1. Cooperative Buzz

Much as ‘multiplayer’ was the hot buzz word for games in the Oughts, ‘co-op’ is the buzz word for the 2010s. Like most buzz words, it implies something great without necessarily delivering it. Let’s look at the ‘multiplayer’ buzz; suddenly every game needed to have ‘multiplayer’, but very few really understood how to do ‘multiplayer’. So for every ‘Quake’ and ‘Counterstrike’ there was another game with laggy netcode, unbalanced weapons and awful level design. Multiplayer was the Frankenstein created to fulfill the publishers need to have a feature on the back of the box. 10 years later, we might be a little closer to understanding that ‘multiplayer’ is not just dumping players in a room with a bunch of single-player weapons and having them kill each other until somebody wins.

Let’s examine the ‘cooperative’ buzz. Although it’s not as prevalent as ‘multiplayer’, is undeniable the number of games featuring some sort of cooperative play is on the rise. And why not? Gamers love the concept of co-operative gameplay and publishers see an easy way to increase the number of units sold. After all, if your game is fun with one person, it would be twice as fun with two people, right?

2. Clones and Robots

Here is where it starts breaking down. Developers assume because they can create a engaging single player experience and a good multiplayer mod they can simply ‘fuse’ the two to create co-operative gameplay. I’ll discuss the story issue first. In the worst case, we have a mysterious ‘clone’ of the protagonist appear, who is never explained and completely destroys story continuity, such as in Halo: ODST (where the hell did that guy come from?? symptom). The slightly better scenario is illustrated in ‘Gears of War’ or ‘Army of 2” where each player is a unique character. However, now we have new issues – because we don’t want to force players to play co-operatively, sometimes the second player has to be controlled by an AI…who acts completely differently than a real human player. Can you imagine trying to watch a movie where the actor is replaced with a robot stand in for half of the film? Unless you’re watching a movie about robot body stealers, it’s going to make for a very disconcerting experience.

3. It’s a whole new ballgame

The second issue is that co-operative mechanics are fundamentally different than single player mechanics. I remember the first time I played ‘Command and Conquer’ online. I was playing the game just like I would in single player – spread out base, conventionally placed  static defenses, a perfect balance between defense, units and teching. My opponent fast teched to helicopters and commandos and blew up my MCV in the first 5 minutes, while I was still playing Sim Base. Same units, same game mechanics, totally different game.

I mention this because it illustrates how a lot of game designers approach co-op; it’s the same game with an extra player. Except it’s not; even with the same mechanics, you’re dealing with a totally new scenario. What was fun in single player doesn’t necessarily translate into multiplayer. For example, dealing with health and ammo in co-op creates a feast and famine paradox. If you keep the same amount (famine), you may end up with both players low on ammo, or one player will all the bullets and one who has to always use his knife/shovel/fist. If you’ve balanced your game properly for single player, this generally sucks. What if you double the amount? Suddenly you’ve got two rampaging killing machines instead of one – forget balance, now it’s a contest to see who can get the higher killcount. Whats interesting about this exercise is that the two scenarios described can actually make a fun co-op game, but only if the designer adjusts the gameplay accordingly.

Is there any way to handle the attack of the clones? Can we ever make co-op as fun and balanced as single player? You can judge my theory in part 2 as I present my plan to put co-operation back in co-op gaming.

Chamillionaire was great. First thing I noticed  – he connected with the audience right away. It wasn’t him trying to prove he was ‘in’ with the Stanford crowd; it was just him acting naturally, like he would act at a concert.  And everyone became more engaged, myself included. I have listened to a few of these talks from CEOs of successful startups, and none of them ‘hooked’ me like as Chamillionaire. It fit right into what he was saying – your product needs to be authentic. Your audience can’t connect with you otherwise. It doesn’t matter if you are selling rap records or insurance policies.

I was at a Jay-Z concert last night; after listening to this talk,  I noticed that Jay-Z took a lot of time during his set to connect with the audience. Unlike some other performance art, good rappers take the time to be intimate with their fans.

