This item from Nintendojo is quite interesting, albeit it builds a substantial structure of speculation on the basis of a rather slender input of facts.

The basis of the story is a sort of non-interview with Chad Paulson, founder of Warp Pipe Technologies. Warp pipe is PC/Mac software that allows a Nintendo GameCube with a network adapter that is located on the same LAN to connect to other, similarly connected GameCubes remotely, so that you can play LAN-enabled GameCube titles over the Internet. I call it a non-interview, because about all Paulson says is "no comment."

Warp pipe's software is an interesting kludge, and the reason it's necessary is that Nintendo has been extremely skeptical of and basically unwilling to bother with Internet play. As an example, last February, Satoru Iwata, said in an interview "Many people believe that online games are the next big thing. But I wonder how much revenues Microsoft and Sony have made from online games. I don't think the current online games have adopted the right business model, and people will not pay money for them."

The Nintendojo article, however, suggests that Nintendo may be planning on launching what they call "Mario Net" for multiplayer support of networked wireless games playable via Nintendo DS, using technology developed by Warp Pipe.

What the DS Specs Tell Us

Well, what do we know about the DS's support for networking? For one thing, we know that it will support "IEEE 802.11 and Nintendo's proprietary format." Elsewhere, this has been reported as 802.11b, but the Nintendo release does not specify a particular type of 802.11. The capabilities of "Nintendo's proprietary format" are, of course, unknown (except presumably to DS developers under NDA to Nintendo).

Nintendo has also announced that the device will ship with "PictoChat" (originally announced as a separate product), which "allows up to 16 users to chat at once," sending each other doodles as they do. (One of the DS's screens is a touch screen, so a stylus can be used to draw on it.)

Multiplayer From Just One DS Game Card?

And Nintendo also says that the wireless range is 10-30 meters (reasonable for WiFi), and that "multiplayer games can be played using just one DS game card."

That last is interesting. In principle there are two ways to do this, but one is impractical. The impractical way is for the machine with the card to compose all images for all machines and dispatch them wirelessly to the other players; this is impractical because you're not going to get a reasonable frame rate on, say, 8 machines with a processor that normally supports only one, and any way, you wind up sending a huge amount of data over the air, which is inefficient. The practical way to do this is to design games so that a "thin client" can be used to connect to one other player's machine designated as a server, and allow players to send and install thin clients without paying. StarCraft does this, as an example; you can install the multiplayer client on any number of machines from a single CD, all of which can play without the CD in the drive, even though you need the CD in the drive to play the single-player game.

So presumably Nintendo is looking at a thin client approach--although this makes the claim itself a little dubious. Implementing a thin client is up to the developers--thus "ability to play multiplayer from a single card" is not an =intrinsic= characteristic of the machine.

But it makes good sense. I have Red Faction for N-Gage, and in principle, if I'm ever within 10 meters of someone else who also has an N-Gage, and has that particular card in the device, we can play Red Faction multiplayer. It hasn't happened yet. If you really want WLAN play, thin clients are the way to go.

Voice Chat Via VoIP

Nintendo's release also says "voice chatting with the internal microphone while playing over the Internet is possible." Of course, "possible" does not mean "we will support this out of the box," but this is extremely exiting. One of the reasons multiplayer mobile phone games suck is the inability to communicate while playing--texting is awkward, and mobile phones are designed to make either data or voice connections, and can't do both at once. I've been pushing for the ability to do voice-and-data for years, because I view it as absolutely critical to making mobile games a success. So bully for Nintendo--although there are a host of unanswered questions. Like: If I have sound on in my game, is it going to drown out my voice? Or think about playing against 7 other people, each of whose DS is also making sounds that are coming out of your speaker as you chat with them, as well as your own sounds, and the sound of anyone talking--chaos! Or... Is it realistic that if I'm holding the device at armslength in order to play, that my spoken words are going to be clear and audible to another player, given that the mike is several feet from my lips?

A headset solves these problems, of course, and is probably critical to supporting voice-and-data.

Finally we have, a report from TNI Securities claims that the DS headset "will allow gamers to use the DS as a phone handset enabling free phone calls over wireless network hotspots."

Woah baby! Let's think about that for a moment. It's one thing to allow VoIP chat during a game; that's straight forward. Enabling literal phone calls is another issue, however; it means there needs to be a way to interconnect from my IP device to the telephone switching network. It's one thing to say "send this voice data to this IP address"; it's another thing to say "send this voice data to this telephone number."

Now, this is a solvable problem--there are a host of VoIP companies that do precisely this, but they all charge users (either a monthly fee, or by the minute)--for making such calls. They have to, because they have to pay an interconnection charge to Verizon or T-Mobile or British Telecom or whomever.

So my guess is that TNI's claim is, in fact, bullshit; the DS will let you communicate via voice with other DS owners during games. It will almost certainly not allow you to place phone calls to either mobile phones or plain-old-telephones--although someone else might enable such a service, for an additional fee.

And it may not even allow you to chat with other DS owners outside the context of a game. Why is that?

For this reason. The DS connects to the net via WiFi. That means that, in order to reach the Internet, you need to be within a few tens of meters of an Internet connected WiFi router, and that router either needs to be unprotected, or protected and you know the network name, password, and so on. A WiFi router identifies itself to the public Internet with a single IP address; it identifies devices connected through the router via a subnet mask. In other words, when I'm at home, and using my home WiFi, my IP address is, oh, call it IP #1. When I go to work, however, and pull out my DS, I'm going to connect through the WiFi there, and will effectively have a different IP address, call it IP #2.

