“For example, if the game allowed you to pause it while you placed towers or if there were a few more seconds between wave launches, Star Defense would lose its fast pace. If we altered the strength of the towers or how much it cost to upgrade them, it would influence how you played the game. If we handed out more credits for each enemy unit killed, it would change how you managed tower purchases and upgrades.”

Players underestimate just how difficult it is to design a game with a nice balance between being rewarding to play but challenging enough to want to continue playing.  Even with iCombat, which has a very simple game mechanic, it took several weeks to refine the level design and lay them out in a way that provided a steady progression from level 1 through 60. And this initial design has been refined and tuned throughout every update.

Aside from the level design which is the most visible factor that can affect game play, there are things like enemy AI (firing frequency, movement paths, speed, etc), the scoring mechanism, the frequency of power-ups or bonus items, the number of lives, upgrade prices and so one that are crucial to getting the game right.

An example of just how intentional these design elements are can be seen in iCombat’s score system, where many users wondered why we chose to go with a countdown (Enigmo style) method where each level begins counting back from 10,000.  The decision was focused at creating a scoring mechanic that rewarded speed, thus creating a nice interplay between playing it safe to preserve lives or playing fast to get points.  The result is that no 2 scores are ever alike.  This might seem like a small detail, but for the avid users it creates an entirely different decision tree when facing the harder, more involved levels.  Do you hide to preserve life, let the time expire, and then execute a level safely?  Or do you go guns blazing to finish with as many points as possible?  To extend this decision tree further and equalize players across difficulty level we made the countdown 12,000 for Hard mode, 10,000 for Medium and 8,000 for easy.

Another great example of where we made a decision to point the user behavior a certain direction came from the fact that one shot equals a player kill.  Here the logic was to force users to play more conservatively, pushing creative calculations with ricochet’s and bonus items.  And by limiting the map size, we managed to create a campaign mode that could be done in bite sized chunks, 5 minutes here and there.

So the next time you play a game think about how every single detail in the game was deisgned intentionally that way.  There are no default game layouts or settings so if it is in a game then the developer wanted it there.  Whether it was the right choice or not is a separate issue, but sometimes it helps to remember just how difficult it is to get the balance right.

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In previous posts I have suggested to first time app developers the importance of creating proper specs when planning to create an app.  I think mockup tools like Balsamiq are even more useful than making great specs and writing out usage scenario examples.  Not only does it help you better develop your idea but it also gives you the ability to share your mockups with other people instantly.  For example, if you are thinking about outsourcing development or are talking to other team members, Balsamiq will let you share your mockups and convey clearly what you want to do (for info on how to protect your idea with outsourced developers read this post).  And by visually demonstrating the flow of how you want your app to work developers will have a much better idea of what you are looking for.  This will pay off in terms of the quality of developer you manage to get and it will also improve the accuracy of the time and budget estimates you get from developers.

Even if you plan on developing the app yourself, you can benefit from working through the fuzzy parts of your idea.  A mockup tool will give you the simple tools you need to work through EVERY aspect of your app structure before you begin the development process.  This is important because it can alert you to fundamental flaws in your idea or logic before you put the time and effort into building it.

In addition to the sketches of the iPhone and its main interface tools you also have sketches of dozens of buttons, switches, icons and other items that you can customize.  For example, when you drag an iPhone image to the drawing area, a box pops up where you can select whether to include the status toolbar at the top, change the orientation, the background look, etc.  You can even drag call out boxes into the picture as well to insert commentary about your mockup.  Check out this video for an example of what is possible.

Balsamiq includes a free trial version so you can test it out today…give it 5 minutes and you will see how quickly you get the hang of it.

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Another fascinating post was by Matt Roberts’ titled Usability and Game Design where he does a great job of reminding developers just how important the subtleties of game design and intuitiveness can be for making a game successful.  From determining if your controls are natural to making sure that the user always understands what is happening, these are hugely important albeit basic things.  As I reach the end of my game development process I think my distance from the coding has helped me focus more on these basics (relating more as a constant beta user), but still I can understand the feeling of sometimes losing a grasp on the importance of simplicity and intuitive design.

While the ngmoco gamemakers portion of the blog hasn’t been posting for more than several months and really only has a handfull of posts, everything I have seen is definitely worth reading so if you are in game development you should add it to your list.

Update: The ngmoco blog has been updated with several posts with insights from the GDC this year.  There is a really thought provoking post about the future of the App store and the evolving opportunity with the coming SDK 3.0 update.  Here they talk about how the value proposition will shift from a one time sale to a longer term outlook.  In their words, “with social gaming and microtransactions in the form of level packs and virtual items, games will become more than the first impression and need to upsell their services.  That in itself represents a new market opportunity for content differentiation.”  Exciting indeed to think that we will all have to start thinking about creating long term value as opposed to one time gimmicks or successes; this should benefit the entire App gaming market by refocusing us to the task of creating games with strong foundations upon which to build a following and deeper games.

