Evil Hat's New Logo

Fred Hicks discusses the odd brand juxtaposition of Evil Hat's logo on kid-friendly products like Happy Birthday, Robot!:

"It ends up being a little weird to grab hold of a copy of HBR, flip it over, and see an aggressive, shark-teeth-baring evil hat glaring at you from the back cover."

Working together again on Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, and looking forward to future products, Fred saw a need to evolve Evil Hat's logo and branding a bit. Offered a few quick ideas, mainly to streamline the hat's silhouette, use the brim as a mouth, and use a less horror-themed typeface so the hat takes the spotlight.

Fred just posted the new logo suite and it looks great. It retains Evil Hat Production's essential brand, but sets up the company for a long and prosperous future. Look for the new logo on Do. :)

I'm never not playtesting. [T-Shirt]

A few months ago, I quietly uploaded this t-shirt design to the shop. As I recall, there was an ongoing discussion about the pros and cons of playtesting. I posted this design as a bit of a joke.

Though I may call one of my games "finished," I'm never really done tweaking it in my mind. And certainly when I play someone else's games, my mind is turning over all the nuances of the design, trying to hack it for a new theme or bolting together different mechanics. The process never really ends.

If you feel the same way, grab this t-shirt from the store. Giulia already has hers, as you can see up at the top of this post. She says, "True to the spirit of the shirt, here I am trying to eat soup with chopsticks." True to the spirit indeed. Keep at it, Giulia!

» I'm Never Not Playtesting - Dark T-Shirt

Interview with Ministry of Entertainment

Grant Chen of the Ministry of Entertainment (MiniEnt) emailed me a while back to do an interview. We were going to do it over Skype, but the ongoing layout marathon for Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple left my schedule very tight.

We discuss my game design process, what was cut from Do, making binary choices interesting, emergent complexity, and the loooong road from conception to production. Hope you dig it!

We conducted this interview over email for a few days, so my apologies if I'm even more long-winded than usual. :)

» MiniEnt: Interview with Daniel Solis

20 Reasons why Super Metroid is the Best Game Ever.

Super Metroid is one of my favorite games. I remember playing it for the first time at our local Target. It was their demo game. You got 5 minutes to play the game before it reset. I could never make it to the second save station. When I bought it, I played it to death. Even now I will practice speed running or do a no boss run through.

But Super Metroid is an old outdated game - released in 1994. I've had 17 years to play other games. Yet none have surpassed Super Metroid. The care and detail of it's design is just unreal. I want to look at why it's so gosh darn amazing.

So let's return to a time before achievements, before Facebook games, and before the MMO's. To a time of 16 bit gaming and 2-dimensional graphics. Here's a look at Super Metroid and why it is the greatest single player game ever made.

Super Metroid - Reasons #20-16

#20: The Chozo Surprise

Super Metroid sets up expectations then breaks them.

A good example is the first miniboss: The Evil Statue

The set-up:

"Hello I'm a generous Chozo Statue." "Here's some missiles!"

Expectation:

"Hello again!" "Here's some Bombs."

The Surprise:

It's a trap!

Lots of games do this. They set an expectation then break it. Mimic Boxes and Apples which fall up.

What makes this the chozo surprise great is that it plays on a meta-expectation. The standard procedure for most games is "Fight Boss then Get Reward." A good example is Megaman. The game is structured around that idea. "Get Reward then Fight Boss" turns that expectation on it's head.

It also plays on the expectations of Metroid 1 and 2. You have two games telling you "Chozo Statues are your friends." Super Metroid gives you a nostalgic surprise. Super Metroid understands it's gaming context and plays on those conventions.

#19: The Charge Shot

The Charge Beam is the coolest weapon ever designed. That one mechanic - charging your power, has many interactions.

Here's what you can do with it:

Many games will give you a tool or a weapon that does one thing. This blue key opens that blue door. These flippers only let you swim in the water. This sword only does more damage. That's stupid.

