What is this virtual card game that I've been working on forever? Now you can find out for yourself here. It's deceptively simple in that you only make about two clicks per turn: first choose your fighting range, then choose amongst attack / inercept / rest / switch characters. And yet I think you'll find it tests the interesting skills of yomi (reading the mind of the opponent) and valuation (judging the relative value of moves in a game).

I take full responsibility for how good or bad the game balance is. ;) Oh, and I already know you think that Tafari is too good and that the random number generator is broken. Neither is true and everyone says both of those things when they start.

You can discuss the game on my forums, if you like.
Good luck!
--Sirlin

Here's a video that Cigarbob recorded of some casual play in the Street Fighter HD Remix beta. You can see me play starting at 3:15. I play Ryu here and demonstrate the use of the fake fireball several times (it has other uses too, but this is just a sample).

I forgo several crossup oppertunities in this vid, partly because we were distracted with talking partly because CigarBob has crazy reversal abilities. In later matches I went for the crossups more, but whatever. At some point I did a crazy dragon punch vs his sweep and declared the maneuver "old-school only."
Enjoy.
--Sirlin

In a surprise, hardest-working-man-in-game-design move, I have three betas of three different games that I'm lead designer of happening on three consecutive days:

Monday: Kongai, 1.8 balance patch, closed beta
Tuesday: Yomi: Fighting Card Game, semi-closed beta for shoryuken.com members
Wednesday: Street Fighter HD Remix, open beta

Yomi: Fighting Card game is a fixed-deck card game using modified poker cards that simulates the mind-games that go on during fighting games. I started this as a side project three years ago. Kongai virtual card game is the main site-wide game at Kongregate.com and is also an exploration of "reading the mind of the opponent." I started the design of this game about 2 years ago. Street Fighter HD Remix is an update to the 14-year-old classic, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. It has all sorts of features, but most importantly, I completely rebalanced the game and I hope it will hold up under the intense pressure of tournament play. I started the balancing process about a year ago.

Kongai: 20 characters
Yomi: 18 decks (18 characters)
Street Fighter HD Remix: 17 characters

That's 55 characters total, and tens of thousands of variables that have to be set a certain way to make sure things are balanced for competitive play--and fun!. (Maybe hundreds of thousands if you really count everything in Street Fighter.) It's a lot to balance! Especially all at once.

If you're not in the closed beta for Kongai, you'll get your chance to play it soon anyway. The ...

Here's an amusing post on gameriot by Vir that mentions me. The comments are entertaining too. It's about the balance in World of Warcraft arenas, and making the game into an e-sport.

For the record, I'm available but I don't think Blizzard will call. ;) For one, they might say that fighting game balance doesn't apply to their game, and that I don't know their game. Shrug. The same concepts seem to apply to Puzzle Fighter, Street Fighter, Kongai, Yomi card game, and the other projects I can't tell you about. Balance is balance and the same issues show over and over.

And second, I don't think my article two years ago won me any points there. Even though much of what I complained about has indeed been acknowledged and addressed, I don't think my tone went over well.

Anyway, thanks Vir.

--Sirlin

One of the only visual arts sessions I ever went to at the Game Developer's Conference was one years ago given by Larry Ahern, the art lead on the Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3). He was great and explained that he chose 2D on purpose of 3D, that he undertook the herculean task of doing the line art for ALL the backgrounds in the entire game himself for consistency's sake, and that following the rules of classical composition guaranteed he would at least end up with things that "didn't totally suck."

And now, gamasutra interviewed Larry about his company. It sure sounds a lot like what Grassroots Gamemaster talks about. The people in Larry's circle are all contractors who come together for projects but don't all work in the same "factory." I'm getting used to the idea.

Meanwhile Jenova Chen is doing his own thing in this other interview. I will officially state that Jenova Chen has beaten me. He really is making things of his choosing, things that the rest of the industry isn't so good at making. Most of all, he really seems to lead a band of programmers and developers to implement his vision. Bravo, Jenova Chen.

--Sirlin

The fine folks at GameCyte did cut a second part of my interview after all. This one touches on the more abstract concepts of balancing games. Topics include symmetric vs. asymmetric games, hardcore vs casual balance, and depth vs. fairness.

Maybe I should have a weekly show or something?

--Sirlin

The fine folks at GameCyte interviewed me about Street Fighter HD Remix and a bit about my background. I discuss how difficult it was winning over hearts and minds on this project, but now we're going strong, I think.

GameCyte also asked a lot of questions about game balancing in general, what it actually means, how it's done, and how it differs in different types of games. Those didn't make it into the final cut, but maybe they'll create a part 2 out of all the footage. In any case, enjoy!
--Sirlin

World of Warcraft has made so many positive steps since I wrote the single most read article ever on gamasutra.com (literally). Most of my concerns in that article have been addressed. Back then, the PvP's honor system was so grueling that it actually endangered players' health. These days, you can create a level 70 character with any gear you want in fair competitive tournament setting. Impressive. Back then, "raid or die" with 40 people was the overriding design ethos. Today, there are no more 40-person raids and even the 25-person raids can all be done in 10-man versions.

You can hear some information about this in this video (which incidentally has less than a third of the views of my interview on the same site, sorry for the uncalled-for cheap shot).

Anyway, I just couldn't let this video go. I don't get why World of Warcraft has taken so many steps towards being reasonable and yet can't take the last, logical few. The key point here is that 10-man raids will get worse rewards (one tier lower in WoW-speak) than the 25-man versions of the same dungeons. Kaplan (lead designer) explains that 25-man raids are much harder to coordinate, have more logistics to worry about, and are more work. No argument there, I think we all agree with that. But this is the *reason* that they need to have better rewards, he says. That sounds a ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

Guile is a solid mid-tier character in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST), but it takes quite a bit of player-skill for him to fulfill that potential. As a mid-tier character, he’s eligible for a few upgrades, especially in his bad matchups. More than that, he’s eligible for some fun.

