Dinofarm Podcast Episode 2: Randomness

 

In this episode, Keith, Blake, Ben and Andrew discuss last week’s show and some of the reactions that the show got.  Also, we take a few questions from listeners.  Finally, the main course of the episode is discussing the idea of randomness in games, different types of randomess, and their effects.  Direct download here, and here’s the RSS link.

 

Discussed in the episode:

The randomness of Super Mario Kart

Fighting about dice-rolls in Summoner Wars

We actually all mention some games that we like (not that it’s relevant!)

And much more!

Enjoy!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Posted on 08/07/2012 by keithburgun. This entry was posted in Game Design, Podcast and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

  • Pingback: Superlicious | Superlevel

  • http://platformsandpitfalls.com link6616

    Excellent, a podcast for my commute to Uni tomorrow.

  • Logo

    It’s cool to hear the positives about SC2, but the game is still really minimized the creative aspects as the player’s skills progress.

    Almost every SC2 unit is used right now which is nice. Reaper, Carrier, and Battlecruiser are the only exceptions (even then BCs see use).

    Anyways the point I wanted to make is that the creativity you see as you gain in skill is changes and is harder to see most of the time, but it’s still really there and really slick. It becomes much more about how you setup transitions and the elegant ways in which you can modify a build. Going 1 evo chamber vs 2 seems yawn boring, but to a high level player who spots the subtle differences it’s just as different as going roaches vs going mutalisks. The creative reward you get when your thought out transition hits the unit you need at just the right moment is just great.

    A good example I suppose is playing vs Protoss with a roach based strategy. There’s a ton of flexibility and creativity within that one style. You can go with 2 evos for an upgrade roach kind of expand strategy, you can go with burrow/burrow move to avoid forcefields, or you can even use your roaches against phoenix pressure despite the fact that the roaches can’t shoot up. So just within the idea of roaches ZvP there’s a ton of creative differences without even going into the actual details of the mechanics.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      I’ve played more RTS games than most people, I’m comfortable saying that. Played Warcraft 2 on Kali back in the mid 90s, then intensely played the original starcraft. I have something like 6,000 1on1s of Warcraft 3 on my account, and then Starcraft 2 I got to the highest league (that existed at the time, I think it was platinum?) before making the following realization:

      I will never play an RTS again. I realized that 90% of my emotions during them can be described as just sheer frustration. This is, I believe, because it’s basically a turn-based game that you’re forced to play in real-time. So it’s SO much about execution; more than street fighter, more than anything else. And worse, it’s like a “rub your belly and pat your head” type of execution, where each execution on their own is easy, but put together it’s just this nightmarish noise.

      So yeah, I don’t think RTS are enjoyable, personally because of this horrible stressfulness. And further, I don’t think they’re very well designed. They have way too many unit types, way too much inherent complexity, maps that are too big, scrolling, too large unit number caps. They’re just a big mess.

      • pkt-zer0

        Making tough decisions during a crisis (i.e. intense stress) is a really fun part of things, though. If you want to strive for mastery, that’s a pretty good challenge, I’d say.

        Not going to comment on the post-hoc “but they’re poorly designed anyway” rationalization, we’ve been there before, you tried weaseling your way out of that argument as well. So how about this instead: SC2 has a powerful editor, go make a custom map that fixes the game, then, so you’re not just theorycrafting (or bullshitting, I should say).

        • http://platformsandpitfalls.com link6616

          Mmm, I really agree with you. The stress of making decisions in real time is really interesting, especially because it makes choices that might not ultimately be ambiguous, ambiguous most of the time. There is something to enjoy from Turn based games aswell, but the unique ability of real time games to force quick decisions tests some very different, and important skills.

          • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

            I’m not against “making decisions in real time” at all. I’m against asking a player to maintain 20 uninteresting routines at once rather than maintaining one really interesting one.