Good mechanics are elegant. They do one thing, but in context do many things. Take Jumping from Super Mario. Jumping is simple - Mario moves up, but in context it has many uses. You can land on enemies to kill them and to do super jump. You can land on top of blocks and break them. If you run then go higher.

The Charge Beam, like Jumping, is elegant. It does one thing - Charge your power, but in context does many things.

#18: Soft Locks

With an open world game, designers need someway to guide the player through it. Someway to pace their experience. One of those tools is the Soft Lock.

Here's a bunch of Soft Locks.

A Soft Lock uses the game's physics and mechanics to limit the player. The super hot room is a classic one. You take too much damage to get to the end of it. Without the Varia Suit or Red Tunic you can't progress. A soft lock is basically a subtle and integrated hard lock.

A Hard Lock is a gate with an single arbitrary Key. You need a blue key to open the blue door. You must defeat the dragon and then the king will repair the bridge. There's only one way to progress and it's unrelated to the game's mechanics. Essentially Hard Locks are about status. Which is why I hate them.

A Hard Lock is like a Member's Only sign. You need a member's card to proceed. If they are all over a game, it feels like the Game Designer's breathing down your neck. "Sorry son, you have to play the game my way. (Evil Laugh)" No thanks Sakurai. I think I'll play this other game.

Soft Locks are closer to tests, challenges, puzzles and bosses. They are about performance.

To me they feel almost justified. 'Well of course I can't get there yet, I can't jump high enough. The game just doesn't work that way.'

The other reason I love soft locks is that you can game the game. The player can do some lateral thinking and pick the lock.

Here's a couple ways you can cheat at Super Metroid.

Cheating is awesome.

#17: The Morphing Ball Spy

Before you get the Morphing Ball, the Planet Zebes is lifeless. No enemies, nothing interesting. Once you get the Morphing Ball this happens:

What a cool effect. You've trigger an alarm. Something has happened. Something has changed. But more than just a neat special effect or an unspoken narrative, the Morphing Ball Spy is there to teach the player an underlying truth about Super Metroid. Once you get a new item or ability everything changes.

With the Morphing ball the player can explore the world in a new way. The Morphing ball is like a light you can shine on a dark and empty room. Now those 'meaningless' small passages have meaning. You can get through them. The Morphing ball is more of a viewpoint than it is an ability.

The Spy is like Samus' Uncle Ben. With your new found spider-powers you can light up a dark world. The morphing ball not only changes you, but how you see everything else.

#16: Secret Rewards

Super Metroid is full of secrets. More than just Missiles, and Upgrades it has secret rewards hidden in the game. There's a secret reward in one of my favorite rooms:

The Speed Boosts Lobby

What a beautiful room. Before I talk about the secret reward I want to highlight how well designed this room is.

The bottom half is wonderfully orchestrated. Everything in the bottom half tells you where the secret passage is. The Lava says "Don't go down." (and it foreshadows the upcoming test.) The little jumps tell you to "Stop Running." The green guys tell you "look up" and "Shoot us first."

If you listen to them you will find the passage rather easily. Right when you enter the room if you stop and shoot up at the green guys you will 'magically' open the secret passage.

What a Convenient Secret:

With that out of the way let's look at the top half. It's the part with the secret reward. I don't mean it has secret missiles or energy tanks, the room has no secret items. It's the Red Guys.

For a long time, these guys bothered me - I didn't understand why they are there. They aren't an obstacle to overcome. They don't block the door. They aren't very difficult. If you wanted just an arbitrary enemy, why not use a different enemy? Why use the little red guys? I didn't understand until I started doing speed runs. They're there as a hidden reward for keeping your head cool. There's five of them because they make a nice sound effect.

The next room over is the Speed Boost explanation room. When you get the speed booster, the stage shakes and lava rises. You need to run like hell. You'll run up a long corridor all blue sparked (weird that blue sparks = speed,) At the end you'll crash into the blue door and kill your speed. Hurray, you're safe.