Crazy New Flash Kick
Guile’s roundhouse flash kick goes straight up very high in ST, and has no use I’m aware of. I’ve never seen a good US or Japanese Guile player use it in a real match, so it’s a ripe place for some new spice. Instead of traveling straight up, it now travels very far forward and diagonally up just a bit.

Guile players salivate at this newfound range, but it comes with a price. Great flash kicks come with great recovery. If blocked, it’s the most vulnerable move in the game. A fierce Dragon Punch is pretty vulnerable if you block it too, but Guile’s roundhouse flash kick leaves him pushed right up against you so that it’s very easy to time a combo as he recovers.

The new flash kick means you can’t jump straight up and down at mid-range versus him anymore. He can use it as an escape if you try to cross him up. He can use it to trade or even clean hit Dhalsim’s Yoga Fire and Sagat’s Low Tiger at mid-range. He can ...

Here's an interview on gamasutra with Jim Greer (co-founder of Kongregate.com) and myself. As usual, I will surprise and amaze you with an unusual level of honesty about what's really going on. There are cheers and jeers and some of my methods revealed. A choice quote from Jim mentions my "genius for balancing" and the interviewer himself refers to me as "renowned game designer and balancer, David Sirlin." Ha.

Now that that's out of my system, check out Kongregate.com. Jim and his crew are highly intelligent, highly motivated, and foster an environment where everyone contributes ideas and the best ones rise to the top. Kongregate is worth your look. The site-wide metagame called Kongai is where I come in, and I hope that's worth your look too, once it's out of beta.

--Sirlin

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

T.Hawk has been one of the hardest characters to balance (along with Fei Long and Honda). On the one hand, he has an extremely damaging command throw, a great Dragon Punch-type move, and an aerial dive. These moves could conspire to make him terrifying, so I understand why the original SF2 developers were so careful to keep him check. Hit the jump to get the full story…

Now that we have the benefit of 14 years of SSF2T history to look at, we know that they kept him a little too much in check (he’s considered a bottom tier character), but their decisions at the time are certainly understandable.

The thing that makes him especially hard to balance now is his all-or-nothing game plan. The “nothing” part happens when you spend the entire round trying to get in on your opponent and never do. I’d like to explain the “all” part for the uninitiated though. His devastating sequence is:

Safe jump jab -> low jab -> button-up command throw -> repeat.

That’s a lot of jargon, so let’s sort it out. I covered the concept of safe jumps in the advanced section of my SSF2T tutorial videos. The idea is that you jump at your knocked-down opponent as he gets up. You time your jump so that you land just a couple frames after the opponent is completely standing up. ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

A lot of time has passed since I wrote the first parts of this series about the balance changes in Street Fighter: HD Remix (remember, I wrote them many weeks before they were posted). Some things have changed since then, so here are the updates.

Ryu
No change. He still just has the fake fireball, and it’s great. It tricks people like Honda into jumping at the wrong times and Zangief into doing lariat at the wrong times. He can also use it to pressure with stuff like low roundhouse, cancel into fake fireball, walk up throw.

Ken
I have a “watch list” of things that might be too good. (hit the jump to read more!)

Things are usually on this list because I think they might have some use I’m just not aware of yet, so I want to keep an eye how players use them. Ken’s new long-distance roundhouse Hurricane Kick was one of these things. Despite the worries of many players, this move was actually fine in all the usual uses of trying to hit someone who’s kind of far away. The problem is that after Ken’s knee bash mixup, he can threaten to do low medium kick (from either side of you!) into the new roundhouse Hurricane Kick. The Hurricane Kick starts with a hit on the way up that connects versus ducking opponents (unlike Ryu’s). In the SF2 ...

Here's an interview Brandon Sheffield from gamasutra did with me at Capcom's Digital day last month. It's about the various hard decisions I've encountered along the way in making Street Fighter: HD Remix. There's some pretty hardcore details in there so maybe it's not quite for the general audience, ha. Oh, and for the record, I would never say the word "maths."

--Sirlin

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

Fei Long is usually considered one of the five worst characters in the original Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, but he’s still pretty deadly if he can get close to the opponent and get his offense going. The trouble is, it’s very hard for him to ever get close enough to most characters to get it going. Also, his Flying Kicks move (aka Dragon Kicks, aka “Chicken Wing”) is just too hard for most players (including myself) to physically execute. Unlike the other Tiger Knee-like moves, the Flying Kicks required you to start with *back* on the stick, then go down/back, down, down/forward, forward, up/forward + kick.

Fei Long, Version 1
In HD Remix, Fei Long, along with Akuma, have the notorious distinction of each being the best character in the game and the worst character in the game at various points throughout development. The changelist for HD Remix, version 1 was:

• Flying Kick move changed to qcf+k (easy!)
• Flying Kick with short button can go through fireballs during startup.

The control change immediately made him fun, and being able to do short Flying Kicks over fireballs easily seemed like just what he needed. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast was just too powerful relative to this. Fei Long seemed like the worst character, or close to it.

Fei Long, Version 2
Then came a ridiculous number ...

Wired interviewed me last week about Kongai, the virtual card game I designed for Kongregate.com. We're in closed beta right now, so I'm in the thick of balancing things. I think it's going well.

Kongai is interesting because it investigates a mysterious skill that most people don't even realize exists beyond myth and legend: reading the opponent's mind. Incidentally, my upcoming physical card game called Yomi explores similar territory.