In other words, there's no unique IP address that identifies a particular DS device universally--it changes ever time you move to a new router. Thus, there's no way to make a connection to a specific device--only to its last known IP address (and subnet mask).

Is there a way around this? Sure. Maybe when my DS makes a WiFi connection, it sends its unique device ID to a Nintendo server, saying "I'm online! Register me so I can receive calls." Then, when you call someone from your DS, your DS asks the server what that person's current IP address is. The server doesn't have to route the call, just send you the routing information, and your device and theirs connect directly.

But--to do this, Nintendo has to operate a server (which burdens them with some ongoing support costs, and if the system is "free", they have no revenues to offset that cost), and Nintendo has to set up, test, and integrate the system prior to the DS's launch.

Given Nintendo's skepticism about online gaming--will they bother?

I would; the cost to Nintendo will be minor, and it would be a big selling point for the teen demographic in particular. But all they've said so far, in essence, is that developers who want to can support VoIP calls with the games they develop.

"Mario Net"

The mere inclusion of WiFi on the DS is an unusual departure for Nintendo, given their lack of support for Internet play in the past. And if you've got a network adapter on the machine, you might as well use it to support multiplayer games, right? And indeed, we know that some DS games will support multiplayer. Metroid Prime Hunters, one of the launch titles, will support up to 4 players wirelessly.

How does that work? WiFi has a range of a few tens of meters. Thus, one form of multiplayer involves making a WiFi connection to other nearby devices, forming a wireless local area net (WLAN). Latency over such a network can be very low, in the tens of milliseconds range--considerably faster that the wired Internet, and allowing, e.g., kickboxing games, which are hard to do over the regular Internet. This is what N-Gage does via Bluetooth--but Bluetooth's bandwidth is much lower even than 802.11a (and DS will surely be b at least), and a Bluetooth WLAN is limited to a max of 8 players. So WiFi could allow a larger number of players (which is why I find the 4 player limit for the Metroid game odd). This is presumably the method they're using.

But this is the most obvious and immediate use of the device's wireless capabilities. What else can be done? And what might "Mario Net" be?

Let's go back to Iwata's statement; they don't want to have to charge for multiplayer gameplay. The other kind of networking you can do with WiFi is, of course, through a WiFi hub and over the public Internet. But this brings up the immediate question that devils online gaming: How do you find opponents?

If you know a friend's IP address, that's one way... but as I've said, there is no static IP for a mobile WiFi device. With conventional multiplayer games, there are three solutions, and we may take EverQuest, Battle.net, and GameSpy as representative.

EverQuest is the simplest solution; you connect to a central server, it runs the game, other players connect to it to, you find other players in the game. This works fine, and is basically the only realistic way to run MMOGs, but the game operator has huge hardware, bandwidth, and community support costs. You have to charge, under this model.

Battle.net is much less costly; you connect to a central server, and join a game. When the game starts, one of the players' machines is appointed as the "server" for the game, and all gameplay involves data communication among the players, who only connect back to Battle.net's servers to report the game outcome. In other words, Battle.net's servers exist only to match players and maintain high scores and data about registered users; the players are responsible for providing hardware and bandwidth for actual gameplay.

As a result, Blizzard doesn't charge for access to Battle.net; their hardware and bandwidth costs are much lower, they earn a little bit of money from ads, and they consider the cost worth paying, since they sell some extra units of their games by offering easy online play.

The final model is the Gamespy model. Under this model, anyone who wants to can run a game server, paying their own hardware and bandwidth costs. They register their server with Gamespy. Gamespy supplies software to game developers that they can integrate with their game; players then use it to connect to Gamespy's registration service, and get a list of all the Quake servers (or whatever) that Gamespy knows about. You can then connect to any of them and play.

This is great for developers; they pay nothing for hardware or bandwidth, fans and Gamespy between them bear all costs. It works for Gamespy, because they earn enough from ads and developers to more than repay the cost of operating there servers, which after all just track game servers and tell people about them. It's less than great for gamers, because the quality of service on volunteer servers varies a lot (some are virtual havens for griefers), and it takes some work to find a server or set of servers where you feel comfortable.

So if you don't want to charge for Internet gameplay, your best options are either the Battlenet model, or the Gamespy model.

So someone has to operate servers for player matching. Is Nintendo going to do that? Again, given their past antipathy to online play, it seems unlikely--but perhaps they are in fact turning to Warp Pipe to do this, either to implement the technology or actually to be Nintendo's Gamespy equivalent, outsourcing this function.

Possibly... But the likeliest option seems to be "do nothing." That is, allow developers of multiplayer games to run their own servers for player matching, if they so wish, with no Nintendo-provided solution. That's basically what Sony does for online play of PS2 titles, by contrast to Microsoft's all-in-one solution for XBox Live.

"Innovation"

Nintendo talks a good talk about innovation, promoting social gameplay, and so on--all the things we need to think about when considering future mobile multiplayer games.

And there's a lot that -could- be done--a consistent pan-game player matching and community system, VoIP telephony, use of scatternets to extend gameplay to larger numbers--and maybe it will happen. We'll know in a few months how deeply Nintendo wants to get into this.

But if history is any guide, the likeliest answer is "not very."

(A final note: The Nintendojo article ends with a JPEG of a Nintendo patent filing claiming ownership of the idea of wireless-connected mobile devices. Yeah, I know, I heard about it when it was filed in March of this year--well after N-Gage was already on the market. Can you say "obvious prior art?" I knew you could. Sometimes you'd think the PTO was braindead.)






posted by Greg at 1:58 PM

The No Press Anthology contains eight short tabletop RPGs, created by the Forge community, which is devoted to fostering original, possibly non-commercial roleplaying games from devoted practitioners.

