At long last, the conclusion to my epic 4 piece blast-to-the-past featuring games I created when I was between 7 and 8 years old. It’s fitting that I stumbled on all of these, right before starting work as a designer/programmer for Freeverse. Deciding between staying as a pure indie developer and taking a full time gig was a very difficult decision for me, and seeing these really reminded me of why I do what I do. I sincerely believe this is my artistic purpose… I’ve written and designed games on whatever medium I had available to me, whether that be in C++ code, pencil drawings, action figures, for as long as I can remember. There’s no way I could do anything else.

Anyway, enough ego stroking. On to the games.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Ghost Town II
North American Release Date: October 10, 1989

Ghost Town II, which is predates the entire Survival Horror genre by at least 10 years, introduces the player to the concepts of terror and fright by way of fountains and some red dude humping a building. It also introduced the concept of “Big Ass Portal In The Sky Spewing Darkness and Shit” which would later on be used in games such as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. No, really. Under “password” that’s clearly a big ass portal, and it’s totally spewing little orange bits of darkness and shit.

It’s also worth noting that my crystal balls at age 8, compared to how I draw them now at 27, is exactly the same.

Parade of Death
North American Release Date: October 10, 1989

What’s the last thing you think would scare the shit out of you? Everyone expects demons. Or ghosts. Dragons, lions, tigers, big ass portals spewing darkness and shit. But not parades. Parades are happy times full of music and celebration and pride regarding any one of a number of assorted alternative lifestyles. But not the PARADE OF DEATH.

Yes! A parade of pure, unadulterated death weaving its way down your street RIGHT. INTO. YOUR. FACE. See the horror of the parade in the corner there? The single file line of tombstones is enough to instill fear in the manliest of men.

Also, notice how that in addition to simply “start” and “continue” you can also choose to save or enter a password. Why anyone would want to input a password when a continue option is so visible and tempting is beyond me. But what I do know is the value of being able to save anywhere, and that includes at the title screen. It’s all about options. Because having options is the only way to survive when the Parade of Death marches forth! With Death!

Planet X
North American Release Date: November 8, 1989

Another cool sci-fi game of mine. Planet X is all about the dangers of an unexplored planet, but instead of providing quarter for a hostile alien species, the planet just GROWS A HUGE PISSED OFF FACE AND SHOOTS EXPLODING LASER BEAMS AT PEOPLE. I mean, look at him. He’s fuckin’ PISSED. And think about this: what would you do if the sun/moon just decided to spit laser beams on you while you were walking to work? That’s right: NOTHING. You’d stand there and get fuckin’ annihilated. See that explosion down there that looks like Pizza The Hutt? That’s you. Another victim of the Green, Pissed Off Hostile Planet Face.

Switchblade
North American Release Date: August 25, 1989

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with a little switchblade I had. Obviously, not real, as anyone that knows me personally knows that any attempt to actually use a switchblade would result in said switchblade somehow ending up in my eye. No sir, this was not a switchBLADE but a switchCOMB. The problem with that, is that combs are fucking lame. Pshaw! I ripped that shit out, left the little metal part that flipped out, and the blade was replaced with my sick twisted imagination. (Looking back, I’m grateful I never ended up in a mental institution for this shit.)

Anyway, Switchblade II is the sequel to the ever popular Switchblade. In the sequel, the Switchblade grows so absurdly huge that the player can now climb it instead of stab people, and he must scale it all the way up to the floating Burger King crown in the clouds.

The final game is a good one to close out the series, because it really speaks for itself:

Typical Mission II
North American Release Date: November 12, 1989

I’m noticing a trend- I wouldn’t call it disturbing, just disappointing, on XBLA. I’m talking about games that really should be awesome, but for some reason or another, they’re simply not. I first noticed it with Assault Heroes– it’s still a fun game, but it falls flat when you compare it to the other arena shooters on XBLA (Geometry Wars, Mutant Storm 1 and 2, Robotron, Smash TV come to mind immediately.) Then I noticed it big-time with Small Arms, Band of Bugs and Arkadian Warriors. All these games should have been awesome. Small Arms is a Smash Bros. type brawler featuring animals with guns, Band of Bugs is basically Final Fantasy Tactics, and Arkadian Warriors seems like the closest thing XBLA has to Diablo. But they’re all boring as all hell. More recently, I tried out Rocketmen: Axis of Evil. Same deal: should be a fun game, but it just sucks.

