Tag: Design

The Art of Assets and Game Design: Creating Lasting Memories

In the realm of game design, carefully crafting assets holds the power to forge enduring connections with players. From iconic characters to pivotal moments and invaluable items, the more intentional and thoughtful an asset is, the greater its impact on the player experience and the lasting legacy of a game. While this correlation isn’t always direct, the pressure on studios to develop highly detailed art assets, captivating storytelling, and immersive worlds is immense. However, the challenge lies in balancing sustainability and riding the waves of hype, as burnout and asset “misses” can lead to negative feedback loops that strain the relationship between developers and players.

Memorable Assets: World of Warcraft’s Success Story
World of Warcraft (WoW) stands as a testament to the power of memorable assets, as proven by the resounding success of the game’s classic relaunch. Through unforgettable bosses and items, WoW not only creates cherished memories but instills a burning desire in players to return to its vast world. This highlights the strength of well-crafted assets and their ability to leave a lasting impression.

Navigating Real-World Constraints: Asset Reskinning and Reuse
In an ideal world, unlimited funding and boundless creativity would pave the way for future content and assets. However, within the constraints of reality, such as limited time and budget, developers often turn to solutions like asset reskinning or reuse. WoW’s third expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, exemplifies this approach, with the first raid tier being a reskin of the last raiding tier from the vanilla version. By leveraging memorable enemy and item models, developers tapped into nostalgia while mitigating budget and time constraints.

The Untapped Potential: Asset Mirroring and Reversing
One promising avenue yet to be explored in World of Warcraft is the concept of mirroring assets. Racing games commonly employ this technique to add difficulty by reversing or mirroring tracks. It offers an elegant design solution because, although racing tracks are relatively straightforward to plan, populating them with meaningful assets and narratives presents a significant challenge. By sending players in the opposite direction or through mirrored tracks, developers can provide a slightly new experience without the need for creating entirely new assets. Adding reskins or palette swaps can introduce variations, gradually transforming the experience into an entirely different map. Embracing systemic methodologies like asset recycling allows studios to explore multiple avenues for implementing new content.

Enriching Old Assets: The Potential of Design Details
Blizzard took a similar approach to asset recycling with itemization, using common models with reskins between expansions. However, there are further opportunities, such as mirroring and theming Naxxramas differently. By carefully ideating and testing, developers can implement small design and story details to breathe new life into existing assets. For example, reversing the order of wings or incorporating unique interactions and environments like swimming through sewers can create a fresh and captivating experience.

The Cataclysmic Shift: Rethinking Old World Zones
Blizzard’s revamp of old world zones in Cataclysm, though initially met with mixed reactions, was a necessary response to the game’s evolving world. As WoW expanded from Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdom to Outlands and Northrend, revisiting the old world and utilizing asset recycling became crucial for budget and time constraints while still meeting fan expectations. With Classic Era WoW now a permanent option, these changes are likely to be received with more welcome, as players may appreciate the originals while embracing the essential and remarkable nature of remixes.

Carefully and masterfully creating assets in game design leads to enduring memories for players. Whether through iconic characters, moments, or items, deliberate and well-thought-out assets have a profound impact on the player experience and the lasting legacy of a game. While time and budget constraints pose challenges, embracing techniques like asset reskinning, reuse, and mirroring can open doors to new content possibilities. By carefully considering design details and leveraging existing assets, developers can create fresh experiences that captivate players and add depth to beloved games.

Expectation of Feedback

The room you are about to enter in is pitch black. Before venturing more than a step, you fumble around for a light switch. Searching along the walls, you feel the plastic mold and familiar shape. Raising the switch upwards produces a small, audible click. Yet no light appears. Odd, you think. Perhaps the switch needs to be in the down position. Flicking the switch downwards, a similar but opposite click is heard. Still no light.

A mistake we make socially is believing that the way we interact with the world is the same way we interact with other humans.

The world is completely indifferent to expectations and has no directive from anyone. When we think of the people around us, we cannot hold them to this attitude. People like to say that they aren’t beholden to anyone but themselves. But by virtue of capitalism and due to the nature of family and proximity, it is nearly impossible to live without an expectation from another or without an expectation from ourselves.

