Area 161

My Bookshelf: A sampling

// August 16th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // iDevBlogADay, Purpose, Storytelling

Since I missed these “What’s on your bookshelf” theme the first go around, I’ll go ahead and publish my thoughts now that @Quebarium has restarted it for the #iDevBlogADay site.

My bookshelf is a bit different than most. This is Tom speaking here. Smiley can post his thoughts later, but I can tell you his has a lot of comics!

Speaking of comics, Amazing Spiderman #161 has to be first on our list. Without it, Area 161 (and the friendship behind it) may have never come to be. It won’t help you make better games, but hey…we hadda put it up first!

Next up has to be Jesse’s The Art of Game Design. Bar none, hands down, this is THE book every game maker should get. I’ve bought it 3 times given it away twice. Jesse is our modern day genius when it comes to game design. Read it, but be sure to have a notepad and pencil nearby. The ideas just start flying when you read this book, so you’ll want to capture them before they escape.

Stephen King’s On Writing is a must read for anyone involved in the creative process. Sure, sure, he writes about writing. However, you can apply the concepts and ideas he shares to game making just as easily to writing. I’ve wore out my first edition because I read it so much. What I like best about this book is the insights he gives to the business side of a creative career.

Titan: The Biography of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow is another must read. Regardless of what you feel about oil, monopolies or robber barons, you should read this book. Rockefeller at one time owned the entire oil ecosystem: wells, distilling, transportation, distribution, etc. This is how he became notorious. The most interesting aspects of the book though are his humble beginnings, his rise to power, his singular love (and respect) for his wife, and the fact that he always knew he’d give most of his wealth away. This was one of the rare paperback books I owned, so I wore it out quickly. For a present, my wife bought me a hardback first edition.

Lastly, insert title of your favorite spiritual or metaphysical book here. I personally like this one from my old pal, Jimmy. You can insert a book by His Holiness the Dalai Lama or the Pope or the Koran or the Bible or even a book on Karma. Just pick something that puts your thoughts out and off of yourself. The more you think of your fellow man, the better person you become. The better person you become, the more successful you will be.

That’s it for me. Next week, I’m thinking I may post for my first technical post!  :)

The Importance of a Good Story, Part 2: Your Game Story

// July 26th, 2010 // 7 Comments » // Game Reviews, iDevBlogADay, Storytelling

Last week, I talked about finding your own story. This was in reference to your company, business, etc. This week I want to talk about finding stories in your games.

When Stories Rule, Game Mechanics Don’t Matter

There’s quite a few examples of this, but 2 come to mind that stand above the rest.

1. Myst: I think Myst has finally been dethroned as the best selling game ever, but it took some time. You also have to remember that it was released on CD-ROM at a time when not everyone had a CD-ROM. People either upgraded their machine with a new peripheral or they bought an entirely new machine just to play it. Now THAT’S dedication!
   
   If you think back to Myst, you’ll see the mechanique was very simple: Point and click. On the iPhone, it’s even simpler: Touch on where you want to go. There was beautiful graphics, but there was no animation at all during the game play. Instead, animations occurred in reaction to a move or during a cutscene. Despite the fact that you were almost in essence just clicking through photos, the game captivated millions upon millions of users, many of which were first time (and only time) gamers.
   
   What drew people to Myst was the story. It was a game in which you never died, a first I believe. You just wandered around, solving puzzles trying to figure out who you were, why you were there and how you could get out. They could’ve just made a game of the various puzzles and sold them as a game of brain teasers. However, had they done that, the game would not have been anywhere near as successful.
   
   The most amazing aspect about Myst’s story was it’s non-linear nature. You were free to go in any direction you wanted and solve puzzles in whichever order you preferred. It was like real life vs a movie. This new sense of freedom contributed to the enjoyment, so much so that many adults bought the game just to explore and never bothered to solve puzzles at all.
   
   The Miller brothers were pretty indie when they made Myst, working from garages, etc. This shows that indies have the power to take games to a whole new level when new technology comes out (in their case, CD-ROM tech). We, as iPhone developers, seem to have a new tech to take advantage of everytime Apple releases a new device. We just need to take the time to analyze it from the perspective of “How can this help us tell a new story?”
   
