Game Design: What Makes A Good Game?

We've talked at length about certain facets of good games, but we've never really crystallized what makes a game great.  It's easy to say that Game X is "good" and Game Y is "bad," but what makes them good or bad?  What is the objective of a game, and what are dealbreakers for games?  These three things end up tying together to make a great game, and you can't have one without the other.

1)  Controls.

The amount of enjoyment you have with any given game is directly related to how well the game controls.  Why do controls matter so much?  If your controls are poor, you cannot progress in the game with any degree of enjoyment.  This stymies the more important part of game design.  Controls can make a good game great (Super Mario Bros) or a great game merely good (the Gothic series).  However, controls mean different things for different genres and it's important to note what those things are.

For instance, in a stereotypical RPG, walking around in an overworld or in a dungeon doesn't require fancy controls.  You can get away with weird control quirks, like a slow walking speed or sluggish movement controls.  What you absolutely CANNOT get away with is poor menu design, since 90% of the game resides in those menus, battle or otherwise.  Likewise, a game like Resident Evil can get away with slow movement if you don't have to use fast reactions.  If you have to be able to react fast and you're not allowed to due to the sluggish controls, you've ruined your game.

Conversely, some styles of game rely solely on their controls.  Platformers have to be virtually pitch-perfect with their controls.  There can be no delay, no lag time whatsoever.  You have to have full and total control over the character at all times or risk ruining the experience greatly.  The Sonic games have demonstrated this:  Why the overall idea of the game might be okay, the controls usually lead to Sonic careening off a cliff or making some horrible mistake and getting killed.  Sonic games are now universally loathed.

2)  Challenging yet attainable goal achievement.

We've talked on this blog about the importance of goal achievement and how it adds to the overall satisfaction of a game.  There's a constant push/pull dynamic in gaming.  You want the player to progress, but at what degree and how fast?  Is it complicated or easy to progress?  Make the game too difficult and the gamer feels stupid and stymied.  Make the game too easy and the gamer doesn't feel they did anything special, which is the whole point.  They need to take you along, teaching you the skills necessary to proceed and then making a situation where you're able to use those skills.  Make those skills too complex and you've once again stymied forward progress.

I'm going to hold up Super Mario Galaxy as my example here.  If you take a person who's never played Galaxy and drop them into the final level, they'll be lost and die repeatedly.  Eventually, they'll give up and say, "I hate this game!  It sucks!"  However, for someone who's played Galaxy from the beginning, while the ending is challenging it's not horribly so.  You've been trained transparently throughout the game on what you need to do.  You understand how gravity works, you understand how to get Bullet Bills to work for you, and you understand how to defeat Bowser because you've done it already to varying degrees.

I'm going to use Mario 64 as my bad example.  There's one star on the Rainbow Road level called "Wall Kicks Will Work."  To get this star, you eventually get to an area where you're supposed to leap at a stone wall and hit the B button at the correct moment to send Mario flying in the other direction.  Sounds easy enough, but the timing and angle of the jump has to be perfect or Mario ends up just flinging himself against the wall and falling down.  It's much harder than it sounds because the game demands that you do it in a certain way.  You MUST kick and time your kick at the proper time and angle or risk failure.  It's frustrating and makes you not want to get that star.  Nintendo realized their error and fixed this skill in Mario 64 DS.  Now, the star is called "Wall Jumps Will Work."  You need to merely fling yourself at the wall and let Mario grip onto it as he slides down (which he does automatically), and then hit Jump again while he's sliding.  There's no mystical button press or strange timing involved.

Circling back to controls, this demonstrates that when you make your controls too difficult it stops people from enjoying the game.  When the taught skill is easier and more intuitive to use, goal achievement proceeds, satisfaction in the game rises, the gamer's self-esteem rises, and you've made a fan for life.

3)  Anticipation.

Great controls and good goals mean nothing if there's nothing to strive for.  This is where you can lump all the other supposedly "necessary" things about games:  Story, graphics, music, the works.  Those things are all in service of anticipation.

For instance, let's say you have marvelous bump-mapped graphics with full-screen AA, but everything in your game is grey and brown.  There's nothing special to see, and each level, as beautiful as it is, looks the same.  Will you continue?  Probably not.  There's nothing to look forward to.  Now, let's say that you have a less-detailed world but you're constantly handed new, inventive tools that you can use to manipulate that same environment.  Will you continue?  More than likely.  You'll be looking forward to the next tool and what else you'll be able to do to the environment.

The same applies with story.  The only thing a story is supposed to do in a game is provide anticipation.  That's why Final Fantasy VII's story worked: You wondered where it would go next and what was the true nature of Cloud, the protagonist, and Sephiroth, the antagonist.  That's why you didn't mind grinding levels or sitting through unskippable cutscenes.  They doled out just enough to keep you wondering up until the grand finale.

