Reiding…

I recently read an article that sparked me to think about how video games could use better market segmentation strategies. The article defines segmentation as follows:

“separating your customers into different groups according to how much they are willing to pay, and extracting the maximal consumer surplus from each customer.”

The video game industry historically does not have the varied strategies of selling their products in the same way the movie industry or book industry does. For a given movie, they have theater sales, DVD, Pay-per view, rentals and so on. Books have the books itself and audio versions. For videogames we pretty much sell it once and that’s it. I don’t think we receive revenue from used game sales or rentals. I lump digital distribution and retail sales as one because the user experiences the game in the same way. In contrast with movies, people experience the content in vastly different ways with theater, DVD and broadcast delivery mechanisms.

I’m growing impatient with the industry continually creating games that are much to long for their own good, often damaging to the overall quality of the game experience because the game has to be padded with extra content to meet some arbitrary requirement for length of gameplay experience. I long for a game much like Full Throttle or Portal where it’s about 2hrs long to play through. Admittedly, Full Throttle and Portal took me at least 4 hours to play, but they are the closest example I have to what I’m looking for. My responsibilities and interests (such as writing articles like this one) do not allow me to sit for hours on end to play, let alone finish epic games of 10+ hours. These days, a game that is advertised as being more than 20+ hours really turns me off.

In an effort to introduce some ideas for market segmentation (focusing on singleplayer games) and satisfying my desire for much shorter games I propose the following various “packages” of games:

$30 - Core Experience Package

Contains the 2hr core gameplay experience package. No extra collectible items (t-shirt, art book, etc) or downloadable content access codes.

$60 - Extended Experience Package

This is more like the current offerings of games, like Halo3, GTA IV or Gears of War 2. The overall story and progression is the same, you even get to see all the same enemies, locations, characters, weapons, power-ups, etc that the Core Experience Package has but everything is longer. The battles are extended to include more waves. The cinematics may have extra scenes that provide extra context. Think of this as equivalent to a movies’ “Director’s Cut”. It’s the same overall experience but with more of it.

$80 - Collectors Extended Experience Package

Same as the $60 Extended Experience Package, but includes the extra collectible items, like the art book, toy figures, strategy guide, t-shirt, or access code for one piece of downloadable content.

$100 - Lifetime Collectors Extended Experience Package

Includes everything from the $80 Collectors Extended Experience Package plus lifetime access to ALL future downloadable content at no extra cost.

$20 - Lifetime DLC Package (Note: DLC = downloadable content)

Includes lifetime access to all DLC at no additional cost.

Players could combine packages, such as the Lifetime DLC Package and the Core Experience Package, totaling $50. Still cheaper than the $60 Extended Experience Package. Or if they are a light fan of the game they only have to pay $30 for the Core Experience and then maybe one or two DLC offerings, if that.

Personally, I don’t think I’d ever go pay for more than the $30 Core Experience but I do know people that I suspect would even go for the $100 package. Despite my confidence there are some important open questions I have:

1. In what ways can the Extended Experience game be different from the Core Experience game without Core players feeling like they are missing out on the overall experience? You can’t risk leaving out a cinematic or gameplay mission that core players feel would hurt their experience.

2. Do players see any value to the price points? How much could one person spend if they paid for all DLC separately? Does the Lifetime DLC package potentially save them money?

What about you, do you see potential for this idea or do prefer to see it die in a fiery death? Any suggestions for improvement?

xbox 360 achievement unlocked for president elect barack obama

A friend sent this image around and after I finished laughing, it made me wonder how many games have featured a positive African American role model as a playable character? My friend suggested two games, Shadow Man and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I haven’t played either of them but after doing a bit of research on the less familiar game of Shadow Man, I’m not confident these are games that depict the kind of positive role model I am thinking of.

What about you? Can you name any playable characters that are African American and positive role models? I loosely define a positive role model as someone who inspires someone else to be a better person.

