[Event] Johannesburg Community Evening - 10th February 2015
This event happens monthly, is free to attend and anyone may speak at the meetup - just comment in the thread below to let us know!
Test games! Talk games! Make games!
When: 18:30 until around 21:30, Tuesday 10th February
Where: Microsoft Campus Bryanston, 3012 William Nicol Drive, Bryanston, Johannesburg. In Auditorium 2
Content
Community News (5 min)
"What did you learn from the GGJ?" - 5-10 mins
"Depth is Great, but Granularity is better" ~ 20 mins
5 minute break.
Focused Feeback
Boxer - @SUGBOERIE
Slingers - @Asbestos
SAM - @DavidKuun
Raptor Polo - @Bensonance
Open Demo Floor (Show your games in an informal manner with set up PC's/laptops).
Bring your games and set them up inside the auditorium before and after the meetup!
Beers/Drinks/Pizza afterwards at Col'Cacchio's down the road! Other nearby suggestions are welcome!
If you intend to attend, please indicate so on the FB event!
Board game prototypes can, will, and have been tested at the post-meetup beers and pizza, so bring along your prototypes!
Test games! Talk games! Make games!
When: 18:30 until around 21:30, Tuesday 10th February
Where: Microsoft Campus Bryanston, 3012 William Nicol Drive, Bryanston, Johannesburg. In Auditorium 2
Content
Community News (5 min)
"What did you learn from the GGJ?" - 5-10 mins
"Depth is Great, but Granularity is better" ~ 20 mins
5 minute break.
Focused Feeback
Boxer - @SUGBOERIE
Slingers - @Asbestos
SAM - @DavidKuun
Raptor Polo - @Bensonance
Open Demo Floor (Show your games in an informal manner with set up PC's/laptops).
Bring your games and set them up inside the auditorium before and after the meetup!
Beers/Drinks/Pizza afterwards at Col'Cacchio's down the road! Other nearby suggestions are welcome!
If you intend to attend, please indicate so on the FB event!
Board game prototypes can, will, and have been tested at the post-meetup beers and pizza, so bring along your prototypes!
Comments
The games can be shown after, or request a focused feedback slot and we can just have the Jam feedback?
Thoughts, everybody?
Also, I'd like to do a game design orientated talk on how "Depth is great, but Granularity is better". Anyone keen on that mysteriously titled talk?
Would be nice to have one or two more games getting focused feedback slots, anyone have anything they want feedback on?
The whole FB thing isn't mandatory, it's just to get some eyeballs on MGSA :)
Dammit. If you post some slides I'd be interested in looking through them.
Do we need to bring our own hardware to demonstrate ie: PC, controller etc or just the game?
@DavidKuun Cool! We'd love to have the game! As @Elyaradine said, ideally you should bring your own laptop, as mine is infamously slow.
In addition, are you hoping to show the game on the big screen in front of everyone? We're trying to limit the number of people doing a: "Look, I made something cool" presentation and instead do a "Look here's this thing I made, I want feedback about [x]". If you guys want feedback then, yes, we'll definitely give you a slot. Hell - we'll just give you a Feedback slot anyway just because we're short on content :).
I'll bring a tablet with some prototypes in case anyone wants to have a look
Although, in the event that the talk was insightful and mentally arousing, I'd like everyone to know that he interned here a while back and I spent many a long minute nurturing the bright spark I sensed within him (which has presumably blossomed into the brilliant and charismatic young man you witnessed tonight).
Everyone!
Here are my slides/notes in case you want them.
Here is the Zach Gage article I mentioned in the questions section but didn't have time to reference in the talk itself.
Thanks for listening everyone!
(Now tell @BlackShipsFilltheSky how life changing my talk was, eh? ) :P
@Bensonance's talk raised interesting points, though I didn't entirely agree on everything, but definitions can get tricky. I like the thrust of adding things that are not "needed" to play a game but expand on depth.
However the base game needs to be rock solid first before the "granular depth" has any meaning, I feel. Also complexity doesn't have to be directly proportional to depth for example VVVVVV was incredibly deep for very little complexity. But then we can't all be Terry Cavanagh... Though we should all aspire to be :)
And it even gave me an idea or two for things to add to my Hexen-project.