As such, it is an essential reference for those interested in innovation and originality in games of all forms. It is an "amateur" publication, where "amateur" is used in the sense of "one motivated by love" (the word derives from 'amare') rather than "one not ready for prime time." Paper games lend themselves more readily to interesting non-professional evocation, since the number of talents required to test and bring a paper game to fruition is low, and the development costs are minor.

The RPG is, let it be remembered, a form of recent evolution; D&D was first published in 1974 (and the term 'RPG' did not appear until some years later, intially in the pages of Alarums & Excursions, as a way of referring to "games like D&D" in the sense of involving a gamemaster and players, without necessarily replicating the dungeon-crawling experience).

The No Press Anthology is edited by Luke Crane, designer of The Burning Wheel, one of the most highly regarded independent RPGs. Before discussing it, at least some mention should be made of the theoretical framework shared by most designers at The Forge: GNS theory. "GNS" stands for "gamist, narrativist, simulationist," and these refer, in essence, to intentional stances on the part of roleplaying gamers (and, to some degree, of the intentions of game designers). Essentiality, a "gamist" player is one who approaches an RPG with many of the same intentions of a player of a conventional game: a desire not necessarily to "win," since few RPGs have definite win conditions, but a desire to excel, to manipulate the rules structure to achieve positive outcomes for his character. A simulationist player wants the game to be a somewhat accurate recreation either of real life concerns, or at least a "simulation," in some sense, of the fantasy world in which the game takes place. A simulationist might desire more accurate combat rules; a gamist wouldn't care, so long as he understands them and can use them effectively. A narritivist player seeks to shape the game experience into a compelling and effective story--he, unlike a gamist, might not care if his character suffers badly, so long as the character's suffering is an effective story element. Those who want to explore GNS theory in greater depth may find Ron Edwards lengthy essay on the subject rewarding.

(And a side note: "narritivist" is being used in a different sense here than its use by game studies academics, who counterpoise "ludologists"--crudely, those who believe that games are sui generis and can only be understood in their own terms--to "narratologists," who believe that games can be understood through the same lens as film, novels, and other story-telling media.)

With only a few exceptions, these games are all narritivist in stance; that is, while they contain rules to resolve game situations, these rules are often quite arbitrary, that is, not based in any simulationist approach, but simply providing some mechanism to determine outcomes. This accords reasonably comfortably with my own RPG design approach--ridiculously complex and cumbersome rules generally get in the way of roleplaying, I feel--although I generally to take a more simulationist approach, if only to the degree of trying to shape systems that evoke a sense of the setting and theme of the game.

Snowball

The first game in the anthology is "Snowball" (des. Alexander Cherry). Cherry's intent is to design a game in which a story is related in an inverse direction: that is, the gamemaster describes the final scene, and the players work backward in time to create the scenes that led to this outcome. However, Cherry states that the system can be used for games that involve other schemes of narration.

Each player begins with "five dice" in a pool (the dice pool concept was originally created by James V. West of Random Order Creations). Each player must also define a single "trait" of his character, that must appear to have some import in the first scene of the game. A "trait" starts at "3", meaning that 3 dice are rolled when it has some impact on the game. Further revelations about that character arise later in the game, unfolding just as they would in a story.

Essentially, the game begins with the GM setting an initial scene. He may either continue the scene, or close it out, taking the action to some earlier or later moment. The players state their reaction; at any time, a player may state an "idea," or a conflict will arise. In either event, a player (the one proposing the idea, or the one involved in the conflict) rolls dice. Normally, the number of dice rolled depends on his "trait"---and if he doesn't have trait, he may "spend dice from his pool" to initiate a new trait (or increase the value of an existing one). If any "1"s are rolled (all dice are D6), he may then perform a "Monologue of Victory"--essentially, the player usurps the GM's role for a time, and describes what happens, under the supposition that his player has succeeded in some important way. If no "1"s are rolled, but any "6"s are rolled, the player instead performs a "Monologue of Defeat," explaining how his character achieved an undesirable outcome. If neither 1s nor 6s are rolled, the gamemaster instead interprets the outcome.

There's a bit more to this game, but not much. In traditional RPGs, complicated systems of levels, skills, capabilities, and modifiers are used to determine the success or failure of particualr actions; in this game, it is a given that characters are blanks (except for one predominant Trait initially), and that the ultimate objective is a well-told tale, the only real determination being in whom will advance the tale at the next juncture--either the acting player, who must explain either success or failure, or the gamemaster, who rules in all other conditions.

In other words, Snowball is a narritivist game, in which the ultimate outcome is presumed to be a story that makes coherent sense from a story-telling perspective, in which the gamemaster is the default story-teller, but which permits the players to highjack the story-telling role upon the role of relevant dice, to influence the story's direction as they wish, but within defined constraints. Objective, extra-game elements--die-rolls, modifiable to a limited degree by the GM (who my allow the player to roll zero to three additional dice when a key roll is made), determine under what circumstances players may take over the narration.

At a minimum, the GM is still required to establish a compelling narrative framework from the initial narration; but subsequently, player intervention, with occasional GM interpolation, and the basic rubric that "what has been established is true" determines the outcome of the narrative collaboration.

In other words, this game does not have the closed narrative arc of My Life With Master, nor the freedom of action of typical tabletop RPGs, but attempts to enlist both GM and players in a form of collaborative storytelling, with a definite (and even, pace Salen & Zimmerman, quantifiable) outcome, but still places story telling, rather than gameplay, foremost.