Cheers to Kongregate for doing a great job implementing this design, they've been terrific to work with, and you know I don't say things like that unless I mean it. It's actually incredible how this game started out. Kongregate *asked* me what a good game for them would be. Usually companies say, "we're making this platform game with the Spongebob license or whatever the heck, and can you fill in the details?" But Kongregate actually asked a game designer what an interesting game would be that would let people earn cards or game pieces by playing other people's games on Kongregate. Well, Kongai was my answer and we all lived happily ever after.

I wish some other companies would ask me what would be a good game to make! Card games, fighting games, undefined genres with experimental ideas, and an MMO that zigs when everyone else zags would be a few things among my answers. At the very least, I know which awesome, unknown games to borrow from. ;)

You'll see Kongai in ...

I went to a children's birthday party today (they were about 7 years old) and I arrived late so I missed the introduction of the performer. She had the patter of a magician and she appeared to be doing magic tricks, but I soon realized she is not a magician at all: she's a scientist. She dazzled the children (and the adults!) with super-absorbent substances, chemicals used in fireworks that burn bright colors, refractive lenses that give light sources a rainbow effect, a Tesla coil(!), and more.

During all this I thought maybe she is a UC Berkeley science student who did this stuff as part of a class project. But something was wrong about that notion, because she's just too damn good. It's rare to see someone so thoroughly excellent at performance AND knowledgeable about science. She has stage presence and she really connected with those kids.

Her name is Dora Wedekind, and she's the Operations Manager at Mad Science of Mount Diablo. And she's making a difference. I think I can summarize Dora's work by just telling you one small thing she did. She brought up the word "conductor" and asked the kids to say what they thought it meant. Eventually she gave her definition, that it's a material that lets electricity (meaning electrons) travel through it easily. She then took out her trusty Tesla coil (after having explained that it, well, has a lot of electricity at the tip!) ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

Sagat—well actually “Old Sagat”—is one of the best characters in ST. He’s even soft-banned in Japan, meaning there’s a tacit agreement not to play him, even though you are technically allowed. He might not be as strong of a character as Balrog or Dhalsim overall, but the problem is that there are several matches where he just dominates. His Tiger Shots (fireballs) are so powerful that many characters spend the entire game trying to get around them. I think everyone knows that this nerf is coming.

Tiger Shots

Sagat now has fireball recovery that’s better than New Sagat and worse than Old Sagat. In ST, the difference in recovery times was about 12 frames between Old and New (huge), and Remixed Sagat’s recovery is about 4 frames wore than the terror that was Old Sagat. It’s still very good, but not as abuseable. It’s similar to Ryu’s fireball recovery.

Various Boosts

In exchange for this loss, Sagat has several new bonuses. First, he is based on ST’s New Sagat, so he now is able to soften throws and he has a super move (with the reversal bug fixed, even). Furthermore, the super travels farther than in ST, and it does more damage, and it always knocks down on hit. It’s now a viable tool. [Clarification: it does LESS damage than in ST if you are point-blank in the corner. Less than 50% ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.
Balrog is generally considered to be tied for the best character in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST). Pretty much everyone ranks Balrog and Dhalsim as top, with some Americans adding in Old Sagat, some Japanese adding in Vega, and a few people claiming Chun Li. But there’s not much debate about Balrog (or Dhalsim) being top.
The knee-jerk reaction is to nerf, nerf, nerf (that’s internet-speak for “reducing the power level” of something). I said in my first article that we would leave the top characters top, so it’s been quite a test of willpower to follow my own advice and avoid bringing down the hammer on Balrog.

Before you read the actual nerfs, I’d like you to consider what might have happened. By far the most common suggestion for Balrog was to reduce his overall damage by about 20%. Almost everyone who said anything about Balrog said this. But reducing the overall damage of a character by 20% is mostly just another way of making him 20% worse, and does nothing to remove the tactics we’d like to tone down. So the good news for Balrog players is that he still does a whole lot of damage and is not a 20% worse Balrog.

Throw Loops

After Balrog’s headbutt hold, he can do a mixup where he either walks under the opponent (to get on the other side) or not ...

After Capcom's Digital Day press event, I got the chance to talk with Max Hoberman for a while about game balance. He's lead designer of the newly announced Capcom game called Plunder, and he was lead multiplayer designer on Halo 2 and 3. I explained to Max that all I seem to do is balance things these days (Puzzle Fighter HD Remix, Street Fighter HD Remix, Kongai at Kongregate.com, and my own card games: Yomi and Spellblind). I asked if he had any advice.

His first advice was that no matter how great you are, you need a post-launch patch. Sounds good to me. I asked if he had anything general to say on the subject and he explained that he likes to focus on the fun first. Even in playing board games, if he can make a move that is suboptimal, but increases everyone's fun, he'll often do it. This prompted me to ask if he cares about balance at the highest tournament level, or only about pleasing the average player. He said that due to Halo's rise in various gaming leagues, he had to care about tournament balance in Halo 2 and 3, so yes he does shoot for that.

I also asked how much or little he relies on math and how much he listens to players. He explained a few math things he does, but mostly it's not about math. Even though I have a math degree from ...

Ernest Adams is one of the most prolific writers about game design. He was one of the main reasons I started writing game design articles 8 years ago. In his recent article about video game patents, he said this:

"By far the best Gamasutra article on the subject [of patents] is David Sirlin's well-researched 'The Trouble with Patents.'"

Well-researched! Someone noticed, phew. Also, "by far the best." He probably wrote that off-handedly. Also I know that being motivated by external factors like what someone thinks about you is a bankrupt way to live, but it's somehow a gratifying full-circle feeling in this case. Thanks Ernest.