Thanks man!
I've usually come across the term with regards to the frequency of something occurring, and the size of the occurrences. Like a higher frequency of the narrative progressing in smaller chunks, or a higher frequency of stats improving in smaller increments, or more occurrences of an event with less impact eachh.
So I suppose it can be used to suggest the frequency of skills taught to the player... but a game with high granularity of skill mastering would surely be one where the skill learning has been broken down into smaller and more frequent doses, rather than describing adding additional expert skills as you have described.
I'm agreeing generally that breaking down the skills into smaller lessons, and aiming to have optional skills for experts is a good way to engage players and avoid the depth of your game creating a barrier... and I'd agree that adding a headshot ability should make your mastery graph more granular...
But I wouldn't say granularity is something you "add" to a game. When you're actively improving granularity (in the sense of player mastery) it's usually when you feel players' engagement slip, by spreading learning better over the course of a game, or when players become overwhelmed, by presenting problems in their component parts rather than all at once.
Granularity is also something you get as a by-product of making feedback more nuanced, or adding more interactions to existing systems. In these cases you've added another small skill or two for players to master, and that makes it one step easier to have a game with high granularity in terms of player mastery.
I guess what I'm saying is "when is recommending granularity (in the sense you use it) different from recommending elegance or emergence"?
Still... It's an interesting subject (I'm just going by your slides of course, not sure what your actual words were). I think thinking about complexity and barriers for entry and the frequency at which players' learn skills is very important. I'm more disagreeing with your phrasing than your content.
Hmm, I can empathise with your perspective, but honestly I believe adding granularity to a mechanic can make the game rock solid? So Cannabalt without that pressure sensitive jump wouldn't be nearly as good, I think.
At the same time I do agree that you shouldn't be thinking about adding depth until the core prototype feels very good. As I mentioned, I think that development of a game after the prototype phase is mostly about adding depth/exploring the original idea?
I think depth is innately tied to complexity. It can't not be really? The more choices your player has, the more difficult it can be to process all the information? On the other hand, I haven't yet really thought on how brilliant games can have such depth for so little complexity - although I do think it ties into granularity. I can't comment specifically on VVVVV as I haven't played it.
@CodeCthulhu
Glad you enjoyed it!
@BlackShipsFilltheSky
I looked for any use of granularity in a game design context, and couldn't find much consensus? It seems to be used in a lot of ways. I decided to use it because it fit with the idea of adding depth to a specific, individual mechanic? It certainly not something I've seen before.
I'm definitely not using it the way you've come across it in terms of frequency of something occurring?
I think what you say here is pretty much the manner in which I use granularity. I don't think granularity is separate to either elegance or emergence, when I think about it, actually. I think adding granularity is a good way to reach elegance, if we take the assumption that granularity is adding depth for a cheaper complexity cost?
Regarding emergence, and a short caveat. In theory, designing for emergence (taking the meaning of emergence producing outcomes that aren't expected) is impossible, I suppose? Because you can't construct a system really where you don't expect something to happen, because otherwise how did you construct the system? In practice, if you construct a system with enough nuance and depth, it becomes difficult to understand and forecast all the outcomes of the interacting decisions a player makes, so emergence is more likely to happen?
I suppose then, by adding granularity to a game, you're making both elegance and emergence slightly more likely to occur? Both 'elegance' and 'emergence' are these kind of legendary things that every designer wishes they can achieve, but there is little thinking out there (I haven't look very hard, to be honest) about the process of actually making games that produce these legendary design outcomes. Perhaps then granularity is a tool people can use in working towards such goals.
PS: I think your usage of nuance is delightful, and makes me kick myself for not using it. Another way to phrase my understanding of 'granularity' is: adding/having nuance of control to an existing system/mechanic.
1. Canabalt doesn't have pressure-sensitive jump, that would require physical pressure-sensitive gear, it has height-variable depending on how long you hold the button. Which Mario had.
2. That mechanic isn't really "a mechanic you don't need". Jumps which require you to jump much further than the quick-tap small jumps come up fairly early on. So without it you'd die really really quickly. Guess it depends on your definition what is "needed" to play the game - playing for the first 5-10 seconds is still playing.