   
2. Dragon’s Lair/Space Ace: This game utilized the joystick and button setup commonly found in arcade cabinets at the time. The unique thing about this game is that it told you every move you needed to make. Unlike Myst, there was no wondering: Where do I go or what do I do. In fact, if you didn’t do exactly what it commanded at the moment it told you to, you’d die.
   
   Because of the linear nature of these games, they were able to make a very tight story and link it to constantly playing animation. Where as Myst was like clicking through a photo album of an unknown world, DL/SA was literally an animated cartoon world that you got to participate in.
   
   DL/SA both played to a male’s sense of manhood. They were stories that pretty much encapsulated what every little (and not so little) boy dreamed of. Who doesn’t want to be the knight in shining armor or the super-studly space pilot that defeats the enemy to save the hot girl?
   
   DL/SA was made by Don Bluth. While I’m guessing he had some deep pockets backing him, I’ll still call him an Indie because he was an Indie Animator trying his hands into video games.
   
   Both games also leveraged another disc based technology, Laserdisc. Again, we see how new technology allowed for a new way to deliver a compelling story.

A Game Plus a Story for 99 cents?

I know what you’re thinking. “These games were priced far higher than your typical 99 cent app.” You’re right. Myst, I believe, was $40 new and DL/SA were a quarter (or 2) a pop, which very easily became $40 per player. I have some opinions and some rough, non-scientific studies on price, but that will be in next week’s post. Suffice it to say, that despite our lower price point, story can indeed still be delivered.

Here are some games that are experimenting with story on the iOS platform:

• Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor – Yeah, spinning webs and catching bugs is fun, but that’s not what makes the game great. It’s the stuff outside of your control that makes it great. It’s the photos in the background. It’s the trinkets in the secret levels.
  
  Lesson to learn: You can tell a story without words and completely in the background.
  
  
• Pro Zombie Soccer – I’m still torn on this game’s story, but hey, at least they have one. One thing I do like is how they’ve integrated the comic format into their game.
  
  Lesson to learn: Feel free to mix media in your games, in this case comics.
  
  
• Robocalypse (Seems to be pulled from US App Store) – I really like the story in this game. It’s very silly and makes up for what I find to be too complicated a game. I put up with the complexity though to see more of the story.
  
  Lesson to learn: Have fun with your story and it’ll be fun to the users.
  
  
• Plants Vs. Zombies – The story here is very subtle, but the neighbor/vendor guy is a friggin’ hoot. They could’ve very easily given you a storefront without him and no one woulda really noticed. However, I’m glad they spent the time to create what has to be one of the more memorable characters out there.
  
  Lesson to learn: Even something as simple as one character can liven up a game with a story.
  
  

But It Needs to be a Good Story too.

I’ll keep hounding about story, but there’s one thing I have to admit. I hate a really, really poor story. You can’t force a story. I like Steven King’s explanation:

“Writing a story is like excavating dinosaur bones. You’re job as a writer is to carefully brush away the dirt and other items not important to the story. The story is there whole, waiting for you. You just have to make sure not to mess it up.”

However, the only way to get better at story telling is by telling stories. Therefore, don’t be scared to add a story, but just try to learn each time and learn from others:

• Chaos Rings – I love me some Final Fantasy, so I was stoked about this iPhone original. However, I think it’s fairly clear that Square Enix has their B-team working on their iPhone games. The story is painfully horrible. Maybe it’s poor translation, but I simply can’t play it because the story is so bad.
  
  Lesson to learn: Read the story out loud. If it’s hard for you to follow while reading, it’s gonna be even harder for your users.
  
  
• N.O.V.A – The dialogue in this game is atrocious. I realize that dialogue is exteremely hard to do, but that’s no excuse not to do some homework. My favorite hobby as a teenage writer was to go to the mall with headphones on my head, but with no actual music playing. I’d sit next to perfect strangers and listen to how the spoke to each other. I’d then take notes and add that to my dialogue.
  
  Lesson to learn: It’s not what your characters are saying that’s important, it’s how they say it: word choice, inflection, sentence structure, etc.
  
