Hello again,

In part one I talked about a four point list of ideas I picked up from Game Developer Conferences. This is part two: “Have a well defined creative vision.” This entry may have less of a second hand quality since I have a vision for Lords of Illic. Either way the content that spurred the entry where various Game Developer Conference talks. It has been longer than I'd like because I already wrote a blog entry on the topic but it ended up being too convoluted. In retrospect I didn’t really need to dissect the essence of games to talk about artistic vision. Then when I rewrote it I was still not happy with it. Then I got sick and then I got sick again. Since the new patch for Illic is coming out I figured I had better finish the entry and post it. This may also end up being not one of four, but second of two in the series since it has now been four months since I watched all of those Game Developer Talks. We will see I guess.

But I digress, so let’s get to the topic at hand. To start off with, what do I mean by vision? I mean vision in the sense of an overall goal or idea of what you are trying to achieve. Rather than spend too long trying to define it let’s give my attempt to split vision into five broad categories: 

1. Games are cool, let's make one.
2. This one game is really cool, how can I make something like it?
3. Dragons are cool - let's make a game about fighting them.
4. By carefully considering some of my favourite games I have found what I liked about them and I am going to try to make a game which has the best parts from those games.
5. I’ve done exhaustive research and come up with a 100 point plan on how to make this game.

Which one of these five is best? For starters let’s rule out the last one. It is not a good idea to plan out every detail of a project for reasons I mentioned in part one. We can also discard the first as without any plan we would just waste time spinning wheels. If you are trying to copy a game you are going to try to outdo someone else at their own game and most likely create a lower quality game. Which is not to say that it is impossible to take a successful game and make a similar successful game. That is the strategy of the people with money who can afford big marketing budgets and flashy graphics. You may argue that you could really understand what is good about the game and create a better version - but that is really doing option four. So we are left with three and four but which is better? Since this is about a blog about Lords of Illic, let’s consider this with Illic as an example. 

Illic sits between the three and four (with a bit of two mixed in) - I wanted to take the best of the Fire Emblem series, because I thought tactics games were cool. This might seem like a bit of a cop out since I brazenly brought forth four different options but there will always be mixed motivations like this. For Illic the main reason the vision became so mixed was because I changed the vision part way through the project. Initially I was just trying to recreate Fire Emblem heroes. I love and still love FEH but I found the constant addition of new heroes who were overpowered was silly. Years later I can only laugh at that sentiment. Either way the original core vision was to make a more puzzle based version of FEH. The actual game was added in a mode which is exactly like this called “Tactics Drills”. Illic after I initially finished in my last year of study came to a crisis - that is I don’t actually like Tactics Drill style gameplay. So I quickly decided I had to make the game more like the main-line series. Which started to move my motivation to the “Dragons are cool” category - except it was that “Tactic games are cool” or “Fire Emblem is cool”. The reason I call this a departure is that I was no longer trying to copy the game but the format. The more and more I worked in the next two years even this vision became watered down as I developed an obsession with the game. I needed to work on Illic and the game’s vision went out the window. It got to the point where it became “games are cool” territory. Fortunately it got even worse from there. I decided to update my game to the new input system and my motivation became “I just need Illic to not be on fire.” It was only last year where I had put out a lot of fires and got a reality check from a friend’s critique that I could actually start to regain the game’s vision. Even then, it was difficult - my first concern was that the game worked. It is only really this year that I can start down my road to careful consideration. Now that the game is stable I can sit down and carefully consider what is the core part of the game. What is fun and what is not and that I would like to argue is the most important part.