            Note that in something like Street Fighter, you don’t have this problem at all. In almost every real-time game ever made (sports, racing, fighting, etc), you have to control one actor. RTS is this bizarre thing because they took a turn based game and hit a switch and turned it real time.

            (EDIT: This was placed in the wrong reply thread somehow)

            • Logo

              It’s fine to say RTS is stressful… but I think that’s a very good/strong design quality. Not something that’s a sign the game is bad/wrong.

              It’s stressful because you are emotionally involved.
              It’s stressful because the game causes adrenaline to flood your system.
              It’s stressful because you are under pressure to make complex and critical decisions in a very small amount of time.

              It’s not stressful because you have to keep making workers or keep up production.

              Macro APM is only ~60APM-100APM and is relatively leisurely and slow paced. If the upkeep in an RTS (which isn’t something I’m defending) is the stressful part of the experience playing on a map without an opponent would be stressful, but it’s not.

              Any competitive game that isn’t stressful for someone isn’t a good competitive game. The only way you can have a stress free competitive game is if it doesn’t cause you have to have an emotional investment.

              Sure playing the game in a casual setting shouldn’t be stressful, but clearly with 6000+ 1v1s logged… that’s not you.

              Now sure you can streamline the management and whatever you want and maybe make a better game, but it won’t be any less stressful.

              Also there’s no translation. SC can’t be SC and be turn based. The only way to do it and preserve any of the strengths of SC (or another RTS) would be to basically have each round let you move all units in a synchronous turn for a very small time slice in which case you’d need a very low time limit/turn for the game to resolve in a reasonable amount of time. So basically you’d go from a RTS to a TBS where you have only seconds for each turn to command everything you want to do. Any other way and you’re making a game that takes hours to compete. Regardless of any idealistic views on game design time to complete a match IS a huge quality of a game ESPECIALLY one that needs to be spectator friendly.

              • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

                No no, Starcraft is a *totally* different kind of stress than really any other kind of completely legitimate game. It’s stress that overwhelms the other normal emotions.

                Chess is stressful. In fact, there’s even this (silly) game called No-Stress Chess that uses card draws to make it less stressful.

                I am emotionally involved, I am under pressure to make decisions, etc.

                The difference is that in Chess, I have to move one piece at a time. I don’t have to simultaneously control 100 units.

                Would anyone really even ATTEMPT to argue that Starcraft is elegant? 200 Food count? All of those different units and armor types and shit? It’s ridiculous.

                Compared to most videogames, I still think Starcraft is really good in that it *is* indeed a game, it requires skill and strategy and thinking. However, I do think that all of that stuff is outweighed too much by simple APM clickfesting.

  • DC

    Hey Keith, here’s a question for you. Would it be possible to bring your 100 rogues/ auro to nintendo 3ds via (eshop) ?
    The 3ds is also a touch screen based device, and you could expand your market share. And auro’s trailer is looking good!

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      I wish. Right now we’re actually working on an Ouya and possibly other platforms release. After that, we’d love to have 100 Rogues playable on the nintendo handhelds, it’s just a matter of getting their attention I think.

      • pkt-zer0

        So, you’re saying that RTS games were actually turn-based ones, and they just flipped a switch? Did it take 25 turns to build a marine in SC, or what?

        Come on Keith, surely you’re not saying that this is what passes for well-reasoned, thought-through game criticism in your book. Don’t just vomit out whatever nonsense pops into your brain if you want to be taken semi-seriously.

        • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

          No, it would take much less than 25 turns to build a marine, I think. I don’t *literally* mean they flipped a switch, of course knobs also have to be tweaked, but in general, it IS a turn-based sort of game, turned real time. My point about real-time games forcing you to control just one actor stands. It makes no sense to have to control “an army” in real time. I do have extensive experience playing the games.

          Also… what the hell? I dont know how this 2nd paragraph of mine got in this thread… bizarre. Moving it above.

