How NOT to deal with criticism

Indie game developer Jeff Vogel is pretty good at writing controversial blog posts. In fact, I would like to take this opportunity to personally controvert one of his recent dispatches, titled Three Reasons Creators Should Never Read Their Forums. The actual post is more tempered than its title, but I still found plenty to disagree with (even though I realize I don't have the fabled "15 years of indie game development experience"). Here's a taste of his argument:

When I read the forums for, say, World of Warcraft or xkcd, I'm always amazed at how nasty things get. It makes me think, "If you hate it so much, why are you there?" But that's just the way it is, and excess exposure to insults can really get under your skin, make you doubt yourself, and interfere with your work. It's very sad, but you sometimes need to just protect yourself by staying away. Keep your brain clean.

I think this paints an accurate picture of what it feels like to receive criticism. Player feedback can be either affirming or demoralizing, but the latter variety often has a much bigger impact. I think this is especially true in modding, where you aren't charging or being paid for your creation. While making the mod is often fun, finishing it is often work, and the positive feedback you get from players is a small compensation for the long hours you put in fixing bugs, tweaking combat balance, and performing all the other tedious finishing touches. Therefore, when the mod is finally released and you get a negative comment - particularly if roughly delivered - it can easily get under your skin.

However, disengaging your audience is not the answer. It may be good for your psyche, but it will also embolden your critics to know that the person they're slamming isn't around to defend themselves. You don't need years of game development experience to understand this. You just need life experience.

Who believes in paranormal activity?

You won't catch me going off topic very often, but in this case I can't resist. Last night I finally managed to see Paranormal Activity 2, a movie I'd been wanting to see since back when it was in theaters.

I was initially impressed. The setup seemed more intriguing than the original, with its extended cast of characters, additional security cameras to more fully document the goings-on, and an interesting wrinkle where some of those who witness the spooky events - notably the baby and the dog - can't tell anyone about it. Unfortunately, as the hours of video footage fast-forwarded by, my excitement about the possibilities waned with the realization that I wasn't being scared.

Boredom gave me an opportunity to think about the underlying assumptions at work here. As the movie progresses, more and more characters come to believe that the unexplained phenomena in the house are paranormal in nature, until finally the most skeptical of the lot is convinced. The order in which the characters turn into believers offers a case study in stereotypes. Here, according to Paranormal Activity 2, are the people most likely to perceive (and thus believe in) the supernatural:

1. Animals
2. Children
3. Minorities
4. White women
5. White men

Depending on how you would like to be offended, you can substitute "religious people" for "minorities" as #3, as the character I'm thinking of was both Hispanic and a devout Catholic. Incidentally, a character with the same profile appears in the recent horror movie Devil, and guess what? He's the first to recognize that something strange is happening (there were no dogs or kids in that one).

Now, you could argue that Paranormal Activity 2 actually inverts the stereotype, because after all, the people who believe in hauntings turn out to be the smart ones! But you'd be wrong. The film doesn't make the case that demons are real. Despite the pseudo-documentary trappings, this is pure fiction, with its implied "what if?" As in: "What if my dog were barking his head off over an invisible demon, instead of the sound of a plastic bag blowing around in the backyard?"

Am I off-base here?

Dialogue Trees: Rules to bend and break

There are a number of rules I follow when modding. Fortunately, none of my rules of modding prohibit me from talking about modding,* so that's what I intend to do in this post. Specifically, I want to discuss some of the rules I follow when writing dialogue trees. My last post provided an overview of dialogue trees and the different types of PC responses. This one is going to delve into greater detail, with the sort of concrete statements that might be found in a standards document for a game company.

* That's a Fight Club reference, and obviously not a very clever one since I feel the need to point it out.

Before I start, I should mention my last rule of modding, which is to break every one the rules at some point in the game. This rule is a paradox, because it requires you to break it, which means there are rules that should never be broken, which is actually true. But never mind all that. The point is that slavish adherence to rules tends to make games predictable, so once in awhile, it's good to break up the pattern.

With that, here are some rules, guidelines, pieces of advice - whatever you want to call them - to consider when creating dialogue trees.

Building a better video game romance

Ever since Baldur's Gate 2 introduced players to the charms of Aerie, Jaheira, Viconia, and Anomen, romances have generated more discussion than just about any other feature I can think of. It's almost gotten to the point where the subject deserves its own Bioware forum, where players can knock themselves out speculating about who's romanceable, sharing tips on how to get the "best" results, and generally engaging in a lot of fantasy kissing-and-telling.

I, of course, am above all that. Sure, I have romanced all the female love interests in every Bioware game I've ever played, but that was just for the sake of cultural awareness, scholarly interest - you know, that sort of thing. Moving on...

One of the most interesting things about romances is the very fact that people find them so interesting. The knee-jerk reaction to this is that people who enjoy RPG romances are either sex-starved nerds clutching their 20-sided dice, or female. However, it's become increasingly obvious that not all RPG romantics can be pigeonholed that way.

Alistair

For me, the inclusion of romances in RPGs seems natural. RPGs are supposed to offer the opportunity to live a different life - why shouldn't that include one of the things that makes life worth living? In fact, you could argue that a game like Dragon Age - with all its romantic content - doesn't go far enough. If it truly and accurately modeled human needs and desires, we'd be spending a lot more of our time working on our relationships with Morrigan or Alistair, and a lot less time working on our Herbalism skills.

But I'm not advocating for that, exactly. Rather, I'm advocating for better romances. Because as interesting as they already are, there's certainly room for improvement.

Dialogue Trees: From roots to branches

RPGs come in many forms, but almost all of them have one design element in common - the dialogue tree. This method of constructing conversations has been around for a long time, and while it's reviled by some and mocked by others, no one has yet come up with anything better. Even the dialogue wheel used in Bioware games is just a shiny interface hiding the same underlying structure. It brings to mind what Churchill said about democracy being the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.

Yes, that just happened. I quoted Churchill on a blog about video games.

With dialogue trees being ubiquitous in RPGs, I thought it would be worthwhile to spend some time discussing their structure and some best practices for creating them. Much of what I'll say represents solid RPG standard, which I've learned either through playing the games or from following the standards set forth by Ossian Studios. Other points - perhaps the more contentious ones - are based on my personal experience writing RPG conversations over the years.

I can't cover everything in one post, so let's break this up into three parts. In this first part, I'll focus on PC responses, which create much of the "branching" in dialogue trees. Specifically, I'll talk about the different types of PC responses and how to approach each.