And it was glorious.

Here is a synopsis of the plot:

The year is 2044 and the world is in near-ruins. The Great Recession has taken its toll on the world’s economy, and resources are scarce. The Internet and gaming culture have evolved into a creation known as OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation), a massively multiplayer online simulation game created by James Halliday and Ogden Morrow of Gregarious Simulation Systems (GSS), formerly known as Gregarious Games. Halliday, with no heirs or other living family, dies suddenly and leaves a video will to those in OASIS and a book that was dubbed Anorak’s Almanac, a journal written by Halliday himself containing all his thoughts. The video says that whoever can collect three keys (Copper, Jade, and Crystal) that are hidden throughout the universe of OASIS and pass through the matching gates will receive his fortune and controlling stake in GSS. This becomes known as the Hunt and people immediately begin the search for Halliday’s Easter Egg. Those searching for the Egg are referred to as “gunters,” a portmanteau of “egg hunters.” Gunters devote an enormous amount of time to studying 1980s pop culture, the decade Halliday grew up in and was perpetually obsessed with, in the hope it will assist them with locating and solving the puzzles involved with the egg.

As the book opens, many years have passed since Halliday’s death, but none of the keys have been found. The public frenzy about the hunt has receded into a gunter subculture, while Innovative Online Industries corporation continues to operate a task force dedicated to solving the puzzles and seizing control of GSS.

This story is so much fun, it’s unfair. It is riddled with 80′s pop culture and videogame references, it was particularly great for me because I got all of them. This book is a treasure of geek culture and I recommend it highly.

Get it now in paperback, on kindle, or audiobook.

Well, it happened. I fell off the wagon, thanks to my wife and her coworkers dragging me back kicking and screaming I’m back on World of Warcraft.

The last time I played was in 2010 before we had our son Ethan. He’s almost 3 now and for some reason we thought it would be a good idea to go back for a bit (well, they did. I am still undecided.) How bad could it be, I had a few 80′s from back in the day I could dive right back in, right?

Well–The first thing I feel I should say is…what happened here? This doesn’t feel like the game I used to play at all. Paladins don’t have auras, Shaman totems work completely different… The talent tree has become a talent stump. This is a completely different experience now.

But, is it better or worse? I don’t know and I can’t tell. They have definitely made an attempt to “streamline” the game. But it almost feels as if they were sick of people complaining that other people didn’t know how to play correctly so they removed all significant choice from character development. You choose a spec and the game decides everything else for you with the exception of a pseudo-choice once every 15 levels. And glyphs are only little more than useless now.

It just feels incorrect. Maybe the raid scene has improved for it, or maybe Blizzard no longer feels the needs to target a mature audience with this game anymore. Mists of Pandaria has a pretty darn good and engaging starting zone story arc, probably the best so far in World of Warcraft, but the fact remains that they took an April Fools Joke and made it canon–not only that but they took it seriously.  Also, WoW Pet Pokemon battles.

Hooooly shit. The Pet Battles.

When Mists of Pandaria was announced, I heard about their plan for vanity pet battles. Figured it would just be a gimmick to pass time in raids. What I didn’t anticipate was the depth they would take it to. All pets have levels, you can fight the critters you see running around the world, and you can even attempt to capture new ones after you have damaged them.

It’s freaking Pokemon.

And it is glorious.

Yeah, the pet battling is stupid, stupid fun. I did not anticipate how much it would draw me in and it is embarrassing. Especially with all of the wacky collectors edition and special event pets I’ve gotten over the years.

I still have 5 days on my scroll of resurrection…so we’ll see how long it lasts. I don’t know if Blizzard believes World of Warcraft can’t stand on april fools jokes and pandering to pokemon kids or not, but the old crowd is definitely gone and the game has moved on to a new target audience, that much is obvious.

I’m not sure when the nostalgia will wear off, but I know it’s a matter of time.  I’m definitely not a lifer anymore, but it has been enjoyable to get back in and feel the “like riding a bike” rush come back. I am curious what Blizzard plans to offer in their next MMO Titan. Activision’s involvement with Blizzard is worth noting now, you can see how World of Warcraft changed after their involvement– coincidence or cause is up for you to decide.

