming. And today, I’m the Technical Director at a small studio.
You’re a bright guy. And if you really want to learn this skill, then I’m sure you can. I will warn you though, it will take a lot of effort. Like anything in life, there is a distinct difference from dabbling in something and becoming proficient at it. But if you stick with it, you’ll find that it’s a fun and exciting journey!
If you ever have any questions or want some advice on this topic, feel free to give me a shout. I’d be happy to oblige ;)
February 5th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Sweet Johnny V, thanks. C# seems nice. After a bit of it, I went back to trying things in the Unity engine, which I like, but it’s still pretty hard to get it to do what I want. I can sort of imagine someday being able to prototype things in it. Maybe I will ask you very dumb questions sometime. Also, random thing, just wanted you to know that in an audio interview I once said you made some dumb comment (though didn’t really know it was you at the time) and since then you made up for it like 100x over with many good comments.
But regarding programming, I predict failure for myself, lol. Bruce has a good point that it’s a shorter road for me to create value some other way. It is pretty painful seeing my stack of research books that I’ve already read in preparation for my next book and knowing that I don’t have time to be learning new crafts if I’m going to really write it. For some reason studying coding takes a lot of mental effort for me, while researching things like system design or psychology come automatically. I just naturally tend to do that while sitting around. Hmm.
February 5th, 2008 at 9:35 am
That’s not so surprising as you might think, Sirlin. Programming languages are completely meaningless, there’s no real world application the way you find in something like phsychology. Maybe you don’t need more to read, but here’s a pretty interesting article on the way students tend to deal with learning programming concepts:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000635.html
February 5th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Sirlin, feel free to ask any questions you want. I’d be happy to help ya out. As far as whether you’ll stick with it or not, I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Just have some fun with it and see where it takes you. Even if you do only end up dabbling with it, I think you’ll find that just knowing a bit will help you deal with other programmers better.
And don’t worry about the audio interview comment. That whole thing was kinda funny, actually. At any rate, I’m happy to hear that I don’t always come off like an idiot :)
February 5th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I’ve been working on my own side project on and off for years:
http://margalis.f13.net/ (Horribly out of date)
It’s very hard to come home from programming all day and program more for fun. Which explains why I’ve been at it for a couple of years and have made like 3 months of progress…
I tried to choose a project that had minimal art requirements but art is still a giant pain in the ass. Earlier I made a fighting game engine that was pretty robust but the art requirements for fighting games are far too much. Now I’m just stealing artwork until I have a better plan.
February 5th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Wow interesting. Similar to PoxNora at all?
February 5th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
That looks awesome, James M. I’m in a similar situation in regards to wanting to start some XNA projects, but it’s really hard to come home from work and do anything productive. Of course, I don’t have anything nearly that cool to show off;;
February 5th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
C# is a good choice. Learning Javascript is basically useless if you’re not doing web development.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:32 am
“I tried to choose a project that had minimal art requirements but art is still a giant pain in the ass. Earlier I made a fighting game engine that was pretty robust but the art requirements for fighting games are far too much. Now I’m just stealing artwork until I have a better plan.”
As the quality of computer graphics has improved, graphics and music have become a progressively larger part of computer game projects. If you look at a franchise like Wing Commander, the increase in budget is basically for improving the non-interactive parts of the game. (I’m sure the game engine has seen re-writes, but it’s basically the same game.)
February 6th, 2008 at 5:22 am
<QR>
Man, your comment about the boardgame thread was pretty spot on. So much jumping to conclusions. Good (for me) to see that this isn’t limited to videogame forums…
February 6th, 2008 at 7:37 am
It is kind of similar to PoxNora, although moving away from that. It started out pretty close to that style of game, where you deploy units one at a time. However I’m moving more towards having them all out at the start as in traditional table-top games.
One thing I don’t like about PoxNora is that there is no reason to play faction-based armies other than a totally artificial system that has hard cutoffs — it’s not organic at all. There are some magic numbers (10 and 20 I think) that give certain bonuses but playing 15 or 10 of the same faction is exactly the same.
The Magic resource system is great in that it naturally encourages you to play single-color while allowing you to play multi-colors. But it is very difficult for me to copy that without it feeling like an obvious Magic ripoff. (The fact that I’m stealing their artwork doesn’t help)
My game is shaping up to be more like Chess or Statego, where positioning and geometry play a big role.
