I was playing a pickup game with a friend the other week when a mutual friend and illustration student started taking shots at the quality of our game materials, or more specifically our map sheet, crinkled and worn. Sure it’d seen better days but at least the art is…. actually, I’m not even a fan of the art, and I never was. In fact, it’s about time I stopped being displeased and actually do something about it.
While I haven’t had a chance to work on it much, I finally trotted it out for a short game recently. I’m going to finish this one way or another, but I’ve had some aesthetic concerns. First, I’ve been a little concerned with the general look of big ‘mechs on little terrain. Ends up that the unpainted plastic figures from the introductory boxed set work oddly well; being unfinished they strike as being more figurative than representational which fits with the discrepancy of scale. Also, the terrain actually makes their unpainted medium grey color less offensive. I wonder if their smaller then full sized bases also helped. (When a figure with a normal sized base is next to a hill it almost looks like an un-based mech is standing on a higher level). Pulling and holding the wooded hexes when moving into them and noting it for combat wasn’t so much of an issue as I thought it might be, remembering to put them back though was. Simply putting a slip in those hexes would solve that, but ideal to set up the board by moving the trees around without the second step of marking their positions. The hills have been warped for a while, but I was a little disappointed with how the board itself seems to be holding up. While the slight bowing that the spray-mount seems to have caused isn’t a big issue by itself, if I were to make four boards and set them side by side it could get ugly. Finally, no excuse for my poor photography, I promise I’ll get a real camera someday.
Use of information in most games promotes a simple distinction between public and private; the fog of war, the cards in an opponents hand, the items in the Clue envelope. In some games its as subtle and pervasive as not knowing what the outcome of a die result will be or the intents of another player. In other games, the mental organization of the information is of particular importance. The pervasive HUD in games is an outgrowth of this need to manage information, stressing or removing ambiguities, in order to provide a specific gameplay experience.
Cards games are noteworthy in that they defer to players who understand the relative chances of different hands. Adding a clear and highly designed expression of the chances inherit in a player’s hand and the potential results of different discarding choices would transform it into a new, and likely less compelling game. While reading this information from the cards is ‘part’ of the game, reading the specific information contained on each those card is not. Obscuring the number and suit of a card, potentially confusing the player or forcing them to spend more mental energy deciphering them, would be detrimental to the game. The clear and unambiguous presentation of this information is necessary for the intended play of these games.
All games contain information, and the play of the game is based in part on what information has game meaning and in what way. HUDs in computer games help keep non-gameplay related ambiguities minimal, allowing the player to focus on a particular set of information and thus engage in a particular form of gameplay. It can be easy to say simply that the removal of the HUD (in games like Killzone 2 or King Kong) increases immersion. After all, we don’t need a HUD for a film, right? The information aspect of games though makes the random user guided access of information, typified by the HUD, important. I believe that evaluating the effects of a change in HUD on the qualities of the game experience is not possible without evaluating the specifics of the game being played.
These specifics are often additionally influenced by the people playing the game. While the defined rules of an FPS may stay consistent between two groups of players, the gameplay between each group may be noticeably different. To a group of novices the game is about properly aiming the gun at an opponent, to a group of experts this ‘game’ may have been mastered or ‘solved’, and is limited and boring. As such their game focuses on co-operating to control tactically valuable parts of the battlefield. The first type of play may require the player to possess an enemy tracking system less it be too difficult, whereas in the second example players may eschew such a HUD element (turning it off) in order to focus on gameplay built around situational awareness. An example of this is the distinction between normal and hardcore modes in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. In the hardcore modes, health is reduced and the radar is removed. A player who doesn’t understand the map or how to play defensively will find the mode particularly difficult or frustrating, while an expert will find managing the new ambiguity particularly engaging.
In comparing games to movies in the discussion of HUDs it should be noted that information in film can be presented as needed, when needed. Games also present situationally important information (in the form of feedback) but are typically not sophisticated enough make sweeping assumptions about what the player needs to know when. In these cases having information constantly accessible is safer for game play than having it obscured when needed. Furthermore, the relative meaning and import of various, and very specific, changes in the game state are beyond the sophistication of most games. A game may be able to hi-light a killing blow, but managing the emphasis on the subtle moves that led up to it is a far more difficult feat, one best left to the player. So long as they have the information to understood the sequence in the first place.
Overt use of information in most games consists of a simple distinction between public and private; the fog of war, the cards in an opponents hand, the items in the Clue envelope. In some games it’s as subtle and pervasive as not knowing what the outcome of a die result will be or the intents of another player. In other games, the mental organization of the information is of particular importance. The pervasive HUD in games is an outgrowth of this need to manage information, stressing or removing ambiguities, in order to provide a specific gameplay experience.
My new plywood template is alright. For the best results it’d definitely be best to screen print a grid on. At minimum, I’m pretty sure I could use a color that more complements the ‘burnt grass’. I decided to go with the browner surface to set the woods off a little, but it causes them to seem a little more artificial than I’d like. You can see the results of the previously mentioned warping foam core in the hills of the third image.
Annie Clark. Photo by Tim Lampe
I’m still on break, and am taking advantage of it with a in-progress trip to Atlanta spurred by a visit by talented and waifishly pretty Annie Clark (aka. St. Vincent ), who needs to be somehow paired up with Miranda July immediately so I can touch the sides of my eyebrows with the corners of my smile.
Classes – and official work on my thesis – begins in a week. To… celebrate (?)… in future weeks I’ll be discussing the relations between ideas in this book and this essay, the latter of which is required reading for anyone interested in game design.
The terrain project is on a delay. After learning that using this on foam-core causes the wet side to shrink (dur) and the board to curl I acquired a Woodland scenics grass mat and quickly pieced up a pair of 17″x22″ surfaces with some spray-mount and an x-acto blade. Unfortunately my home made 8.5″x11″ hex pattern stencil needs replaced with one that covers more area and lays as flat as Ohio. Litko has stencils for purchase but not in the 1.25″ catholic variety which I’ve resolved to adhere to. Securing 1/32″ thick birch plywood was easy enough but cutting the holes is going to take a moment (or more accurately 250+ moments)… and possibly a drill.
UPDATE:
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Giant Battling Robots- How awful is it?I'm trying out the new Blogger template design tool. Unfortunately that means scrapping the entire scheme from the old blog and starting over. It's a bit of a mess yet, but I think it might be a bit easier to read now, at least to my middle-aged eyes. There is work yet to be done; I need to redo the banner, and the sidebar gadgets are a complete me […]
- How awful is it?
- Scrapyard Armory
- TDR-10M ThunderboltThe 2010 limited edition ‘Mech carries on the tradition of jumping sculpts with the TDR-10M from TRO 3085. I had originally wanted to get this mini done for the WAMP contest but ran out of time before I could finish. I just wasn’t happy with the paint job until today. This ‘Mech will be joining [...] […]
- TDR-10M Thunderbolt