Discernment

As one of the designers of Paranoia, I've long been interested in games that take the basic paradigms of roleplaying and turn them on their head. (In most RPGs, players are expected to cooperate; in Paranoia, they are expected to backstab and betray one another). And I've looked, usually in vain, for RPGs that do the same. Michael S. Miller's Discernment does so.

In Discernment (des. Michael S. Miller), rather than having one GM and multiple players, you have the reverse: one player, and multiple GMs.

The basic idea behind Discernment is that one Earth human (the player) has been captured by aliens. The other participants are "probing" him in an attempt to deduce his "soul quality." There are 16 "soul qualities," arranged on a wheel at the end of the rules, ranging from "charity" to "gluttony" to "faith"--all might be defined as sins or virtues. Before the game begins, the "player" chooses one, and also notes the qualities adjacent to the chosen quality on the wheel--thus, one might choose the soul quality of "lust," with adjoining qualities of "gluttony" and "wrath."

One of the other participants is chosen (at random) to be the Lead Scholar; he describes a a scenario. This might be something alone the lines of "it is a world of fairy tales, and you are the seventh son of a seventh son," or it might be something more concete, such as "the Nazis have conquered France, and you are a member of the resistance." He assigns roles in his story to other of the "aliens" as need be, but the chief role in the story is assigned to the player, who may respond as he wishes--but is abjured to use his 'soul quality' (and adjacent qualities) in determining how he responds.

The narrative play continues until the Lead Scholar states "a conflict is upon is. The crux of this conflict is..." At which point he is supposed to state what "soul qualities" are in conflict here. In other words, the whole point of the narration is to test for a particular soul quality, in opposition to some other. At this point, the "player" states his desired outcome; the Lead Scholar states a different outcome; and a system of bidding (in which the all participants, including the player) is used to determine which outcome occurs.

If the Lead scholar "wins", he narrates the outcome. If the "player" "wins," each of the other scholars must "narrate" one element of the "reality" (e.g., "you are held immobile by strange rays on a table", or "aliens are probing your mind"), and the "player" narrates the outcome. This is described as "the subject becoming aware," the idea being that there are three levels of reality (the real world; the alien ship; the stated scenario), and the player is becoming aware of the second-order reality. Scholars may then write down what they think is the player's soul character, but are not required to do so. Play then passes to another "scholar," who now becoms the "lead scholar," and may create a scenario that bears no resemblance othe previous condtion, the player remaining the lead character, and other scholars brought in to play bit parts.

Once "the subject has become aware" three times, the game is over. At this point, the "player" reads what each of the "scholars" has written down as their guesses about his "soul character," applies modifiers that only he controls, and points to one, saying "You are closest to the truth." The game specifically requests the player never to reveal his actual soul quality, and to destroy the written notes from the scholars, to preserve a tasty sense of ambiguity.

How does this "turn a basic paradigm of roleplaying on its head"? In this fashion: rather than having one gamemaster and many players, we have one player and many gamemasters, since each of the scholars takes a turn at describing a scenario. Quite interesting, really, and I suspect this would be fun--at least as an occasional change of pace; I have a hard time imagining a Discernment campaign.

Pretender

Pretender (des. Kirt Dankmyer) is, by contrast, specifically designed for an extended campaign. In a sense, it's something like freeform World of Darkness. Set in 1985 (for obscure reasons), each player is a "pretender," a being of great mystical power living among the mundanes. Each player has some means of detecting other pretenders, and all pretenders must be "cool." Other than that, nothing is initially a given; the first session of play, in fact, is devoted to extended negotiations among the players and GM about precisely what kind of character each will play, what the character is like, how it detects other pretenders, what pre-existing relationships exist among the pretenders, what other "known" aspects of the setting exist prior to play (e.g., "vampires are common"), and what connections each player has to NPCs, with such "important" NPCs also defined to some degree before the game begins. The bulk of the rules, in fact, are devoted to discussions about how to manage this negotiation; guiding principles are that players should be able to play just about anything they think would be cool, but that all decisions are ultimately made by consensus.

Each character has a rating, usually between 1 and 6, in five characteristics: earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. The rules define earth as being "passive and physical," air as "active and mental," fire as "active and physical," water as "passive and mental" and spirit as "how well you do anything supernatural." These values are initially negotiated as well. During play, when a die roll to determine an outcome is necessary, the player explains how one characteristic could affect or govern what he is attempting to do, then rolls as many D6s as his value in that characteristic. After rolling, he chooses one die to apply to "narration," one to "motion," one to "safety," and one to "style." (If rolling fewer than 4 dice, a roll of "1" is assumed for the extras.) A roll of 5 or 6 in one category is generally "success," a roll of 1 or 2 is "failure," and 3 or 4 is "neutral."

If the roll for narration is 1-3, the gamemaster decides who will narrate the outcome of the action (either the GM or another player of his choice). On a roll of 4-6, the acting player decides who will narrate.

If the roll for motion is a success, the player "moves decisiviely toward his goal," while on a failure, the player "loses ground."

If the roll for safety is a success, the player is unhurt; if a failure, hurt badly; if in between, hurt a little. What "hurt" means depends on context--in combat, it's fairly obvious, but in attempting to pick a lot, it is unlikely to mean physically injured.

If the roll for style is a success, the character does whatever happens stylishly, and on an unsuccessful roll, he looks awkward, and the "adversity" for the next action increases by one.

"Adversity" is a number, generally 3 or less, that represents mystical forces opposing a player; essentially, when adversity exists, the GM chooses one of the player's dice, and substracts the adversity number from the number rolled.