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Atari Pong Screenshot

I am fairly confident I have limited just how much I can screw this up by keeping the game simple and without too much of a plot as this seems to add another layer of design complexity. This is why I chose to do a game based off of some of the original gaming platforms: these focused on the quality of in game play rather than depth and variety of sound or visual effects (of course there was no choice back then).

After just building what we have, and you guys will get to be the judges of how well we have done soon, I can say I really respect professional game designers.  To have the vision to not only create a fully developed plot but then to fold in the complexity of quality sound and graphics really is a huge effort.  Especially when you are inventing a new theme or world from scratch.  No wonder game budgets are becoming so enormous like Spore’s estimated $35 million and there are tons of Bachelor’s degree programs for game development and design like this one.

What I was wondering today is how much experience do you need other than the intuition behind knowing what you like when you see it?  I am not a gaming fanatic at all, I don’t own a single console or handheld gaming device and haven’t since the Sega Genesis!  I guess maybe the iPhone counts but I definitely didn’t buy it for the App store (purchased it a 4am after a night out in NYC on the day it launched – way before there was any talk at all of the App store).  I have played the Nintendo DS and it only interests me, as with all games at this point, if I can play with someone else.  The reason we are creating a 2 player version in our game is this: I only care about playing / creating a game for 2 players.  While I know that the XBOX live forum has mimicked this social interaction, for me I need to be in the same room with the person.  Trash talking just can’t be as much fun over a headset.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

So what do you think?  Do you think more formal game development training and experience is important for creating iPhone games or can designing a simple iPhone game work the first time by amateurs?  We have seen Trism and iShoot work very well but you could argue that these were copying general proven themes and thus were sticking to relying on what was already proven to work.  One example of a very unique game idea that popped up last year by an independent developer was Petri Purho’s Crayon Physics (just came out on the iPhone).  If you have other good examples of other first time developers with truly original game design I would love to see them.

Update: I found an interesting post here talking about Gogogic’s initial design process for their games where they use flash to run through and explain the most common usage scenarios before coding.  A great approach for any kind of application design.   Also, if you have not seen the Photokast slides on product design they have 15 great tips from their experience here.

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Level mock-ups

Of course you have to consider user habits, the quality of the enemy AI and so on, and even knowing that and expecting future revisions it is still frustrating how much of a shot in the dark it all is

The question I grappled with most was how will the accelerometer steering affect game play…impossible to really know until we start fiddling with different filters to find the right blend of speed and control.  I definitely want to avoid making a Labyrinth style experience, where the low friction coefficient makes steering so difficult.  Another thing I didn’t really appreciate beforehand was how little real estate an iPhone screen actually has -  you do have to be efficient in your design when it comes to games.

So although I have no proof that this first run of layouts will last or even be playable, I am going to briefly go into how I laid them out because I think it was fairly efficient.  First, I traced the iPhone and screen size in 20 boxes to one of those huge Post-it Easel pads (for those of you like me who don’t work in an office with miles of whiteboards this is a great solution).

Then I started laying out sketches in pencil of the game level walls, enemy starting points, bonus items, etc.  Doing them all on 1 page makes it easy to avoid repetition and to get a united visual view of how the player experience progresses.  I didn’t focus too much on having a perfect arc in difficulty level because I figure I can always change that either A) in the PowerPoint mock-up version or B) when it comes to seeing how the levels play out.

Once I was happy with the levels I just used powerpoint and took a screenshot of the iPhone simulator and used that plus some copied building block graphics off of the web to compose my tanks, walls, background, etc.  While none of these graphics will make it in to the game it helps to have a visualized version so that the functionality can be developed in parallel with the graphics.  One thing that became very obvious once the levels were laid out though was that the AI behind the enemy movement is going to need to be good otherwise the game can easily become unplayably hard or easy.  I am trusting Taras and his team to help offer some insight as to how best create a good user experience.

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I decided to develop a basic tanks game that would leverage the 2 player via Wifi as well as accelerometer and tap features of the iPhone, but include little in the way of characters, story line, etc.

This stems from the assumptions that 1) I have no idea how to develop an interesting game narrative and 2) it is the playability and 2 player component that I think will have people signing up.   I decided to use the tank theme of the original Atari Combat game that so many of us know so well as the inspiration behind my game.

Atari Combat - Tank game

For me, this was the first game that captured my imagination and got me obsessed with gaming as a boy.  If you recall, there were several playing modes all of which looked the same but had slightly different strategies but all were 2 player. The game was so addictive primarily because of this social component, so I hope to recreate that effect on players when my game launches on the iPhone app store.

Of course I had to make sure such a game had not been done, and while I found atleast 6 tank related games on the App store, I found none that used similar functionality nor tackled the 2D approach as well as I had wanted to.  Even in the flash games world I had not found a version of this other than an exact replica of Combat, so I knew I had an idea that could be different enough from everything else out there.  Let’s hope it stays that way until well after game launch!!

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