So to any others that gave up the drug after Wrath of the Lich King, it’s an interesting trip. Get someone to send you a Scroll of Resurrection, their current promotion includes a free upgrade to Cataclysm and an instant Level 80 boost/Transfer for one character (which they should have done a loooong time ago and I am glad they caught on) plus 7 days free, of course.

But then again, there’s always the free option too.

At the core a game designer is the advocate for the player. That means the designer makes decisions in order to deliver the best play experience as possible for the player. Judgments about what makes a good play experience come firstly from: playing lots of games across many genres and secondly from systematically playtesting and iterating.

This article describes how game designers can balance the challenge level of their game with the ability of their players in order to deliver a satisfying “flow” experience.

Matching Challenge to Ability: Gamers Have An Inherent Advantage

There’s one thing that unites us across race, age, gender and culture: we all love a challenge.

In fact, according to the research of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, challenge it’s so fundamental to human nature that the very notion of  ‘enjoyability’ of task completion is deeply linked to how close the challenge level matches one’s ability.  This applies to learning an instrument, playing sports, picking up a new language, your entire career – just about everything, and definitely playing video games.

However, there’s a balancing act when it comes to the question of “how much of a challenge is the right amount?” and it’s a concept gamers are intimately familiar with.

To use a well-known example, Minecraft has exploded in popularity since its release for a number of reasons. Chief among them is that Minecraft matches the gameplay difficulty with the player’s ability. Minecraft’s open world mechanics meansplayers set their own challenge level and are rewarded in a commensurate manner.

By its nature, Minecraft does not become too difficult (which would deliver a frustrating experience) nor does it become too easy (which would be become boring).

This matching of challenge level to ability level was conceived by Csikszentmihalyi, who dubbed his findings ‘flow theory’. Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow theory can be summed up with the following diagram.

The diagram elegantly illustrates what good game designers deliver for their players. That is:

-      When your player’s ability is low then the challenge level of the game needs to be commensurately low.

-      As your player’s ability steps up the challenge level needs to step up commensurately

-      When ability and challenge are commensurate your player has a highly satisfying experience (what Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow” and what is shown as the upward diagonal slope in the middle of the diagram.)

-      If the challenge level is too high relative to the player’s ability then the experience is too hard (frustrating)

-      If the challenge level is too low relative to the player’s ability then the experience is too easy (boredom)

It is simple in concept but executing to deliver flow via your game is a huge part of the art of game design.

How to Deliver Flow to Your Players
Step 1: Play and Deconstruct Lots of Games

Game design is more of an art than a science. Delivering flow to your players requires multidimensional creative and technical judgements and the skilled hands of an artist. In this case “artist” means playable system designer.

The foundation for this skill is to have knowledge of lots and lots of games. Play all kinds of games – console games, browser games, casual games, hard core games, smart phone games, board games, card games, luck games, skill games, alternate reality games, and everything else. Talk about what makes these games work with your fellow players and with people online. Deconstruct their rules and procedures to demystify how the game designers constructed the challenge level of the game so that it steps up in coordination with the ability level of the player. Here are deconstruction examples from two very different games. Each delivers a world-class flow experience.

Example Flow Deconstruction 1: Tetris.

If you haven’t played Tetris yet – you need to drop and give me 20 pushups, then go play it online immediately. When Tetris starts the shapes are dropping very slowly. Why? It’s because the player has low ability and slow moving shapes are less challenging than fast moving shapes. At the beginning she is just learning how the controls work. Then as she starts to master the controls and the concepts of how the shapes fit together the game increases in difficulty. In Tetris the only variable that changes to increase difficulty is the speed at which the shapes drop. The speed increases as the player’s score increases. Player score is an accurate reflection of player ability in Tetris. That, my friends, is elegant game design. Tetris delivers such a powerful flow experience that people get lost for long periods of time in the rhythm of it. It is common for players to have Tetris dreams. Tetris creates this flow experience because the difficulty level (speed) steps up elegantly in step with player ability (score).