When we have an expectation from the world, we rely on our agency to produce the desired result. If I cannot produce light in a dark room, I will find another solution such as a flash light or repairing the light switch. There is very little rational operation outside of this, as thinking or wishing for the room to be different brings no change.

The act of agency, the observable moments when a person applies change or control to their environment, is a form of communication. While earlier I stated that the world is indifferent to expectations and thusly would be indifferent to communication, acts upon the world carried out by agency is what produces change. So the world may not directly communicate to us or facilitate anything on our behalf, but without our influence we would have absolutely no control on outcomes.

This is starkly different from our expectations of humans.

In my analogy above, there is a human and an environment. Our human looks for ways to control or alter his environment and with that desire he extends into action. Change this analogy to there are two humans. One human is attempting to elicit a response from the other human, mostly in the form of illumination or visibility in this analogy. What would we expect from our human to human interaction? Should we expect the same approach as the first example, with human A looking for a light switch to see what human B is up to?

Unfortunately, not. Although there are many situations in which communication or a bit of direction can largely influence social interactions, more often I find that people elect non-feedback, non-confrontation, or to simply to ignore or move on from the situation. My most familiar outcome of this situation is that human A simply sees human B is “off” and human A proceeds to do nothing about human B until unprovoked change occurs.

I say unprovoked change in the same context as our human versus environment example. It would be unrealistic to expect change to occur to an environment, desired change, without correlating directive. Yet this is often the case with human versus human interaction. We believe the other participant in our conversation has the ability to change to our desired outcome without our input, without our agency, without our feedback.

This is partly for two reasons. In densely populated areas, it’s much easier to accept an environment and to move on from person to person we find incompatible, than it is to relocate or change environments we deem incompatible and to accept whatever people are thrown at us.

The second reason is that we innately understand that nature is indifferent to our expectations. This conversely means that we innately understand humans are not indifferent to our expectations. In fact, we can just announce our expectations and do very little else but wait for desired outcomes from others.

There are many metaphorical carrots on sticks that fool us into believing we are interacting with or providing feedback with others. While this analogy is becoming more and more abstract, try to imagine asking a room to illuminate itself or telling it to with rewards in mind. Even if the room has the ability and means to illuminate itself, it will not illuminate itself until there is feedback or interaction. And that failure to be bright is not interpreted personally or antagonistically by us, but rather as part of its nature.

There is a strange assumption that we believe it is in people’s nature to agree, work with, or understand each other innately. This handshake of an expectation only goes smoothly day to day because we’ve set a baseline social model we are all expected to follow. People are supposed to say “How are you?” but we are not supposed to be overbearingly honest. People are inconsiderate in traffic but if they wave and acknowledge the other party, it’s more reasonable. These social constructs are built over time and passed on to one another through day by day interactions, becoming social mores.

Social mores and our ability to disengage instead of confront expectations, is what is deeply different from approach with the world versus our approach with other people.

The most fascinating aspect of the topic of feedback is that I haven’t even reached the topic of the game world, or the nature of great design, which is to provide consistent and accurate feedback to the user. In a future post, I’ll go over designed worlds and how gamifying our world or providing accurate and consistent feedback changes our expectations, attitudes, experiences, and outcomes.

Virtual Worlds as Theme Parks

The more I play World of Warcraft and the more videos I watch on the topic, the more I realize the design of the games and the worlds are no different from the designs of theme parks. I thought about what new games and old are doing to attract players, what players can do while they stay in their world, and what the relationship between the designer and player is like. Funny enough, as soon as I thought of theme parks and MMOs, I remembered I watched a youtube video not too long ago about the design of MMOs as theme parks.

It turns out this video is over a year old now. I didn’t quite think of this video when I began this post, but it certainly captures important elements of online world design. The author describes differences in game design attitudes when shaping the worlds and how players interact with them. Some designers build set experiences like rides in a theme park, some designers build sandboxes in which players choose to create their experiences. There’s a lot more risk and instability when it comes to designing sandbox games. It is that difference which sparks the divide between online worlds being mostly set experiences, as set experiences are easier to design and forecast.

We know set experiences are easier to design because we see them so commonly in the gaming genre. Very few games give players a majority of the tools and let players build the majority of experiences. By nature, creating numerous possibilities takes numerous tools, and the most fun possibilities are the surprising ones, which are difficult to design or manage.