But if you keep your head cool and remember to open the door and keep your speed boost. As such you'll slam into the little red guys. They are your secret reward.

They are your fireworks.

That's reasons #20-16. I'll try to have at least 5 reasons a week. I want to write a lot more about Super Metroid. Especially going over the level design in detail. But I'm going to try and finish this first.

Join me next time for reasons #15-11.

Workification

We're hearing a lot about gamification over the past few years. Whether for or against, I can't help but feel like there's a nuanced middle-ground. It's just another method of communication, administration or education that can be implemented carelessly or thoughtfully. When done carelessly, it feels like Tom Sawyer convincing Huck to paint a fence. An insincere ruse, y'know?

That's pretty much my only statement on the matter for now, but I was curious what the opposite of gamification would be. Workification? How would you define it? I posed this question to my tweeps. Here are there responses:

@DanielSolis game mechanics that are so heavy and/or require you to do something too similar to actual work? #madethisupless than a minute ago via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet ReplyRenato Ramonda
renatoram

@DanielSolis Halo 3 on Legendary. Achievements that require grinding up to a huge number. Shadowrun character creation.less than a minute ago via Twitter for Mac Favorite Retweet ReplyKit
kobutsu

@DanielSolis Applying work processes - like paperwork and accounting and inventory management - to games, to make them less engaging.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyCraig Wayling
luminoustedium

@DanielSolis Turning play into an obligation. Professional gambling, pro sports, most MMORPGs' griding after the initial fun bits, etc.less than a minute ago via Tweetie for Mac Favorite Retweet ReplyMarc Majcher
majcher

@DanielSolis Gamification adds rewards. Workification avoids rewards.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyChris Chinn
yeloson

» Image: Attribution Non-commercial Share-Alike license by sAeroZar

Making Mystery part 2

Eating Cake

Dirty dishes don't really bother me. But when I see a plate covered in crumbs, I get rather upset. Someone bought cake and I didn't get to eat it.

Knowledge is a lot like food. An idea can give you energy and help you grow as a person. Just as there's more food than you could possibly eat. Not just in terms of variety but also capacity. Your brain and stomach have a limit. It takes a scientist to build rockets, just as it takes more than the average bear to be a hot dog eating champion.

If you'll pardon me for mixing metaphors, there's more to the analogy: if food is like knowledge, learning is like eating. If you want to eat the cake your first step is to find it.

Where is the Cake?

The first part of learning is Perception - the act of gathering information. You need to get the cake before you can stuff it down your face, just as you cannot learn something if you can't see it.

The primary way that we gather information is through our senses - Sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.

Look for the Cake

Sight is our primary sense. Most technology revolves around sight - Reading and writing, Television, and computers all use sight. Games are they same way: You see the Goomba touch Mario and then you see him die. If you were reading a text message when the Goomba touches Mario you would have no idea why you died.

I have a problem with learning new fighting games because I have to focus on the controller instead of on the screen. Quarter Circles and Shoryukens are not built into my muscle memory.

There’s this fun thing with fighting games and sight - You don’t actually see the game. The hit box on Ryu’s sweep could be shorter or longer than his actual foot. The health bar is just a representation of damage. You don’t know if you've done 850k or 870k damage to Sentinel, you only see that he has a little bit of life left.

Obfuscation is a problem with video games in general. Video games are a black box. The player never actually sees the game. What information a game shows is incredibly important.

Hear of the Cake

Sound! The best of all the senses, mostly because of music. The mood and feel of a game is shown with music. It resonates with your emotions and adds to them. You can hear the speed of Sonic and the intensity of Master Chief. If you are playing a horror game, hit the mute button. Zombies turn from frightening to comical.

Sound effects reinforce sight with a redundancy. You see Mario jump and you hear the ‘Boing’ sound. Sight and sound work together. Without this redundancy there can be confusion and frustration. Walking across the street is a good example. If you pressed the walk button, but you don’t know if the machine registered your input. I press it about 10 times to make sure. Cross walks could use a ’Boing’ sound effect.

