General Discussion

The team from NetDevil's upcoming sci-fi MMORPG Jumpgate Evolution have provided us with this new edition of our dev journal series. This week's contribution talks about accessibility.

One of the biggest barriers to entry into any activity is the amount of effort it takes to understand it. The quote by Albert Einstein is telling because

although Einstein's theories are immensely deep and rich they are relatively simple to understand. We have spoken a lot about accessibility in games and I think it might be a good idea to be a bit more specific about what that means. Accessibility, just like simplicity, is not about making things "dumb", insignificant or even uninteresting; nor is it about removing depth or complexity. In fact, it is quite the contrary. Classic games that survive through the ages such as Chess and Go have surprisingly simple rules. You can explain the game of Chess in about 20 minutes; Go can be explained within a few minutes; and yet people can play for their whole lives and not understand all the possible strategies involved.

The reason for this is that complexity has to do with permutations of simple rules; thus the way to build a complex and intricate game is to create interdependent and simple rules. Let us consider the game of chess. It is precisely sufficiently complicated, but not overly complicated; just as Einstein said. The board is restricted to a specific size. Each piece has its strengths and weaknesses, but there are pieces that are universally more important than others. For example, the queen is able to move in any direction, thus it is important that there is only one. The king can not move much at all, but it must be protected or the game is over. Pawns are weak but can be used to resurrect stronger pieces, provided the player can protect it. Each piece is designed with a strength and a weakness and each piece has only one or two moves that it can make. Thus when we look at one individual piece, they seem much too simple, but when someone is playing chess all the complexity is revealed.

Read the whole article here.

Ummm.... Who wrote this? and wheres the link to the original article..as in the link to the dev blog?

An excellently well written article. I too would like to know who the author is.

On the whole I agree with the author.

 If the game design is as well crafted as this Journal, JG Evolution will be a killer game.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Ummm.... Who wrote this? and wheres the link to the original article..as in the link to the dev blog?

I have no idea what original article or dev log you're talking about. This article is exclusive to us so this article IS the original.

Originally posted by Stradden

 

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Ummm.... Who wrote this? and wheres the link to the original article..as in the link to the dev blog?

It was written by Hermann Peterscheck, the Producer. I've changed the original article to reflect this.

 

I have no idea what original article or dev log you're talking about. This article is exclusive to us so this article IS the original.

 

So MMORPG.com is the website for MMORPGs it seems!

This article is really good. The first time that I read a good explanation about  often abused statements, like ´Easy to learn but hard to master, like Chess or Go.´. There are several theories and quotes about simplicity which could enrich computer-game-concepts. I like this too: "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."  Antoine de Saint-Exupery. But it is one thing to find hints how concepts can be improved and another, how this knowledge can be used to design something new.

I like Hermann Peterschecks articles, but I missed his ideas about how to make JGE as simple as possible. Yet I am sure that he will design something great.

My one reservation:

Eve Online is a complicated game that occasionally produces unintended consequences the developers did not forsee. However, this is an aspect that makes the game interesting.

For example, a year ago, players suddenly realised they could make some battleships go increadibly fast using previously underused fittings. It turned their ships into solopwn-mobiles.

The game had to be re-balanced. However, the complexity of Eve Online means it is possible to think of an entirely new stategy nobody has thought of before.

I think this is a good thing (and it keeps the devs gainfully employed!)

yup

Thank you everyone for the kind words.  To be honest I think any developer that thinks they have all the answers is waiting to get burned - and we love to get burned don't we. We make our share of mistakes that have a smack-in-the-head-how-did-we-ever-think-that-was-a-good-idea effect . I hope I wasn't coming off as too authoritive or "look at me I have all the answers." I certainly don't... these are just theories and ideas and I hope they are valid to some degree. When I started working in games I honestly had no idea how hard it was. When you are in the thick of it (as we are on Evolution now) it is really hard to keep perspective. Deadlines can be brutal; decisions critical. We have all these "great ideas" and never really know which one will work.

A lot of the time developers spend ungodly hours working on things that don't make the game work any better - horrible things like little graphic glitches or control schemes that don't work, bugs with UI randomly crashing, frame rate issues, loading problems you name it. I would say about 50% of dev time is spent on things like that which makes feature implementation that much harder. Of course this is nothing new, and at this point I'm probably just venting. Having worked on a few games now I just think that in many cases developers try to do too much and end up losing focus. It takes incredible discipline and focus to not do this. One of the most difficult and painful things is to cut some feature that I reeeeealy wanted and was sure would rock, only to find out it actually sucks. I wish I would have found the Saint-Exupery quote instead of the Einstein quote since it nails it home so well. Reductionism is a lesson learned again and again.

I truly hope that we are able to produce a game worth people's time and money. Games, after all, are meant to be played by other people and MMOs even more so. I can tell you that the team is very focused and dedicated to the project and people giving us criticism and kudos helps a TON.

Thanks again!

Hermann