My pet peeve with a lot of video games is that the developers can’t separate what’s cool and what is actually interesting or fun. The simplest example of this is super sized bosses in games. Monster Hunter World has a cool cutscene of the mountain-sized Elder Dragon Zorah Magdaros - if he reaches the island it is all over. So how will we fight this grave threat? We will be removing warts from his back. Is this a step up from clipping Lao Shan Lung’s toe nails from previous games? You may not know Monster Hunter, but if you have played any action game I am sure you have had the chance to give a heart attack inducing manicure to a giant. Which deadly beauty treatment you provide doesn’t matter, you had better be ready for the long haul because as we all know the giant thing means giant hp bar. This is where you take a deep breath and work to get the fight over with so the game can begin again. Either that or wonder why you play videos and what the nature of fun is.

I think this is where “careful consideration” could have helped them out. Instead of working on intuition they could have written down what is interesting about the game. The complex dance between the hunter and the hunted doesn’t make sense when the creature’s toe nail dwarfs the player. So how do you figure out what is fun or interesting? I have heard of Shadow of the Colossus which is all about fighting giants. It is successful enough to get a remake so evidently you can make a successful game about fighting giants. The difference is the vision or focus of the game. Monster Hunter’s and Shadow of the Colossus have different visions and thus different goals to fulfil.

So how do you base this vision to make your game successful? You can’t please everyone, so you should be making the game based on your own taste. It may seem risky but how can you really know if a game made for someone else’s taste will match them? You will always be the best person to make the game that matches your taste. Maybe that taste will be a niche one but there is an advantage to that. The more niche a game is, the more it can appeal to that niche. The “Why Dark Souls is the Ikea of Games” and “SpiderWebSoftware Failing to Fail” are two great talks on the topic. The first talks about how dark souls tailored itself specifically to its core fan base and while it may have exploded in popularity to this day none of From Software games have apologised about being difficult. They are and continue to cater to their niche - even if an easy mode would get more players. Spiderweb studio on the other hand is run by a single developer who has been making niche games since before I was born and “failing to fail” as the talk’s title suggests. Spiderweb studio’s “hits” may not be anything you have ever heard about but it shows how success is measured differently for different people. You probably won’t be the next Dark Souls, but you don’t need to be. You just need to make something that at least some people will love.

What more is there to say? Most likely you think you know what you like, but most likely you actually don’t. You might say “I like Fire Emblem” or "I like “Persona 5 Tactica” and it is probably true. That isn’t really an insight though, what you need to ask yourself is what exactly do I like about Fire Emblem? For me I know it is not just about the genre - I have played a lot of games which I don’t like which are turn-based strategy games. For instance: in many fire emblem games there is a system where you upgrade weapons or repair them if their durability is low. Now when I was making Lords of Illic I thought to myself “Fire Emblem has shops I should make shops”. I didn’t add durability because of the frustration it had caused me. What I didn’t realise though is that… I didn’t just dislike durability but also the shops themselves. They are probably the most boring way to become more powerful - you trade a number (money) for a number (stats) on your character. One feature I liked in Persona 5 Tactica was its skill tree. While it also has shops, I realised that I would have preferred it if they hadn’t didn’t. The great thing about the skill tree in tactica was that it did not lock points - you could reallocate points whenever which gave you a flexibility to explore and doesn’t lock you in. How often have you spent all your money at a store in a game and then new items popped up? If all your character was upgraded in a skill tree it would make it easier to offer more complex customisation with items and weapons in a more streamlined way. The shops and inventory systems in Illic have caused me a lot of pain. A lot of pain I could have avoided if I had actually paid attention to what I actually found interesting or fun. So when you play video games I suggest that you should be mindful and spend time examining what it is that you actually enjoyed and what you didn’t. I’d suggest getting a little journal to write these tidbits in. They will become a goldmine when you need ideas and importantly they act as a sanity check. What mechanics did you love and would love to be in your next game and what would you rather never have to do again? This applies to a lot more than just games - in fact it is just one of my favourite youtuber’s Stephen Zapata’s advice about art. But it can equally apply to helping you find what movie to watch or even how to write a blog post. How can you live your life the way you want, if you don’t know what it is? So I suggest taking some time to think about that. While you do I will be working to rework menus in Illic to work how I would actually like them to.

Until next time.