Example Flow Deconstruction 2: StarCraft.

This is another must play game for anyone serious about game design. Starcraft has a much more elaborate playable system than Tetris and so the designers had to do a huge amount of work to craft a flow experience for their Starcraft players. Starcraft creates flow starting with the tutorial, which is called “Boot Camp”. Boot Camp presents the player with one basic interface concept and one basic game mechanic concept at a time. The concepts are carefully sequenced to build on one another – e.g. build two SCVs; have them harvest the nearby Crystals; when you have 100 build a second Supply Depot. It’s super easy because the new player has super low ability. After completing the tutorial the player chooses to play a campaign as Terran, Zerg, or Protoss. The structure of the subsequent missions follows the same scaffolded, step-by-step process as the tutorial – e.g each introduces progressively more advanced concepts and more difficult dexterity-based gameplay.  Starcraft’s entire single player system is essentially a training ground for the real challenge in the game – multiplayer. By structuring the single player missions to create a satisfying flow experience for players the designers create competent and challenge seeking multiplayer players who are capable of playing on Battle.net. In contrast, imagine if Starcraft players had to start by being dropped straight into multiplayer play. They would have dozens of concepts thrust on them at once. The difficulty level would far exceed the new player’s ability level and he would experience extreme frustration. It would be so much frustration that the player would likely not play Starcraft at all.

Step 2: Learn How to Playtest and Iterate

There is a sure fire way to know if your game creates flow -  measure it through testing. The way to measure is simple:

• Build a prototype
• Playtest with real players (not someone from your team)
• Measure if new players can complete the level within X minutes, 90%+ of the time.
• Also you will know if the level is not delivering flow because you will see playtesters do things like throw controllers (too hard) or yawn (too easy).
• Iterate to make the level easier or more difficult
• Repeat process until 90%+ of new players can complete as desired

Those are the basics. They work. There are a great many details on how to create playable systems, how to conduct playtests, and how to iterate. But those details are for later articles.

This article has been written to help you understand the importance of delivering a flow experience to your players and the basics on how to do it. Heavy gamers have an inherent advantage over light gamers in achieving world-class design skill because they have a deeper foundation of knowledge about what creates flow and what does not.

Chris Swain

Chris Swain is a leader in the game industry having co-founded the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab at USC and leading over 50 products in industry including games for Disney, Microsoft, Sony, MTV, and Activision, among others. His USC thesis student, Jenova Chen’s masters project was the game Flow. Serious games that Chris has created include Ecotopia, Play the Game Save the Planet, a cinematic, story-driven game focused on environmental protection, and The Redistricting Game, which educates citizens on how the U.S. congressional redistricting process leads to polarization in government. He is the creative director in the Game Design program at the New York Film Academy.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/crashgames/paradise-fallen?ref=live

Via Boingboing:

Cary Walkin, an accountant in Toronto, knows a thing or two about Excel. So great is his expertise that he was able to create a full-fledged RPG inside of its scripting environment, called Arena.Xlsm. I couldn’t get it to run in LibreOffice, but it sounds like it’s very featurful and fun, provided that you’re willing to use Microsoft products

Download Arena XLSM here

Final Fantasy Dimensions launched initially for iOS; the prologue chapter (about 1-2 hours of gameplay) was free, but each chapter was sold separately via in-app purchases. At launch, the entire game cost a total of $28.99. In an ocean of $0.99 and $1.99 apps and games that offer considerable depth and gameplay for the price, this was shocking to say the least and there was an outcry, to be sure. In December of 2012, the game released on Android (my platform of choice currently) and while the prologue was not free to try, the entire game was sold for a flat $19.99 (I’m told the iOS price has dropped as well, but I haven’t investigated myself)

So…what’s the big deal? I pay $20 and upwards regularly for console and PC games. Why should it feel so awkward and wrong to be asked to pay $20 for a game for my phone?