I have a theory- I’m tempted to call it Academia Syndrome. This is when a game is done “right” by almost every standard: super high production values, superb art direction, use of a good engine, an impressive bullet list of features and unique selling points, and they seem to be by gamers for gamers, but when it comes to actually having fun with the game, it’s flat as coke that you opened months ago. The game is the sum of all these parts, yet there’s that little-something-more that just didn’t make it in. You could call it the heart & soul of the game, but it’s not gameplay… but yet it is. It’s weird. You could read the design docs of these games and easily tell that they have great gameplay. Smash Bros with guns? Casual FF Tactics? XBLA Diablo? All awesome. I could have fun for tons of hours with any of them. But there’s feeling and, believe it or not, emotion, that needs to be conveyed along with that gameplay.

This is really not something that can be taught formally, and I would say this is the single biggest thing that would qualify games as art (which is territory I’m not going anywhere near today.) Gameplay can evoke emotion, the same way music or movies can. And, in my opinion anyway, it’s our responsibility as designers to ensure we convey that emotion. You can’t just say “My game is Game X meets Game Y with Twist Z” and leave it at that. Sure, that’s a great way to get the idea on paper, but once you start programming, you need to keep the following in mind. How did Game X make you feel when you played it? How about Game Y? You need to evoke those EMOTIONS as well as just combining the game mechanics of Game X and Game Y, or your game will be flat.

I think this is also why it’s crucial for designers to have an active role in development, and also need to be able to do some programming and art assets. Consistency is more than just art direction- the designer needs to make sure that the appropriate feelings are conveyed by the game at all times.

Got a Diablo clone? Feelings of exploration, feelings of Gauntlet-style, one-on-many combat, the strategy of planning the development of your character, and the feelings of triumph when those developments allow you to slaughter your foes.

Got an arena shooter? Feelings of intense adrenaline, with some claustrophobia thrown in for good measure. Feelings of incredible, jarring impact from gunfire and explosions. You’re not just spawning a bullet object. You’re firing a cannon. Your enemies aren’t playing their death animations and being removed from gameplay, they’re getting fucking slaughtered. Convince me of that, or your game is flat.

So 2007 is about to end. For you east coasters, it’s already over. Happy New Year.

A quick update, since I haven’t written in over a month.

Prototyping is going well. I have three prototypes now- the first one sucks, but I’m keeping it around until I can figure out something to do with the game mechanic. I’m leaning toward the scrap-that-shit-and-make-something-cooler approach. The idea is to give the Fic treatment to old arcade games, and the one I wanted to start with is Missile Command. But, as it turns out, going back to the game, I realized that I never really liked Missile Command to begin with. Oops. There just isn’t all that much you can do with that mechanic. The change I really want to make is allowing the cities to move around, but then it’s not Missile Command at all- it’s Space Invaders. So this idea I think needs to be brought back to the drawing board.

While that’s going on though, the second prototype I’m working on is awesome. I really want to take this further. It’s a beat-em-up, so think Double Dragon, although right now the gameplay is similar to the beat-em-up levels in Battletoads.

As an aside, I finally got to playing Battletoads, both to find ideas and inspiration, but also because I never played it as a kid and everyone kept saying how hard it was, especially the bike level. It’s worth noting that I FUCKED THAT BIKE LEVEL UP. Oh man. Not only did I ruin its shit, it was also one of the most fun moments I’ve had with a beat-em-up. The level I had the most problems with was that fucking level where you’re on the unicycle-type-thing and the giant orb is chasing you- mostly because it actually points out a problem with the 360 sticks. Namely, the use of analog sticks for directional control when you need frame-perfect timing.