It's also amusing that he should call my patent article by far the best on the site when there have been *several* patent articles written by actual patent attorneys! And I'm just a guy who peeked into their world. I guess they aren't likely to point out that their own profession has spiraled out of control into a mess that now hampers innovation, rather than fosters it.

Anyway, check out Ernest's article about patents here, and also check out his older article about copyrights. The copyright article actually got me to reconsider my opinion on the matter, so I'm glad Ernest writes these things.

--Sirlin

Here's some links to information and interviews about SF HD Remix from Capcom's Digital Day press event.

A long interview with me from Gamevideos.com (updated!)
GameSpot's interview with me.
GameTrailers's interview with me.
Another GameTrailers interview with me. (uptaded x 2!)
1up's coverage, some quotes from me.
Kotaku's thoughts.
IGN's coverage.
Gaming-Age, listing several features.
Capcom blog post by Capcom producer Rey Jimenez.
Wired interviews with Backbone studio head and with me (updated x 3!)

Looks like the cat's out of the bag that you can play the game in widescreen or not, with new gameplay or not, with new music or not, and with redrawn sprites or not. Plus 8-person tournaments, true 1080p, and a way to view the hitboxes. It's all for you!

--Sirlin

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

Cammy is considered one of the five worst characters in ST (Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo) along with Zangief, Blanka, Fei Long, and T.Hawk. It’s interesting how much better she is now with so few changes, and even one nerf.

Control Motions

Cammy’s Hooligan Throw motion is one of the most frustrating in the game in ST. Not only does it end in up/forward which results in accidental jumping sometimes, but it also closely overlaps the Spinning Backfist command.

New commands:

Hooligan Throw: quarter circle forward + punch
Spinning Backfist: quarter circle back + punch

Just the ability to do Cammy’s Hooligan Throw reliably makes her easier to win with. It’s a really good move (but not too good because most characters can just jab her out of it). Cancelling low forward into Hooligan Throw is now easy and pretty effective.

Spinning Backfist

Here’s some trivia about the Spinning Backfist. The very first change I made in the entire game was allowing Cammy’s Spinning Backfist to go through fireballs. All three versions can now do this and she even has lower body invulnerability during this, but her head is completely vulnerable the whole time, so you can smack her with high moves if you know she is going to Spinning Backfist. Her regular full body vulnerability returns, of course, by the time she can actually hit you.
The Spinning Backfist now has a much bigger hitbox on the second ...

GamesRadar interviewed me about Street Fighter HD Remix and also about Street Fighter in general. You can read it here.

--Sirlin

Grassroots Gamemaster has stirred up a lot of trouble and almost everyone hates him. I'm really confused why people hate him, but I think it's because they are reacting to the surface level antagonism he has. If you look past that to his actual message, it's really good. As I said before, "Sign me up."

If you'd like to know what his message is, a week ago I would have told you to read like 50 different things he wrote. But now you can just forget all that and read one post where he sums everything up. He even wrote this one without the usual antagonism, so maybe people will be able to hear the message this time.

Even still, because this is the internet, we know many people will still hate him. Many of them will show up in the comments of this very post and hate him. Here is what an anti-Grassroots Gamemaster platform would look like:

1) No passionate advocacy. Games will turn out better if there's no one behind them who passionately believes in the point of the game and drives it forward. Better to follow the lead of, say, a shoe factory. (Note: there will still be shoe factory game companies no matter what, don't worry.)
2)  Geniuses really are mild-mannered and agreeable (or "we don't need the other kind because the supply of mild-mannered ones is plenty!"). Sure David Lynch and Isaac Newton are/were hard to ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

Blanka is considered bottom tier in ST, but even in that game he has a lot of potential and a lot of things going for him. The throw range on his bite is enormous. His crossup (jumping short) is excellent and easy. After the crossup, you can go for a combo, a bite, a blocked hit into a bite, another crossup, or a blocked hit into another crossup. Also, Blanka’s roll attack does really good damage. HD Remix Blanka retains all those good features, and gets some boosts.

Horizontal Rolling Attack
In ST, most characters can hit back Blanka’s roll after blocking or even being hit by it. In HD Remix, it recovers faster, but it’s still not completely safe. Dhalsim and Balrog are still able to hit it back easily (with standing fierce and jab rushing punch, respectively).

Bison can still hit it back with a well-timed Psycho Crusher. But Honda no longer gets a free hit after the roll, and Ryu no longer gets a free red fireball. Blanka actually lands fast enough from his roll to jump over a fireball if Ryu throws one right away. That’s quite an upgrade from getting hit back and knocked down every time.

Diagonal Rolling Attack
The so-called Beast Roll or Rainbow Roll was not at all useful in ST. It has long startup time as Blanka jumps back before rolling and it has ...

Please help me with a personal project. Tell me what you think "the most balanced games" are. Don't include sports. Stuff like Chess and Backgammon, while true, isn't that helpful either. These should be competitive multiplayer games that have demonstrated they hold up to high level play.

It seems like the games I'm looking for have to have the concept of different races/classes/characters/sides to qualify. Otherwise, it doesn't mean much to say something like Settlers of Catan is "balanced." It's a great game and all and we could study it to learn how to make a great game, but not really how to balance a competitive multiplayer game.
My nominations:

StarCraft
Fighting Games:

Street Fighter (Hyper Fighting and Super Turbo)
Virtua Fighter
Guilty Gear
Soul Calibur 1 (yeah, I said it)

Magic: The Gathering
Puzzle Fighter: HD Remix (??? I don't even know, but I can nominate it at least!)

StarCraft probably requires no explanation. Guilty Gear designed defensively by including many self-correcting balancing features, as well as lots of tuning over the many versions of the game. Virtua fighter has relatively low variety (compared to Guilty Gear) but extreme care has been taken over MANY iterations (over 14 versions of VF so far, maybe way more, I lost count). Soul Calibur 1's parry system does a lot to level the playing field, and it was pretty balanced in general anyway (SC2 and 3 maybe not so much and ruined by bugs on top of that).