Whoever narrates the outcome is essentially free to describe the events in whatever fashion he or she chooses, keeping in mind these principles.

There are a few other wrinkles, but that's pretty much it as far as game system goes.

In short, this is another highly narrativist game, in which the emphasis is placed on mutually envisioning a world and creating rich characters with pre-existing motivations, challenges, friends, and enemies, thus setting up interesting conflicts before play begins. The whole would be rather vague, except that Dankmyer provides a concrete example, based on a campaign he ran, in which one player was a fallen angel, another was Lilith, another an "unnamed animal" (created by God with the other animals, but never named by Adam); another a Death (there are many, apparently); and the last a sentient computer virus. The examples bring the text together, and suggests how such a game could indeed be compelling--precisely because of the players' intimate collaboration in creating the setting and characters.

Note again the transfer of what is normally considered exclusively the gamemaster's role in describing the setting and outcomes to the players, at least at times--a common theme in experimental narritivist games.

WTF?

WTF? (des. Daniel Solis) is a sort of surreal anime-themed RPG; as with Discernment, it involves only a single player ("the star"), with the other participants acting as gamemasters. One way to look at this game is as a roleplaying equivalent of a round-robin story, a story in which each writer writes a passage and then passes it on to another writer. Round-robin stories often turn surreal and are sometimes pretty damned inexplicable, particularly if the writers have very different ideas and motivations in writing. WTF? makes a virtue of this; as Solis says, "no matter how screwed up the plot twist, incongruous the character, or jarring the mood swing, the show must go on in all its bizarre glory."

Solis doesn't really bother to provide rules, in the conventional sense; the rules say "The star creates a character using whatever system the group has decided to [use] for" the game. In other words, he's not interested in providing resolution systems; use whatever you feel comfortable with. Instead, he's providing a narrative scheme.

At the beginning of play, each of the non-star participations (Solis calls them "directors") describes briefly the plot element he will throw at the star when it comes to be his turn. No collaboration is suggested or implied, and if they're bizarrely different, all the better. The player chooses one to perform the first narration. He is the director for ten minutes, taking the conventional gamemaster role--describing all elements of the scene, determining the actions of NPCs, and so on. At the end of the 10 minutes, the player chooses the next director, and play continues until each director has had a turn. Once all directors have had an equal number of turns, the final director says "roll credits," and this "episode" is over.

One note worth mentioning:

The "scene shift" is a particularly important point to have agreed upon ahead of time by the group, since it can be a point of friction between directors. The two extremes are 1) that the directors can only build upon previously established dramatic elements, or 2) allowing directors to completely switch stories between directors, with the very confused protagonist as the only common element.

In other words, Solis doesn't care, whatever floats your boat.

There's a little bit more to the game--the player distributes "tokens" to directors whose "work" he likes, giving them the ability to "interrupt" other directors during later episodes--but not much.

In short, this is more of a cute gimmick than a game, but it is worth noting the common theme with other games here--the inversion of player/GM roles, and the desire to pass around the burden/joy of storytelling, rather than relying on a single GM.

The Agency

The Agency (des. Matt Machell) is much more of a conventional RPG. "The Agency" is Britain's espionage agency devoted to control of supernatural phenomena--something like The Laundry in Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives (a brilliant novel, btw), but minus the Lovecraftian grimness and plus the light-hearted stylishness of Bond or The Avengers.

To create a character, a player chooses two skills at "good," one at "excellent," and one at "poor." Skills are not defined by the game--basically, choose anything you like, subject to GM veto. Subsequently, when attempting an action, a player with no relevant skill rolls 2 dice; 1 if poor; 4 if good; and 5 if excellent. If any die shows a 5 or 6, the player succeeds. Normally, the GM narrates outcomes, but a player may spend a point of "karma" to narrate the outcome himself.

Karma can be positive or negative; it can be awarded by the GM. If a player has negative Karma, the GM can also use this to have something bad happen to the character, cancelling one negative point. In other words, a player can pretty arbitrarily use Karma to make something good happen, knowing that Karma ultimately balances, and something bad will later happen.

Each player also has a "heroic bonus" and a "heroic flaw"; some examples are provided (e.g., bonuses such as wealth, contacts, influence, gadget; flaws such as proud, lustful, drinker, reckless), but they are representational rather than exclusive.

Somewhat detailed rules for combat and car chases are provided, as well as a little bit of world background and some adventure ideas, villains, and NPC agency members, making this read very like a conventional RPG presented in compressed form.

Pagoda

Pagoda (des. Jeffrey Schecter) is a game of wuxia, flashy Chinese martial arts movies. Schecter provides relatively little in the way of background or setting, presuming, I guess, that readers who want to play the game will be already familiar with the genre.

Unlike many of the other games here, Pagoda does not play with the GM/player relationship, but presumes a fairly conventional GM role. Instead, the text is primarily concerned with system--a system that is keyed to provide a real sense of the genre and both the mysticism and fast action that are its focus. The system is complicated enough that I will not attempt to explicate it in detail. The basic rule, however, is that when a player attempts to perform an action, he rolls some number of dice, and if any two show the same number, he succeeds. The "number of dice" is determined according to a complicated formula. According to the rules:

Characters in Pagoda are made up of three Degrees -- Elements, Aspects, and Paths -- as well as a Sign of the Zodiac, a Flaw, and a pool of Chi points.

The "elements" are the traditional Chinese elements (water, wood, fire, earth, and metal); Aspects are Power, Grace, Cunning, Awareness, and Presence; there are many Paths (including the Sword, the Fist, the Emperor, the Honorable, etc.); and the signs of the Zodiac are again the traditional Chinee ones (rat, ox, tiger, etc.). Each of these things is supposed to have some implication for the nature of the character's inner life, and are freely selectable by the player.

