Handout from my GDC Lecture

Here's the 4-page handout from my Game Developer's Conference lecture about balancing multiplayer competitive games. Several people have asked me for the link, so I also put it in my sidebar under "Multiplayer Game Balance" (click to expand it) then "Four Page Overview." Now you can find it easily in the future!

Remember that this handout was designed to be viewed on paper, rather than online. It's meant to be printed on a single sheet of 11x17 paper, folded in half to create four 8.5x11 pages. It was quite a trick to summarize the 16,000 words of my game balance articles in just four pages...but I somehow did it. Maybe you can use it as a case study about how to densely pack information in a way that still has decent aesthetics.

Enjoy!

GDC 2009, Day 3

Eve Online's CSM

Getting up early is painful for me. Doing it on the third day in a row after saying up late on the second day is almost impossible, but I would *not* miss Eve Online's talk about the CSM. No way.

If, hypothetically, I had worked on an MMO game design, then that design would have a constitutional government surrounding the administration of the game, including a House of Representatives. The CSM (Council of Stelar Management) is Eve Online's House of Representatives.

Eyjolfur Gudmundsson and one of his researchers Petur Oskarsson came all the way from Iceland to explain the thinking behind the CSM. Gudmundsson has a Ph.D in economics and helped architect the system. Incidentally, first revealed the plan for the CSM at an Eve Online convention where they "got hammered" on the idea. They submitted the plan to many industry colleagues and also to academia and were "hammered" by pretty much everyone. I think it's strange that so many people from so many backgrounds could not understand how this would work, while I was (hypothetically) designing the exact same system because, well, it's really obviously a good idea. It has not only "worked out" in Eve, but it really defines the game.

The CSM is a group of 9 players, democratically elected by the playerbase.

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GDC 2009, Day 2

I'll break with tradition in my Game Developer's Conference coverage and simply say "no comment" on all the sessions I attended today, except for Hideo Kojima's, creator of Metal Gear.

Hideo Kojima

Several people told me they didn't like Kojima's presentation at all and they found it very long and boring. While he should have removed the first 10 minutes which was spent entirely on saying hi, repeating the title of the presentation several times, and apologizing and making jokes about the presentation...once he actually gave it, I thought it was worthwhile.

Kojima's talk was called "Making the 'impossible' possible." He showed a side view of a ground plane and a square obstacle, saying that this square represents any obstacle in life that we might encounter. How do we overcome it? Mario would simply jump over it. Solid Snake would tuck and roll to get over it. But what if the obstacle is taller? Mario could still get a running jump over it, but Solid Snake cannot jump that high. What can he do?

This seems like an impossible task for Snake because the obstacle is simply too high for him to overcome. But Kojima, displaying the classic traits of a visionary and of lateral thinking, devised several possible solutions. Snake could get a box which would act as a step to reach the top of the wall, then climb over. He could use large balloon for lift and hover over. He could fill up the area on one side of the wall with water, then float to the top. Kojima rattled off at least 6 solutions to the "impossible" problem. As you are about to see, this really captures the essence of what it is to be Mr. Kojima.

The First Metal Gear, on MSX2

In 1985, Kojima was given an impossible mission: create a combat game using the MSX2 hardware.

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GDC 2009, Day 1

As usual, I will call wednesday day 1 of the Game Developer's Conference even though it has other types of sessions on monday and tuesday.

Iwata, President of Nintendo

First up was the keynote speech by Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo. I still remember his last speech years ago from before the Wii came out. He outlined Nintendo's entire strategy on DS and Wii, and the general reaction from the crowd was "nice wishful thinking there, bud." I was impressed with his plan and thought it was good, but I had doubts whether it would actually work. Nintendo went on to smash everyone with the DS and Wii, and his plan came true with even more wild success than he hinted at. My point is that we should listen to Mr. Iwata. I got there early specifically to make sure there was no chance I would miss his talk, even though waking up early is highly traumatic to me.

I'll first tell you the various odds and ends he covered later in his talk, before focusing on his main point. The odds and ends: 1) the Wii system software has been updated to version 4.0 (now supports downloading games to SD cards and loading SD cards of any size, not just 2 GB), 2) there is a pretty cool Wario Ware DSi game that uses the camera and after each session you can see (and trade with friends!) a video of how stupid you looked playing the game, and 3) a Japanese pop music star contacted Nintendo because he wanted to make a rhythm game, made it, and it comes out in the US in about 7 days. It's called Rhythm Heaven and we all got copies of the game for attending. The last time we all got copies of a game was when Mr. Iwata gave us Brain Age just before it came out, years ago.

But most of Iwata's lecture was about Shigeru Miyamoto. Iwata told us about how Iwata himself used to work at HAL Laboratories and how difficult it was being a developer. He says that today, people think that only Nintendo can be successful in selling a game on the Wii, but that he thinks that is not true. He understands why we'd think that because when he was at HAL, he thought the same thing. It seemed that Nintendo just had more money and that is why they could make a more polished game.

Meanwhile at HAL, he found himself in what he called the Death Spiral.

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UC Berkeley StarCraft Class, Week 8

This week's StarCraft class was about the techniques of scouting and anti-scouting.

Replay 1

In an amusing replay of a Protoss vs. Terran match, the Protoss player pulls off quite an anti-scouting maneuver. Apparently he's a Korean player who is known for ridiculous strategies and he likes to suddenly put on some music and start singing during the critical moments of his plans.

In this game, he uses two probes to block the ramp leading to...an empty base. The enemy's SCV scouts, tries to get past these probes, but the probes kill the SCV. Later, he replaces these probes with two zealots to block the ramp, and he even builds a pylon outside the ramp. The other player is thinking "this is obviously his main base." The zealots fend off another SCV scout.

The Terran then sends the full force of his army at this ramp, and finally gets up it. The zealots run around a bit, trying to waste time as the Terran player realizes this is a completely empty starting zone with no Protoss base at all. At this time (cue the music!) the Korean player does two things. Remember that pylon just down the ramp to this fake base? Next to it he suddenly builds a whole set of cannons to lock the enemy units inside the empty base! Some nuance of strategy was lost on me here, but apparently the Terran used a fairly standard Terran vs. Protoss build here and that meant his tanks didn't have siege mode yet, so the cannons were especially devastating. Second, the Protoss player had been building mass dragoons this entire time at his actual base and sent them to the Terran's (undefended) main base. The Terran realized he was in trouble before the dragoons even arrived, as the Terran had already floated away all his builds to be annoying. Interestingly, the Protoss player forfeited at this point. Apparently this match was broadcast live and it was too boring to have to tech to air units and go hunt down the floating buildings, so the Protoss player just quit, ha.

Replay 2

In this match of Zerg vs. Terran, the Terran player scouts with an SCV to find a Lair in the process of building and a hydralisk den already in place. He expects lurkers, we assume, so he builds up a

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