Writing Well, Part 4: Trolling

August 4, 2014

In some ways, trolling may be the most effective communication of all.

A troll is a person who posts or chats on the internet with the intent of stirring up trouble and getting emotional responses. A troll is not concerned with speaking the truth, nor with speaking lies. The truth value of statements isn’t important at all to a troll, only the amount of trouble their statements can cause.

Another aspect of trolling is efficiency. Ideally, the troll gives very little input to the system, but creates a large stir from it. Think of it like giving your opponent a bag of nonsense, but the opponent can’t simply open the bag and say “oh, that’s nonsense.” Instead, the nonsense is wrapped up in an intricate puzzle that takes pages of text to unravel and defend against.

James Cameron is a man clearly dedicated to his craft, but then again so was Jim Jones. But Cameron had much better results. Eleven fewer people died from cyanide poisoning.

—Mr. Plinkett

Is Trolling Bad?

I know a grandmaster troll. His name is garcia1000. He says that trolling is like sex: if you force it on someone, that’s bad, but if it’s consensual, then both parties enjoy the activity. Over the years, we’ve developed many “chat techs” that are handy language tricks for trolling. Playing with intentionally deceptive language is really fun, and I think there’s some value in it too. When someone tries to use this stuff on you, you’re ten steps ahead of them if you’re well aware of all these tricks. You can also incorporate these rhetoric tricks into your writing as jokes, or for real if you’re a news journalist.

Try consensually trolling your friends and develop your skills together.

Chat Techs

Implying a Connection When There Isn’t One

One of the easiest ways to troll is to imply a connection to something bad when there is actually no connection at all. The victim will have to go through all sorts of trouble to explain why there is no real connection.

He eats pizza without a knife and fork, like an animal in a zoo would.

Wilt Chamberlain had over 20,000 career rebounds. Meanwhile Governor Schwarzenegger had 0, the same number as Hitler.

DOTA has a song about it. So does killing cops.

Ian isn’t a pedophile, at least that’s the story so far.

Blake says he’s not racist, but Don Imus said that also.

By moving out of our cramped apartment into the larger one, we’ll finally have more breathing room, or “lebensraum” as the The Nazis called it.

Connection to Stock Price

Amazon.com Inc. [AMZN -1.89%] is staying the course with a new line of Kindle Fire tablet computers that undercuts competitors like Apple Inc.’s [AAPL +0.55%] iPad on price. (source)

It sounds like the stock prices demonstrate that Amazon are idiots for undercutting Apple’s price, but the stock price changes are not because of this specific move. If Jeff Bezos cured cancer tomorrow, the Wall Street Journal article would read:

Jeff Bezos Cures Cancer [AMZN -1.89%]

Mr. Bundesen says he chauffeured Grumpy Cat around Austin in a black BMW [BMW.XE +2.91%] X5, with tinted windows. (source)

Did Grumpy Cat directly affect BMW’s stock price? Let’s go with yes.

True Goodness

Mother Teresa has performed many good deeds, but how many of them were truly good?

Aphotix has made many useful contributions to balancing the Yomi card game, but how many of them were actually useful?

Lack of Perfection = Badness

garcia1000, creator of numerous troll techs, has never created a single perfect troll.

Lady Gaga has written, directed, and sung many hit songs but she has yet to create any song without flaws.

The Absence of Something

The President will be holding a dinner at the white house next week. The best chefs in France will not be attending.

The ACLU will not be attending.

The League of Women Voters will not be attending.

EA held their company picnic last Friday. The IGDA, an organization that fights for quality of life issues on behalf of game industry employees, did not attend.

The downtown clinic opened its doors to all who needed medical attention, regardless of their age, class, or race. The clinic helped no black people yesterday.

In each case, it sounds like the lack of these people attending implies their disapproval. Actually it implies nothing and there’s no reason to expect them to have attended.

Not Immediately Available

Pop star Justin Beiber visited the Anne Frank museum and said “Hopefully she would have been a Belieber.” It’s possible this line made sense in the context in which it was said, but a news story can make it (or anything else) automatically look bad with this line:

Bieber's representatives did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment Sunday, but visitors to the Anne Frank Facebook page had plenty to say.

