Friday, July 27, 2018

Devstream: the Fortnite surrender




From the transcript of the Devstream.

Our idea was that you were going to be interacting with artificial intelligence, so you had your squad which could be AI soldiers, which could be enemy soldiers, NPCs, etc. Yeah we really went  overboard because we were bringing in synthetic speech, we were bringing in speech recognition, so there was a surprisingly sophisticated interaction with the artificial intelligences. We actually wanted to try to make it that you couldn't tell if you were interacting with a human or an artificial intelligence you know, so kind of like what you see with the bots these days, but but even more sophisticated. And remember this is back in 1996 and 1997, and the reason that the stuff sounds so advanced is because the industry went in a less sophisticated direction.

Again not a criticism. That was the right thing to do. People have sold literally billions of dollars of games that are based on the pseudo railroad.  I mean it's not actually a rail shooter - a true rail shooter would be something like the original Rebel Assault where you're literally on a rail and you can sort of swing back and forth a little bit, but from a design perspective, it's still the same function, it's still the same thing, in order to experience the story, in order to experience the the gameplay, you have to go through in a general order generally the same way.

It was interesting to see how effective that was in the early Call of Duty games before Call of Duty turned into being primarily a multiplayer game. The original missions did a very good job of giving you a pseudo-military experience, but of course it was all heavily scripted. You had to do things in exactly the right order, you knew exactly what was coming at you eventually; in some ways it was very similar to the old arcade games. In that MMOs have opened things up, you know, the FPS MMO; no one has really truly managed to design the proper one, the ultimate one, but there have been numerous attempts. Even Richard Garriot was unable to deliver on on that idea with Tabula Rasa.

But the interesting thing to me about Fortnite, and the reason why I consider Fortnite to be essentially the game designers more or less giving up, is because what we have been doing as FPS designers from the very beginning is attempting to provide meaning and structure and story and experience to the action, and unfortunately we've been fighting the tendency of a certain group of
players - who I am not at all convinced are the majority of players, but there are a lot of them - and they have a tendency to simply run around like chickens with their heads cut off. If you've played any online game starting back in the days of Doom and Heretic - yeah when we were playing with 4-player and 8-player networks - what you would see is some people would play strategically, some people would camp, other people would would team up and move cooperatively, but you always had the people who just run around like crazy, blasting away like crazy, and basically behaving in a way
that you can't even possibly consider anything that is remotely approaching anything credible or realistic.

And so, with Fortnite, and I have played it, and it's a very good example of what it is the Battle Royale genre and so forth, but ultimately there is no purpose, there is no story, the action is the experience. Now that's ok, that's fine if that's if that's what you want, but you see, for years designers have been trying to hide that, they've been trying to keep that under control, and what Fortnite represents - and it's obviously not the first Battle Royale game, it's not the only one, but it is the most successful, the most symbolic of the concept - it's basically the designers throwing up their hands and saying, "you know what, you guys just want to run around like chickens with your heads cut off slaughtering each other, here you go!" And to their credit, they give you the means to do that, so that's what's different between that and Call of Duty and Battlefield and all these other FPS games. Almost all the other games were trying to limit that, they're trying to limit it through the level designs they're trying to limit it through the ammo drops, and all that sort of thing.

10 comments:

  1. Long time reader of VP, but I like the idea of the Devstreams happening and being here, if only to drive more traffic to this site to encourage more posts. I would like to read more game design posts by you and commentary on the current state of game design, such as this video. Thank you!

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  2. To me Q3A represented that kind of capitulation. And in that i found it refreshingly honest. But a capitulation it was none the less.

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  3. By "meaning and structure and story and experience" do you mean what the pretentious "game researchers" refer to as a ludo-narrative experience? If not, what's the difference?

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  4. Devstreams are great. I hope we can squeeze slightly more technical information from you without losing people that play video games but don't think about what's actually happening.

    Sidenote: Pity you didn't record one of the online courses you did, you could've sold the replay. (Obviously no one can teach a class the size of a football stadium and give time to each student, but a replay can be sold to tens of thousands of people that expect no interaction with the instructor.)