Magic: The Gathering also has a ...

It was hard to find any talk of games today at the Game Developer's Conference.

There was a promising session where venture capital firms let five or so startup companies present what they're doing. One of them was Dennis "Thresh" Fong, the Quake master who once won a Ferrari in a tournament. Afterwards I introduced myself, gave him my book, and asked if I could interview him in the future for my next book, which will contain compare several champions in various different games. He said yes and at least sounded excited.

Anyway, the session itself was dreary and strangely not relevant to the conference. It was a session that showed no games, talked about no games, and none of the featured companies were game companies. They were all VC-fundable, yes, but all strangely out of place at the same time.

By far the most notable speaker was the guy behind "I'm in like with you." He cursed like a foul-mouthed sailor and opened by telling us that internet completely sucks in the United States. He moved to Korea for a few years and got a 100mbit connection for 30 bucks. He says everyone plays games there--everyone. Popular, beautiful girls play games, it's the norm. Games are social. Games are all ostensibly free. Korea is moving completely away from the subscription model. Item buying is commonplace and his friends there often gave him items in games as gifts. He noted that he received ...

Soren Johnson
I wanted to go to his talk, but I couldn't get up in time because I stayed up too late doing [can't talk about it for 2 years.]

Ray Kurzweil, Futurist
Oh my god. There is no possible way I can explain to you what he explained to us. A year or two ago, GDC had a "vision" track with a keynote speech from a scientist that worked on the mock-technology behind the movie Minority Report. Spielberg had him assemble a team of top scientists from different disciplines around the world to create a plan about how future technology like transportation, advertising, computer interfaces, etc, etc might feasibly work in the future. The goal was for all these super smart guys to figure out something reasonable in under a year about all this. At first, I wondered what this had to do with the game industry, and maybe this guy didn't belong here. By the end, he seemed like the smartest guy at the entire conference and *we* were the ones who didn't belong.

Ray Kurwzeil (the Futurist!) gave me that exact same feeling. He's like, on a level above another level that's above everyone else. I was trying to estimate how many times more data he used in his talk than the average, but the average is somewhere around zero so it's hard to compute. I think there were tens of thousands of pieces of data thrown at us, at minimum.

So ...

Even though the Game Developer's Conference technically starts on Monday, I always call Wednesday the first day of the main conference. A lot of people ask me why I go to this conference at all. Other people at the conference ask me why I go to the actual sessions. All I can say is that it's a huge melting pot of semi-conflicting ideas. There's nothing else like it.

Player Generated Content
Daniel James (Puzzle Pirates), Brian Goble (Hipsoft), and a guy from IMVU talked about their experiences with player-generated content. Bottom line is that it's awesome, that it takes some system to manage it, but that it's really worth it. Goble explained that his word game that's been out four years now has had 2.9 million player-submitted phrases (kind of like Wheel of Fortune phrases). Only 19,000 of those are approved, but this is way more than the development team could have ever created (there are several requirements for what makes a phrase good for the game).

IMVU has a great business model. Players can create models/textures for avatars (in maya/photoshop) and upload them for sale. Users buy credits from IMVU. They spend the credits buying cool avatar stuff and 50% goes to IMVU, 50% to the content creator. The content creators do NOT sell those points back to the company to cash out, though. Some users use the points they earn to simply buy other people's cool avatar stuff. Creators that make ...

A classmate forwarded this to me. As author of Playing to Win, I am strangely compelled to post it.
What would you do?.....you make the choice. Don't look for a punch line, there isn't one. Read it anyway. My question is: Would you have made the same choice?

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question: "When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?"

The audience was stilled by the query.
The father continued. "I believe, that when a child like Shay, physicall y and men tally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child."

Then he told the following story:

Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, "Do you think they'll let me play?" Shay's father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed to play, it ...

There's a mysterious, secret guy called Grassroots Gamemaster. You can read about him here, and especially this post of his. He talks about how backwards the game industry is right now, and one of his best points is how people who know the most about the design of games are nearly never the ones who decide which games to make. Those decisions are usually made by people who wear suits. I laughed at his analogy of a money guy telling Thomas Edison that a lightbulb is not really what anyone wants but he'd like to hire Mr. Edison to be an inventor of something else (perhaps a genre platformer for the next kids movie coming out).

Dear Grassroots Gamemaster, I have a lot of positive things to say and one negative. The positive part is that you have exactly described me, I fully accept your arguments, agree with them, and would like to work in the environment you describe. To give you an idea of how true that is, it's hard for me to picture myself working as cog in someone else's machine where I get $0 for each additional copy sold for much longer. I don't care about job security, I care about doing something that has lasting impact and meaning, but those notions get lost in the shuffle as you described.

So when do I start? Let's do it.

I hate to give out jeers on something ...

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 ...

Giving out truly unbiased and thoughtful awards is a lot of work and requires a lot of research. It also yields pretty predictable, boring results, so that's why my awards are totally biased and generally unfair. Also, don't you hate it when award stuff starts counting up from like the top 100 when you just want to know the #1 winner? Me too, let's start with that.

Best Game of 2007: Portal
Even though it seemed packaged as thrown-in extra content on the Orange Box disc, the game is a real gem. You get to control your character immediately with no intro story. Even though there are no cutscenes or story segments, you learn the story of what's going on through context and voice acting from the computer that runs the facility. And most importantly, the portal mechanic itself is great fun and the developers did wonderful puzzley things with it. This is a good concept with great execution.