“Not immediately responding” sounds like some sort of admission of guilt, when it actually means nothing at all. Beiber is guilty of not immediately responding many times though:

I don’t know what Justin Beiber did or didn’t do, but the “didn’t immediately respond” tech is great to combo with a false accusation.

Not the First Time

Sony's PlayStation Network servers crashed today. This isn't the first time that’s happened.

Even if it only happened once before, the statement implies it’s been multiple. Also, “it’s not the first time” can put the phrase "and it won't be the last" into reader's mind. The statement is factually correct though, even if it happened only one time before, so it can't be challenged.

Not the Last Time

Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Meyer banned employees from working from home, which was controversial. A “news” article ended the story with the sentence:

Her remote working ban may not be the last controversy of her rule. (source)

So now she’s held responsible for future, unspecified controversies! Also, it’s a nice touch to call her tenure as a CEO “her rule.” This implies it’s some dictatorial horror, when it’s actually the job of a CEO to “rule.”

This tech also combos well with accusations. Being accused of something doesn’t mean you did it, especially if the accusation is totally fabricated or ludicrous. But if we add that it “may not be the last time,” then it sounds more damning.

McDonald’s was accused of using rat meat for 20% of its burgers, and this may not be the last we hear of it.

Some people say Google is guilty of tax fraud, while others say this may not be the last time we hear this accusation.

That's also an example of “weasel words.”

Weasel Words

Weasel words are a way of using vague language and anonymous authority to assert something that’s impossible defend against because it’s too vague to even know what it means.

Some people / experts / many say that The Hobbit is the worst movie of modern times.

Which people? How do they know? What standard was used?

It is said that the this article is the definitive one on fun trolling language, though there are some who claim otherwise.

Who said that? They said it as fact? Also those who say otherwise only “claimed” it, so their viewpoint is diminished.

Examples
"A growing body of evidence..." (Where is the raw data for your review?)
"People say..." (Which people? How do they know?)
"It has been claimed that..." (By whom, where, when?)
"Critics claim..." (Which critics?)
"Clearly..." (As if the premise is undeniably true)
"It stands to reason that..." (Again, as if the premise is undeniably true—see "Clearly" above)
"Questions have been raised..." (Implies a fatal flaw has been discovered)
"I heard that..." (Who told you? Is the source reliable?)
"There is evidence that..." (What evidence? Is the source reliable?)
"Experience shows that..." (Whose experience? What was the experience? How does it demonstrate this?)
"It has been mentioned that..." (Who are these mentioners? Can they be trusted?)
"Popular wisdom has it that..." (Is popular wisdom a test of truth?)
"Commonsense has it/insists that..." (The common sense of whom? Who says so? See "Popular wisdom" above, and "It is known that" below)
"It is known that..." (By whom and by what method is it known?)
"Officially known as..." (By whom, where, when—who says so?)
"It turns out that..." (How does it turn out?¹)
"It was noted that..." (By whom, why, when?)
"Nobody else's product is better than ours." (What is the evidence of this?)
"Studies show..." (what studies?)
"A recent study at a leading university..." (How recent is your study? At what university?)
"(The phenomenon) came to be seen as..." (by whom?)
"Some argue..." (who?)
"Up to sixty percent..." (so, 59%? 50%? 10%?)
"More than seventy percent..." (How many more? 70.01%? 80%? 90%?)
"The vast majority..." (All, more than half—how many?)

Dog Wouldn’t Understand

If you explained global warming to a dog, the dog wouldn’t understand.

While James claims he's not racist, even his dog Woofy can't be sure of that.

Playing with the Likelihood of Things

It's possible Jeremy is sane like a normal person. We can't dismiss that possibility out of hand.

You can use the teapot fallacy to make anything, no matter how astronomically unlikely, have a 50% chance of being true:

There either is or isn’t a teapot orbiting Jupiter. 50/50 that it’s true.

There either is or isn’t a supernatural being who takes interest in my personal fortunes. Again, 50/50.