Another thing that I noticed was the relative meritocracy of the rap world. I can’t say how widespread it is, but it seems there is less focus on pedigree and more evaluation based on quality. These guys get grass-roots distribution and marketing; nobody told them they needed an ad agency, so they talked to people they knew to spread buzz. They didn’t have the budget for print or TV, so they embraced the internet early. They are still quick to embrace new media as well – Twitter, iPhone, whatever. They don’t need to see a case study first – if it interests them, they try it.

Last thing – the effort they put into their work is phenomenal. As small artists working against big labels, it’s a David vs. Goliath situation, and they understand that. They understand they need to be more agile, defy social convention and work harder. When we listen to the final product it seems effortless, but it is equal parts work and brilliance that create a great album.

QD3 stated that last year, only indie labels made a profit. If indie gamemakers hope to survive against Goliaths like EA and Activision, we need to understand the lessons of the indie rapper.

My favorite idea was the concept being the leader of an strike team sent from the ’surface’ to capture? assassinate? subvert? Rapture. As the leader, over the course of the game can influence your team to ’splice up’ or not, watching in horror/shock/glee they become increasingly more inhuman.

I think this is a fantaastic idea. The concept of being able to genetically build a team of super-soldiers while slowly sacrificing their humanity strikes me as a classic game dilemma (it would require some trade-offs – perhaps the genetically engineered brutes would become impossible to control, or having more ‘human’ troops allows you more sympathy/control with the locals).

I think it would be very interesting to build a team from the various plasmids/tonics available in Rapture – I’ll make this guy my chameleon spider sniper, my other man will become my brutish drill-arm booze hound (complete with Big Daddy suit!) and this one I’ll make my half electronic hack master…

And can we say perfect vehicle for 4 player co-op? Wouldn’t Rapture be a great place to test out the video game moralities in your group of online buddies? Would you allow someone on your team to harvest a little sister, or would you fight to save her? The potential for human drama here is potent.

If I had about a year of spare time, all the bio-shock assets and access to some world-class voice talent, this would be my next mod project.

Fun sidenote – this concept is so ‘Apocalypse Now‘, which was the original premise of System Shock 2.  This allegory fits perfectly – your squads mission is to assassinate Andrew Ryan, and as you journey on through Rapture everything becomes more and more insane…

Sublime animation; you must see it to believe it.

‘The Duel’ - the whole thing felt like an animated watercolor. Anyone who has used Photoshop will recognize some of the techniques used, but it’s still breathe-taking to watch in motion.

Loved the standoff scene – when the Arbiter goes into his combat stance,  I felt his war paint and body merged into one symbol of purpose.

‘Origins’ – felt like watching one of my favorite illustrated history books coming to life.  Similar to ‘The Duel’, it feels like watching a painting in motion.

Interesting revelations about the Halo universe here; according to Wikipedia this is official universe canon, and is fascinating. The overall message felt heavy handed, but due to the amazing visuals, I’ll let it slide.

‘The Package’ - Clearly the ‘eye candy’ of the group. The CG and animation in this clip is simply outstanding, clearly built on the same technology that made the ‘Appleseed’ movies visually excellent. Plotwise a little formulaic/shallow (but this is Halo, anyway) but provides the visual fan-service in leaps and bounds.

Escapes the uncanny valley by using ‘anime’ style characters instead of more human forms (less of a  problem with the covenant, since they are alien to begin with). Story nitpick – Catherine Halsey was the mastermind of the Spartan program, and should be an older lady (40-50s), not someone who looks barely out of high school. Best moment here was definitely the three Spartans emerging from an explosion in a bubble shield and wreaking total havoc.

The bubble shield seems to be one of the best cinematic devices invented by the Halo universe. Talk about the perfect vehicle for inserting a dramatic pause.

Blind Fire (Bonus Rambling)

‘Odd one out’ certainly feels like the odd one out, being the ‘for laffs’ episode inserted at the end. After so much heavy, heavy drama, it feels very odd by itself. My recommendation would be to see it first or to skip it all together.

Interesting interpretations on the strength of Spartans. Vary from god-like (In ‘The Package’, 3 spartans drop about 100 enemies in a couple minutes) to pretty human (One Brute takes down a Spartan in ‘The Babysitter’, one needler shot takes out a Spartan in ‘Homecoming’).

A couple shorts painted the elites in a very ‘eastern culture’ palette. Seemed like a good fit – wonder if Bungie had this in mind originally.