It's also why Half-Life's story works.  If you take Half-Life out of the video game realm and put it into the same terms of a book or a movie, the story falls flat.  However, in the sense of a video game, it's darn near perfect.  You don't know what enemy or challenge lies around the corner and you're eager to see the inventive nature of the game.  You want to find out what's going to happen next, and that makes the story good.  It's why Suda51's games still attract followers even if the design isn't always right.  You never know what audacious trick he's going to pull out from under his hat and that keeps you anticipating the next twist.  It's also why 2-D platformers really have to bring something new to the table to be interesting.  We've seen ice worlds and fire worlds and desert worlds a hundred times, so there's no anticipation.  They really have to try in order to give us something fun to see.  It's why a game like Kirby's Dream Land 3 is awful:  Once you've gotten past the first world, there are no new powers to see and no new ideas.  You don't care what happens next.

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If these three things seem a little simplistic, it's because, at it's heart, game design is a simple idea.  Give a person an obstacle course, the tools to manage it, and a reward at the end and they can't resist it.  Give a person a frustrating obstacle course, unwieldy tools and no bonus at the end, and they'll avoid it.  All the ancillary things that people THINK are important: Graphics, music, cool flashy combos, downloadable content and all the other buzzwords of the moment need to be in service to the three things listed above or they are worthless.

Cool! (Shadow Tower)

OK, here's a cool idea for a game.

See, this is the type of stuff that we never would have seen even back in the PS1/N64 days.  It seems that now, the developer's ambition is able to match up with the power of their tools more than ever.  When people complain about gaming somehow being "better" back in the old days, feel free to laugh loudly in their faces. 

Getting Back To Game Theory

I've been blathering on an awful lot about the hideously boring console wars.  I'm going to have maybe one more post up about them and then I'm backing off for a while.  I'm going to try and get back to my bread and butter: Game design.  Stay tuned.

Review: Little King's Story

I've been wracking my brain over how to start this review for Little King's Story. The blank page in Google Documents just sits here, mocking me, waiting for me to put something down. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because there's not a whole lot to compare Little King's Story to. Maybe it's because every time I start talking about it, piles of positive things start spilling out until my writing is a jumbled mess of excited statements. I think I'll start at the beginning.


Little King's Story starts out when a sad, lonely boy named Corobo finds a magical crown that makes people do his bidding and worship him as the king. That doesn't happen when I wear my paper crown from Burger King, but maybe I'm not wearing it right. Either way, this entails him gathering an army, clearing the land of monsters, and expanding his kingdom to fill the space while wooing princesses and crushing other kingdoms beneath his adorable heel.

So, what is it about Little King's Story that works so well?

He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command. - Niccolo Machiavelli

Little King's Story plays like a mixture of Harvest Moon, Pikmin, and a standard action-RPG. Your ultimate goal is to defeat eight neighboring kingdoms and become the greatest king of the land. People in your kingdom will get married and have children (with a little encouraging from the king, of course), while you'll meet and court various princesses along the way. You'll need to keep your advisors happy and worry about your townspeople's wellbeing as well.

You need those people on your side, since you'll be assigning them jobs and leading them into combat. Townspeople can be farmers, soldiers, lumberjacks, chefs, miners, florists, or even just stay as children. You'll want a balanced group, since you'll need many different types of jobs in order to tackle your goals. For instance, farmers can open cracks in the earth which can lead to treasure or soothing hot springs that will heal your units. Miners can break up large rocks that will open the way to new areas. Soldiers will cling to enemies while dealing high damage. Each one has their own unique purpose.

You'll also receive quests from your ministers or the town suggestion box. Your ministers may send you to defeat the king of a neighboring kingdom, and the townspeople may tell you of a monster blocking the entrance to an area or direct you to treasure maps. When you complete a quest, you'll get spoils which can be converted into money, which enables you to build new buildings, unlock new units, or just add to your burgeoning population.

So that's the concept, and it's a good concept on its own. However, like most things, it's not just the concept but the execution that makes Little King's Story come alive. Let's look at the presentation.

The ear is the avenue to the heart. - Voltaire

The music in Little King's Story is mostly classical numbers that have been repurposed for use in the game. The games starts off with a version of Bolero which is unique and tells the story nicely. Little King's Story then moves through other great numbers, like an excellent usage of The Nutcracker Suite and other tunes which will sound familiar. At times, I swear to God I heard the Super Mario theme tucked in the background too. Everything fits extremely well, and the various yelps and greetings of your underlings never get grating or repetitive. Excellent work all around.

On top of that, Little King's Story looks good. Now, I hate the phrase "Looks good for a Wii game," so I won't use it here. However, Little King's Story plays to the Wii's strengths. Color is used exceptionally well, and every unit is easily distinguished from other units very easily. There's a very useful minimap that shows you where enemies are in relation to you and your group, and everything looks great across the board.