Hopefully it will end up being fairly unique feeling.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I’d just like to comment on the Guilty Gear execution thing as opposed to other games. While I’d agree about FRCs being silly because of their tight window, I wouldn’t say that Guilty Gear has a lot of arbitrary execution requirements… I mean, certainly it has a very high one, but I wouldn’t call it arbitrary.
Execution difficulty is an emergent property of Guilty Gear. Most stuff in the game, besides FRCs and Slash back, system wise, have a fairly generous window. Moves, gatlings, air combos, all the basic stuff is pretty easy. Even most silly motions have been trimmed down — besides gamma ray, but who cares about that?
Anyways, when you stack all the systems in the game that make it interesting, you of course generate a wide variety of possible uses. With that in mind, some of the best uses are going to naturally end up in the more difficult end of the spectrum as they are the tactics that generally exploit the engine the most. There seems to be a very real and generally consistent execution ceiling that defines the level of tactics used in any fighter. Basically whatever best option exists under that ceiling is whatever becomes the Bread and Butter combos. While I’m sure Arc System Works has a reasonable idea what combos and tactics will arise at first, I honestly doubt them or any one else knows what will come later.
Lets look at the P.Buster combo. I’m with you in that I hate that thing… But of making it easier could possibly introduce more execution heavy things. Lets say the window was made more generous. Now lets say while it’s much easier to slap em with 2S -> Heat, it becomes possible to 5H -> Heat, which does more damage. So the window is widened again. Now 6HS -> Heat is possible. So they say ‘fuck it’ and prorate the damage so it all comes out fair in the end.
And when thats all said and done, someone finds a different combo thats hard to execute off PB FRC for 20 more damage that completely negates all the easing they did on execution… And people will go for the 20 points more of damage simply because it’s still under that execution ceiling that still exists.
Sure, you could say… just screw it and make PB have a force break followup, but now you negate all the possible situational variables that could theoretically go along with it. If you imply this mentality to all difficult situations, then you HAVE dumbed the game down, as there is now less tactical options to explore in the game. Maybe now some theoretical wall combo that make P-Buster deadly in the corner is gone, thusly reducing Potemkins desire to work his opponent there… Or now there isn’t a choice between more damage and a knock down.
It is a tax though. I think that was an execellent way to describe it. Execution is the natural cost of a complex system like that in a fighting game. This is different then say, Street Fighter 2, where the game has been explored to the extreme and the system is simple enough to make it managable to reduce execution requirements and watch what cascading effects it might have. That said, you sound like you’re having a hell of a time balancing some stuff in SF:HDR (though I trust it’ll come out nicely in the end). Just think about what the mess the Arc Systemworks has to deal with during each revision.
(Hope this wasn’t too incohoerent)
February 6th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Kayin, yeah GGXX’s “arbitrary” execution difficulty is mostly on FRCs. Most of the other difficulty is from taking advantage of all the various systems. Better than arbitrary difficulty, but either way, I can’t do Millia’s basic combos so I can’t play her.
I think you’re a little off on the Potemkin Buster thing. Imagine that the window to FRC it opens way ahead of time. You could potentially have over an entire second to input th FRC and it would come out automatically at the proper time. Yeah that would feel weird, but I’m illustrating the point that there is one possible solution where strategy is EXACTLY the same yet execution was easier. Another bs ggxx thing is Slayer in AC. So to even do a basic combo I have to link stuff like kick -> link to low kick -> link to ducking HS, and so on. That is arbitrary. It could just as well have chained and the experts wouldn’t care because they link it everytime anyway, but I get to miss combos unless I spend all day in training mode. Even worse is that kick -> mappa works in ggxx slash, but doesn’t in AC…unless you input it in a tricky, complicated way. Nice!
SFHD is an ongoing puzzle, except I never know for sure if I put the pieces together correctly. I can only make a guess based on experience that I have.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I forgot all about Slayer. While he’s massively fun, the design philosophy that went into this iteration was terrible. I think he also acts as a good piece of evidence that difficult execution does not balance out more options.
As for the P-Buster combo, I was talking about the combo in general. Not just the FRC but the drumming in of 2S with it or whatever more annoying character spefici combos exist. I have always had an issue with the timing required for FRCs and have had the same thought my self as to making it easier. I wish they experimented with that for the Wii version, instead of just giving an option to make the windows huge… Then again, those huge windows are fun to mess around with…
February 6th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
I had something important to say, but I’ll just write it off by saying this:
Sirlin, you self-congratulatory bastard.