  
• Rogue Planet – My issue here is the amount on Non-Player Characters. I think this is an example of people trying too hard to put story into a game. “More characters mean a more complex story. The more complex the story, the more engaged the users will be.” Sorry, but that’s simply not true. More characters means you need to be a better a writer.
  
  Lesson to learn: It’s hard to keep track of a story as it is, so limit the number of characters when you can. Many of your are just starting out, so don’t make it any harder for yourselves than you have to.
  
  

“Where’s your street cred?”

So what makes me think I can talk so much about writing, eh? Why don’t I put some examples out there that can be critiqued?

Fair enough. I haven’t written in awhile, but below are links to some of my work and writing tools I’m making:

• Dragon Lore – A fantasy story of a little girl and an old dragon. I think the dialogue shines here, but you can judge for yourself. This was written about 10 years ago.
• Unemployment – A modern fiction piece about an unemployed man. This piece utilizes that trick I mentioned last post where you start and end a story with the same thing. In this case, it’s a wedding ring. This was written in high school, roughly 17 years ago.
• Poems for my Wife – A collection of almost 600 poems that I’ve written for my wife in the 13 years we’ve known each other. Some are really bad, but some are really good. I’ll let you decide which are which. I used to try to write one poem a day, but it still hasn’t happened. I also used to have this open so other guys could write poems for their wives, but no one ever signed up so I shut that part down.
• Pictstory – A website that I’m building to help get people writing more often. Basically, I’ll post a picture and then users write a story to go with the picture. It’s a tool to get in some writing via your mobile phone, during down time. It currently has issues in Firefox, but I’ll be cleaning it up as we get closer to launch. I’ll be sure to make some noise about it here when it’s ready for prime time.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little two parter on the importance of story. I have some thoughts on world building too, so let me know if you want a write up on that.

Next week, I’ll be writing about app pricing. I’ve been doing some non-scientific research and the findings are rather frightening for us indy devs.

The Importance of a Good Story, Part 1: Your Personal Story

// July 19th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Company Related, iDevBlogADay, Storytelling

In my one brief year of college, I studied Computer Science and English – Creative Writing. It was the 93-94 school year. In the 16 years since, I’ve read a few hundred business books. One thing I’ve always found odd was how the latter pretty muched ignored most of what I learned in the former.

Business books tell about profits, products and growth. They’ll tell you about a lot of the logic behind building a successful business. This is because those things are repeatable and concrete. “Keep tabs on cost until cash flow is positive, then focus on growth.” There are 3 stages to a startup that can easily be mapped and checked for progress. As indie game devs, these logical steps provide a checklist that we can use as a sanity check.

There is one thing, however, that cannot be described in books, because for each and every business it is unique. The item I’m referring to is: Your Personal Story.

eBay Has a Great Story, or Does It?

Let’s take a quick poll:

Why did Pierre Omidyar start eBay?

1. To help with his girlfriend’s PEZ collection
2. He had a long weekend and wanted to code something

Every programmer has the “B” story, but very few have the “A” story. If you approached a news reporter back during the internet bubble, chances are you had a “B” story. However, there was only ever one “A” story and that was the story of eBay.

Funny thing though, there was no girlfriend with a PEZ collection. It was a complete fabrication by eBay’s earliest PR people. However, most of you probably thought the answer was “A” because a good story is hard to let go or forget.

Now, I don’t advocate flat out lying like eBay did. Lie or not though, it was that story that got eBay it’s earliest press. (Sidenote: For a really good story, but not press worthy, look up why the company went with the non-sensical name of “eBay” vs their more intuitive sounding “Auction Web”.)

Pixar (King of Story) Revealed a Gem During Lunch at WWDC

Michael B. Johnson from Pixar gave a great brown bag chat during WWDC. Amidst showing cool footage, talking about internal tech initiatives and showing off in-house tools, he talked about something that Pixar gets that not many other companies do:

Story is King.

When Michael started with the company, he went to one of the tech guys (Anthony A. Apodaca) who explained the history of the company including where the name “Pixar” came from.

“It’s a moon of Degobah.”