Saying Things Are Similar When They Aren’t

I think insisting on high quality games is similar to insisting on serving white people only. In both cases, you're insisting on something.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was in charge of people, much like how Stalin was in charge of his.

Jill took several books from the library without paying. Robbers would have done the same thing.

John was good with building things with his hands, much like the Unabomber.

Admitted

Use “admitted” to make anything sound bad:

Bob admitted he bought the cheaper fabric softener.

Jane admitted she had pizza for lunch.

Andrea admitted she was intimately familiar with how to spell “pedophilia.”

We asked Greg if he committed the robbery, but he admitted nothing. (Also, he did not immediately respond.)

Combine this with the “absence of something” tech for even greater effect:

Charlie admitted his iPad didn’t contain any e-books against racism. Charlie also admitted he did not attend the recent ACLU rally about civil rights.

Comparing Numbers and Degrees

When you say how good or how big or how numerous something is, say it’s more than an absurdly low value. This makes it sound like it probably is that low value.

The French Army had at least 3 soldiers.

Game of Thrones wasn’t the worst of HBO’s tv series, I’ll give them that.

When compared with the most vile and debauched scoundrels, President Obama is a lightweight. He did keep Guantanamo Bay open though.

The makers of the game BlazBlue were passionate about their craft, but then again so were Texas Governors. BlazBlue, a game with more than 6 fans, caused 137 fewer deaths by lethal injection.

Gordon Ramsay cares a lot about his craft, but then again so does Godzilla. Ramsay, who has 13 restaurants rated at least one star, had much better results. He leveled Tokyo 9 fewer times.

Being Paid For Things

The policeman, who is paid $52,000 per year, did not respond to the 911 call in time.

Throwing in salary numbers irrelevant to the situation makes it sound even worse. Being paid is bad.

The heart surgeon said the surgery was necessary to save Mr. Martinez’s life (he was paid to do the surgery).

You were paid to do something, implying that you're only doing it for the money like a hired shill. Being paid is bad.

Wolfgang Puck's signature herb-roasted chicken tastes like charred cardboard, and I could do a better job blindfolded,” said Ellen Kubolski, who has never been paid to cook anything in her entire life.

You haven't even been paid to do something, so your skills are very bad. Not being paid is bad.

Why Not Just?

Why not just implement a new feature in the game?

Why not just redo all the art in the game?

Why not just let prisoners come and go on the honor system?

Why not just have the CFO guess what the taxable revenue is this year?

“Why not just” is a powerful combo of two separate fallacies. First, “why not” implies that any insane idea should be the default. Why isn’t it ALREADY this way? Second, “just” is a red flag word for anyone who does any kind of work. “Just” implies that a task is a small amount of work no matter how much work it actually is. Finally, the “just” hides any and all negative fallout from the ripple effects of the proposed change. For example, if the CFO “just” guesses about the taxable revenue, she might end up in jail.

In Some Ways

Put “in some ways” before a statement to make it true no matter what. Even if it’s apparently false, the burden is now on the reader to construct some elaborate case where it could be true. If they can’t, it’s their fault for lacking imagination.

In some ways, having one of the worst health care systems in the world is a great boon to the United States.

In some ways, lack of exercise makes Jim even stronger.

In some ways, knowing more about a subject means you know even less about it.

In some ways, this article makes you a better writer.

Advanced Combos

The game Skullgirls sold fewer copies than the number of people in prison in the USA, a figure which speaks for itself.

Skullgirls could have given a copy to every one of those prisoners, but designer MikeZ admitted that he chose not to, which just continues the tragic trend.

We can't say if MikeZ is ultimately responsible for the prison riots, but we can say his decision to exclude prisoners from getting free copies of Skullgirls has been a long tradition of his.

Graham lacks the ability to sculpt believable statues from a single slab of marble, much the same way that animals in a zoo can't. This may not be the last time Graham is mentioned in connection with animals of subhuman intelligence.

This one is especially good because it manufactures an insane connection, then says it may not be the last time we hear it, citing itself as the reference.

I approve of this new tech, like Einstein who approved many new breakthroughs.