Well. Let’s think this through. Final Fantasy Dimensions is a new Final Fantasy game made with the aesthetics and appeal of the SNES classic titles. This meant, to me, that I had to play it. But $20 for a downloadable app still felt awkward. They have the right to charge whatever they please, certainly. But I guess what it came down to for me was, “is this game worth $20?” I don’t know if you have been keeping track lately, but SquareEnix has been responsible for a considerable number of very poor titles since the halcyon days of the Super Nintendo.

I was ethically caught between the two ideas of: 1) giving my money to a company that has straight up said “We will not remake Final Fantasy VII (despite the nigh-ridiculous demand) until we manage to make a game that exceeds the quality of Final Fantasy VII” yet still continues to publish terrible games. Or 2) Using my dollars to vote in favor of what I like, new Final Fantasy games using features that invoke the classic gameplay experience that the recent mainline titles simply are not living up to.

I am not afraid to admit, the only Final Fantasy titles I have enjoyed since Final Fantasy X (and even then I wasn’t having enough fun to want to go back and play it again someday) have been side-story titles and remakes. 4 Heroes of Light was a great game, probably not to most people, but I enjoyed it for what it was and it didn’t leave a bad taste behind like the newer “visuals-centric” and “MMO” titles do and Final Fantasy IV The After Years was an exceptional extension to Final Fantasy IV. I wanted to encourage Square Enix for taking a risk in Final Fantasy Dimensions, and I wanted to tell them that I liked the idea of it, but also the thought of a “Final Fantasy Dimensions 2” if you will. But it was difficult to justify the risk of buying a $20 app (that I couldn’t resell, like my ps2 games) if it turned out to be an apology-worthy turd like Final Fantasy XIV Online. (The fact that they are using mainline numbers for their Online series still makes me angry, but that is another rant, I guess.)

Well, long story short(er)…I bought it. All I can say is, $20 has never been better spent on my phone. Final Fantasy Dimensions is a very rich experience and it strikes all the right cords. Technologically, I would place the game somewhere between Final Fantasy V and VI. It uses a multiple-party plot device and a crystal-shard type Job-changing system. There is a Fusion-skill system that isn’t terribly unlike what was used in Final Fantasy IV: TAY, and it feels a little tacked-on but it isn’t in the way (or maybe I just haven’t discovered its potential)

I just finished Chapter 2, and while it may not seem like much, I am 14 hours deep into this game and I am delighted that there is a lot more of it. I can definitely see why they felt such a high price was justifiable…this wasn’t a simple port. There is an engaging story being told and a lot of work had to go into this title. I wish it felt more “16-bit” visually, and the writing is a little silly at some points—but so were the classics. I have very little to complain about in this title and I have a difficult time putting it down. I would be very pleased to buy another game along this line. These are the kinds of games Square Enix needs to do more often, their flagship-title designers are wildly out of control and the way they are going, the only game that will even come close to the quality of Final Fantasy VII is going to be one of these side-games. (Crisis Core was pretty amazing, by the way)

Final Fantasy Dimensions is available right now for iOS and Android devices and is totally worthy of your $19.99. If your favorite Final Fantasy game ended with a single digit, it is recommended highly.

I have been dealing with some very dramatic problems in my personal life that have jeopardized a great deal that I care very much for and it had cost me a lot of time and money to make sure that I and my family are properly protected from this issue that I cannot further discuss.

It’s caused me to reexamine a lot of what I do, and my faith, and I hope that it will come through in my work to make it all a better end-product overall. Only time will tell, I guess.

I added a permanent link to GameChurch, I met one of the founders at a convention last year and as a person of faith (whose faith has been tested and redoubled as of late) I found a lot of their message to be incredibly profound and applicable to people who have the kinds of hobbies that we do. (This just in: Video Games aren’t inherently and irrevocably evil! Who’d have guessed?)

Anyhow. I want to thank all of my readers for their support and I am doing my best to get life back to normal, which includes a more regular schedule of updates and more work on my board game design, which has seen me start ten projects for every one I even come close to finishing, so I am blessed with endless creativity and ideas to be sure.

I am working on a more extensive review for a game that I had an interesting internal moral conflict about buying, which some of you may have noticed if you follow me on G+. So there’s that coming up after I get some more hours into it.

