Entropy as a display of Time

I came across this article through Digg about a physicist’s theory on the multiverse, the big bang and entropy. I find it to be extremely fascinating and actually had a little tie in to game design.

Sean Carroll, the physicist being interviewed in the article, talks about entropy. Specifically one thing he said stuck in my head.

The reason why you are not surprised when you open a deck of cards and it’s in perfect order is not because it’s just easy and natural to find it in perfect order, it’s because the deck of cards is not a closed system.

We assume that everything starts from order and moves into chaos. The same goes for video games. I’ve heard lots of design students talk about making something completely random, but players don’t like that. In fact, it seems humans don’t like that, not just game players in general.

You want players to be able to grok your game. If you make something completely random, there is nothing the player can learn as far as how your system works. Sure, you can have randomness inside of your system (that’s what dice are for), but it’s not 100% random. A single six sided die, for instance, has 6 possible outcomes. Now, there is no way to determine what the outcome will be before hand, but you know that when you roll a D6 you won’t get “porcupine” as a possible result.

Players want a fixed number of ppossible results that will occur because of the actions they take. When you start to change this, the game may get too difficult and the player walks away. And the worse thing you can do is make a game that no one is playing…

The Launch of an MMO from a Player’s Perspective.

Every major MMO that I have played upon release (Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft just to name a few) has always had “bugs” upon launch. This is to be expected, IMO, because of the vast scale of the projects. Usually, these “bugs” are more balance issues than anything else. Which leads to a conundrum for player’s on whether to play at launch or not.

The obvious disadvantage of playing from launch date is having to deal with these issues while the devs try to solve them. Look at WoW, for instance. It took Blizzard about a year to tweak talent trees, class abilities and other aspects after launch (and some would say there are still imbalances in classes.) This can lead to a frustrating player experience. Sometimes, these issues don’t even let the MMO get off the ground and it dies before it has had a chance to build a strong player base.

The advantage, however, of getting in at launch is that you are there from the start. You are able to see content before it becomes outdated. A player starting WoW at this point in time will probably never run any of the content for level 60 characters because they will be in the Outlands, where item drops and experience gain are much better than the old 10 and 25 man raids.

Too all my MMO player’s out there, do you think it’s worth waiting for the issues to be resolved or should you dive in head first and deal with them? 

A follow up on my AFK-ness

So, I haven’t posted as much as I had wanted to in the past couple of weeks, but I have a very, very valid excuse.
I moved to California.

So, a bit of a break down of what’s happened since my last post.
May 29th - Last day of classes.
May 30th - Pack up apartment
May 31st - Drive from Savannah, GA to Charleston, SC with two cars of all of my belongings. Spend the second part of the day purchasing a new car
June 1st - June 4th - Pack/sort my belongings between keep, take and sell. Get car ready for cross country trip.
June 5th - Drove from Charleston, SC to Orchard Hill, MI (which is just south of Memphis, TN)
June 6th - Orchard Hill, MI to Amarillo, TX
June 7th - Amarillo, TX to Flagstaff, AZ
June 8th - Flagstaff, AZ to Escondido, CA (With a short detour to see the Grand Canyon)
June 9th - June 10th - Apartment hunting for a place to live in Cali
June 11th - June 12th - Anaheim, CA and Disneyland goodness
June 13th - Drive back to San Marcos, CA (where I now live) and get apartment ready.
June 14th - June 15th - Relaxation. I need it.
June 16th - First day of work at Areae.

In other words, my crunch time is almost at an end. I enjoy staying busy, but this has just been so much running around, making sure I have things, etc that I need a bit of a break this weekend. Although, I do plan on spending some time re-familiarizing myself with certain things in regards to Areae so that Monday morning I’ll be ready to go.

Return of the Geek: Where have I been?!

So, I’ve been gone for quite some time from here. No new posts. Silence. Where have I been?!

Well, a lot has happened in the past couple of months. My step-father passed away, I had a job interview in San Diego, I graduated college, I got a new car….lots of things. Now that I have some free time, I plan on starting back up with the blogging, which all but disappeared as I tried to finish school, find a job (which I am happy to say was a success) and get ready to move across country.

There should be more posts coming in the near future…no….really. I promise this time.

Metaplace Frontpage

I was asked to do the Project Spotlight for Metaplace this week. Go check it out and see the work I’ve been working on.

Project Loyola Post Mortem

My postmortem for Project Loyola is up on Game Career Guide. It was funny when I was writing it I could think of about 10 more “things that went wrong”. The project has definitely been a learning experience for me and everyone involved in the project.

Project Loyola Blog

As part of the documentation of Project Loyola, our team has setup a blog where we will be discussing things behind the curtain. It should be considered a kl00-free zone, but for people that aren’t on the cutting edge of the ARG there may be some spoiler information. We promise not to talk about anything that hasn’t already been discovered by other players and is part of the ARG past not ARG future.

