Development Info Wasteland 3 Fig Update #22: Building the Everest - From Concept to Design

[MRY]

First of all what the hell are you doing in a conversation about a game you have not played?

Err, you mean the conversation about Wasteland 3, which none of us has played? Or do you mean the conversation about the developers (e.g., "What is undeniable is that most of these developers clearly don’t give a fuck anymore.")? If there's someplace where I offered an opinion about TTON as a product, as opposed to the development of TTON as a process, I'd be happy to retract it. But to the extent you're invoking "wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen," that would seemingly apply more to people who hadn't been involved in game development or worked with these particular game developers issuing conclusions about the content of their characters, I would think, just as well as it would apply to people who haven't played TTON (like me!) opining about the content of its gameplay.

developers knew what people wanted, but made multiple design decisions to suit their believes and agenda to make a game only they wanted

Oh.

You have said that when people were young they could spare more time. Something like 14 hours. Now people have wifes, children and they can't spare that much time on development. Ergo they are the reason the developer performance suffers. And then I said: Are children guilty of stupid design decisions? Blaming fitness also makes as much sense.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I offered an explanation as to why the same developer might seem to "care less" at time X+n than he did at time X. Either you think caring can affect the quality of the game or your don't. If you do, then you should probably accept the possibility that the reason why an older developer is less of a hardcore gamer/game developer might have to do with important competing demands for his care, rather than being exclusively a matter of moral degeneracy.

I'm sort of perplexed that you can't see why "14 hours of pure devotion" and "8 hours of apportioned devotion" would yield different outcomes. The gist of it is that generally speaking certain things work better when there is a single author. I believe I've written about this in other posts, but one reason this is so is that there are often connections and resonances that an author creates subliminally. These might even become the theme of the game. When you have multiple authors, it is highly unlikely you will get that. Incidentally, "authors" here doesn't just mean "the dude who puts the words on into OEI." If the same guy designs the areas, designs the encounters, writes the words, oversees the artists, etc., etc. he will draw connections among these things -- there are implications in his area design that he might not articulate but which will be teased out in a scrap of dialogue, a character's attire, whatever. If you don't get this, maybe try giving AOD or Grimoire a play.

The larger the project, the less feasible this kind of auteurial quality becomes. First you start to divide among competencies (so-and-so will be the area designer, so-and-so the encounter designers, so-and-so the writer). Then within the competency you subdivide the work. Sometimes that is done with some hierarchy. But even then, having the lead writer review and revise every other writers' work is not feasible. Some of the harmonizing and authorship can come from the project lead, as it can come from a movie's director, but it's not quite the same because the scope of is so much larger.

One reason PS:T's story is so strong, I suggest, is that a single author wrote so much of it. I really like Colin's parts of the game, too, but they are noticeably out of sync (especially in hindsight). The only reason a single author was able to write so much of PS:T is that Avellone worked 14 hour days and stopped caring about other things. The only reason that was a legitimate life choice (if it was) is that he was like 25 or whatever. It isn't a life choice he would, or could, make today. Today he either carves off a smaller piece or he delegates on a larger project or simply gives general guidance. I simply don't think it's possible for him to make another PS:T. It might be possible for a younger person other than him to do it.

Obviously, it's hard to trace a particular shortcoming in a game to any particular thing. TTON's intro was reworked several times. Generally speaking I think revisions are a good thing. But I also think that beginnings can be hard to get right, and they are exactly the place where the auteurial aspect may matter most. I tend to think the intros to my legal briefs are pretty good. Part of that is because I prefer for my briefs to be my own product start to finish, not the product of a team of people doing research for me, writing different parts for me, etc., etc. By the time you're done writing the whole thing, you go back to the intro and it is a distillation of everything that has gone into writing the brief. If there are problems with the intro of TTON, it might partly be because it's not a distillation of the entire content of the game by the person who wrote the entire game because the demands of a large-scale RPG made that infeasible. I dunno.

I do think that some talent level should be mandatory as is desire to give the customers what they paid for.

The first part of this is hard to object to, but it's a little question-begging (what level? mandated by whom? measured how?). The second half is more complicated. I certainly don't think anyone should be defrauded of their money. For instance, if a customer who buys Primordia doesn't like it, I always offer to give them another game they might like more. If I had my druthers, there would be an infinite refund period. I don't like Kickstarter or pre-orders because they are a way of taking someone's money before they know what they're getting.