2nd Best Game of 2007: Tie! Chess, Go, Magic: The Gathering, and World of Warcraft: Trading Card Game
Just a reminder to look outside of just video games. These are hard to top, and honestly as good as Portal is, these games will be much longer-lived.

3rd Best Game of 2007: Resident Evil 4 Wii
You might be saying, "But Resident Evil 4 came out in 2005, didn't it?" Ok, that's true. Last year, you might remember that I was grumpy the game did not even ...

The Xbox Live game Every Extend Extra Extreme (E4) isn't so much a game as it is a thing you do--like whittling wood on your front porch, or knitting. In this, uh, "software experience" your main action is to destroy your own cursor which causes a chain reaction of other explosions. The floating things that explode then leave powerups (loot!) for you to pick up.

There are several strange aspects to that. First, there are no "lives" so you can destroy yourself over and and over forever. Next, after you destroy yourself, you have three seconds of total invulnerability to pick up the powerups--and these three second bursts are the only times you actually play the game. If you get hit by enemies (as opposed to detonating yourself), then you lose all your powerups, which greatly reduces your ability to earn points. There is technically no reason you'd ever die this way though, because you can always detonate yourself within the 3 second shield period and never be vulnerable the entire game.

The gameplay actually involves collecting the powerups in the most efficient way possible. For example, you'd like to collect a few powerups that extend your invulnerable shields a couple seconds, then pick up the time extender and various bonus multipliers. The only way the game ever ends is if you run out of time, but you can pretty much always focus on collecting the yellow time powerups to keep your ...

The Championship Gaming Series is making great efforts to make professional gaming a reality. Their players and website readers are exactly the right audience for my book, Playing to Win.

It looks like 18-year-old Avtar "Paddaman" Padda, an official writer for CGS, felt the same way. Here you can read his sloppily written rehash of my book/articles where he attempts to define the word "scrub," the concept of cheapness, and asks how far you should go to win. I wonder if he got that last question from my chapter of exactly the same name, or if he just saw it in one of my urls:
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/intermediates-guide/how-far-should-you-go-to-win/

The cherry on top? He didn't even change the title (Playing to Win), created an image banner with his picture and the words "PLAYING TO WIN," and now the Championship Gaming Series makes ad revenue off this. The author doesn't seem to realize that he's done anything wrong. Let's see what Wikipedia has to say:

Plagiarism (...) is the practice of claiming, or implying, original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgement. (...) In journalism, plagiarism is considered a breach of journalistic ethics, and reporters caught plagiarizing typically face disciplinary measures ranging from suspension to termination.

This is hardly the kind of thing CGS wants to be known for. I mean, what if ...

Last week I attended Judge Kozinski's screening of the court-room drama The Music Box. Alex Kozinski is the Chief Justice of the Ninth Circuit Court. I was the only game designer in the room.

I liked the film, though it's strangely named and I find the role of the music box itself pretty questionable. Still, it's an interesting film that follows the personal journey of a daughter who defends her father against heinous charges.

What's surprising to me is that 57 year old Kozinski knows a thing or two about games. I mean, how many people from his generation know how to be beat King Hippo in Mike Tyson's Punchout? Many years ago, he wrote some game reviews for the Wall Street Journal here, here, and here. I'm considering writing some law review articles for The Journal so we'll be even.

Kozinski is known for his writing, which is both clear and harsh. I think he delights in the controversy he creates, and he sticks in verbal jabs to those he thinks deserve it. Sound familiar? I think it's very weird that he's a judge who is a game designer in another life while I'm a game designer who is a judge in another life.

I didn't get a chance to tell Judge Kozinski that his law review article on patents is way off when it says the system favors the infringer. It surely favors the ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

Ken is juiced up! Although there isn’t any single overwhelming change to him, all the small changes add up.

Hurricane Kicks
The most visible change to Ken is his new roundhouse Hurricane Kick. In the original ST it has almost no use, but now it travels much faster and goes much farther. Most people say, “Wow!” when they see it for the first time. It allows Ken to hit back various whiffed moves from far away, such as Cammy’s Spinning Backfist or Balrog’s Buffalo Headbutt, but it usually gets only one air hit in those cases. If you can hit a standing opponent with it, it has a lot of dizzy power. So far in testing, this moves *looks* a lot more dangerous than it actually is, but it’s definitely a fun toy.

There are a few more small changes to Hurricane kicks, mostly because of the change mentioned above. The medium Hurricane kick goes just slightly farther, as does the aerial roundhouse Hurricane kick, but you probably won’t even really notice those changes. The short Hurricane kick stays in the air a shorter amount of time, making it a slightly better trick and a little bit better against Sagat’s low Tiger Shots.

Dragon Punches
Now Ken’s jab and strong Dragon Punches are invulnerable on the way up, exactly the like Old Ken’s from SSF2T. Ken’s fierce dragon punch is based on ST ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

Last time we looked Ryu’s short change list, so this time lets look at something more extensive. We’ll have to dig deep into the abyss of Super Turbo tiers to find this character. Buried somewhere near the bottom, we find T.Hawk. Attention readers, a T.Hawk “megaton bomb” is coming.

Most (both?) T.hawk players play Old T.Hawk in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. He’s the version that can’t soften throws and doesn’t have a super, but his normal moves are better. The HD Remixed version is kind of a “greatest hits” of T.Hawk’s moves, so he gets to keep his super and his ability to soften throws, and he also gets the better normal attacks from Old T.Hawk. That means his standing roundhouse and standing strong have better hitboxes and are good for poking, and his low roundhouse is faster than ST’s New T.Hawk. He can also crossup with either his jumping splash (down + fierce in the air) and his jumping medium kick.