          • pkt-zer0

            It makes no sense to have to control “an army” in real time.
            If you’re going to criticize people for lacking critical game design analysis, your output has got to be better than this white noise of “makes no sense”. By what criteria do you define RTS as controlling multiple actors, instead of controlling a single actor (the “general”) that manages multiple tokens on the board? By what critieria does it “make no sense” to control multiple actors? Why should said criteria be applied to RTS games? And so forth.

            These are the questions you should be tackling instead of just blurting out that “it makes no sense”. Again, all of this would be fine, if you had no pretensions of being more than just some guy bullshitting on his blog.

            • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

              It’s bad design. It’s not elegant. It’s not user-friendly. There’s way, way WAY too many possible meaningful inputs. That’s what creates the noise.

              To illustrate, what if there were, instead of 100 controllable actors on the field in starcraft, what if there were 1000? What if there were 10,000? And what if instead of just having to manage your base, you had to manage 5 bases. You hopefully see my point.

              >By what criteria do you define RTS as controlling multiple actors, instead of controlling a single actor (the “general”) that manages multiple tokens on the board?

              …Because you directly control the actual UNITS, you can tell a marine to move forward 2 feet if you want to. If you were controlling a general and just giving general “strategy info” like “now go for marauders” or “advance now, from the left” then that would be another story.

              • Logo

                That example doesn’t hold up.

                What if Street fighter controlled like QWOP? It’s still one actor, but you’re controlling every muscle so it’s way too complex.

                There’s a threshold where things are too complex,and where they aren’t. It’s not some general principal like # of actors, but some property of the sum of the game design decisions.

                You can argue whether or not a game like Starcraft is too complex/too much, but it’s a matter of the game not some fundamental design like control multiple units in real time.

                • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

                  Yes, Starcraft is too complex. Far, far too complex.

                  But worse, the gameplay is actually really so thin, that it actually relies on that over-complexity to make the gameplay at all ambiguous.

                  It’s kind of like a crappy game system that uses dice-rolls to add ambiguity. The over-complexity of Starcraft is a crutch.

  • http://platformsandpitfalls.com link6616

    The title of the podcast here is still episode 1 despite the file name change… It’s still a different podcast but confusing to my media player.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      Thanks! Fixed.

  • el capitan

    You might want to have intros on different segments and really stick to them. like with the q&a part in the beginning which sort of fades in.
    show notes with links to the stuff discussed might also be nice because its hard to understand some of the game titles you are mentioning.
    otherwise i think its a very nice podcast and hope you will continue

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      Great feedback. We’ll work on it. We’re very new to the whole podcasting thing. Thanks for listening.

      • zeemer

        The insert credit podcast is all a Q&A – the thing they do is have a time limit for each question and an obnoxious noise that plays when said time limit is up, with speakers stopping in mid-sentence if they have to when they hear the noise. Might be worth copying; it adds structure, gets you moving to the meat of an episode and out of the Q&A on a decent timetable, and an unfinished train of thought can always be taken up in comments.

        You might also think about having a glossary or a primer on this website that briefly defines the way you use terms – if last week was a ‘mission statement’ episode that was supposed to explain that stuff, it didn’t really come across to me. Not everyone’s going to go on an archive trawl to find your posts about the way you use terms. Making these posts much easier to find on your site layout – and providing a 5 sentence or less precis – would stop a lot of arguments from people who think some bit of software is a game ‘because it’s sold on Steam’, or whatever. Being accessible will make your mission to get people talking about and valuing game design easier in the long run.

        The other thing I was going to say is that a lot of your arguments become much better-formed in writing – obviously not every topic discussed in these podcasts is worth your time doing that, but for meatier topics the podcast isn’t (so far) any substitute for your essays.

        • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

          Thanks Zeemer. All good ideas.

  • embarrassing

    Zeemer time/word limits are stupid because what if someone is talking about something interesting? Sure time limits are good when someone is saying nothing interesting though.

    But I agree, writing is a better and more clear form of communication.