Michael then went on to talk about how he met one of the founders, Ed Catmull. During the meeting, Ed started to also give the rundown of Pixar history. When he came to where the name Pixar came from, he said, “We wanted something computer related like Pixel, but we also wanted something more…” Michael interrupted Ed and said, “Tony already told me where the name came from.” “Oh yeah, what did Tony say?” “He said it was a moon of Degobah.” Ed paused for a moment then said, “Oh that’s a better story, run with that one.”

Michael’s point was that from the tools his team built to the directors of the films themselves, there’s a common goal among them all: To deliver a well-told, compelling story.

Every Story is Different, But…

Here’s the long story of Area 161.

In the fall of 1993, Tom is in line at a 7-11 to get change to ride the bus home. In the register line before him is Smiley, about to get some quarters to play some video games. Smiley opens his wallet to remove some bills to exchange. A picture in Smiley’s wallet catches Tom’s eye. “Hey, is that a picture of Spider-Man in your wallet?” Smiley says, “It sure is.” A geek bond is created in that instant. As we all know, geek bonds are the strongest.

Many years pass and the two share a myriad of experiences:

• They work briefly together at a software shop. Smiley teaches Tom a lesson in business he never forgets, “You work for them. If they pay you to pick your nose, you pick your nose. They pay for the luxury to tell you what exactly to do with your time.” That bit of advice makes working for others tolerable for Tom.
• Smiley’s wedding ceremony is inside his wife’s parents’ home. Oddly enough, Smiley’s wife and Tom’s life criss-cross years before Smiley meets her. Tom stands as co-best man in the ceremony that takes place in the living room.
• Smiley eventually buys his in-law’s house. During the house warming party, Tom visits and says, “Some day we’ll live close to each other.” Smiley asks, “How? I live here near Seattle and you’re wife never wants to move here?” Tom replies, “I don’t know how or when, but I know somehow, someway we’ll live close to each other.”
• Tom finds himself in Arizona years later. While looking for work, he gets a call from a recruiter up near Seattle. “We have this gig.” “Where exactly?” Tom looks up the address, it’s 3.5 miles from Smiley’s home. Tom then finds himself living in a spare bedroom inside Smiley’s house. He tells Smiley, “See.  I told ya, we’d live close.”
• Life works in odd ways. Realizing that the year-long job contract is no chance experience, the two friends strike up a company. While debating company names, they settle on Area 161. Why “161″? As far as we can recall, that was the issue of Spider-Man that Smiley had a reprint of in his wallet.

Almost twenty years have past and not only is the geek bond stronger than ever, but it’s still finding ways to permeate their lives.

Now that’s obviously a lot of story there. Is it a great story? I can’t say, but it’s our story. Is it a good story? Well, I think it’s a heck of a lot better than , “Two geeky friends start a game company.” Which is pretty much every indie dev story, right?

Tools of the Trade

Storytelling is an art, but so is game making. Since you’re all game makers, you know that you are artists. You’ll have to use some of that skill to create your own story. Never told a good story before? Don’t worry there are tricks. The two simplest ones are:

1. Put an ordinary person in extraordinary situations or Put an extraordinary person in an ordinary situation. – From the fantasy world, think Batman (for the former) or Superman (for the latter). In the real world, think Pierre/eBay during the dot com bubble (for the former) and John Carmack/ID during the shareware days (for the latter)
2. A story should always end where it begins. – This one used to confuse me til I realized they didn’t mean quite literally. They just mean you mention something at the start that you then bring back in towards the end. In our case, Spiderman issue 161. It was there at the start of Area 161 history story and pulled back in again towards the end. From the fantasy world, Alan Moore is a master of this technique.

Dig into your history and find your story. The sooner you find it, the sooner you can “own” it. It’s important to own it, because like a good joke, it’s get better every time you tell it. Whether in your head to yourself or to others. You don’t want to be in the middle of an interview with a reporter and find yourself bumbling, “Oh wait, before that…oh and I forgot about…Then was it after or during that time we….”

Next week, I’ll talk about stories in your games. A game is just like a company. There’s a story there, you just have to find it. And when you do, it’ll help you stand out that much more.