Hang in there, everyone.

Everything is gonna be OK.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas (or Christmas-like holiday of your choosing) and Happy New Year!

When I heard about the decision to end Nintendo Power a few months ago, I didn’t really know how to react. The magazine always had a certain charm to it, and a special place in my childhood since I finally convinced my parents to get me a subscription at issue 38 (and began collecting back issues from my local used book store.)

But ever since the magazine changed from being an in-house publication by Nintendo to being licensed to Future in 2007, it didn’t really have the same appeal to me. It felt…”faker”. Like all of the here-today-gone-tomorrow console-specific mags that littered the shelves. The charm had been waning already, but at that point it was officially gone for me.

I’ll admit that I am probably seeing through rose-colored glasses on that point, as it always has been basically an ad rag. But the internet effectively killed any edge the publication could have possibly had by way of “secrets” or “tips and tricks” like it did in the 80′s and into the 90′s. It was fun to read about things that nobody else knew about. And the bonus issues were so…bad.

I didn’t think it would bother me to see the last issue of Nintendo Power…until I actually saw it.

Above you’ll see a side-by-side comparison of the final issue, and the very first.

I haven’t been a subscriber of the magazine since well before the 100th issue landed, but I think I’m going to need to pick this one up. Just because.

A fitting send-off indeed.

Read more over at Ars Technica.

See also: Gallery of Nintendo Power covers. Reminisce, and honor the dead.

RIP Nintendo Power 1988-2012.

But will I buy the Collector’s edition this time? I usually do. Ever since Diablo II, I have made a point to get every Blizzard game in its Collector’s edition format because I really loved the presentation of the games themselves, and the extras were awesome.

Invariably in a Blizzard collectors edition, you would get certain bonuses.

• - The game (duh)
• - An Art Book
• - A Behind-the-scenes DVD
• - A CD soundtrack
• - In-game bonuses (pets, avatars, banners, etc…this is a more recent addition)
• - And some other neat thing.

What I am concerned about is that “some other neat thing”. The inclusion of “some other neat thing” has been a quite fine addition to their games ever since the Burning Crusade expansion to World of Warcraft, in that case the “some other neat thing” was a mousepad and two demo decks (and unique promo cards) for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game (which is fantastic, by the way, you should play it.)

These extra perks kept improving or at least remained steady. The Starcraft II Collector’s Edition came with a simulacrum of Jim Raynor’s digital dog tags which were actually a USB Flash drive with the first Starcraft and its expansion preloaded onto it.

The Diablo III Collector’s Edition came with a freaking statuette of Diablo’s skull, with a USB flash drive soulstone with Diablo II and its expansion preloaded onto it.

The Starcraft II expansion set’s Collector’s Edition “other neat thing”? A mousepad…and nothing else.

Wait, what?

Yeah, a mousepad. No kickass miniature of Kerrigan, or anything else special…just a mousepad. And it doesn’t even look like an oversized one or anything special like that.

Mind you, the Kung Fu Panda expansion to WoW didn’t do any better. They didn’t even put cards in it this time, which really disappointed me because the card game could use the extra exposure since changing hands from Upper Deck to Cryptozoic.

I don’t understand. Have I been spoiled? Am I wrong to expect something a little more luxurious in a package which commands almost twice the price of the regular peasant edition? Is Activision putting pressure on Blizzard to do things like this, as many people have already suspected?

I am conflicted. I stopped playing World of Warcraft after Wrath of the Lich King, and when someone bought me the Cataclysm CE for Christmas, I kept it anyway for the bonuses inside the box. I didn’t even glance at Mists of Pandaria. That decision was easier because World of Warcraft isn’t the game it used to be (and since having Ethan, my budget of time for MMOs has become zilch)

But, I really like Starcraft 2. And I also really like Diablo 3, which is begging for an expansion.

I am disappointed, and I think there is a solid chance that I won’t bother with this Collector’s Edition unless the price is appropriate for its lack of “other neat thing” and it probably won’t be.

Guess I’ll see you at the digital download site on March 13th.