For those that haven’t played it, the level has you on a track which twists and turns in the four compass directions. You have to hold in the direction the track is going to pick up speed. If you hit nothing, you slow down, and if you hold in the wrong direction, you slow WAY down. The whole time a giant orb is right on your ass, and if it catches you, you instantly die and have to repeat the level. Now, using analog sticks, this level was impossible. I just couldn’t get the precision I needed to hit all the turns without slowing down. The only way to get through it was to switch over to the keyboard and use WASD, which let me switch directions the exact frame I hit each turn. This game is hard as hell.

Anyway, back to my prototype. All you need to know is that beat-em-ups are getting the Justin Fic treatment. That means fast action, awesome controls, and blood and dismembered limbs like you wouldn’t fucking believe. It will use the familiar 2.5D angle, and combat will be much closer to Battletoads, or the newer Castlevania games. I’ve added a cool system for melee attacks to the engine so attacks can be as complicated as I design them in XML. If you listen to the Best Damn Podcast Ever you have heard that I will be at MacWorld showing off what I have. If you’re going, I will be helping Freeverse with their booth this year, and will be there for the entire expo. Stop by and ask me about the game and I’ll be happy to show it off!

Finally, the third prototype is still very early in development. It’s the same type of idea as the first prototype, but as it happens, Bruce Morrison is interested in a game that uses its exact mechanic, so I threw something together. With the FicEngine, it took maybe a few hours. Most likely it will remain under wraps for awhile, at least until after MacWorld, and depending on how the beat-em-up is received. Rest assured it’s a game mechanic I’m familiar with, and very good at, and it’s a game that does absolutely need to be made. I’ll keep you posted.

Anyway, happy new year. Peace.

Derek Yu over at TIGsource.com just posted a video from the Independent Games Summit on Innovation in Games. The four panelists had some very inspiring speeches prepared and I want to share my own thoughts on the subject. In the meantime, check out that video. It’s okay, I’ll wait.

Back already? Great. It was interesting to note that the four speakers, each one a well-known independent developer, were as a whole arguing AGAINST what Jon Blow called “Innovation for innovation’s sake.” Jenova Chen of Cloud and flOw fame argued that games needed more “feeling.” Jon Mak of Everyday Shooter fame argued that games should avoid deliberate innovation and to instead embrace the personal expression of the developer. Jon Blow actually had a name for Innovation for Innovation’s sake: a gimmick. I’m not here to just regurgitate the arguments each made, but rather to tie these concepts together with a few examples taken from my own personal experience.

Prior to creating Kill Dr. Cote in late 2004, I was part of a group of students that had studied under Bill Kunkel (of Electronic Games Magazine fame, credited with pioneering videogame journalism) and we met once a week at the Starbucks by the UNLV campus. It was with this group that I learned that true deliberate innovation is a very tricky proposition. Our meetings were almost strictly on design, and we tried different methods of coming up with new games. One mindset that a few of us had was that we would create a completely new game. I’m talking on the order of: Chess, Checkers, Go, ___(insert our game here)___. Trying to brainstorm a game like that with purely abstract game objects was a spectacular failure. A few of us came up with ideas, but they all had some sort of setting: bugs, ninjas, whathaveyou, and because of that, were rejected. And when the uDevGames 2004 contest started up, it was worth noting that none of these ideas were used as a possible game idea.

For the uDevGames contest, we had originally decided to go with a prototype that one member had created: an unfinished 3D version of columns. Being unsatisfied with the choice of game, I instead decided to work on my own game, which ended up being Kill Dr. Cote. KDC is a dual analog shooter, controlled with the keyboard and mouse. It’s basically Robotron / SmashTV, and in the eyes of a lot of people, was hardly innovative. But no one could deny that Kill Dr. Cote was a wholly new experience, and here’s why:

- Feeling. Jenova Chen argued for Feeling. KDC had many deliberate evocations of feeling. For instance, the choice of sounds for the railgun, armageddon laser, and grenade. The camera shaking when big explosions took place. The sheer size of the armageddon laser. The ridiculous number of body parts flying around at any given time. Finally, the difficulty. All these things were deliberate choices by me to evoke a feeling of intense, visceral action.