The number of dice rolled are the sum of the character's value in the Element and Aspect that the player can argue pertain to the situation, plus his value in a relevant Path, if any apply. The GM can grant the player an additional die if he deems the player's description of what he is doing to be particuarly vivid or exciting.

Chi corresponds to what other games might call hero points; players begin with 3, and the GM may award additional ones during play. Spending a point of Chi allows a player to "push the envelope of his capabilities," doing things that might be considered impossible or highly unlikely in the conventional world.

There are also rules for combat, injury, and magic.

Pagoda is simulationist, but in an interesting way; rather than trying to simulate literal actions and outcomes, it instead provides a rules structure that attempts to evoke the spirit of wuxia. Perhaps it would be better to call it "evocative" rather than "simulationist," but in some sense, the impulse is the same--the desire to recreate important elements of the setting.

It's interesting to read this game in the context of the other games in the book as well; it is neither an experimentation with modes of story-telling, nor an abbreviated mini-RPG like The Agency; instead, it is, in essence, the character creation and outcome resolution section of what, if it included more about the background, setting, and likely adventures, might be a conventional RPG, if one with an unusual resolution system.

Cell Gamma

I suppose we need a "spoiler alert" here; if you read this, you will not be able to play this game, at least as intended by the author.

Cell Gamma (des. Mike Holmes) is, per the author, inspired by The Prisoner, Over the Age, and Paranoia. All players begin in a cell block (Cell Gamma), all with pounding headaches, and all have amnesia, not even remembering who they are. The point of the game, in a sense, is to figure out what Cell Gamma is, what's going on, why they are here, and so on. And the answer is: even the gamemaster does not initially know.

The game provides a pretty detailed description of the setting, including all rooms in the prison complex, the daily routine of the prisoners, unusual events that may occur, and NPCs (the prisoners in Cell Beta, another adjoining cell block who eat in the same cafeteria as the PCs; janitorial staff who all seem mute; etc.). But where the game goes from initial conditions is--up to the players, actually.

But the gamemaster is supposed to hide this knowledge from the players--to make it seem as if he has perfect knowledge and a clear direction for the game. For example, here is how character creation works. Characters are not initially defined; when a player attempts to do something, the GM rolls a die, as if he were rolling against a predefined number hidden behind his GM screen. If the roll is low, the player does poorly; if high, the player does well. And, as the rules say, "occasionally describe a result as the prisoner seeming to have little or no ability in that area."

In other words, not always, but on occasion, some aspect of the character is (arbitrarily) "revealed"--or rather, established--during play.

Similarly, the GM is encourage to listen to the players as the speculate about what is happening and what is going on--and adopt their suggestions. The "truth" is not, in fact, out there; it is manufactured by the players.

In a sense, then, Cell Gamma is something of the inverse of Pretender; instead of a negotiated setting, its setting is fixed; instead of detailed characters, its characters begin as cyphers; instead of a narrative passing back and forth between GM and players, the GM is the narrator.

And in a particular oddity for an RPG, Cell Gamma can effectively be played only once. It is, I think, a particularly interesting feat of imagination.

Over the Bar

And finally, we have Over the Bar (des. Ben Lehman), which, like Lord of the Dice is not so much a game as a joke. It is a task resolution system that may be used with any roleplaying setting; players initially establish two abilities and a deficiency. When a player attempts to perform a task, and has a relevant ability, he succeeds; if not, he must have a drink; if he has a deficiency, he must have two drinks. Players succeed if they do not pass out. When two or more players have become too drunk to continue, the game ends. As the rules say, character advancement "is mainly handled by the increased alcohol tolerance of the players."

The title is a play on Jonathan Tweet's game Over the Edge, and subtitle -- "How much are you willing to drink to get what you want?" -- is a play on the stated theme of Ron Edwards's Sorcerer ("What will you do to get what you want?").

Conclusion

I have previously argued that the PC/console game industry desperately needs a parallel, independent game movement that, like indie music and film, can help to reinvigorate an increasingly stale and conservative mainstream industry. A host of obstacles need to be overcome to make that happen--both business obstacles (how to achieve distribution, how to market?) as well as aesthetic ones (most 'indie' games are low-budget imitations of existing game styles, and most gamers see no value in lower production-value games--both developers and audience need to be inculcated with a different aesthetic). Tabletop RPGs are, of course, far cheaper to develop, so the lessons of the indie RPG movement may not be directly germane--but it is important to note, and encourage, the establishment of a highly creative and worthwhile indie movement in at least this one small area of gaming.
posted by Greg at 8:44 PM

Back from the Austin Game Conference. It was actually quite a lot of fun; the AGC is pretty small (500 people last year, not sure of this year's attendance, but certainly <1000) and concentrates on MMGs and mobile, my two main interests, and both fields in which I know a lot of people.

I'd agreed to go before I started working for Nokia; Eric Goldberg had "use it or lose it" miles on Delta, and basically got me a free plane ride (though we had to change in Atlanta both ways, making a 3-4 trip into a 6-7 hour one). Nokia picked up my hotel, however; they're one of the conference's sponsors, after all.

Wednesday night was a reception at one of the hotels; I spent a bit of time chatting with Mark Jacobs of Mythic and Kevin Gliner of Knockabout (an Austin-based mobile game developer).

Eric and I leave pretty early to join Allen Varney, his wife Beth Fischi, and Aaron Allston at a restaurant. Basically, this is a "thank you" to Allen and Aaron for the work they put into Paranoia XP.