But the mere fact that someone pays for something doesn't give them the right to demand it be a certain way -- after all, we all agree that stupid Steam reviews of AOD and Grimoire aren't grounds for Vince or Cleve to change the game. And Codexers seem not to like it when developers pander to players, giving them what they want no matter how stupid or degraded it is. I think the truth is that developers should try to give players something between what they want and what the developers think they need -- developers should always be pushing to make players better as players should always be pushing to make developers better. I think adventure games should have challenging puzzles, for instance, even if players assert a preference for easier puzzles because I think in the long run players will be happier that way. I think RPGs should have stories that are not just wish-fulfillment anime or political pandering, even if players would prefer to be the chosen one abolishing slavery and injustice.

Finally, there is a problem (one we deal with a lot in the law) of multiple intentions. What if two players "paid for" different things? One person paid for TTON because he likes Monte Cook's politics; another because he wants PS:T's real-time combat; another because he liked the half-naked townsfolk in PS:T; another because he really likes the cypher system; etc. etc. Sometimes those things will not just be different, but actually conflicting. Like, some people may have paid for TTON precisely because they thought it wouldn't have combat (misremembering PS:T), while others may have paid for it precisely because they enjoy RPG combat. Whose desires win?

Ultimately, what matters is that for each customer who doesn't like your game, you have failed as a developer. I firmly believe that, which is why I apologize to everyone who doesn't like Primordia and (as I said) offer a refund. It doesn't matter if they don't like it because they think its politics are too conservative, its pixels are too blocky, its puzzles are too numerous and hard, its politics are too liberal, its puzzles are too simple, Crispin ruins the mood, the mood is too dark, whatever. Every single complaint is valid, even conflicting complaints, because each of those customers gave their time and money to something I made because I wanted to, and they came away unhappy. Very few people buy a game to dislike it; very few people make a game despite not enjoying game development. So basically, every time someone buys a game, it is because they have put their hopes in the developer, while subsidizing the developer's dream job. When those hopes are disappointed, the developer should be humble, appreciative, and apologetic that the person misplaced their hopes.

Thus far, you and I are in complete agreement. The only place we disagree is that I don't believe that the reason bad games are bad is because of malice, laziness, carelessly, stupidity, cupidity, fraudulence, liberal or conservative politics, cynicism, or any of the other bad motives that get ascribed to the developers. Games can go wrong for all sorts of innocent reasons, despite good, talented people working hard in good faith with good intentions. If TTON went awry (which seems to be the Codex consensus), I can speak from a position of first-hand knowledge saying it was not because of character flaws, whereas you are just inferring bad traits from a bad outcome. As I said before, it's fine to hate the error, but it's wrong to hate the errer.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

One reason PS:T's story is so strong, I suggest, is that a single author wrote so much of it. I really like Colin's parts of the game, too, but they are noticeably out of sync (especially in hindsight). The only reason a single author was able to write so much of PS:T is that Avellone worked 14 hour days and stopped caring about other things. The only reason that was a legitimate life choice (if it was) is that he was like 25 or whatever. It isn't a life choice he would, or could, make today. Today he either carves off a smaller piece or he delegates on a larger project or simply gives general guidance. I simply don't think it's possible for him to make another PS:T. It might be possible for a younger person other than him to do it.

 

[MRY]

This picture makes me smile every time.

 

[Kev Inkline]

[...]naked[...]

That post alone is more words than Bible, man.

 

[MRY]

That's how you know it's better than l3loodAngel's!

 

[l3loodAngel]

First of all what the hell are you doing in a conversation about a game you have not played?

Err, you mean the conversation about Wasteland 3, which none of us has played? Or do you mean the conversation about the developers (e.g., "What is undeniable is that most of these developers clearly don’t give a fuck anymore.")? If there's someplace where I offered an opinion about TTON as a product, as opposed to the development of TTON as a process, I'd be happy to retract it. But to the extent you're invoking "wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen," that would seemingly apply more to people who hadn't been involved in game development or worked with these particular game developers issuing conclusions about the content of their characters, I would think, just as well as it would apply to people who haven't played TTON (like me!) opining about the content of its gameplay.

Well I don't speak about Mass Effect Andromeda, because I have not played it. If you would have played it you would clearly see why the criticisms arise and why people complain about lack of developer desire. It's like shitty construction work. Everybody sees that people were not interested except the construction workers themselves.

developers knew what people wanted, but made multiple design decisions to suit their believes and agenda to make a game only they wanted

Oh.

Agenda first; content... Just fuck it.

You have said that when people were young they could spare more time. Something like 14 hours. Now people have wifes, children and they can't spare that much time on development. Ergo they are the reason the developer performance suffers. And then I said: Are children guilty of stupid design decisions? Blaming fitness also makes as much sense.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I offered an explanation as to why the same developer might seem to "care less" at time X+n than he did at time X. Either you think caring can affect the quality of the game or your don't. If you do, then you should probably accept the possibility that the reason why an older developer is less of a hardcore gamer/game developer might have to do with important competing demands for his care, rather than being exclusively a matter of moral degeneracy.