———
For some reason studying coding takes a lot of mental effort for me, while researching things like system design or psychology come automatically. I just naturally tend to do that while sitting around. Hmm.
———
Hey, that sounds like me.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
(Also, Rob Howard has a NEW blog.) http://www.therobzone.com/
February 6th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
“For some reason studying coding takes a lot of mental effort for me, while researching things like system design or psychology come automatically. I just naturally tend to do that while sitting around.”
Programming is often a preposterous (or postpreperous) activity. Generally, the way it works is that there is a desired behavior which is (relatively speaking) big and complicated that needs to be cut up into little steps which are the instructions that the program represents. This means that you often have to have the big and small pictures in mind at the same time. As programs get larger this progressively turns into more and more of an issue, and can be spectacularly sticky when dealing with legacy code.
When you look at games, even if the game typically shows large-scale emergent behavior, most of the moves are locally sensible. (If you look at chess, for example, even at master level play, there aren’t really that many deep moves.)
February 7th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Have you guys said anything about the possibility of patching SF:HD down the road?
So far the changes you are making are very similar to the ones I have been suggesting, to the point where were I paranoid I would be convinced you are stealing my ideas :) But it seems inevitable that something will be screwed up, not because you OMG SUXXORS but because it’s hard to get those sorts of changes right.
February 7th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Double Tag on the Slayer nonsense. What happened to all my cool gatlings?
JamesM…
You should head on over to http://www.conceptart.org. That place is FLOODED with artistic talent. I recently went to a convention held by them and everyone there is dying to work on ANYTHING. Even visiting the forums will make that apparent. While I was there I tried to spread the word that programmers, like artists, are dying to make games, they just cant produce the art. I’ll bet you can get a lot of hits sooner than you think with eager individuals. Smart ones would post anyway–the chance to work with structure and goals is great experience and the portfolio bolstering is invaluable as well. I’d offer, but I’m involved in my own crazy schemes. Looks great and good luck!
February 8th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Thanks for the head’s up, I’m impressed by the quality of work there.
February 9th, 2008 at 6:47 am
I know this is kinda out of no where, but I was wondering if there was a chance that Dan would make it into the HD remix roster?
I’m pretty sure he wont, but I’d like to see him as a secret character or something.
February 10th, 2008 at 1:46 am
No. Though it’d be neat if UDON put him in the background of a stage…
February 10th, 2008 at 3:02 am
He called fighters “beat-em-ups”, aaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
February 10th, 2008 at 3:08 am
That got on my nerves too… thankfully, Sirlin put him in his place on that one.
February 14th, 2008 at 5:33 am
ha… didn’t expect you to respond to my article two years later! At
any rate, I was trying to discuss a separate issue - whether we should
change a game if it’s “teaching the wrong lesson” - so I’m sure I
didn’t do a good job of framing my arguments. I don’t really care much
about whether WoW has a solo- or group-focused or some hybrid of the
two. (Ironically, I’ve always believed that WoW’s biggest asset was
that it IS solo-friendly, but that’s only really a relative position
compared with other MMO’s.)
Concerning your original article, I think Raph is largely right that
games are about learning, but that doesn’t mean necessarily that its
learning that would then be applied to the real world. The pure experience
of discovery, experimentation, and mastery is what makes games fun, but
it is - essentially - practice learning.
btw, glad to hear you’re learning to program! Wish it was more
expected for game designers…
February 14th, 2008 at 5:47 am
Soren, good to hear from you.
Games end up “teaching” some things whether they want to or not by getting certain ideas into our unconscious. For example, a random sampling of Street Fighter players would probably find the statement “if you spend a lot of time working for something, you are entitled to get it, while people who spend less time are not entitled” to be very, very objectionable. A random sampling of WoW players would probably agree with the statement though. The game has managed get ideas like that into people’s heads (not with malicious intent or anything). It’s just that after spending some amount of time immersed in the ruleset of a game like WoW, ideas like that are more likely to become acceptable to you.
I think my original point still stands on that. Again, not like anyone is setting out to “teach wrong things,” but different games certainly produce different mindsets in their players. Or at least I see no way around that conclusion after investigating so many competitive gaming communities and comparing them to MMO communities. Yeah it could be self-selecting going on, but that to me seems less of a factor than the consequences of the game rules themselves.
–Sirlin
February 14th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Javascript isn’t useless to learn for games because ActionScript is not much different.