There’s a problem with crediting standards in the videogames industry… we don’t have one. After reading about a recent situation I remembered I was left out of the credits of Sin Episodes. Officially, I wasn’t working on the project but I did contribute dialog for a phone message players can listen to in game. If I recall correctly, some panicked guy says he has stolen documents from a major pharmaceutical which implicates them in a big scandal related to deaths of their users. He says, that big pharma can’t be trusted and they aren’t in the business to help you get better but actually sicker so they can sell more drugs. Then you hear the door being busted in and he’s frantically screaming “they’re here”, oh no and then gun shots ring out and the line goes dead.

I thought this contribution to Sin Episodes fit really well within the fiction of the world and left an open hook for future episodes to latch on to. It was also really personal for me, as when I was younger, I took Accutane to help with my acne, which it did, but it destroyed my immune sys and in 1997 I was diagnosed with Crohn’s. Enough of that, my point is, I put something personal into a game and wasn’t credited for it. It’s partially my fault. I was upset when I didn’t see my name in the credits, but I didn’t speak up. Let this be a lesson to all you young game developers, if there’s a crediting problem, do speak up. You’ll be proud for standing up for yourself.

The other thing I want to mention is, as an industry, we need to band together and take credits more seriously. I mean the actual credits in a game. Take the time to read them in the manual or watch them scroll during the game. You might be surprised to see many old friends pop-up or new pals you met at GDC. Here’s another thought, why don’t we as an industry make achievements and trophies, etc, to reward people who do go through the credits… to the very end? I should be securing a new job soon and I’ll push for this at my new gig, who’s with me?

I wonder about the value of selling a game to your audience via the technology it uses. I’ve been reading feedback on the Force Unleashed demo and many people confuse the middleware technologies we used in the game. They’ll call Euphoria the “Euphoria Engine” that handles AI and material physics. Not entirely true. Euphoria only handles a small part of AI behaviors, it doesn’t deal with attacking, defending or pathfinding. It’s used mostly to react to damage and physical forces inflicted on them or to jump out of the way of oncoming hazards for example.

I don’t blame the players for being incorrect, it’s really difficult to keep all of this technical information straight. Is it worthwhile to include technology related information in communications with players? What might be better is to describe and show the experiences possible in a game but leave out the technology that makes this happen. I think at the end of the day, while players may get some satisfaction from being able to talk the talk, what they ultimately care about is walking the walk, i.e. playing the game and enjoying it for what it is.

Here’s an excerpt from a press release on a new social issue game, Dead Ends.

“Dead Ends is a full 3D computer game commissioned by Channel 4 to support Disarming Britain, a major new season examining the effect of gun and knife crime on Britain’s streets.”

Overall, it is an impressive effort by student game developers who had an incredibly short amount of time to make the game, 6 weeks from initial approach to going live with public downloads. I think there are two kinds of social issue games. 1) An awareness building game and 2) a call to action game. Dead Ends succeeds as an awareness building game but I think would be more successful as a call to action game, which requires more resources. Overall I feel its biggest let down is that it doesn’t answer its own question, “why does this happen? Why do teens resort to gang life?”

The game allows you to play as a teenage gang member and a detective trying to find who murdered the teenager. I give big props to the developers for putting the player in the role of the gang member and the detective, rather than some outside observer, such as a journalist which many social issue games use. Yet, despite playing as people directly involved, the game has very little about the real life reasons for teens participating in gangs.

Again, I realize they had 6 weeks and for that it shows how important it is to give social issue games the time needed to develop a game that reaches its full potential by exploring the issues properly. Here are some ways the issue could have been explored further. As a teenager, you live in a low income home with only one parent. For gameplay, you struggle to take care of younger brothers and sisters while cooking dinner for them. You must race back and forth between the boiling pot on the stove and picking up your siblings to keep them from causing trouble. Your mother comes home from work, dead tired and expresses her concerns about paying the bills. Your family needs money quickly or else you will be forced to leave your home. You, the teenager must quit school and find work.

You go to school to hand in your papers notifying them you are leaving and run into a friend of yours. The friend mentions his gang is looking for people and they pay really well. You are free to choose whether to join or not. Pros - lots of fast money. Cons - risk going to jail. You can choose to get a job at a local fast food restaurant instead. Pros - stable, legal job. Cons - doesn’t pay enough and the family still can’t pay the bills. No matter what, due to the circumstances of your situation, you are forced to join the gang and hope for the best.

