Licensed Movie Games: The Silver Platter Phenomenon

Licensed Movie Games Lesson 1: Resist The Urge to Use Band-Aids

Cliffs Notes On Licensed Movie Games: COMING SOON!

Video Game "Nutrition" Facts

Around 20 years ago, The FDA mandated that most food products be labeled with a nutritional label listing various elements such as fat, cholesterol and protein along with their measurement per serving. This informational addition to the food product spawned a new sector in the food industry that marketed their food products as low-fat, low-calorie foods. Suffice to say, the nutrition label has had a major impact on food companies and consumers alike by creating certain groups of consumers that would only buy a food product based solely on the contents of the nutrition label.

So what if video games had a similar "nutrition" label based on the core elements of that video game? For instance, would consumers be less inclined to purchase the next best 3D action-adventure combat game based on more core system-specific hard data such as the inclusion/frequency/exclusion of individual combat system elements?

This was one of the random thoughts that popped into my head when I was thinking of a clever way to list the core ingredients of an accessible combat system. By no means is this particular "nutrition" list comprehensive or even weighted correctly. In the future, I'll be going into more detail for each of these accessible combat system elements and also regurgitating some of the topics written about by these guys.

Carrying The Torch

Lately, I've been reading Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior by Desmond Morris where Morris attempts to categorize human actions, gestures, body language, verbal, nonverbal communication, etc, into a sort of human gesticulative glossary...

In particular, he writes about Relic Gestures which he defines as: "...a gesture that has outlived its original situation...gestures that have survived long after their primary contexts have vanished." He goes on to give the example of the telephone gesture where the person would act out the posture of holding the receiver to his ear and cranking it. Even today, this gesture is used in some parts of the world by people "who may never even have heard of a cranked telephone and who do not understand where the action stems from."

As a Combat Designer on God of War III, an inherent part of my job is to adhere to the groundwork laid out before me by the original God of War I and II combat designers and ensure the original contexts and philosophies survive and are translated into the God of War III combat/enemies. Although some of the core developers have left the God of War franchise, Adam Puhl and Jason McDonald remain as the surviving primary contextual guides for God of War combat.

Part One: Ratatouille to God of War 3? Say What!?!

I’ve been at SCEA Studios Santa Monica for roughly 5 months now learning my role as a Combat Designer. I say “learning” because that’s exactly what I’ve been given the opportunity to do. Before I get into this a bit more, let me briefly detail what my previous and first design position entailed at Heavy Iron Studios, a division of THQ Inc:

SpongeBob Squarepants The Movie:

· Placing breakables
· Creation of breakable/crate puzzles

Joel Goodsell, the Lead Designer of SpongeBob Squarepants The Movie, is an established game design veteran who gave me my first “shot” at a design role. Currently, he’s one of the heavy hitters at Insomniac Games. Thanks, Joel.

Incredibles 2: Rise of the Underminer

· Responsible for scripting and progression of the enemy “waves” for three arena levels

This was my first game in a full time designer role. No actual “combat” design here. Just pure wave behavior and some dabbling into level design by introducing some interactive set pieces that enhanced the battles.

Ratatouille

• Tons of pre-production mechanics test level building
• Tons of pre-production mini-game building
• Prototyped a chase level ala Crash Bandicoot chase levels
• Production: Responsible for creating missions within one of the worlds

No geometry building; just layering missions onto already designed environments (platforming missions no less, so you could imagine retrofitting these kinds of missions into already designed environments. Yikes! But I digress.)

As you can see, no combat design experience whatsoever. So how do I currently find myself in such a specialized role as a Combat Designer on God of War 3? Two words: Street Fighter.

Part 2 coming soon.

Partial Game Analysis: Mike Tyson's Punch-Out

This partial game analysis isn’t necessarily trying to pinpoint and explain what actually makes Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out so much darn fun to play. The actual goal is to expose the core elements that seem to virtually eliminate player frustration. I’ve never once felt frustrated by this game even when I have to replay the same opponent multiple times because I keep getting KO’d.

This is the problem with many combat games: the enemies and, consequently, the game, become increasingly frustrating because the player is not able to instantly recognize enemy weaknesses and then counter attack accordingly. Instead of game difficulty being determined using different combinations of enemies (as well as environmental scenarios), the game becomes difficult (read: frustrating and un-fun) because the player has not been given a strategic foundation.

The player becomes lost.

Reducing the player and enemy interaction down to its core, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out gives the player the most important, and consequently, the most memorable elements of player and enemy interaction:

· Attack Tells

· Over-the-top/Exaggerated Anticipation Poses

· Over-the-top/Exaggerated Recovery Poses

In most combat games, an Attack Tell is integrated into the attack itself via an Anticipation Pose. MTPO takes Attack Tells another step further by sometimes using multiple Attack Tells in succession. For example:

• Subtle Body Tell (eyebrow movement)==>VFX Tell (entire body flashes red)==>Connection Pose (actual collision between player and enemy)

Easy to counter attack, right? Sure. But as the player progresses, the game removes some of these Secondary Attack Tells and only gives the player one Attack Tell in the form of the Anticipation Pose. From the very beginning, the game gave the player a combination of obvious and subtle clues on how to defeat an opponent. Even as the game progresses and becomes more challenging, the player still has an idea (read: split-second visual recognition) when a specific attack will occur without necessarily having to remember a specific attack pattern. Although, pattern recognition is a big part of this game, but I digress.

The Anticipation Pose is the most obvious and important Attack Tell in the player and enemy interaction. If shown correctly, it allows the player to make split-second choices like blocking, dodging or counter attacking. Without an obvious Anticipation Pose, the player will be instantly clueless on how to attack an enemy.

The Recovery Pose’s main purpose should be to instantly tell the player the enemy is vulnerable and open to counter attack or at a certain point in its attack pattern. The Anticipation Pose is useless if the player doesn’t know when to attack. Furthermore, in MTPO, the player knows exactly when it’s safe to counter attack for one reason and one reason only: instant over-the-top and extremely exaggerated recovery poses. The Recovery Pose in MPTO is almost synonymous with the Connection Pose (the actual hit between the enemy and player). As a result of this caveat, the player can recognize enemy vulnerability instantly and counter attack accordingly. Sure, the recovery window for each attack becomes smaller and smaller as you progress through the game, but it’s expected the player has reached some kind of mastery at this point in the game.