A bit over eleven years ago, Quake was unleashed onto the game world. It was really without peers for a while. Other games came out that offered similar internet playability. Even then, games could get away with just the fact they HAD internet multiplayer and expect to be fairly popular.

Competitive Difficulties

Now however, there are a multitude of games released every year that offer multiplayer or even have multiplayer as their only game element. On top of that, there are new services showing up that otherwise segregates a player from one another. Where before gamers had to play on PCs to play online, the current and previous generations of consoles have their own special networks that draw these gamers there to play their favorite console games (or console version of PC games). Sure, there are plenty of comments that can be made over the value and quality of these services; but that doesn’t lessen their impact.

There are more and more pieces of the multiplayer pie that is getting cut up into smaller and smaller slices. The pie is getting larger with the technology allowing new players to get online, but the number of slices is increasing faster than the pie growing.

Graphics use to be the driving force behind getting the new hardware or the new game. Now it seems that graphics are more of a hindrance than as a bonus. Software gets more and more complicated, more and more polygons are being pushed onto the screen and in the end it gets in the way of the actual gameplay.

Successes

The games that have proven successful in attracting and retaining communities of players tend to strike a balance between flashy graphics and great gameplay. According to http://archive.gamespy.com/stats/, Half-Life 1 is still the most played traditional multiplayer game out there. The game was originally released in 1998, and it has received numerous updates, including new netcode (making lag much less of a concern) as well as very widespread mod successes like Counter-Strike (the majority of the reason people are still playing HL).

To produce a game with successful multiplayer now, it appears you need to have several things in place to make it stand out.

First, you need to have a centralized server matching system that players can interact with to find games. Long gone are the days of just throwing a game out and letting the players fend for themselves. Players need to be assisted and encouraged to easily get into playing your game.

Second, make the learning curve shallow easy to learn, hard to master. You need to let the player get involved in the game and learn it before you throw them into the pit with the jackals. As the player learns the game and how to play, you can remove the training wheels and let them into a more difficult environment with like minded and similarly skilled players.

Third, polish the hell out of your game. There should not be bugs that pop up on occasion; maps and code need to be well tuned for the game. Don’t let the player quit in disgust because of technical issues, because he/she will not be back to play again.

Finally, don’t abandon your game as soon as it’s released (different from central server listing). Provide a website that players can find out about any announcements related to the game, possible free content releases or sequels to the game. Provide that important link to make the player feel like he or she has access to you, the developer. They will be much more likely to keep playing your game and being interested in what you’re working on next.

Summary

There are so many games that vie for the attention of the gamer. The competition is as fierce as ever. Technology can be both a benefit and a hindrance. In order to succeed you must cultivate a community and support it. The balance between pretty graphics and performance has to be met. Above all, the multiplayer has to be fun, and allow for both the novice as well as expert players to enjoy themselves.

However, games are one of the few places where what you get is limited only by your imagination. As science-fiction novels have gradually waned from their height during the 1950’s, the medium of games has stepped in to take their place – frequently cheesy and badly written, but with incredible ideas and explorations at the center. As they become more sophisticated – and more expensive – the writer becomes the source of these innovative ideas. Games are not afraid of drawing on mythology and ancient legends, they are not afraid of religion, they are not afraid of political commentary, and they are not afraid to make you think or cry.

All of which is well-and-good – but how do you actually go about writing a game from beginning to end?

The Overview

The Overview is the prose story outline. This is where you detail the opening scene and motivation, all of the salient plot points, and the climax. If you have several story arcs, you detail each one separately and write two (or three or four) endings.

If you are working on something huge like an MMO, you will probably only be worrying about a minor story arc or two. These work in exactly the same way – if your Player begins the quest by going into an inn and talking to a shady looking man with an eye-patch, that is where you begin your story. What has gone before is irrelevant, as you have no idea what quests they may have completed.

Breaking it Down

Okay, you have your overview. Now you need to break it down into scenes. A scene can be playable, and it can be a cut. It can also be one of those hybrids, in which the character is stuck with hitting a button to work their way through the conversation.

For cut scenes and hybrids please keep them short. Anyone remember that flashback in Final Fantasy 7 where you are talking to Aeris’ Mom? Your game should not be testing your player’s patience.

At this point you will probably want to start making a flow chart. For example:

I like to do this step on paper and pen, each scene on a different sheet, so I can juggle them around. There is loads of software devoted to making flow charts if you prefer the computer. Check out the Google Search!