After joining the gang, you steal cars and earn a percentage on the price of the cars. The more expensive cars are more risky to steal but net you more income for your family. Soon drugs become an option and then turf wars erupt and finally the game ends tragically in the death of the player character.

As the mother, you play a short sequence where you try to do you job as best as possible, but are turned down for a promotion, possible due to a form of discrimination or your level of education.

The other component is to offer a solution. You play the part of someone who’s been sentenced to work with low income kids for a small crime they did. Your character, doesn’t respect the kids who come from low income homes but must learn to do so. You eventually help kids find suitable jobs and take skill building classes after school. The point here is to explore the issues of respect and fear and show the kids other options. The teenagers think fear is the way to get respect. They’ve never been respected in another way by an adult, especially by someone like you. Once your character learns to show them proper respect, they learn that there are other ways besides gang life to get the respect they desire.

With this approach, we see a bit more from multiple perspectives why a teenager may be driven to join a gang and ways to help them realize there are other options.

In closing, I think they could have been able to answer their own question if only more time and resources were allocated for development. Here’s hoping they get another shot at it soon.

When I was younger, I used to play ice hockey and during practice once, I fell down trying to pass others. I thought my coach was going yell and scream about sloppy skating, but he didn’t. Coach said to the whole team, “It’s OK to fall down. It means you are challenging yourself, pushing your body to improve and strengthen your legs.” In other words, I was exploring the limits of my capabilities and fortunately, he did not punish me. I got back up and tried again. Then I fell down some more and it felt great.

After reading one of Clint Hocking’s presentations, it’s clear videogames allow players to explore. Players explore the game mechanics (rules and system dynamics), game space (world), and themselves. Just as when I was playing hockey, trying to explore the limits of my skills, games allow me to explore my skills and my perspectives about the world.

Games often use death and failure for various reasons such as to heighten anxiety/tension or to communicate incorrect choices by the player.

Yet, if games are about exploring and if we want games to encourage players to explore themselves, then using systems that punish players may actually prohibit exploration. Players may become frustrated and stop playing. They may seek out an approach that works and stick with that approach, without trying others in fear of more death and failure. Both of these hinder the freedom necessary to explore and learn from those explorations.

As an aside, not really related to the topic of games as an exploration, another reason to not use death and failure in a game design is because it simply destroys immersion. It breaks the fourth wall by reminding the player, “Hey, you’re playing a videogame! Go RELOAD your last SAVED GAME!”

It also breaks FLOW, the loop of players facing challenges, overcoming them via appropriate feedback loops and then facing increased challenges. Videogames that maintain the cycle of FLOW tend to be incredibly immersive. Players often note that they lost track of time and had no idea what else was going around them in the real world.

Whether you are looking to increase the immersiveness of your game or encourage players to explore the game and themselves, I suggest you think about what value using death and failure conditions adds to your game. You just might find you are better off without them.

There was a lot of interest at the 2008 Game Developers Conference regarding creating videogames for social good, explore human themes or that at least are embedded with something important to say. I’m really happy to see this because it’s a goal of mine to create games around social issues that inspire people to take action.

Related to that, Philip Zimbardo (social psychologist of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment) is interviewed on Wired.com about his work and his theories as to why good people can become evil and treat others inhumanely. He says during the interview, “But once I switched to being the prison superintendent, I was a different person. It’s hard to believe that, but I was transformed.”

Here’s something to think about. I do believe videogames can be used to transform people, help them to be more open to different ideas and possibilities, to be more tolerant, and accepting of others. That’s all fine and dandy, but if I believe that to be true for the positive side of videogames, shouldn’t I be able to admit that videogames can do the same for the negative side? If videogames can make people more tolerant of others, can’t they also have the power to make people less tolerant?

It’s a scary thought, because, as creators of the most immersive and potentially most influential medium yet, we have a great responsibility not to screw things up for everyone else.