Bringing this idea back to the real world, entertainment in large spaces can be seen as sandboxes or theme parks, and should more heavily lean into their own identities. Music gatherings become music festivals, social gatherings become bars and clubs, etc.

I’m not exactly sure what the closest parallels are, which can be commercialized or organized, for sandbox entertainment. The closest I can currently think of are fairs, markets, or holidays in general. But I do know that theme park rides, cinema, and festivals deeply parallel online experiences we enjoy at home, but in public mass settings.

There are a couple of internet to reality based gatherings, such as anime conventions or gaming tournaments. In these micro-environments, people can hold different identities and status compared to their normal lives. It is this very essence which prompts this post, the essence of further identity and engagement that videos games and virtual worlds accomplish, but few real world events do.

The best real world example of identity and subculture contextualized in an event is a sporting event. Fans of one team sit opposite of fans of the opposing team, cheering for their respective teams on a field. As successful as sporting entertainment is, it is a passive hobby which the user best enjoys live, a tiny timing window in the grand scheme of things. What if there were virtual words or real world places for fans to gather and interact? Well, there are. There are fantasy leagues, there are sports bars, there are stadiums and merchandise. But it still differs drastically from a gaming experience.

Fans can separate themselves from others with knowledge and time investment or with rare or expensive collections. How can that be reflected in reality? When a character in an RPG enters a dungeon, it is similar to a person in a theme park going on a ride. The dungeon never changes, as does the ride. But in RPGs, the character entering the dungeon is different (hopefully) each time. While it is true a man can never step into the same river twice, how can fans see or feel a feedback system which responds to their participation in real life?

It’s easy to think of merchandising options or NFT wallets or some marker to identify our super fan and to grant some kind of exclusive access. This type of thinking is too basic, relying on cosmetics or video game features to override reality. We can point to current examples like court side seats, ticket availability in general, limited whatever. There are numerous ways for our fan to invest into the game, but so far the only feedback I’ve been able to list is seating or merchandise availability. Maybe that is the best feedback a fan can receive. A better view and something to take home.

Dungeons get easier the more geared and experienced a player or the group is. The rewards from the dungeon are static, but the experience becomes smoother, and the joy comes from within. Now, most players stop doing a dungeon once they have received a particular piece of loot they have been looking for, waiting for random chance to go in their favor. Still, the fun of the dungeon comes from a sense of progress internally, as the player builds themselves up against a set experience.

Is there a theme park or an environment, where shared-world users can slowly increase their agency and status, independent of the real world? Am I just describing high school?

Hiking Sycamore Canyon

My girlfriend and I just went hiking along one of the easier paths in Sycamore Canyon.

It was an easy trail for casual hikers like ourselves. Round trip it took us a little over an hour. The trail featured minor elevation and a few changes in biodiversity. Aside from the wonderful conversation and the fresh air, the plant life and the trail design captured my attention.

The beginning part of the trail featured a lot of cactus life. It surprised me how they grew in little patches along the hill. I’m sure the little moisture in the area was being drained in groups. As we walked further along the path, we saw large vines of golden leaves entangling all the trees. We had seen a warning about poison oak and suspected that it had infested a large region of the forest. Several trees were completely covered by the vines, losing out on any sun or water that might have once supported it.

Just a month ago, Vox released a video on trail design on how well made trails are invisibly designed for its users. As a designer, this fascinated me way more than an average person could be. I noticed the changes in elevation, the bumps and angles, the curves of the paths, and the surrounding markers. The ease of the path and the small changes made for a pleasant walk.

Without a video deep diving the design of trails, someone like me wouldn’t appreciate the simplicity and the undertaking in designing the trail I undertook. The first image in this post seems little more than a meandering line through terrain. And for many people, that is all hiking needs to be. In the relationship between designers and users, the best intercourse is often none at all. Thank you to Vox for highlighting such a simple, yet beautiful design topic. Thank you to my girlfriend for dragging me out from my computer desk. And thank you to California and America for supporting our access to nature and leisure. I love appreciating good design as a user, but more so I love understanding good design as a designer. I recommend sharing the video and sharing a hike. We could all use great simplicity.