Review

Reviewing your script means you show it to your team, your managers, or your friends. If you are making this game all by yourself – and kudos to you if you are – you shove it in a drawer for a week and forget about it. When you pull it back out, look over it as though you were a jaded gamer with a short attention span. Is it gripping? Is it new? Does it have a Hero character you really want to play?

Rewrite anything that doesn’t make sense, or would get missed. Make sure that really important plot points are repeated throughout the game. Many people will drop a game half way and not come back to it for four months. If you’ve written an incredibly long and complex RPG, people may not remember when they reach the end some 400 hours of gameplay later what crucial thing was said at the start of the game and on which their survival now hinges. Quest logs, notebooks and diaries can be very useful for this reason.

Make sure that any absolutely essential things are completed without the Player having to reload from an earlier point. For example, if they needed that secret book of ciphers, and you let them leave the room without it, and then later that building falls down so they can’t get back inside – well, you’ll make a lot of gamers very angry. If that building fell down fourteen levels ago… you’ve just made a lot of lifetime enemies.

Finally, ask yourself if you would want to play the game. There are hundreds of corporate created games out there, slick and shiny with invested money. If you want your game to succeed, it should offer something new and heartfelt. Like any creative endevour, writing a game is about giving something of yourself to the world.

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Today I want to talk about the different styles of massive multiplayer games, since they are so incredible popular, as well as potential filled area for game developers. The two big styles I want to discuss is the “amusement park” versus the “sandbox” styles.

These fall upon a spectrum, where at one end is the pure “amusement park” and on the other is the “sandbox”. There is also the middle ground, where a game can attempt to combine sandbox and amusement park, often with it differing upon the activities.

Typically the style is a key defining facet of a games identity. It dictates how the content of the game is going to be designed. It is also one of the key draws for certain types of players.

Amusement Parks

Pure, ideal amusement park game play is the idea that the developer controls every aspect of how the player interacts with the game. The name comes from real world amusement parks. The idea is that for a ride, you stand in line, get into a little vehicle of some kind and be taken through by the programmed motions of the ride from start to finish. There is little or no player control over the outcome, often with just the succeed/fail outcomes determined by the player’s actions from a series of controlled challenges. You can’t jump the track and head off in an unexpected direction.

One of the biggest amusement park games on the market right now is World of Warcraft (WoW). For instance, take running a dungeon instance. It is limited to five people at any one time; it has a definitive start and finish with a certain order of progress intended. You first kill your way down some corridors to the first boss, then the second boss, then third etc. etc. until you reach the final boss and the instance is cleared.

Now the wonderful thing about WoW is that it is not so controlled that you cannot stop the ride once it has started. You can swap out group members; you do not have to kill every single boss before leaving. In some circumstances you can even bypass a boss or a certain number of bad guys. The game is an amusement park style just short total control, and in the end it is probably one of the reasons the game is so popular (in addition to the other positive aspects which is a different discussion).

Sandbox

On the other end of the spectrum is a game like EVE Online. It is a sandbox game with very little developer controlled game play. The developers created the galaxy, many of the stations, planets and other locations. They created the rules of combat, how ships work and how skills are learned. There are also some NPC (Non playable character) missions and other things provided by the game devs. Essentially, they took a plot of land, built little wooden runners, filled it with sand, plunked down some toy trucks, shovels and buckets and said “Have at it boys and girls!”.

To continue with the sandbox analogy, some people spend time building sand castles, some spend time digging holes, others spend time socializing. Others spend there time fighting with others over corners of the sandbox or focusing on destroying other people’s sand castles and filling in people’s holes.

While there is a nanny watching the sandbox, she’s reading a magazine and only will interfere if the kids in the sandbox are trying to strangle each other. Beyond that, there’s little intervention.

Development

From a development stand point each style requires different considerations. Neither is necessarily easier to make than the other.

Sandboxes require much more consideration for balancing abilities, skill and powers of players. Since there is much more room for one player to negatively (or positively) impact another player’s experience, having things overly powerful loose in the game can really throw things out of whack within a matter of days. But what sandbox games need less of is the structured and hand designed content. This often can save time and resources and allow the developers to focus on the balancing of the game.

Amusement parks have nearly opposite considerations of sandboxes. They can often have unbalanced or otherwise over/under powered items, skills or abilities without it having a large impact on the game. The developers can spend more time in between having to update the game. On the other hand, they require much more developer designed content. This is fairly time and skill intensive. Often times this requires a larger group of developers dedicated solely to this endeavor.

Both styles of games require considerable efforts on the part of the developer. Neither is easy to do and it often takes years to accomplish.