Really, I think Flash (which uses ActionScript) is the easiest way to make games. The language is pretty easy to use, and there are plenty of example apps that come with Flash (including games) and the help files are mostly useful. The environment you’d be working with (Flash) to make the game is harder to learn than the language itself in my opinion.
Then the next easiest language to use would be maybe Java, but there’s a huge difference in difficulty between the two. It feels more like a “real” language, and it requires you to use an object oriented design, which may be more complicated than necessary for a beginner. It is nicer though because it’s not completely interpreted, it does go through a compiler, which means it’s a little bit easier to debug. I seem to remember Flash just skipping lines it didn’t understand.
C/C++ (and maybe C#? never used it) are probably the hardest to use. I haven’t even attempted graphics beyond the Windows API in those languages though, so I don’t know for sure, but I’d assume OpenGL and DirectX are more difficult than using the Windows API, which is to say, very difficult for a beginner. The great thing about these languages is that they’re faster, and you can even write at the assembly level if need be, which is probably something you’re not that worried about.
I’ve never used anything else to make games except VB, which has no advantages over the other languages I listed, at least for games.
I’ve never heard of the Unity thing Sirlin mentioned. Also, if I’m just rehashing what someone else just said, sorry. I didn’t feel like reading through every comment.
February 16th, 2008 at 7:36 am
yeah, there’s no doubt that games teach us things at a very fundamental level, and I’m glad that you talked in your article about how the lessons are in the mechanics and not on the surface (like with GTA). The tricky question is where do we go from there? If I feel like a game I designed is fun but teaches the “wrong” lesson, should I change the game? If I got my game into such a situation, then did I betray myself in my own design? Should teaching the “right” lesson be a starting point for a game design, or simply a nice by-product of having a clear vision? I think every designer will feel a disconnect like this at some point (especially MMO designers), butI don’t think we really know how we are supposed to answer those questions yet.
hope that was coherent… :)
February 16th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Soren, you remind me of a comment by Will Wright. One year when he was working on The Sims Online, he mentioned something resembling: “What would success look like for this game? The common answer is it happens if we get a whole lot of people to spend a whole lot of time in our game. Some people are going to have their lives sucked away into this though, and I don’t know how I feel about that.”
By his facial expression, I took it to mean that he literally did not know how he felt. Simultaneously good and bad, I think he meant.
Should you change the game if it “teaches the wrong lessons”? Hard to go down that road, because somebody will claim some bad lessons no matter *what* you make. If you subscribe to my theory that a fair competitive game teaches good things, then I guess you wouldn’t have to think too hard about that while making, say, Starcraft. You’d just impart your sensibilities of fairness, of equal-chances-for-all, of game balance, and so forth, and hope the good stuff falls out of it, as you said.
I can picture coming at it the other way, though. In something like an MMO’s case, it’s pretty foreseeable that it will teach “time = entitlement,” and at day 1 of the design, I can imagine at least heading that off at the pass with “if we’re going to keep that time = entitlement stuff because that’s how MMOs work, let’s at least also allow merit = entitlement in there somewhere, too.”
That was a basic premise of Second Life, for example, where creating interesting in-game items rewards you, so living in that world naturally “teaches” people about creating value, rather than purely investing time. If this were well-considered, I don’t think you’d end up with some art-house thing no one would really buy as possibly implied by your 2-year-old comment. ;) You’d instead maybe end up with a lot of awesome player-created dungeons (players creating value, honoring and looking up to those who contribute value) or something, and the same great game mechanics and social aspects that made the current game popular.
To go a little more art-house on you, I’ve long wanted to create a game just barely similar to Oblivion, but with a salient theme of civil rights vs. security. In one town, guards are in your face, there’s the equivalent of warantless wiretaps, and all the other civil rights violations that happen in the name of security. Another town is fanatical about civil rights, but that stance has drawbacks too. The game isn’t *about* that entirely though. The moment to moment gameplay can involve fighting monsters, talking to NPCs, picking locks, and various other things that are close to a game like Oblivion, but experiencing the consequences of high civil rights vs high security will, I think, make it into people’s unconsciousness–into their bones. Moment-to-moment, you’re doing a mission to kill an evil dwarf, or whatever trite thing, yet having to navigate through George Bush town to get some information first will “teach” you something, whether you realize it or not.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you ruin a pitch completely by typing something off the top of your head rather than carefully explaining it. I hope you kind of get the point though.