—garcia1000

You can think of these troll techs as a kind of vaccination. By injecting them into your bloodstream, you become more immune to them being used on you. Try injecting them into your writing, twitter, and friends. Enjoy!

The Sheathed Sword in Software Development

August 3, 2014

Working hard in and of itself is not a virtue. It's the result that counts, not the specific quantity of work needed to achieve it. Working smart is often a better tool to achieve a good result in software development. Unfortunately, working hard is more likely to be rewarded at most companies because it's so visible. Working smart can be invisible.

To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence. Nor is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the whole empire says, “Well done!” True excellence is to plan secretly, to move surreptitiously, to foil the enemy’s intentions and balk his schemes, so that at last the day may be won without shedding a drop of blood. To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Software Development

Software projects (including all video games) are notoriously over-budget and over-schedule. Why is this? It has much to do with the highly counterintuitive nature of software project management, beautifully described by Steve McConnell in his book Software Project Survival Guide and in this article of his.

When project managers get involved in a project, they tend to impose a lot of process. They want tracking reports on this, detailed planning on that, reporting procedures on the other. It’s only “common sense” that all the time spent on extraneous bookkeeping like that takes directly away from the productive time that could have been spent implementing the actual software. Workers do admit that there’s a small amount of “thrashing,” or unproductive work, that’s basically unavoidable. So a graph of how much productive work gets done during the course of a project looks like this:

The mistaken notion that process is pure overhead and that everything will just work out in the end.

This is, of course, a fantasy. In reality, software development is an enormously complex undertaking that requires an enormous amount of coordination, cooperation, and communication. Defects that appear early in the process (and they DO appear) magnify in scale like a growing cancer as the project continues. When things can go wrong, things do go wrong, and they go wrong quite often in software development. It’s not the case that smartest and most able developers commit no errors. Even if that were true, errors and problems are introduced through coordination and communication problems, and even through outside factors beyond everyone’s control—not just through flawed code. So the real question is how does one go about minimizing, detecting, and correcting errors once one has admitted the truth that the existence of such problems is an unavoidable fact?

I can’t say it any better than Steve McConnell:

When a project has paid too little early attention to the processes it will use, by the end of a project developers feel that they are spending all of their time sitting in meetings and correcting defects and little or no time extending the software. They know the project is thrashing. When developers see they are not meeting their deadlines, their survival impulses kick in and they retreat to “solo development mode,” focusing exclusively on their personal deadlines. They withdraw from interactions with managers, customers, testers, technical writers, and the rest of the development team, and project coordination unravels.

Far from a steady level of productive work suggested [in the diagram above], the medium-size project conducted without much attention to development processes typically experiences the pattern shown [in the graphic below.]

In reality, the project becomes more complicated, and despite the emergency processes instituted, thrashing overtakes all.

In this pattern, projects experience a steady increase in thrashing over the course of a project. By the middle of the project, the team realizes that it is spending a lot of time thrashing and that some attention to process would be beneficial. But by then much of the damage has been done. The project team tries to increase the effectiveness of its process, but its efforts hold the level of thrashing steady, at best. In some cases, the late attempt to improve the project’s processes actually makes the thrashing worse.

The lucky projects release their software while they are still eking out a small amount of productive work. The unlucky projects can’t complete their software before reaching a point at which 100 percent of their time is spent on process and thrashing. After spending several weeks or months in this condition, such a project is typically canceled when management or the customer realizes that the project is no longer moving forward. If you think that attention to process is needless overhead, consider that the overhead of a canceled project is 100 percent.

Processes such as change control, QA, defect tracking, automated source code control, and so on are the methods of winning the battles against Murphy’s Law before the full-scale war is allowed to begin.

Even small investments in process can go along way. If you have a team of 20 people, having all 20 of them spend over an hour a day on tracking their progress is probably not a good use of time, but having them spend 10 minutes in a stand-up meeting (where you literally stand up) and have each person rattle off the work they plan to do today (and possibly what they did yesterday), keeping it under 30 seconds per person keeps everyone aware of dependencies. It might make you realize that of your three possible tasks, people are actually waiting on one of them, so you should work on that first. This type of meeting is just one example of investing a small amount of time in process to avoid bigger problems later.