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  5. I've been hoping for awhile that you would do livestreams of gaming and it seems I got my wish. Looking forward to any game projects you come up with.

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  6. I enjoyed the stream, but I am confused about something. Do you think that the Battle Royale genre is somehow worse than the "Deathmatch" modes of classic FPS games? There wasn't really any structure to those either, although those games did have a story-driven component.

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  7. Really enjoyed this video. Thank you, VD. Would you be willing to shed a little bit of light on the differences and similarities between video game development vs board game development (specifically RPGS)? Doesn't need to be a video, or even a full post, but something short and sweet.

    Lastly, and OT, do you think the system that you're developing for the Alt*Hero RPG could function well as a generic system on its own? If you've already answered that question, feel free to just post a link.

    Again, good video, and thank you.

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  8. Have you tried player Player Unknown's Battleground (PUBG)? How do you compare it to Fornite? A lot of people consider Fortnite a PUBG-clone.

    A think there's a big market for these type of "standalone" games. Prior to the emergence of the Battle Royale popularity, there are very successful MOBAs - DOTA, League of Legends, etc.

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  10. "But the interesting thing to me about Fortnite, and the reason why I consider Fortnite to be essentially the game designers more or less giving up, is because what we have been doing as FPS designers from the very beginning is attempting to provide meaning and structure and story and experience to the action, and unfortunately we've been fighting the tendency of a certain group of
    players - who I am not at all convinced are the majority of players, but there are a lot of them - and they have a tendency to simply run around like chickens with their heads cut off. If you've played any online game starting back in the days of Doom and Heretic - yeah when we were playing with 4-player and 8-player networks - what you would see is some people would play strategically, some people would camp, other people would would team up and move cooperatively, but you always had the people who just run around like crazy, blasting away like crazy, and basically behaving in a way
    that you can't even possibly consider anything that is remotely approaching anything credible or realistic."

    There's a solution to that.

    You prevent it the same way that reality prevents it on actual battlefields -- "tiredness". To just continually spray and pray requires lots of ammunition. Ammunition is HEAVY (it's LEAD!). The more ammuntion you're carrying, the less you can run (if at all). Joystick/gamepad inputs are to be used to indicate the player's INTENT, but NOT the avatar's ability to carry out that intent. Sure, let the idiot run around at top speed like a chicken for.... 45 seconds... and then poop out suddenly... and find he's out in the middle of nowhere, with no friendly players nearby, and now he's got to walk to the closest cover....without getting shot.

    Or he can optimize for more running.... but only at the price of carrying less ammunition. Which means requiring both fire discipline AND shooting on semi-auto, not constant full-auto, or else he's got to go back and get more ammo again.

    And anybody who has shot a combat-style shooting tournament knows... shooting accurately after running a while is damn near impossible, even with a tripod and Traverse/Elevation equipment. You're BREATHING too heavily to keep a constant aim (or if it's an MG on a tripod with T/E... your heavy breathing interferes with getting a good look down through the sights).

    Introduce THAT factor, and you eliminate the maniac-chickens from the game -- Those who try that method will just find themselves getting killed.

    Also, to make players value the life of the avatar better -- make a respawn take 30-60 seconds.

    You'll lose the 95 IQ players, and some 105 IQ players, but you'll finally get battles being fought where EVERYBODY is behaving in a rational manner. Maybe not all alike, but certainly no yahoos who think that you can actually fight a modern firearms battle by just charging across no-man's land and running around in his rear.

    Best to tweak it so that a full-speed charge into the enemy's rear while carrying even a moderate load (i.e. basic load of 7 magazines.... plus, say, 6 more) results in the player pooping out right about the time he gets into the enemy's rear.
    And if he's carrying an "I'm gonna carry 50 magazines!", he poops out right in the middle of no-man's land.
    And of course, in both cases, have his view heaving due to heavy breathing....AND even his orientation with respect to both ground and body heaving somewhat, too (because the weapon is in contact with the body that's gasping for breath), unless it's a weapon on a tripod.... but that's gonna be a HEAVY weapon, which makes him poop out even sooner.

    Just simulate reality, and the crazy chicken players are forced to adopt new techniques if they want to play.

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