- Expression. Jon Mak argued for Expression. After my initial inspiration for the game, it practically designed itself, or at least it felt that way. The design work on the game felt automatic because it was what came naturally from my personality. The game was praised for its style and panache. MY style, and that alone is something that has never been seen before.

- No gimmicks. Jon Blow argued against Gimmicks, or Innovation for Innovation’s sake. There’s a term I like to use for a gimmick that isn’t quite a gimmick- for innovations that don’t overpower your game design and instead work to improve it. I like to call those “Hooks.” KDC had many hooks: the keyboard/mouse control, the recharging grenade, the carnage meter, and the sheer number of enemies. Each one of these individually won’t overpower the game, but they were combined to create an experience that hadn’t been seen before, even in similar games.

So with the blatant self-promotion out of the way, here’s what all that boils down to:

- Innovation isn’t about coming up with totally new rules for games on an abstract level. That’s a risky prospect, there isn’t much to work with, and expression doesn’t usually work on that level anyway.

- Expression is innovation. Even the most subtle visual or audible effects can alter the player’s experience, and change the feelings that are evoked. Just the difference in these feelings can create a completely new and innovative game.

- Another form of evoking feelings is being able to reference how a player feels while playing another game. An example is one level in Everyday Shooter that Jon Mak says was inspired by the Studio Ghibli film Porco Rosso, where the player must shoot down red enemy planes inspired by foes in the movie, in an attempt to recreate the feelings that one would get from watching the movie. Of course, when, where and how this sort of thing is done is completely dependent on your own personal style, and is therefore innovative and new.

- Similarly, WHICH feelings you evoke are another source of innovation. Kill Dr. Cote is very intense, meant to give feelings of constant pressure (and a release from that when you whip out the bigger guns) and intensity. Jenova Chen’s flOw is meant to be a peaceful, almost spaced-out experience. So imagine two games, exactly like KDC and Flow, respectively, but swap those feelings. So a dual-analog shooter that actually evokes feelings of peace and calm, and an abstract eat-game that evokes feelings of pressure and anxiety. I believe both can be done, and even with all other game mechanics identical, I would call these two hypothetical games innovative and new. (As an aside, it would be an interesting experiment to create a version of KDC that was actually relaxing, or to create a new game with two different versions or “skins”: one is intense and one is relaxing. If I try it, it would be the subject of a later post.)

That’s all for now. More developments on the FicEngine to come very soon!

Hey all, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated, so I figure I’d let you guys all in on my current project. I call it the FicEngine.

What is the FicEngine?

The FicEngine is a game engine developed independently by me, for use in my own independent game projects. In development for about a month now, the FicEngine is designed to be a robust toolset that I can use to quickly get game mechanics working and ideas rolling. It takes the basic concepts I laid down in Kill Dr. Cote, and later refined in Arachnoid: Predator of Worlds, adds to it the experience I’ve gleaned from my 18 month tour-de-force of working in the videogame industry.

The design philosophy of the FicEngine:

• Creation is the credo. Games are the goal. Over-engineering an engine is a sure-fire way to failure. My goal is not to make an engine. It’s to make games. The first rule of the FicEngine is that the FicEngine is only a means to an end. The end goal will always be the next awesome game that rocks your face. The FicEngine exists only as a central core of code that should only be written once.
• Speed and Agility are clutch. The FicEngine is designed to allow me to create games with incredible speed. By laying the foundation of classes that I use most often in a central core, I can create a game in a matter of hours. The goal is to be able to prototype an idea in under 10 man-hours, and it’s looking like I will achieve that with the FicEngine.
• This engine is designed by me, for me. Sounds selfish, but it’s a central idea that I need to keep in mind. One big thing I learned from my experiences as an indie smashing game-dev contests, and as a paid employee in both fairly large (50+ people) and small (15) game companies is that coders all have their style. When I chose to create the FicEngine instead of using an existing engine such as Torque or Unity, I chose so because with my own engine I can cater precisely to my style of coding, which will allow me to express myself much more easily. Programming is much like architecture, and I definitely fancy myself more of a Howard Roark than a Peter Keating. Also, in creating my own engine, I don’t have to cater to “the user.” The user is ME. I don’t intend to market the engine, like I said, it’s a means to an end, and a means only.
• Leverage existing tools and code. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Progress is taking everything you’ve learned so far, and using it to get to the next level. This is especially true in game development. Tons of people have solved so many problems already. We have sorting algorithms and efficient, reusable data structures, great tools and middleware– there’s no reason to reinvent all this. I’ve seen some people view OPC (other people’s code) as nothing short of the antichrist and insist that the only way to code something right is to code it yourself. What a waste of time and effort that could be spent making games! OPC is out there for a reason- it works, and solves an existing problem. So if it’s free to use, USE IT whenever possible!
• No limitations. Here’s another tough one. Limitations are a natural by-product of robustness, and this was also a major factor in not going with existing game engines such as Torque or Unity. The limitations in those engines, in my opinion, come about because those engines are also 3D graphics engines, as well as game engines. The FicEngine is all about separating the game logic from what you see on screen. In the FicEngine, you might see models and vehicles zooming around in 3D, but maybe in reality, all you need for the game logic are a few circles and rectangles. The LOGIC is central to the FicEngine.

Here’s a quick list of features of the FicEngine. I can go into more detail in later posts about each one, but here’s them in a nutshell:

• Excellent cross-platform potential. It is based off of all cross-platform libraries such as SDL and OpenGL, and is designed for maximum portability. It is being developed on a Mac, but compiles straight out of the box for Windows. SDL and OpenGL calls are encapsulated, to allow for fast (and one-time) portability to Xbox 360. The game logic is 100% cross platform- so port the engine once, and all the games go with it! Also planned is FicEngine Lite, which I guess you could also call FicEngineDS
• Robust asset management. This one is really nerdy, so I won’t go too much into it, but I can define any kind of asset I want, such as textures, sounds, music, shaders, or even made up stuff like xml definitions for user interfaces, and the FicEngine catalogs it for easy retrieval anywhere in the game.
• Support for modern 3D graphics. While it is not my primary goal to create a 3D engine, the FicEngine does support a programmable pipeline using shaders. In fact, FicEngine graphics are totally based off of shaders- this not only allows for the potential for very modern, cool graphics, but it also makes organizing the scenegraph much easier. But don’t think I’m going totally 3D either! The support is there, but there is also a sprite animation system that I plan on making great use of
• Incredibly robust input system. I’m proud of how this one turned out. All interaction with the game world is done through a set of game commands, and a game command can be mapped to any input on any device, whether that be a mouse, keyboard or joystick. Not only that, but the Xbox 360 controller is treated as a special case, since it’s probably the best controller I’ve used, and because there are just over 9 million Xbox 360 owners out there at the time of this blog post. So if you have your 360 sticks with you, you can plug them into your Mac or PC and feel right at home in a Justin Fic game.
• Lightweight, yet robust sound system. Using SDL_mixer, the FicEngine implements a simple yet robust positional sound system.
• Here’s my favorite at the moment: A robust, extendable system for defining bullets and guns. I call it “ARSENAL.” ARSENAL will allow me to create a huge variety of guns and ammunition using many different variables. Defining a new gun is as simple as laying out the parameters in an xml file- a process that takes at most 2-3 minutes. And the data driven approach means that testing guns in ARSENAL is extremely fast. I can even reload ARSENAL at any point in the game, so I can change a gun’s parameters on the fly and see its new behavior instantly. I definitely want to give ARSENAL its own blog post later on!
• A fiendishly simple physics/collision system. A tough decision that I made with the FicEngine was not going with an existing physics SDK to solve my physics needs. There are many good ones out there, but I decided that their limitations weren’t worth the trouble, that they didn’t jive with my style of coding, and frankly, physics is one aspect that I like coding myself. So all I have to do is register a game object with physics, and it moves. BAM. Register it with collision, give it a shape, and it hits stuff. BAM. Also unique to my system is the concept of factions. I borrowed the concept from Everquest and related MMOs, where certain factions are friendly or not so friendly to each other. Well in physics, all objects belong to a faction, and it only collides with certain other factions, which I can define.
• Extendable, data driven UI. The last 10 months of my game industry experience have been centered in Xbox 360 UI programming. In that time I have designed a set of classes that are reusable, extendable, and powerful. The only problem is that controlling a UI with a mouse is vastly different than controlling it with a 360 controller! So my improved UI system, which I call “FUI2″ uses the aforementioned concepts of game commands to control its UI elements, and can switch between Mouse and Paddle modes. (Mouse mode is also useful for control schemes such as a stylus or Wiimote.) It is also now data-driven, so you can lay out your UI in XML, and, like ARSENAL, you can reload it on the fly.