I'm sort of perplexed that you can't see why "14 hours of pure devotion" and "8 hours of apportioned devotion" would yield different outcomes. The gist of it is that generally speaking certain things work better when there is a single author. I believe I've written about this in other posts, but one reason this is so is that there are often connections and resonances that an author creates subliminally. These might even become the theme of the game. When you have multiple authors, it is highly unlikely you will get that. Incidentally, "authors" here doesn't just mean "the dude who puts the words on into OEI." If the same guy designs the areas, designs the encounters, writes the words, oversees the artists, etc., etc. he will draw connections among these things -- there are implications in his area design that he might not articulate but which will be teased out in a scrap of dialogue, a character's attire, whatever. If you don't get this, maybe try giving AOD or Grimoire a play.

The larger the project, the less feasible this kind of auteurial quality becomes. First you start to divide among competencies (so-and-so will be the area designer, so-and-so the encounter designers, so-and-so the writer). Then within the competency you subdivide the work. Sometimes that is done with some hierarchy. But even then, having the lead writer review and revise every other writers' work is not feasible. Some of the harmonizing and authorship can come from the project lead, as it can come from a movie's director, but it's not quite the same because the scope of is so much larger.

One reason PS:T's story is so strong, I suggest, is that a single author wrote so much of it. I really like Colin's parts of the game, too, but they are noticeably out of sync (especially in hindsight). The only reason a single author was able to write so much of PS:T is that Avellone worked 14 hour days and stopped caring about other things. The only reason that was a legitimate life choice (if it was) is that he was like 25 or whatever. It isn't a life choice he would, or could, make today. Today he either carves off a smaller piece or he delegates on a larger project or simply gives general guidance. I simply don't think it's possible for him to make another PS:T. It might be possible for a younger person other than him to do it.

Obviously, it's hard to trace a particular shortcoming in a game to any particular thing. TTON's intro was reworked several times. Generally speaking I think revisions are a good thing. But I also think that beginnings can be hard to get right, and they are exactly the place where the auteurial aspect may matter most. I tend to think the intros to my legal briefs are pretty good. Part of that is because I prefer for my briefs to be my own product start to finish, not the product of a team of people doing research for me, writing different parts for me, etc., etc. By the time you're done writing the whole thing, you go back to the intro and it is a distillation of everything that has gone into writing the brief. If there are problems with the intro of TTON, it might partly be because it's not a distillation of the entire content of the game by the person who wrote the entire game because the demands of a large-scale RPG made that infeasible. I dunno.

I do believe that more time spent is LIKELY to produce better results, but there are many important criteria. First is caring about what you do, then there is talent, understanding the audience and support from the management. If I would give a hammer or a wrench to a monkey I won't expect it to renovate my house or repair my car. It just doesn't work that way. No matter how much time it spent playing with tools.

Thus, I don't believe that given more time or resources would have yielded better results, because most of the games weaknesses come from strange design decisions.

I do think that some talent level should be mandatory as is desire to give the customers what they paid for.

The first part of this is hard to object to, but it's a little question-begging (what level? mandated by whom? measured how?). The second half is more complicated. I certainly don't think anyone should be defrauded of their money. For instance, if a customer who buys Primordia doesn't like it, I always offer to give them another game they might like more. If I had my druthers, there would be an infinite refund period. I don't like Kickstarter or pre-orders because they are a way of taking someone's money before they know what they're getting.

But the mere fact that someone pays for something doesn't give them the right to demand it be a certain way -- after all, we all agree that stupid Steam reviews of AOD and Grimoire aren't grounds for Vince or Cleve to change the game. And Codexers seem not to like it when developers pander to players, giving them what they want no matter how stupid or degraded it is. I think the truth is that developers should try to give players something between what they want and what the developers think they need -- developers should always be pushing to make players better as players should always be pushing to make developers better. I think adventure games should have challenging puzzles, for instance, even if players assert a preference for easier puzzles because I think in the long run players will be happier that way. I think RPGs should have stories that are not just wish-fulfillment anime or political pandering, even if players would prefer to be the chosen one abolishing slavery and injustice.

Finally, there is a problem (one we deal with a lot in the law) of multiple intentions. What if two players "paid for" different things? One person paid for TTON because he likes Monte Cook's politics; another because he wants PS:T's real-time combat; another because he liked the half-naked townsfolk in PS:T; another because he really likes the cypher system; etc. etc. Sometimes those things will not just be different, but actually conflicting. Like, some people may have paid for TTON precisely because they thought it wouldn't have combat (misremembering PS:T), while others may have paid for it precisely because they enjoy RPG combat. Whose desires win?