Players

What ultimately defines a game and keeps many of the players around long after the novelty of the world has worn off is the player community. A strong community is the key to keep a game going regardless of style, lore or setting. If the game provides an easy way to keep in contact with others the player has encountered through their travels then they will continue to keep their account active.

Both sandbox games and amusement park games attract a certain type of player. The sandboxes tend to have players who are a bit more resilient than their amusement park counterparts. Amusement park games tend to attract the normal video game player as well as people who normally wouldn’t play video games, since these games can often be played casually and in small bites, only a few minutes at a time. There is certainly overlap in the player population as well.

The reason for these attractions is pretty straight forward. People who encounter difficult or otherwise “bad” situations early on in a video game are more likely to quit the game. Sandboxes, due to their open nature, are much more likely to be a harsh experience for a player, with an unexpected action like another player killing them or stealing their items, which is enough for some people to quit. Thus, a majority of people who stick with these games are individuals who are willing to keep on trying even in the face of being violated by another player. Amusement parks on the other hand are often a bit less dangerous and allow for casual players and others who are not traditional gamers like stay at home mothers, grandparents and young children can enjoy. These games have rules are usually easier to learn and require slightly less skill/experience to play. Thus, people who might not have been entertained by other games can find these games enjoyable.

Summary

Overall, MMOs are a great genre of games. They appear in many different shapes and forms, with some games being extremely similar of others while others are very novel in their design. They all fall somewhere in the spectrum between sandbox and amusement park. Understanding how these games compare is a great benefit for picking up future games you may wish to play.

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Writethegame.com has teamed up with Isotx.com – the creative masterminds behind such games as Iron Grip: The Oppression and MidEast Crisis – and they want to read your work! Isotx have provided the prizes for this competition, and they are:

First Prize: $100 Amazon gift voucher.

Second Prize: $50 Amazon gift voucher

Third Prize: $10 Amazon gift voucher

All vouchers will be for Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

The Brief

• Write a short story about a group of friends on an adventure. Make yourself one of the characters, but don’t tell us which one you are!
• Make this character interesting – encourage us to identify with their hopes, fears and thoughts.
• Build the story to a climax, keep us hooked and build suspense all the way to the end!

Rules

• You must be aged between 10-15
• Stories should be between 500 – 2000 words
• All work must be your own, original writing. Previously published work will not be accepted.

The Deadline & Other Information

• Stories must be received by September 30th
• Stories should be emailed to kpeney@googlemail.com
• Stories should be either within the main body of the email, or attached as a Word file (.doc) or a text file (.rtf or .txt)

Still, it does make wonder if there are any great mods that venture off the beaten path somewhat. Disregarding stuff for World of Warcraft, are there any other gems out there?

Alternative endings were the next step. It isn’t that difficult to implement; instead of having a linear set-up, you simply switch to a modular one. Which modules are completed affects the route taken through the story, and hence the ending. Modules can be affected by anything from the type of character the player chooses (mages get different quests to warriors) to the scores they get on a task (rescuing all 100 slaves means one thing, only getting 68 means something else) to straight out decisions (if the player decides to fight it makes a different story than if they choose to run.)

Of course, game developers resources are limited, so the more cross-over modules there are the better. Nobody is going to make five completely separate games – at the very least they are going to share environment backgrounds.

The alternative ending is progressing as games evolve; mmorpgs are in a unique position in that they are endlessly updated; changes to the world can directly reflect the actions of the players in them. And yet they also require a certain suspension of disbelief. After all, every time the big evil gets defeated by the great champions it respawns – not a problem for most gamers who are just after equipment and kudos, but something difficult to reconcile with an evolving story.

Another problem with mmorpgs is that storylines naturally build to a climax. The ring gets thrown into a volcano, the bad guy gets run out of town, and the hero gets married. Formats which encourage endless stories (like long running TV shows) always get tired and old. Witness the final seasons of Buffy. Or take a look at the current episodes of The Simpsons. Games are reinventing themselves as interactive stories, and though gamers are tolerating cheesy dialog as long as they get flashy graphics, how much better would it be if they got decent storylines as well?

Alternative endings are post-modern – and before anyone groans and runs away from that pretentious word, let me hasten to add that this is a good thing for games. Games are already non-linear, fragmentary, and slightly surreal. They have different view-points built in. Sci-fi and fantasy genres have always been questioning and challenging. Games have grown out of ‘shoot fifty square blobs and gain ten points for each’ into complex multilayered worlds with good and evil, morality and sin, religious dogma, terrorists, sex, gods, mythology, anarchism, environmental activists, corrupt politicians, fearless prophets, satire, sarcasm, straight faced preaching and complex characters.