Of special note are the cutscenes. Usually, an animated cutscene from a Japanese game about a lonely boy would have brooding characters and vapid, doe-eyed heroines staring off into the distance while J-pop plays in the background. Not so in Little King's Story. They have the look of a chalk drawing, and pile on the charm. You get the feel that a lot of love went into these, as if the designers just enjoyed everything about the concept and wanted you to enjoy it too.

Another great thing about Little King's Story is that it doesn't talk down to you. It discusses God, life, the anxieties of growing old, death, science and anything else it gets its hands on. In a rarity for a game on a Nintendo system, there's a character who's a drunk and they SHOW HIM DRINKING ALCOHOL. They don't dumb it down by calling it soda or anything. It sounds weird, but it just shows that this is a game that looks like it was made for kids that is aimed squarely at your scabby, blackened adult heart.

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. - Nelson Mandela

Unfortunately, there are a few flaws. One, the game can get unexpectedly difficult. There's nothing worse that running around, gathering spoils and killing dudes and then running into a battle that was a little over your head, getting killed, and having to reload your game. There is an easy way to warp back to your castle, but I was usually so into Little King's Story that I would forget about it until it was too late.

Two, the AI pathfinding is pretty bad. Your units can get hung up on the scenery and end up dying, or you'll send your units to fight and they'll all slam into a nearby mailbox and go back to their place in line. Here's another problem with the pathfinding: Let's say there are three targets: A hole that needs to be dug, a large, angry enemy, and a tiny little enemy. How would you prioritize those threats? I would say, kill the little enemy first, then the big one, and then dig the hole, right? In Little King's Story, all three things are equally important, so you'll have people trying to dig a hole while angry cow is stepping all over their kibbles n' bits.

Another flaw: Let's say my group is comprised of fighters, archers, farmers and miners. I'm in a battle. Do I want all four groups to get sent into battle? Of course not! However, in Little King's Story, whichever person ends up right behind you at that specific time ends up being sent next. You might end up getting some innocent people killed, or having to shuffle through your units until you find the right one for the situation. It's a headache.

Here's the solution: We're using the Wii Remote, right? How about giving us an onscreen menu that we can use to choose our unit's behavior. Let's say we ONLY want to use soldiers at this time. Let us do that. Let's say we don't want to fight but want to just dig holes (for whatever reason). Let us do that. A context-sensitive onscreen menu sounds like a little much, but it would have made the difference between a very, very good game and a legendary one.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. - Winston Churchill

However, that shouldn't deter you from getting Little King's Story. It's rare to find a game with so much charm. If I could rate this game on charm alone, it would get an A. As long as you still have a soul and can overlook a few biggish flaws, you'll love Little King's Story.

Digital Distribution Has Worked Out Sooooo Well For The Music Industry

Via NY Times:

A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.

How crazy is that? And obviously, people didn't stop listening to music. So where did they get their songs from?

I'll let you put two and two together.

What Do I Want From Other Systems?

Since I talk about Nintendo so much, I thought I'd temper this Nintendo talk with what I want off of other systems.  This is an incomplete list, by the way:

Shadow Complex
Flower & Flow
Turtles In Time: Re-Shelled
Force Unleashed
Prince of Persia
MLB the Show
Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time
Uncharted & Uncharted 2
'Splosion Man
Braid

I'm sure I'm missing some stuff here.  In fact, I'm sure I'm missing an awful lot.  If Sony and Microsoft combined both their systems, I would be all over it as a matter of fact.  It's just that I threw my lot in with Nintendo, and while it hasn't been perfect, it's still been pretty satisfying.

So if anyone wants to buy me a 360 or a PS3, I wouldn't, you know, COMPLAIN.  Hint.

Digging Out My Wii Number

I'm getting sent a WiiWare game for review. A while ago, I reviewed Trine for the PC and all I had to do to receive my review copy was give my email address to the dev, they sent me a review code and that was it. Ta-daaa.

What was the process for WiiWare? I'll tell you. First, I was told to give them my Friend Code and add their Friend Code. They gave me a 16-digit number to enter. I decided to look for my Friend Code and went into System Settings to see where I could find it. It wasn't there.

So I put in Mario Kart Wii to see if it gave it to me. I had a Friend Code, but it was 12 digits and I could only enter in other 12 digit numbers to add friends. This was certainly suspicious, so I sent a message back saying that I needed their 12-digit number. After a while I realized that other people had 16 digit numbers as well, so where was mine?

You know how I found the code? Was it in Nintendo's help screens? Did they have a handy website? No, I had to open up a YouTube video where it showed me to go into the Wii Message Board (!!!) and open up my "Make A New Message" area (!!!!!) and there I could select Wii-to-Wii messaging where it finally gave me my number and enabled me to enter in their number.

I know people hammer on this system being ridiculous, and I feel like I'm piling on. It's not bad enough that they have Wii codes, but they make them so DIFFICULT to get to.