Oh for FFS don't use that sophism on me. I have no criteria therefore it's immeasurable. By customer feedback. Other industries kinda have nailed it to perfection and do what customers want. No, not this industry. We get showered with developer cats and childhood stories.

Another strange statement (that AOD and Grimoire should change because of stupid reviews.). If the majority of customers who paid for the product are unsatisfied, then its not subjective? Especially if majority agrees. The codexers don't want developers including stuff that panders to the masses like romances for example. They are perfectly fine with tactical combat or higher difficulties. It's what the core audience wants and not what bystanders want. And codexers had higher opinions about devs than they deserve. They decided that they want their games dumbed down, catering to their ego, pushing agendas etc.

Yeah that's what I am talking about. NOBODY plays old school isometric game for fucking politics, especially SJW politics. So those who paid for combat and half naked townsfolk got shafted IIR. That's the thing I have not heard majority or even significant minority praise the cypher system, that nobody asked for. You say the reason is the lack of time, but I believe otherwise you had too much time on your hands as a company and decided to create a lot of stuff nobody asked for and forgot/didn't care about what people paid for.

I do understand that creative people have desire to impress and create new stuff or innovate. But hard core crowd does not want innovashun, it wants what worked well previously. That's why Bio and Beth get bashed a lot here.

 

[MRY]

Other industries kinda have nailed it to perfection and do what customers want.

Which industries are you thinking about? Are you talking about the awesome movies we get today, the awesome genre novels, the awesome studio music, or the awesome car design? "Give them what they want" doesn't necessarily yield improvements. Bioware made more money with games the Codex didn't like than with games the Codex did like.

 

[l3loodAngel]

Other industries kinda have nailed it to perfection and do what customers want.

Which industries are you thinking about? Are you talking about the awesome movies we get today, the awesome genre novels, the awesome studio music, or the awesome car design? "Give them what they want" doesn't necessarily yield improvements. Bioware made more money with games the Codex didn't like than with games the Codex did like.

FMCG and even car industry. Every one segment has it's own car with it's design etc. To be honest I am perfectly happy about car industry. Everyone from race drivers to suburban soccer moms get what they want. We? (hard core, old school players) Not so much.

I am not saying that catering to my niche is more profitable. It is not, but it is niche that is willing to pay for products. So either you cater to us or you don't. I do not believe myself and this niche to be extremely valuable, but you came to us, not us to you. If you people didn't care about us in the first place why did you come to us? To scam us out of money?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Of course you had to find someone to give you money when you don't have the possibility of competing with AAA devs (which you secretly want to be) so scamming a niche seems like a good way to go about it.
I wouldn't say inXile are as much scammers, at least not as much as Obsidian and their "i hate the games we're supposed to make a spiritual successor for" lead designer.
inXile seem more clueless than anything else, like they never understood what was good about the games they tried to copy or like they completely misunderstood what the people who gave them money wanted... maybe as a result of just listening to the retarded cocksuckers on their official forums.

 

[Iznaliu]

FMCG and even car industry. Every one segment has it's own car with it's design etc. To be honest I am perfectly happy about car industry. Everyone from race drivers to suburban soccer moms get what they want. We? (hard core, old school players) Not so much.

I'm sure there are some segments that aren't catered to; you just don't know enough to know about them. The issue many on the Codex have is not so much that the market doesn't cater to them, but that it used to (or was perceived to have used to) and now doesn't. Loss is a powerful driver of resentment.

 

[l3loodAngel]

FMCG and even car industry. Every one segment has it's own car with it's design etc. To be honest I am perfectly happy about car industry. Everyone from race drivers to suburban soccer moms get what they want. We? (hard core, old school players) Not so much.

I'm sure there are some segments that aren't catered to; you just don't know enough to know about them. The issue many on the Codex have is not so much that the market doesn't cater to them, but that it used to (or was perceived to have used to) and now doesn't. Loss is a powerful driver of resentment.

Yeah I don't know about them. From Taliban's Toyota hilux (with optional equipment sub-machine-gun mount), Arnold's Hummers, Kale eaters Teslas and to old school modernized or restored cars like Count's customs. If they do exist I surely don't know about them.

I for one don't care about any loss as long as I get the product. I don't want to be the centre of earth. I just wanted games that I like to play.

 

[Iznaliu]

I for one don't care about any loss as long as I get the product. I don't want to be the centre of earth. I just wanted games that I like to play.

There's a lot of indies out there, so that isn't sufficient explanation.