His Dragon Punch priority is also the (better) Old T.Hawk version, and the timing is more lenient (as it is for all Dragon Punches in the game). T.Hawk’s uppercut often did not knock down before as part of a game-wide problem where 2-hit moves are tagged to only knock down on the second hit. This has been corrected by making both hits able to knock down and ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

Is the gameplay the same as Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo?
You actually get two games in one in this package:
1) SSF2T HD Remix
2) SSF2T HD Classic Arcade

SSF2T HD Remix is a brand new game. It’s a sequel to SSF2T, with over 100 changes to improve the balance and playability.

SSF2T HD Classic Arcade has the same gameplay as the original Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. It does NOT have any of the easier joystick motions, command changes, bug fixes, or gameplay tweaks that you might have heard about in SSF2T HD Remix. Our goal is to make SSF2T HD Classic Arcade as close as possible to the gameplay of the original arcade ST in every way.

You don’t have to worry about which game you might like, because you get both of them together!

Is the rebalanced game (SSF2THDR) intended only for beginners? I heard someone say it’s “dumbed down.”
Although easier special move timings will help beginners, the rebalanced game is intended to be the tournament standard played by pros. The pros can already perform almost any move with staggering precision, so changes to move commands won’t affect them very much. The balance changes of hitboxes, recoveries, and other move properties will definitely affect the gameplay at the pro level though. Most of the balance changes are specifically aimed at the very highest level of tournament play in the world. (Plus ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

Ryu’s change list is unusual, so let’s start with him. He’s the central character in Street Fighter, both in the story and the game mechanics of fireball/uppercut. In ST, he’s not especially powerful (no one ranks him as top tier), and yet in the hands of an expert he is able to win tournaments. He’s pretty balanced as he is.

I asked tournament player John Choi to give me a complete list of Ryu changes that he requested. Choi is, I think, the #1 Ryu player in the US (check out his crushing victory at Evolution West 2007, among others [editor’s note: HERE is one of those matches from Choi]). Choi contemplated this for weeks and finally came up with his complete list: 1) add a fake fireball, and 2) no other changes.

This was not what I expected, but I immediately liked it. Ryu already has the tools he needs to win, so he doesn’t really need much of a change to win. Choi’s original reasoning for the fake fireball was to give him an answer to Dhalsim’s drills. Dhalsim can drill Ryu on reaction when he sees a fireball, but a fake would trick Dhalsim into committing, then Ryu would recover from the fake and be able to Dragon Punch.

That use of the fake fireball sounds fine, but what’s even better is that is addressed a larger problem, too. ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

Super Street Fighter 2 HD Remix was originally going to be a graphical update of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, but along the way some magic happened. HD Remix is now a completely new Street Fighter game—the 6th installment in the SF2 series. It also includes an arcade perfect gameplay version of SSF2T with new art and music. You’re actually getting two games in one.

For years, I’ve been a care-taker of the franchise, helping to present the games in the best way in Capcom Classics Collection 1, 2, and Remixed. Now I have the honor and burden of improving upon what I consider the very best Street Fighter game ever: Super Turbo. So many have said it’s impossible to improve upon the polished gem of ST, but as Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” so Capcom and I felt that it was worth taking a shot.

Here are the design goals:

1) Make the game easier to play—more inclusive rather than exclusive
2) Make the game even more balanced for tournament play
3) Add fun as long as it doesn’t interfere with #2.

Easier Controls
Inside Street Fighter, there is a wonderful battle of wits, but many potential players are locked out of experiencing it because they can’t Dragon Punch or do Fei Long’s flying kicks, or whatever other joystick gymnastics they require. I’d like to reverse this trend. There’s ...

Virtua Fighter 5 just came out for Xbox 360. The gameplay is great as always, but a lot of features of this game leave me scratching my head.

Button Configuration
I think I have witnessed more players configure their buttons than any other US game developer. (Feel free to correct me if you know of someone else who tops me here). I watch people config buttons for hours and hours and hours as I run tournaments at multiple events per year, every year. There is a 100% rate of agreement among players that the best implementation is where the game lists the functions, then the player presses the button he wants for that function. So you highlight "jab" or "punch" or whatever, then you press the button you want to be assigned to that. This process does NOT require you to know that the button you presses is really X or Square or A or whatever else.

Virtua Fighter and many other fighting games STILL use the bad method where you cannot press the button you want to assign. You must highlight the *button* (not the function), then go left/right to set the function. So the game lists "X" then you have to look down at your controller, find the X button, realize that it should be kick or whatever, then go left/right until you select kick.

Believe me, this requires an extra mental step from players and it takes significantly longer for them ...

The virtual card game I'm designing for Kongregate.com was finally shown in public at PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo. Here's a video showing player reactions. Incidentally, I've heard some of these same positive comments about Yomi, my physical card game. It seems like I have a lot of cool card games that you can't actually play yet.

You'll be able to play Kongregate's game soon enough, and I'll even post an article about its design after my series of articles on writing and thinking.

--Sirlin

I don't really have time to write full articles. I like an article to be well thought-out, researched, and solid enough to last years. I just shipped Puzzle Fighter HD, I'm working very hard on Street Fighter HD, as well as Kongregate.com's virtual card game, and my own physical card game called Yomi. Plus, I just competed in and helped run several Evolution Fighting Game Series events. So when am I supposed to write anything?

Well, surprise. I wrote this month's feature game design article in Game Developer Magazine. It's about save game systems and mentions the systems in 12 different games. Today I also reprinted my article about patents in the game industry. The article originally appeared on gamasutra.com.