I must have watched a lot of stuff done by Studio Bones, because I start recognizing familiar sound effects (Electricty sound before something blows up, the crackle after an explosion, the anime ‘metal shine’ sound).

I didn’t notice any new scoring, but the music was very effective. This being said, I’m a totally biased observer, due to the ‘Pavlovs Dog’ effect that takes over whenever I hear the Halo themes. Would you kindly go and buy Halo ODST?

The directors did some great use of source material, I noticed little things from the games & novella all over.

Final Note - I jumped on the iTunes store to grab this and noticed several ‘one star’ reviews. Turned out to be Halo fanboys upset that this wasn’t the Halo movie. Gah. Nevermind the utter stupidity of the statement (the ignorance required to actually confuse this with a Halo movie would be legendary), anyone who watches this and then whines about it is just a Philistine. It bothered me the entire time I was watching. Thanks morons, for reminding me that I share a hobby with some of the most bigoted, close-minded, teenage idiots alive. Just keep buying Halo games so I can enjoy the hard-fought artistic benefits from your imbecile dollars.

Caught this portion of Jensen Huang’s (CEO NVidia) Standford E-Corner presentation, talking about motivating employees. To summarize – he believes NVidia’s engineering culture is excellent because they have their engineers ’self-select’ high quality peers, using a ‘rigorous interview process’. He also compares their engineering team to an elite football squad.

This may be a standard ‘corporate policy’, but it doesn’t make sense to me.

Great engineers aren’t always good judges of character

The qualities that you look for in an engineer (innovation, attention to detail, technical savvy, etc.) are not exactly ‘people skills’ (as opposed to sales, where success in your position is almost directly related to people skills). I’ve seen bad engineers with good people skills emphatically convince the right people they are the right person for the job, and seen good engineers be turned down because of poor people skills (not saying people skills are not necessary for an engineer, but that’s for a different post).

When was the last time you heard about a football team selecting it’s own players? You have scouts and a GM for that. Players play football, scouts and coaches evaluate talent. Engineers should build and innovate; someone else should be evaluating your talent.

Counter-intuition: A rigorous interview doesn’t select good employees.

Examine Gladwell’s article on ‘Most Likely to Succeed’. The NFL uses a series of extremely rigorous interviews (scouting, combine, etc.) with entire teams of people devoted to evaluating future player performance, yet there is almost no correlation between draft pick selection and future performance. Are tech companies all that much better at evaluating future engineering talent?

When you depend on rigorous interviews, you are putting the incentive and emphasis at being good at interviewing, not being good at your future job.

For the Indianapolis Colts, deciding between Ryan Leaf and Peyton Manning came down to one question.

The question was, ‘What would you do the first day you were signed?’ Manning said he would ask for the playbook; Leaf said he would celebrate in Vegas. In the end, it was something completely unrelated to football that would decide between a future hall of famer and epic draft bust. I don’t claim that I can tell you what’s the right way to select employees. What I do want to point out is: since you are making football analogies Mr. Huang, did you ever consider that your ‘rigorous self-selection process’ may not be the best way to find good employees?

Some football players who failed the NFL’s  ‘rigorous interview’:

Tom Brady: Round: 6 / Pick: 199 (3 time super bowl champion, 2 time super bowl MVP)

Kurt Warner: Undrafted (4x pro bowler, 2x NFL MVP, super bowl champion)

Tony Romo: Undrafted (3x pro bowler)

Wes Welker: Undrafted (2 time pro bowler, 2 time NFL leader for receptions)

Miles Austin: Undrafted (Cowboys franchise record 250 receiving yards in single game, 2009 Pro-Bowler)

At the bare minimum I’ve managed to add a couple more interesting quotes on the page; If I can’t be a brilliant writer, at least I can be a good thief. My sources of inspiration:

Malcolm Gladwell, ‘How David Beats Goliath’

37 Signals, ‘Getting Real’

Sid Meier, ‘Covert Action’ on Wikipedia

Not directly quoted, but an important part of the philosophy, Derek Sivers, ‘There’s no speed limit’

Jason Fried says your company should be about more than just making a product; I think the collection of messages in these articles sums up what I want to be doing here.