Project Loyola Blog

Simulation vs Abstraction: Narrative Wins

I’m a big time nerd. Big time. Anyone that knows me will agree. I have a fascination with math, science and computers that goes to a level beyond the general populace. It’s one of the reasons I love game design so much, since it involves so many different aspects of so many different areas of study (psychology, art, etc).

Right now I’m enrolled in the end all, be all class of nerdiness in game design: Abstract Systems Simulation. The class is basically “How to make a gaming using Microsoft Excel”. And no, not like this. It’s about using Excel to balance and create a desktop RPG system. Basically, number crunching at an extreme rate. Most of the art kids in our major shudder at the idea of the class, but a select few of us uber nerds have been drooling over the possibility of it.

One of the interesting topics that was brought up on the first day of class was simulation versus abstraction. Why are we abstracting these systems? If I wanted to create a life like RTS that calculates all manner of things from troop skill, troop morale, weather conditions, vehicles maintenance, ammunition types, new weapons bilt by government contracters, etc., there are system designers out there that can do it. Why don’t they then?

Because it isn’t fun for the player.

Well, for people like me it is. But, I know I’m not normal. The people that take the class, if they had a chance to, would make a game with systems so complex that it would take a calculator, slide rule and abacus COMBINED to play a single turn. Most people, however, want board games and desktop games that don’t involve lots of mathematical computations in order to do a simple action. That’s why game designers have to abstract the systems in order to get them to be less complex.

But wait. There are many who believe that “learning is fun”. So, wouldn’t more complex systems create a higher level of learning and create more fun games?

No. The problem is the curve involved in the learning process. Imagine if Chutes and Ladders involved complex equations to determine sliding speed based off of wind resistance and the coefficient of friction. Most 6 year olds wouldn’t want to play the game. But since the “slide” is mearly an abstraction of a normal slide, indicating “go here from here”, the system is understandable.

That’s what it boils down to. Most people want to get at least some sort of comprehension of what is going on in the world. Even if there is a small nugget of information for them to grasp onto and use. As long as you can start off the game with some level of information that is understandable, you can always add larger amounts of information for them to keep track of.

Of course, you don’t want to go overboard.

Questions I’ve been getting

Since my last post, I’ve been getting lots of questions from people regarding what the project is. I thought I should put up a post answering some of the more common questions

What is Project Loyola?

Project Loyola is an ARG created by me and fellow students to document the ARG development process. We originally decided to create an ARG because of an interest in massive multi-player cooperative game mechanics (that’s a mouthful).

We knew we were never going to create an ARG on the scale of the commercial ARGs, like the Dark Knight or Cloverfield. We decided to create a grassroots ARG and document the hell out of it! That way, future students or grassroot developers interested in ARG development could have at least a smidgen of information to build off of.

That’s nice. What’s an ARG?

An ARG is an Alternate Reality Game. It’s a game which takes place in the real world and in the virtual world. Non-Player Characters interact with Players via the internet, phone calls and text messages.

So, how do I play an ARG?

It’s actually fairly simple. All you have to do is find clues that lead you to the next part of the game. Clues can be hidden in many different places; from websites, to emails, to phone calls you may receive from characters in the game.

Wait, I’m confused. How do I play?

If you want some good sources of information for playing an ARG, I’d suggest heading over to the following websites and do some reading.

• ARGNet
• unforums
• unfiction

Doing research on the net about how to play will help you with the mentality of, well, how to play.

Launch of Project Loyola ARG

The official press release:

SCAD Students Announce the Launch of Project Loyola ARG

Savannah, Georgia, March 1, 2008 – A group of senior students from the Savannah College of Art and Design announced the release of Project Loyola, a student-developed alternate reality game (ARG) that allows its players to unravel the mysteries behind the disappearance of its main character, Alex Loyola.

Like all games in the ARG genre, Project Loyola invites players to go on an adventure that takes place in both real and virtual space. However, the Project Loyola ARG is also one of the first student-developed projects in the field of alternate reality gaming. The initial launch of this project, along with a promotional campaign spanning multiple sites such as Facebook, craigslist.org and many other sites, will take place on March 5th, 2008.

“We initially decided to develop an ARG because of the uniqueness of the project,” said Jeff McNab, project lead for the Project Loyola.

“We quickly found out that there is little information regarding ARG development and turned our project into a sort of test-bed for future students interested in ARG work. We wanted to find out what works, what doesn’t and most importantly, document every step of the way.” The Project Loyola team plans on releasing this documentation once the project goes through an initial testing phase to document player interaction.

For more information on the Project Loyola ARG, visit redloyola.com.

About PROJECT LOYOLA:
The Project Loyola Team is composed of five main members: Jeff McNab, Ashley Waldbaum, Francisco Rodriguez, Stephen Lawrence and Greg Morgan. They, along with a variety of volunteers, faculty members, and students on multiple fields of study, are responsible for the both the development and maintenance of the first student-developed alternate reality game in the Savannah College of Art and Design.