So that’s FicEngine in a (admittedly long) nutshell. I’ll detail the systems above soon, but the important thing to take away from this is that Justin Fic is back as an independent force to be reckoned with. Development on the engine will continue for the next 2-4 weeks, after which you will start seeing blog posts on game prototypes. I will keep you all posted on my progress via this blog, and maybe BDPE also whenever I can squeeze it in.

Later!

My tirade about videogames that waste my time got some great responses and feedback, enough that I’d like to elaborate more on some of the points I made last time.

One part of games that I’d like to focus on in particular is the collection sidequest. These are the most glaring attempt to pad out gameplay hours that I can think of. The vast majority of collection sidequests extend well past the end of the single player experience. For instance, on my initial playthrough of Ocarina of Time I found maybe 30-40 gold skulltulas out of 100. That’s not even half. Collection in the new Castlevania games extends the playtime by at least 200-300%.

So the question was: are these fun? And my completely useless answer to you is: it depends. (God, I hate saying that, but it’s true.) There are two major types of factors that Fun depends on. The first is player motivation. There’s a wonderful article up at Gamasutra about Designing For Player Motivation, and I suggest you check it out, since I’m only summarizing it here. Motivation depends on Player Skill, Needs, Reward, and Challenge. You need to account for all of those factors or you have no motivation to play, and your game collects dust. (By the way, this applies to your game in general, too, not just sidequests and minigames.)

Example: Crackdown. I’ve maxed out all my skills, but there are still like 200 agility orbs and 250 hidden orbs floating around somewhere. There’s no additional reward for getting these extra orbs (aside from Xbox360 achievements) and the challenge is completely out of whack. I have max agility, so I have no physical problems getting to the orbs, but FINDING them is a pain in the ass, and since I have no idea which ones I’ve gotten already, reading a FAQ with the locations is completely worthless.

The second factor is the minigame itself. I hate having my playtime wasted, but yet, I spent 15-20 hours in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin collecting all the different items and building up my characters. Why? Because once the exploration is complete, you still have the combination of platforming and combat, which keep me stimulated and make running around and collecting all these items fun.

Now take for instance, the Fishing Mini Game. Doesn’t matter which game it’s in, because it’s everywhere. Games around the world love to include the Fishing Mini Game. I fucking hate the Fishing Mini Game. My first Fishing Mini Game was in Dark Cloud 2. I fished in the Fishing Mini Game. I caught fish. Wonderful. Diversion over. I have absolutely no desire to play the Fishing Mini Game in the million subsequent fucking games I’ve seen it in. Animal Crossing? Don’t care. Twilight Princess? Don’t care. Contact? Don’t care. If I wanted to fish this bad I’d just get a pole, go outside and fish. If I play Zelda, I want to explore, fight monsters and uncover secrets. I don’t want to sit on my ass and fish.