Blizzard – the company behind WoW – produces quality games. In the current climate, many game publishers send out buggy, big-name cash-ins or derivative works with little to recommend them. I am particularly enamored of Blizzard for their habit of releasing games that play on both PC and Mac. If they can do it, why can’t anyone else? I first began playing the Warcraft series with Warcraft III, and I loved the mix of strategy and ‘heroes’, the grandiose storyline, and the thread of humour that runs through all their titles.

The secret to the success of World of Warcraft then, is not so surprising. It is a high-quality game, with an easy interface and challenging gameplay. It has strong characters that break from stereotype enough not to feel like ‘just another ranger-type’. It has a massively detailed history, that satisfies role-play and fantasy fanatics – but can be safely ignored by those just looking for a bit of escapist gameplay.

It also featured an intuitive interface and smooth controls, along with a vast range of quests aimed at different levels of players. It is perfectly easy to progress through the game slowly with fairly easy solo-quests. It is also possible to complete incredibly challenging raid-quests that involve a large group of people co-operating down to the last detail of a strategy. You can expend hours just playing the Auction House, or farming, or exploring. There are multiple styles of play that are rewarded in different ways.

So, what lessons can we draw?

• Quality Counts. For the writer that means a polished storyline, attention to details, solid characters, and an engaging narrative. It also means humor – games are meant to be fun.
• Depth and Breadth. This means you need multiple ways of progressing through the game. World of Warcraft is open-ended, but even linear games need to have alternative story lines and ways of progressing.
• Disposable Elements. It is very easy to think that because you have written something, everyone needs to read it. Instead you work on the assumption that only 10% of your audience is going to explore every nook and cranny of your story. That doesn’t mean you cut corners – it means you create more content, something for everyone. In WoW that means different kinds of quests leading to different kinds of gameplay. For your game, it could mean whatever you think it means.
• Challenge. Hardcore gamers are good. There are people out there who can level a character from 1-70 in WoW in less than a week. A good game should include a couple of ‘impossible’ sidequests that are designed solely to test these fanatics. Think of the Weapons in Final Fantasy 7. You don’t need to reward them especially well – the thrill of a challenge is enough.
• Humor. All the best games I’ve played have had serious story lines that crack jokes. Never underestimate the power of a wry aside. Okay, so the /silly command doesn’t bring up any great gems – I know at least a few people who are addicted to it though.

1. All you need is a Good Idea

Ideas are ten-a-penny. The game industry doesn’t need ideas, it needs people who make the ideas happen.

2. Working in Game Development is easy

No. It’s time-consuming, it’s hard work, there’s a lot of pressure to succeed. I don’t know anybody who works in games – in whatever position – who doesn’t frequently put in twelve hour days. The plus-side, of course, is that you’re doing what you love.

3. You don’t have to play games to make games

This is generally spouted by the casual gamer. Because they’ve seen someone playing Final Fantasy once, they think they can make something like that. After all, how hard can it be? You just need some weird looking people and some magic spells, right?

Wrong. Video games adhere to a set of complex rules that places them within a very particular genre. To write that genre, you have to know those rules. The only way you learn those rules is by playing games. Lots and lots of games.

4. It’s all about who you know

It’s all about your portfolio. Get developing today – make game mods, design characters, write scripts, do whatever you have to do, so that you have something to show people. Game companies need workers, not social butterflies.

5. You don’t need training

Wrong. Whilst experience makes up a lot of your potential worth, doing a course will give you the skill-set you need, as well as giving you the resources, time and space to work on your portfolio. I’ll be talking more about university courses in another entry, but suffice to say – if getting a degree is an option, it is one you should take.

Sloperama

The bit you want is “Game 101″. It debunks the popular myth about how all you need is a good idea. It also might make you think twice about breaking in to the biz. If you get past that though, it’s full of great advice.

Gamasutra

For jobs, articles, advice and so on about the games industry.

Game Script and Storyboard Creation

If you like learning by example, this guy has some.

Become a Video Game Designer

Simple and basic overview.

Why am I starting off my blog by sending you elsewhere? Because I want to illustrate my first tip for all you wannabe writers. To write for games, you have to live, breathe and play games. That means being a part of the community. That means going to as many game development sites as you can. That means making contacts, being active on forums, running fan-sites, and playing all the big-name games that come out. Working in the game industry is time consuming, and like most writing jobs, you have to be passionate about it.

With this in mind, I suggest you read through those websites – and others – and get as many different people’s input as possible. The more you read about games, the more you’ll know, and the more prepared you will be!