Thursday morning, bright and surly, I showed up in time for the keynote, which involved marketing dweebs from Microsoft and Sony talking about their plans for console MMOGs. The Microsoft presentation was the same-old same-old, basically talking about how neato it is to have 1m paying subscribers for XBox Live, and how generous Microsoft is to offer you, the developer, access to this huge online community. This, of course, completely fails to address the problem, from an MMG developer's perspective, with XBox Live; XBox Live customers are paying a monthly subscription to their ISP for broadband, plus an additional monthly subscription to Microsoft for their XBox Live subscription, and have the entirely reasonable expectation that they're not going to have to pay yet another subscription, on top of that, to play games over XBox Live. That's fine and dandy for Halo, which like similar PC games, is free to play because small-scale multiplayer games don't require a server in the mix, and game providers thus pay little or nothing to support online play. MMGs, by contrast, require larger backend server operations, and =need= to charge to match ongoing support costs against ongoing revenues. And Microsoft isn't willing to share its subscription revenue with MMG providers. Therefore, no MMGs on XBox Live. QED, unless you want to maybe change your business model.

After this dull presentation, you might have thought that the Sony guy could hardly do worse. Wrongo. Fellow shows up wearing boxing gloves and ducking and weaving and making some lame joke about XBoxing, a new extreme sport. Hah hah. Moron.

He tells us console MMGs are here today! And yes, PS2 supports Final Fantasy XI and EverQuest Online Adventures. They've sold (if I recall correctly) 4m network adapters; FFXI requires the hard-drive addon (and was bundled with it), of which they've sold 375,000. Per Sony Guy, this means that well, MMGs are just a niche product, when after all the very best-selling PS2 titles can sell up to 10m units. Uh, are you sure you're talking to the right audience, buddy? And do you understand how subscriptions work? If FFXI actually has 375,000 subscribers playing via PS2, plus more via PC (and I don't believe those numbers), they are -golden-.

He also proposes SOCOM as PS2's online play hit, with 1m people having played online. "We think that looks a lot like a massively multiplayer online game," he says. Right--only it's not massively multiplayer. It is to sigh.

Next up, I go to the mobile track keynote, given by Rob Tercek of mForma, which has closed on close to $80m in funding over the last year. This, by contrast, is superb. Tercek makes the argument that consolidation in mobile gaming has begun, and will accelerate over the next few years, and that ultimately there will be a handful of mobile publishers with global reach, with the carriers pruning their decks and choosing to deal only with the larger operations. Also, the fact that the only thing that seems to work is branded games means only those who can offer global reach to brand owners will survive. He suggests ways for smaller companies to position themselves--mostly either to work towards a buy-out by one of the larger firms, or to become the best at some particular category of mobile games in order to survive as an independent developer. He ends with a plea for game design innovation, making the point that there is not yet a signature game for mobiles--and he's right, there is no equivalent of Mario for NES or Halo for XBox that demonstrates why you want to play games on your phone.

All very convincing, but two things. First, when you think about it, the subtext is "We've got $80m and you don't, ha ha hah, you are so hosed. Prepare to be assimilated." Second, the business forces he's just discussed imply that there will be no innovation. The time for innovation has already passed. Only brands sell.

Next, I check out a panel on MMG production, with Matt Firor of Mythic, Star Long of NC Soft, and Rich Vogel of SOE. It's pretty dull, really, mainly because they agree on everything, which never makes for a fun panel. Prune your feature list, control information to the fans (so they don't get upset when you prune your feature list), use cross-disciplinary strike teams to address problems quickly, community management and data mining is important. What I take from this is that the US MMG development community is pretty insular, with people bouncing around the same handful of companies. In part this is good--best practices get spread around--but I also get the sense that it's leading to group think. Everyone agrees. Innovation is more likely to happen when someone goes off in a different direction--and so we're going to have to look toward smaller operations, and possibly Asia, for novelty.

I moderated a panel with Glenn Broadway of Iomo, John Newcomer of In-Fusio and Mark Cartabiano of Sennari. The idea is that each is to present a single game and discuss development issues. Glenn goes first, talking about the mobile version of Tomb Raider, and about Iomo's Colin McRae Road Rally game. The second is quite impressive--true 3D at 15fps even on a Series 40 phone. Apparently, one of their programmers disassembled the KVM to figure out where the bottlenecks are to really optimize the code.

John Newcomer--an industry legend, btw, started in the first arcade boom at Williams, and designed Joust--discusses the mobile version of Golden Tee Golf. This a popular arcade game they licensed; the arcade game uses a track ball (how fast you spin it implies how hard to whack the ball), but phones don't come with track balls, alas. So they were stuck with the "choose direction, now choose power level" approach common in bowling, pool, golf, etc. games. One interesting gimmick; you set power level by holding down the action button, watching the power bar fill, and releasing the button when it reaches the right level--but the speed at which the power bar fills increases the longer you wait, so it's easy to be precise with a putt, but hard with a long drive.

Sennari, Cartabiano's company, has developed some of the best-selling mobile games in the States (including both versions of Jamdat Bowling), a lot of Jamdat's games are developed on a work-for-hire basis, so Sennari is, well, not as successful as this might otherwise imply. I have a fair bit of sympathy for Cartabiano, but he basically hasn't prepared, and gives us the usual "intro to my company" presentation. Bleh.