Projects that attack problems before they become problems win the war with sheathed sword. Process becomes fine-tuned and second-nature, while thrashing is reduced.

Sun Tzu Says Nip It In The Bud

Sun Tzu’s said that the generals who win our praise are those who, through great effort, win large, dramatic battles. The far greater generals who should win our praise, though, are those who avert war altogether. They defeat the seeds of war long before the masses realize that there was any danger at all. This is especially true in the case of software design, since errors that appear early in the process become more and more costly and difficult to fix as the project progresses. Imagine a sentence in a design document describing how a particular piece will be implemented. How easy to change that sentence if it is in error and avert disaster, yet how hard to re-implement the entire module that later grows out of that sentence.

The Anchor

I worked at a company that was, like most software companies, entirely set up to praise hard work and not at all set up to praise kind of general Sun Tzu was talking about. In this company, two teams worked loosely in parallel from the same starting code base to create two different, vaguely related products, with roughly the same development cycle.

The actual quality of this software as far as end user is concerned—the game design—is totally irrelevant to this discussion. I know I like to talk a lot about game design, but let’s focus on software design for the moment. The lead programmer on my team was a careful, pensive, steady man. To him, the beginning of the project was a time for cleaning up the code base and reorganizing it to save time later. He was interested in creating a number of tools and processes designed to uncover code errors early in the upcoming development cycle.

I called this guy “The Anchor.” I felt I could sleep at night without worrying that the project would float off into an iceberg in the middle of the night, or something. His steady work made the final stages of the project pretty much by the book. The game made it through Sony’s rigorous approval process on the first pass.

Meanwhile, the sister project encountered a number of mysterious bugs towards the end of the project cycle. This was not surprising since their process was not as rigorous as that taken by my team’s lead. Tracking down some of those bugs was a monumental effort. Several of the programmers became company heroes by staying at work all night, working straight through with no sleep on countless occasions. Every time their project reached the final candidate stage, some new bug would be discovered, another monumental effort to fix it would take place, another final candidate would be created, then yet another bug would be found. Only through hard work totally unheard of in most industries and totally counterproductive to the well being of human workers was that project finally finished. (Let’s just say they didn’t get Sony’s approval the first time through.)

The management of the company couldn’t say enough good things about those guys who were working so hard. They were "examples we could all learn from!" The CEO gave out awards to some of those programmers on the other team who had worked far above the call of duty. The Anchor did not receive one.

Frankly, I found that offensive. First of all, those programmers who sacrificed their life and their health to pull of some kind of 11th hour Herculean win were not working beyond the call of duty. The company expected that from them. Worse yet, the far greater general—the general who had defeated armies of bugs before management or anyone else even knew a war was coming—was not given an award that day. His contribution was not visible even though it was far greater than the other team’s. When the hero wins the war before the masses know there was to even be a war, no one notices there even was a hero.

In closing, Sun Tzu in his Art of War had this to say about the tragic, hero-general:

…his victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom, nor credit for courage. For inasmuch as they are gained over circumstances that have not come to light, the world at large knows nothing of them, and he therefore wins no reputation for wisdom; and inasmuch as the hostile state submits before there has been any bloodshed, he receives no credit for courage.

The Secrets of Donkey Kong Country 2

August 3, 2014

To get in the mood for this article, here's some music from Donkey Kong Country 2:

The Cranky's Theme track is ok, but those other two are total crap.

The first platform games were about trying not to die. Dying occurred frequently and your main goal was to get through all the levels. As time went on, there was more emphasis on finding secrets in the levels. This allowed platform games to have dual goals: 1) get to the end of the game and 2) find all the secrets.

A casual or younger player's goal might be to simply get to the end of a game. This doesn’t even require completing every level because of warp zones and non-linear map screens that allow you to skip levels. A more demanding gamer's goal is to uncover every secret the game has to offer. In Mario64, this means finding all 120 stars (only about 60 are needed to "win" the game.) In Donkey Kong Country 2, this means finding all 40 DK coins as well as finding all 102% of the bonus rooms. These dual goals allow a single game to appeal to a wide range of players.