Grab the Cake

We also perceive information through touch. Tag is a game based on touch. You know you’re it when you feel the it person touch you. Many children’s game use touch. Gooey Louie, Jenga, or Touch Football.

In Chess, you see the pieces and the board, but you don’t have to. If you close your eyes you can Perceive the game through touch. By feeling what piece is where, you could form a mental image of the board.

A side note: If someone is born blind their brain doesn’t have the faculty for sight. The neurons have been rewired for other uses. A doctor can’t cure those born blind by repairing the eyes. They must also teach the brain to see. (I‘d link this awesome video but I can‘t find it gah!)

Smell and Taste the Cake

Taste and smell are rarely used to show information in games. I use smell when looking for a smash brothers tournament. I know I’m in the right spot by the stench. Wine Tasting is a kind of a game which uses flavor. A player uses their tongue to determine how woody or fruity a wine is.

To lead into the next section: here's a little puzzle.

The Wizard's Cake

You want to be a wizard. So you start searching craigslist for wizarding schools. Scrolling down the list you see that all of them have very difficult entrance exams with side effects of death or mutation. Continuing down the list you find a school less violent requirements. It reads - "able to eat cake." Considering that you're an award-winning cake eater, getting in should be easy. You could even get scholarships! To apply you only need to click on the "Apply now!" button.

Click. A mini-wizard jumps out of your screen and casts a spell on you. He informs you that the spell he cast was a Cake-numbing incantation. For the next 48 hours you cannot see, smell, touch, taste, or hear cake. If anyone tells you about cake you will hear them talking about something else. If you read about cake you will see it as something else entirely. If you can find and eat cake in the 48 hours the spell will instantly wear off in a dazzling array and you will be accepted into wizarding school. He jumps back into the screen and wishes you the best of luck.

How would you find the cake? How would you begin to eat it? Is it even possible?The short answer is yes. The long answer is in Making Mystery part 3.

...to be continued in Making Mystery part 3: Eating the Invisible Cake

PlayStation Network DOWN!

For almost two weeks now, the PlayStation Network has been down and players worldwide can not reconnect to their favorite games to play online, in the midst of the rumor storm surrounding the whole issue - it went as far as some people suggesting sony is bring down PSN permanently - I have received an email from SONY and i've decided to share it's content with everyone given the serious nature of the problem:

Valued PlayStation Network/Qriocity Customer:

We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this intrusion, we have:

1)     Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;

2)     Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened; and

3)     Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our network infrastructure by re-building our system to provide you with greater protection of your personal information.

We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding and goodwill as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly and efficiently as practicable.

Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state/province, zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence that credit card data was taken at this time, we cannot rule out the possibility.  If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, to be on the safe side we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.

For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, social security, tax identification or similar number or other personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking.  When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password.  Additionally, if you use your PlayStation Network or Qriocity user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them, as well.

To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant to review your account statements and to monitor your credit or similar types of reports.

We thank you for your patience as we complete our investigation of this incident, and we regret any inconvenience.  Our teams are working around the clock on this, and services will be restored as soon as possible. Sony takes information protection very seriously and will continue to work to ensure that additional measures are taken to protect personally identifiable information. Providing quality and secure entertainment services to our customers is our utmost priority.  Please contact us at www.eu.playstation.com/psnoutage should you have any additional questions.

Sincerely,

Sony Network Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment Teams  

 The timing of this outtage couldn't have been worse, given that so many schools are off on spring break or just easter holiday seasons. As for newly released games that won't have a chance on the PSN network it included the Mortal Kombat reboot, Portal 2 and Socom 4. Players are most likely to head to the Microsoft network for either PC or Xbox360 online play. 


Hope this issue would be solved soon and with it comes a better much more stable network experience. Sony so far has been losing the online battle to it's competitors.