Last up for the day, we have The Carrier Panel. Gotta have one. Jason Ford of Sprint, Lou Fasulo of Cingular, Dan Silberberger of Nextel, moderated by Eric G. The business culture of telcos is quite different from that of game developers, and in the past, carrier panels have usually consisted of meaningless marketing blather, but Eric holds their feet to the fire a bit. The good side: revenues are increasing rapidly, probably double again this year, they're all looking to "improve the quality level," meaning pruning lame games and not launching further games unless the graphics look decent. (However, I very much doubt any of these guys are actually gamers, and hence the notion of trusting them to make aesthetic decisions about games makes me shiver.) The bad side: No license, no deal.

Here's the basic problem with mobile games today: In the US, close to 100% of mobile games are sold through the carrier's portal. (In Europe, about 30% get sold through third-party portals.) This means that the way you choose a game is you look at the title on a WAP deck and select it to download. Essentially, the only information a prospective player has about a game is its name; and they therefore gravitate to names they recognize. Thus, only branded games sell. ("Brand" in this context can mean a retro arcade classic, a tie-in with a current console/PC game, or a license.)

Per Jason Ford, only about 5% of the games Sprint offers are unbranded (read: original). In other words, the window of opportunity for innovation in mobile games has already closed, as I said before. Ouch.

Then off for a quick bite and the conference party, at a local bar. (Downtown Austin is crawling with bars. Reminds me of the way Hoboken used to be.) Spend some time chatting with Allen Varney, and with the Themis guys--who seem to be putting some serious bucks into promotion, since they have a full page ad on the back of the program book.

Friday morning, I don't manage to roll out of bed early enough to attend Ted Castronova's keynote (which is too bad, he's always an interesting speaker)--well, parties will do that to you. The mobile marketing panel, with Kevin Gliner, and people from Mobliss, Sorrent, and Atari whom I don't know. How do you market mobile games? Short answer is: you don't, cause a single title doesn't generate enough money to pay for ad buys, and anyway, how would you do it? Include instructions for how to find the game on six different carrier's decks in six different places? Longer answer: buying the brand is your marketing. Or begging the carrier for good deck placement is your marketing. Or make co-marketing deals with partners (Sorrent somehow managed to get Fox to run ads for their Fox Sports games) is your marketing.

Yep. Another opportunity to give consumers more information about your title lost.

The next mobile panel was on "the value chain," and I figured I already understood the value chain, so I went to "Building Massively Multiplayer Games on a Budget," with Brian Green of Near Death Studios (they run Meridian 59), Bruce Woodcock of Playnet (World War II Online), Chris Allen of Skotos, Daniel James of Three Rings (Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates). Gordon Walton was supposed to moderate, but I guess he's busy. How do you develop an MMG on a budget? Well, one way is to inherit a product somebody else kills (Meridian 59); another is to try to build a product on a large budget, fail at launch, and wind up with a marginal one (WWII Online); another is to stick with text (Skotos); and another is to find some kind of angel funding and eat a lot of rice (Puzzle Pirates). However, they all seem enthusiastic about what they're doing, and the audience wants more, and frankly, all of these games strike me as more interesting than yet another fantasy hack-and-slash treadmill.

Last session of the conference, I basically give the same presentation I gave at Digital Genres last year--dev costs increase along with Moore's Law, sales increase incrementally, we are all doomed. It's in the program as "Game Industry Economics" or somesuch, and my (modest) audience seems somewhat shell-shocked, as if this isn't what they expected. But hey, a little rabble rousing never hurt.

That evening, I hang out for a bit with Len Quam and Damon Osgood; I've worked with Len at three different companies, and Damon was CTO at Crossover while I was there. Len's now doing work for Vindigo; Damon's in Austin with SOE and seems pretty pleased to get away from le bebe for a drink with friends.

Saturday, on the flight, I wade through The No Press RPG Anthology, which is pretty cool and perhaps I'll post about another time, between games of NetHack on my Nokia-provided laptop. Hey, I'm a game researcher. It's research. Yeah.

posted by Greg at 3:27 PM

According to Gamespot, Acclaim plans to file Chapter 7. Dang. Chapter 11 means continuing operations under the protection of bankruptcy; Chapter 7 generally means liquidation. Hard to remember that a scant decade ago, Acclaim had an annual gross nearly as large as EAs. Another nail in the coffin of any hope for game development in the NY area, I'm afraid.

Robert Gehorsam is now CEO of Forterra Systems, the new name for what used to be There, Inc. This makes sense; Robert was in charge of There's government business, which involves using the There virtual world technology to build "virtual Baghdad" for training purposes. (Nice when your betatesters are the 101st Airborne, and can be ordered to file appropriate bug reports :).

As I've previously argued, non-game MMGs are inherently dull and doomed to limited player bases, and as I expected, There has failed to achieve a large enough paying player base to making any money to speak of--and they had a huge amount of venture capital, and surely don't earn an adequate ROI on the basis of the consumer service. In other words, the only money There was making is on the basis of their government contract, and it therefore made sense to put it front and center and have the operation run by Robert.

I do wonder how this is going to work, however; like me, Robert is nailed to NY (for essentially the same reasons, e.g., loss of joint custody of children if he does). There is California-based. A lot of time in jets, I imagine.

To round up today's post, OS News has an article pointing out the problem with trying to develop games on an open source model. What it boils down to is that programmers will apparently work for free (or for employers who are willing to pay their salaries to contribute to open source development because doing so helps them achieve other business objectives like, say, landing huge maintenance and support contracts from corporate customers--the IBM model). Artists won't, and media asset development comprises most of the cost of developing an A-level title. Although, to be sure, some fine games have been developed as open source--e.g., NetHack--but note that NetHack is plain text. (Sure, there's a little 2D iconic version, now, but personally, I prefer the feel of the plain text version.)
posted by Greg at 10:49 AM