What Is A Secret?

Secrets were hard to find in my day. Not everything was for babies.

You could hide a secret in the game somewhere ridiculously obscure. You could put it in a random location that looks the same as any other, and make it nearly impossible to find because it's so obscure. This is not a good modern design sensibility though. The secrets I'm talking about here are carefully, intelligently placed and they're meant to be found.

Think of these secrets the same way a mystery author thinks about their plots. A mystery is not a zero-sum game of writer versus reader. The writer actually wants the reader to figure out the answer—just not too early. The answer has to be hidden well enough that there's a sense of accomplishment in finding it, but there have to be enough clues to make finding the answer possible. The answer, just like a secret in a platform game, isn't randomly created. It's carefully designed and hidden, and carefully pointed out by clues.

Donkey Kong Country 2

I think Donkey Kong Country 2 was the first to implement this concept so masterfully, and it remains one of the best examples even today. The game is fairly easy to "win" simply by completing all of its levels. Dying is somewhat frequent, but the difficulty is pretty low and free lives are plentiful. Even very young players should be able to get through the difficult parts through repetition. The real game, though, is to uncover all the secrets. Each of the 40 levels has one to three bonus rooms and a single "DK coin."

I think the DK coin is the greatest thing in platform games. It's a ridiculously large, shiny, spinning coin that somehow manages to be hidden on every level. There's something magical about finding that single, well-hidden secret on every level that just isn't the same as finding 5 Jingos (Banjo-Kazooie), 100 coins (Mario64), or any of the ten zillion tedious things on your shopping list in Donkey Kong64. And don’t get me started about blue coins in Mario Sunshine.

Donkey Kong Country 2 has a well-designed hierarchy of secrets. Each level has:

one super secret (the DK coin),
one to three other secrets you "have to" find (the bonus rooms),
and other, less important secret items (banana coins and free guy balloons).

At any time, the player can check how many total DK coins they have and the percentage of bonus rooms they've uncovered. They can also easily check if they've found the DK coin on any given level, and if they've found all the bonus rooms on a given level. All the while, the character Cranky Kong taunts the player by telling them how they have no hope of finding all the DK coins and bonus rooms. This gives the player a clear idea of their mission: to prove Cranky wrong.

"This site still sucks. They should really put me back in charge."

Having a clear system to keep track of which secrets have been found is critical in this type of game. Knowing that there are 40 DK coins hidden out there somewhere in a huge world and that you've found 23 of them so far, simply isn't fun. It's daunting. If you want to feel daunted like that, try finding all 100 packages in the enormous, sprawling world of Grand Theft Auto 3. By contrast, it’s a fun challenge to know that somewhere in this one particular level that isn't even all that big, there's a tauntingly large, spinning, golden coin that you can find.

Unwritten Rules of DKC2

Part of the magic of DKC2 is the way all these secrets are hidden. The highest compliment I can give the game is to say that I felt every DK coin was placed by a single intelligence—by one person. As the game progressed, I came to know how he thought and what he'd be likely to do. In essence, the game felt not like an action game of me versus the computer, but a strategy game of me versus the designer.

In order to create this feeling, the game established and religiously followed a few unwritten rules. First, bananas (the common items littered everywhere on every level) are always helpful. If they spell out a letter or an arrow, it's always a genuine clue, never a trick. If a single banana is placed in some precarious, seemingly impossible to reach spot, it's always pointing to a secret. If a banana is over a pit, it always signifies that jumping in the pit will not kill you. In effect, the bananas themselves are a character—a sentience—trying to help you at all times. DKC1 did not follow this rule, and that resulted in much frustration and throwing of controllers. In that game, you had to mindlessly jump in every pit just in case one of them scrolled down to reveal a secret instead of killing you.

Another interesting unwritten rule is about running at full speed through dangerous levels. Anytime there's a series of obstacles that require timing to navigate (swinging vines surrounded by deadly bees, spinning cannon-like barrels over pits), you can always progress safely by running at full speed and taking every jump as soon as possible. Put your fears aside and have faith that jumping from vine to vine at full speed will somehow work out, and that you'll never touch a deadly bee.