Then, about depth vs complexity... Maybe we are thinking of different things. For example, Portal has very little complexity - to me. The core complexity is that there are two portals, and they are joined. That's all the player needs to understand to play the game. The depth comes in how that single mechanic is used - there was a lot of depth before they added to the complexity by adding boxes and guns and whatnot.
VVVVVV has one mechanic - press button, flip gravity. That's it. You should play it :)
I do think of VVVVVV as being "deep" (from the little I've played of it). As a puzzle game, it's not really asking you to make a whole lot of meaningful choices: all you're ever having to choose is whether/when to go left or right, and change gravity. But as the game progresses, because of the level design the choice is often very difficult because the "correct" choice is not at all trivial. Some are super difficult. Having to think longer to make a choice is one of the characteristics I see in a choice having depth. On the other hand, I don't think Super Hexagon is very deep at all, because you don't really have to think very hard: the game actually forces you not to think hard or long at all, because it tries to train you to act on reflex. (It's a little bit deep in that you identify patterns, and that certain patterns are only introduced in certain levels, so I think it's deeper than if there were no patterns and the barriers were completely random, but it's otherwise not very deep.)
I think depth and complexity are related, in that making something more complex usually adds more choices, or more information that needs to be processed. Each choice that is added (provided that the choice is something a player would actually consider doing) makes all of the other existing choices require a little more consideration. And it's generally best to keep your complexity down, both to prevent the player from being overwhelmed, and to prevent the scope of the game from exploding with each additional module, script or asset that would need to be created.
I wasn't really in agreement with the title of talk (that granularity is "better" than depth) in that I felt that depth and complexity were conflated, and that the proposed solution was actually a method for adding depth anyway (so it's not "better") while keeping complexity minimal (which means that depth and complexity are separable, even if they're related). I mean, I agree that it's a smart thing to do. It's more the title of the talk that sort of framed my expectations. :P I think that what I understand is meant by "granularity" is also touched on in the Extra Credits video, where they talk about designs that have irreducible complexity, where there are games where you can't actually play without having learnt all of the rules first; that it's favourable to design mechanics that can be introduced incrementally, and to get as much depth as you can out of a single mechanic before trying to add more stuff.
I think "elegance" in design is when nothing is superfluous. There are mantras in other design industries where they say things like: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." I think we often try to fix a game that isn't fun by adding more mechanics, or more content, or more something. I think an elegant design is very much one that is built on simple rules but allows for almost endless exploration, strategy or re-playability. I think Threes is elegant.
I think emergence is something that you can design, to some extent. It's not nearly as straightforward as designing a linear experience, but I think you still have to make important decisions that affect what can emerge, or to try and weight the emergent experience toward one that is more favourable or interesting. I imagine having the foresight to design the parameters that result in favourable emergent gameplay is extremely difficult (and probably not all that worth the effort anyway, given how much can be gained from prototyping and iterating).
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@Bensonance: On a somewhat unrelated note (but more relevant to a conversation I saw take place on Twitter that I only saw because I was tagged in it), I enjoyed the talk, but I would have loved to see something that you worked on yourself, applying the principles you talk about, and where we can experience what the game is like before and after the improvements. My favourite talks by far have been ones that are functionally similar to post-mortems, but which are hopefully general enough that attendees of various experience levels can apply them. Even when it comes to the prototypes, I'm always very interested in seeing the thought process. What sort of prototypes came before this one? Why did you make the changes that resulted in the prototype/product that we now see? That kind of stuff is the The Best (whenever we can make it happen)!
Granularity in the player's mastery of the game system therefore refers to how the problems posed by the game are subdivided. How much do the players have to master at once, is it a shit ton, like in Dwarf Fortress, or are the problems to be masters broken up very finely, like in Plants VS Zombies.
@Bensonance Again... I'm not saying I disagree with you points or your values. I think you're coming to the right conclusions but just using the vocabulary in a weird way.
There is a fair amount of design advice on designing for emergence or elegance out there. I guess what's frustrating me about your usage of "granularity" is you appear (to me) to be substituting "granularity" for "elegance" or "emergence".
e.g. (I would conceded that those sentences don't make perfect sense, I was more trying to illustrate a point).