In Castlevania, the minigames all revolve around the core mechanic of the game: jumping around and killing shit. If it had a minigame that involved me raising a vampire bat by feeding it or something, guess what? I don’t care. If the minigame doesn’t involve me jumping around and killing shit, I’m not interested. Going back to Crackdown, prior to the downloadable content, once you beat the game, the gangs are completely gone from the city. There is nobody left to kill. But yet you still have this huge collection minigame to do. So take out the motivation from step one, and also remove one of the core mechanics of the game (shootin dudes) and you have a completely boring collection sidequest.

When done right, sidequests and minigames extend the life of the game by changing the rules around. It’s like a separate game mode. Now instead of getting to the end of level X, now I have to kill and collect. When done wrong, all they do is piss me off, since now there’s some reward in the game that I’m not going to get unless I suffer through some repetitive bullshit like spraypainting 100 tags for one stupid respawning shotgun.

I have gone through my list of games that I need to beat, and pruned it to no longer include games I have no intention of suffering through until the end. Especially now that Contact and Etrian Odyssey have both snuck onto my DS list, I really need to focus on the games that I enjoy and to hell with the garbage. I even removed some really quality games: couple of Grand Theft Autos and Final Fantasies, to name a few. Why? Because I’m sick of them wasting my time.

For instance, Lost Magic? I have no intention of ever playing that game again, screw it. The only reason I would beat it is for closure, and those are precious hours I can spend playing other games, hanging out with actual human beings, reading, or feeding my non-existant fish.

If the Xbox 360 Gamerscore has taught me anything, it’s that I absolutely hate sitting down and playing games for any other reason than to enjoy it. Suffering for hours upon hours to complete a story, or reach 100% completion is bullshit. Lego Star Wars II - I beat that game in a few hours, and reaching 100% takes about ten times as long. What the fuck? I could spend the 3-4 more hours to get up to that 100%, but I just can’t justify wasting the time. Dead Rising? Sure, I could spend the 10-15 hours to get a few of those achievements (the kill ~50000 zombies and survive 5-7 days ones) but god damn, I could spend that time doing ANYTHING ELSE!

The worst types of games for me though are games that have their gameplay wear out on me before their story does. Final Fantasy 8? I was done with that shit after Disc 1, but no, there were 3 more discs of whiny emo bullshit to suffer through, and at the time I couldn’t NOT beat it- it was Final Fantasy, and I already invested a disc’s worth of time into it! Final Fantasy X-2? Not even going to bother. I just saved myself 50 hours.

It’s gotten to the point now where I’m buying games faster than I’m beating them. Much faster. I can’t take the time to do boring, repetitive tasks in videogames anymore. I remember drawing the line at Final Fantasy X- a wonderful game, but to get one of the secret weapons you had to dodge 100 lightning bolts IN A ROW at a certain zone. You pretty much had to stay at attention with your thumb hovering over the X button for hours to do it (there was one bolt every 5-20 seconds or thereabouts), and if you screwed up, you had to start over. WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT THIS WAS A FUN IDEA?!

A much better use of my gaming hours is something like Geometry Wars. I’ve yet to gain some of those achievements. But if I had the skill, I’d get them in 15 minutes. Instead of a stupid, repetitive task, I spend my time increasing my skill on a task that takes a few minutes. This is why I’ll never, ever play another MMORPG. When your main game mechanic is referred to as a “grind” and a “treadmill” I can’t find a whole lot of reasons that I’d want to spend the thousands of hours on it that some people do.

So I guess the point to all this rambling is this. I challenge all game designers out there (myself included) to create games that do the following two things: 1) Give the player nearly all available game content within the first 15 minutes of powering the game on, and 2) Give the player a replayable experience that, if they choose, will still occupy hours and hours of their time. This is the philosophy behind my games to date (a game of Kill Dr. Cote takes around 5-10 minutes, but hours can be spent maximizing your score) and will continue to be. For more inspiration, think the old arcade machines: Space Invaders, Robotron, Defender, pretty much any game that throws a high-score table at you as part of its attract mode. These are the games that people come back to. Show me someone who’s played through Final Fantasy X-2 more than once, and I’ll show you a masochist.