What's the point of this? Most of the gameplay of this game is the act of looking for secrets. Running through levels at full speed isn't going to help you find any so there's really no "cheating" involved. It's just a convenient way to get to a particular part of a level if that's where you think the secret is. Again, the game is trying to help you, and stays true to its promise, never tricking you and never losing your trust.

You also learn a certain consistency to the methods of hiding secrets as you play, if you’re observant enough. The oldest trick in the book is that a big secret is often hidden just barely beyond a small one. It might look like the screen would scroll up a bit if you jumped to that cliff...and it does, revealing a not-so-valuable banana coin. You found the "secret" so time to move on, right? Well the all-valuable DK coin might be just a little bit higher if you noticed the smaller cliff above the one you're standing on.

The game also constantly tests the players assumption and first instincts. After 10 levels of starting on the left side of the screen and scrolling right to progress, it trains the player to assume all levels are this way, then sneaks in a level where the DK coin is mere inches to the left of the starting point, barely off-screen. Most players will never even realize going left was an option. And where is it "legal" to hide a DK coin? I'm sorry to ruin this secret, but I just can't resist. Spoiler alert to skip to the next paragraph, if you must. 39 of the DK coins are hidden somewhere inside a level. Exactly 1 DK coin is hidden in a bonus room inside a level. A secret within a secret. The game has trained the player to assume that no secrets would be in a bonus room, so what better place to hide something? This particular secret was very memorable to me because after I failed to find it several times, I put the controller down and simply thought about it where it could possibly be, then realized a certain bonus room on that level had something suspicious about it, and that it must be “legal” to hide DK coins there after all!

More subtly, the layout of levels often subconsciously suggests a certain path. Jumping from this ledge to that vine and so on just looks right. It feels like the right way to go. And as soon as you believe it's the right way to go, the game has got you. And that is the beauty of Donkey Kong Country 2: it's a constant psychological battle against your own assumptions. Every step of the way, the game is trying to fool you. The bananas are on your side, the but the rest of the level is not. Like a good mystery, there's always a clue—always some indication of where a secret is. There's a way to find every secret without having to constantly kill yourself by jumping into random pits like in Donkey Kong Country 1.

For a full spoiler, here's a video showing all 40 DK coins in DKC2:

Seriously cannot believe you're watching this. Pathetic!

Suspense and Secrets

In storytelling, suspense is a powerful technique, and also an economical one. If the author can create the credible threat that something bad will happen, they can then play with us through anticipation. All the moments where nothing happens seem excruciating because we keep thinking this could be the time something really does happen.

I say that's economical because it's a lot cheaper to keep us interested by action that only happens 5% of the time than 100%. And yet 100% of the time, we might be on the edge of our seats. One example is the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs. Before this scene, the film establishes Mr. Blonde as a person capable of violence. In the torture scene itself though, literally no torture is shown. The anticipation of it is nerve-wracking, and the only actual action that happens is very brief, and off camera.

There's a parallel to games that are about finding secrets. Even though the secrets might make up only 5% of the game, every little step might be a secret. Suddenly, the other 95% of the game is that much more engaging because every careless step you take just might be the one that bypasses the secret.

For a platform game like Donkey Kong Country 2, this means that running to the end of each level is the last thing the player wants to do. It takes only 1-3 minutes to run through any level of the game, but because the real challenge is to find secrets, not pass levels, there's much more gameplay. A player might spend 10 minutes on a 1 minute level, or even longer. Maybe much longer, and if done right it will feel fun, not tedious.

Think about how little of the game's art and programming assets were devoted to these secrets. The graphics for the DK coin, the bonus rooms, and the system of keeping track of which secrets have been found are all minuscule compared to the design of 40 levels filled with animating enemies. By designing levels around secrets—not sticking secrets into levels—this 5% of development effort made the difference between a C- game and an A+ game.

Of course it's an A+, it's all because of me and those DK coins. I hid them all, you know.