Regarding the legendary attributes of "elegance" and "emergence": I'm quite partial to the talks Randy Smith (designer of the original Thief) has given on emergence. I liked his advice because it's very practical in nature, it's stuff you can actually do, and you can see him employing it in his work. I think that's a good place to start for "emergence", though "elegance" is harder to pin down perhaps, I think this is mostly because designing for elegance is more a matter of what you don't add, or what you cut away, or what you repurpose, rather than what you add.
I do have the feeling that my posts here are verging on semiotic fascism.
I'd still say that VVVVVV isn't very deep. It IS very deep for the number of mechanics it has (go left and right and flip gravity, don't touch spikes, save points, walls). But that doesn't make it deep, that makes it very deep for something so simple (which is pretty much how most game designers define elegance). However the depth in VVVVVV doesn't even begin to touch something like Civilization, FTL or XCom, or even something like Spelunky. Yet VVVVVV manages to wring more depth per mechanic out of its mechanics than most games, which is a remarkable achievement.
First off, thanks to you three for taking the time to write out your thoughts and give feedback :).
@Tuism
1. *Shrugs* honestly this is semantics. Pressing a button is a function of pressure - that's why you call it "pressing". But I can see your point - oh and yes Mario had it, many games have had it before, Cannabalt is just the game I like to reference. :)
2. Firstly, I didn't ever say you don't need jumping in Cannabalt. If you look at my slides, I was talking about some granularity in Samurai Gunn and saying you didn't need it to play the game.
Admittedly, this is where my thinking on granularity is still a little blurry. However, I'd say at this point that you don't need is the nuance of a granular mechanic to play the game. You can get quite far with a small jump in Canabalt. But as you said you will die quickly, but I think this comes down to teaching players model first rather than problem first, as Zach Gage talks about in that above linked article. :)
Your Portal example is really good. I think it makes the point that there are quite a few games that you really do need to understand a granular mechanic in order to play the game. Perhaps then, the hidden depth of granular mechanics is less an innate feature, but is rather more a suggestion on how to use granularity. There certainly are games that force you to learn mechanics in order to progress, and Portal is on of them (it does it really well). However, I'd point out that Portal is complex to someone who has never played games (jumping/spacial reasoning/controls etc.) the beauty of Portal's high depth to complexity ratio is that is utilizes/leverages complexity that already has been mastered from many previous games that most of it's players will have enjoyed :). . I dunno, but this really sounds like granularity to me. Adding depth to a single mechanic. In fact, I'd argue that Portal's brilliance is that it adds granularity to how players react to space. It's portals allow players a nuance of how to move across space, and it's so cheap for players to understand because they already have this cultural currency of how to move around FPS games. :)
Yeah I'm familiar with how VVVVV works, just haven't played it :). From gameplay videos it looks like the depth comes from excellent level design rather than a deep mechanic?
@Elyaradine That's seriously a beautiful set of words you put together there, agree with almost everything <3.
RE: the title of the talk, I wasn't too happy with the title either, but I couldn't think of a better one :). Sorry it framed things poorly :P. Granularity is essentially a tool for adding depth (so it's not different), and I'd argue it's the best tool rather than better than depth itself :). So yeah, bad title :)
Totally agree with you about the demonstrated design talk format! I wanted to do something like that (because I love those kind of talks too), but I wasn't sure how to structure it. Also, I have yet to breach the impostor syndrome barrier that is me showing a game I've made and telling you why what I did was a good design decision :P.
@BlackShipsFilltheSky woah! Your usage of 'granularity' makes much more sense in the contexts you gave in those first two paragraphs :). Do you have any material talking about the usage of granularity in those contexts?
Ah alright! I suppose I was using the terms interchangeable, just because I think 'granularity' (or whatever I end up renaming/finding a term for it) is a good tool for reaching both elegance/emergence. Granularity isn't really a term I throw around a lot usually, I usually do just say elegance/emergence :).
Thanks for the Randy Smith recommendation, I'll look up his talks :).
Learnt so much just reading them/ thinking about them <3.