I also wrote not just one, but three articles about how to write. Many people have asked me for writing tips, so here you go. I also wrote another article about the process of thinking logically. These four articles took me four months to complete because of the research, planning, and quoting involved. Look for them in the coming weeks. The titles are:

Writing Well, Part 1: Sensibilities
Writing Well, Part 2: Clear Thinking, Clear Writing
Writing Well, Part 3: Origins of a Writer
Thinking With Doubt: Emptying Your Cup

I'm already cringing at reading the comments that will appear after these articles. I know that you think Writing Well, Part 2 makes the point too strongly. I know that you're scandalized by Part 3. I ...

I did better than I've ever done before at our world finals event this year, taking 5th place in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. I also got to test 18 decks of my Yomi card game, and got to lose Guilty Gear to Yossan, the #1 finisher in that tournament.

I won't say much about Guilty Gear other than having to relearn the strange lesson that my Potemkin gets much worse when I have to play under pressure against unfamiliar opponents, and yet my Chipp gets much better when I have to play under pressure against unfamiliar opponents. I call this the Curse of Chipp.

In ST, I made it to the top 8 without losing a single match. i tried this year to make an effort to "play the opponent" rather than "play the game." In my book, I talk about the player type called Planner. That's how I've always approached things, but the approach has weaknesses.

I've heard Seth off-handedly mention in his match commentary whether certain players "show no respect" for their opponents. He means this in a very particular way. He's not talking about sportsmanship at all, but instead whether a player does things within the game that a really good opponent should be able to counter. Seth isn't even giving an insult by saying this. He's just pointing out when a player is trying to get away with something that he might not try against a player he ...

I talked here about the strategy behind my matches at Evolution West 2007. Now you can see those matches for yourself and get a sense of the crowd excitement.

First up, it's me versus Viscant. I'm purple Bison (the dictator) versus his Vega (claw). I mostly flopped around, loosey goosey because I was pretty sure that would be enough to win. Bison has natural advantages in this match and Vega must know exactly what he's doing to win.

Next is me versus the evil Darkside Phill (DSP). DSP won the mindgame of our initial double-blind character selection by choosing Blanka versus my Vega (claw). Watch this whole match carefully because it's definitely the best of the three in this post. You can stop watching at around 4:50 into the vid when the match ends; I'm not sure why the rest wasn't edited out.

Finally, check out me vs. Afrolegends. I start with Vega (claw) versus his DeeJay. In case you get confused about the technicalities of the match, Afrolegends accidentally paused the game at one point, which is a foul that caused him to lose the round and consequently, the game (but not the whole match). Afrolegends played excellently during this match and all his other matches. He's a rising star.

Thanks to James Chen for recording all this and to Seth Killian for the announcing during the event. Seth, you did a great job, but please, please learn the ...

Evolution West was at Comicon this year. I'll talk mostly about the Super Turbo tournament because it was a great tournament. Here's the results:

1) John Choi (Ryu, Old Sagat)
2) Afrolegends (Dee Jay, Balrog)
3) Jason Cole (Dhalsim)
4) David Sirlin (Vega, Honda, Bison)
5) Alex Wolfe (Dhalsim)
5) DSP (Dee Jay, Blanka, Vega, Balrog)
7) Antonio Diaz (Blanka)
7) Viscant (Vega)

My very first match of the tournament was against Jason Cole, two-time Evolution World Champion in Super Turbo. But more to the point, Cole and I were the #1 and #2 finishers at Evolution North, so it was weird to fight him straight off the bat, but we didn't complain, it's all good. Cole would definitely play Dhalsim, and I decided to pick Vega. I think I've played Vega vs. Dhalsim against Cole about 20 games or so over the last couple years. During the "normal fighting" part of the match, I have the advantage (I think). But eventually during each game, there is a part called "Dhalsim does noogie over and over and I die." This is especially hard for Vega to get out of. Counterthrowing is, for some reason, very hard for Vega in this situation. Jumping out is literally not possible if Dhalsim does a correct sequence. Vega can flip kick out (charge db, f+kick) but this is a tough thing to do. First, you only get one shot per loop because it's a charge move and worse, if you are charging you ...

The Videogame Style Guide attempts to create a consistent set of rules for writing about video games. It starts with an introduction that goes into great detail about many little details of language and why we should care about getting them right. They make great points here, and I'm totally on board with the concept because I already care about language. I already know why you should care, too

The problem here isn't the theory--it's the actual writing. The book mentions the example of when the editor of Wired magazine made the (good) decision to spell "internet" with a lowercase letter "i." It was only really ever spelled with an uppercase 'I' to make it sound important, the book says. I'm totally with them. And yet...the book itself spells the the word Internet with a capital "I" the rest of the way through!

(EDIT: Actually the book doesn't give reasons about "internet" vs. "Internet." That was from another source. The book is not guilty of being inconsistent in this matter; it's just guilty of spelling the word with a capital I.)
In the introduction, there is a colon followed by a capital letter, for no apparent reason. I looked up the usage of colons in Strunk & White, just in case I was having some kind of memory lapse. I wasn't. It's not correct to use an uppercase letter there.
(EDIT: The AP style guide disagrees with Strunk & White on ...

Listen to my interview about MMOs over at Revolution G. It's in two parts, so go here, then click on "Download Episode 4" and "Download Episode 5."

I'm actually pretty complimentary of Blizzard. Even if I don't like the philosophy behind their terms of service, they are still one of the very best game companies in the world. That said, I probably manage to say some things that you fiercely disagree with or that will make you say, "Yes!!! Finally someone said what I wanted to say!"

I cover group vs. solo, time vs. skill, and squishy rules from a terms of service versus hardcoded rules. I talk about what applicability "playing to win" has in an MMO. I cover the kinds of changes I'd like to see to the terms of service in future MMOs, and I even try to quote some academic papers.

Check it out and make sure to visit revolutiong.com, too. Those guys really want the genre to take a step past where it is now and they seem to like me, so that makes them ok in my book. ;)

--Sirlin