Humble Indie Bundle

Just wanted to announce that Penumbra: Overture is now available in the Humble Indie Bundle together with the games World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish and Lugaru HD. The price for the bundle is what ever you feel like and part of it will also go to charity! This video should explain things nicely:

Go here to get it: www.Wolfire.com/Humble

Also, everybody who buys the bundle will be able to buy the rest of the Penumbra series at a 75% discount ($5 that is)!

I think this is a pretty good offer and also an opportunity to do some good :) If you think likewise please spread the word! Remember, it will only last for 7 days!

Please Note: The 75% discount ends the same day that the Bundle ends!

Horror Tip: Paranormal Activity

Name: Paranormal Activity
Type: Film
Link: Imdb Page
Paranormal Activity (PA) is like a mix of Blair Witch Project, The Haunting and The Exorcist. It follows a recent trend of first-person/documentary movies like Rec and Cloverfield that I really enjoy and which works great for horror flicks.

The entire movie takes place in a house where young couple, Micha and Katie, lives. After Micah finds out that is fiancée has some kind of poltergeist haunting her, he decides to put up a camera and get to the bottom of what is happen. The movie then slowly builds up tension, by showing of more and more evidence for the "poltergeist" and creating an increasingly threatening situation. This is classic ghost story telling and it works very well. I had some issues with annoying characters and such, but nothing I couldn't really put a side (after all, if I can suspend disbelief for ghost, etc I can handle some stupid characterizations). On a whole it is a solid and quite scary movie!

The most interesting thing about the movie, and the reason to bring it up, is because it features so familiar environments and situations. The house they live in is by no means a classic haunted house and most of the paranormal events are quite toned down. Yet, the filmmakers have managed to slowly and carefully build up dread to the situations and because of the familiarness of the events and locations, it really manages to get under your skin. My favorite part are the night scenes in which one just views the couple sleeping in a very ordinary looking bedroom. A low frequency sound is slowly built up and finally some strange event(s) occur. The simplicity in this setup is what really drives the movie home and makes it very easy to relate the events.

I wonder if this sense of the familiar and everyday life could be used in a videogame? Games like Silent Hill use familiar environments but there is always a layer of filth, and creepiness added so that, while making you feel frightened, also makes you more distant. When it comes to events happening in most horror videos games, it is even worse. Here there is very little (if anything at all!) that can be related to everyday life.

The reason is mostly that normal life has not so much fun gameplay in it, but I think this really bad when wanting players to connect the events experienced to things in their own life. I think this is something that needs to be more explored in videogame and while Amnesia (taking place in a spooky castle in the 18th century) does not do much in this regard, I hope to explore it more later on. Cause while I do not feel the fear, watching PA, like I have done playing horror games (like Silent Hill, etc), it sticks to me in a way no other game has. When I turn off a videogame, there is no uneasiness left in me, but after watching certain movies late at night, like Ringu and now PA, I feel that some of the fear, totally irrationally, still lingers inside me and makes me dread common place objects and surroundings.

I see no reason for movies (and books) to be alone with causing these feelings and think that if properly executed, games can do it too. Given that games are so good at evoking in-game fear, if this could be combined with a connection to real-life as well, then fictional horror could really be taken to the next level!

Why Trial and Error will Doom Games

Introduction
A sort unspoken rule in game design is that players should be able to lose. Just about every game has some kind of fundamental mechanic that is possible to fail. Whenever this happens, the player needs to try again and repeat the process until successful. This is thought to add drama, tension and also make the player's actions count. It seems to be believed that without it games would not be games and instead some kind of boring linear entertainment. I think this position is wrong, extremely hurtful and if not fixed, will become the downfall of the medium. In this post I will explain why.


The Problem
In a book or movie it is common that the reader/viewer need to experience very upsetting events, that can be very hard to read about/watch. This is especially true to horror, where the goal is often to upset the reader/viewer and to evoke emotions such as anxiety, fear and disgust. It is also common to have more boring and slow sequences in order to build mood, explain character motivations, etc. These are not necessarily very fun/easy to experience but will make up for it later on and acts as an important ground to build the story from. Note that these "hard to repeat" moments are not merely handy plot devices or similar. They are fundamentally crucial for creating meaningful experiences and many (if not all!) of the great works among books and movies would not be possible without them. Yet, at many times the only reason one can put up with these kinds of sequences is because one know there is an end to it. Just keep on reading/watching and it will eventually be over and hopefully an important payoff will be given.

This is not true for games. Whenever in a situation where loss is possible, the player is forced to meet certain criteria or she will not be able to progress. It is not possible to just "stick with it" to complete these kinds of sequences. The player needs to keep playing the same passage over and over again until proper actions have be performed. Not until this is accomplished is the player allowed to continue. This either comes in the form of skill based actions (e.g. platform jumping), navigational problems (e.g. find the way out) or some sort of puzzle that needs to be solved.

For sequences that are meant to be emotional this can be devastating. Often the player is not compelled to relive the experience and/or any impact the sequence was meant to have is lost. Also, it sets up a barrier and effectively blocks certain players from continuing. How can games possibly hope to match the impact of books and movies, when the ability to have critical "hard-to-repeat" moments are nearly impossible because trial-and-error?


Case Study: Korsakovia
This problem is very evident in the game Korsakovia. The game puts you in the role a man with Korsakoff's syndrome and is played out in a sort of dream world, interwoven with dialogs between you and your doctor. It is a very interesting experience, but also a very disturbing one and the game is extremely brutal on the senses. Even so, I felt compelled to continue and it felt like worthwhile experience. This was until I the gameplay started. Korsakovia has all problems associated with trial-and-error (skill, navigation and puzzles) and this combined with the exhausting atmosphere made it impossible to for me to complete it. It was simply not possible for me to replay certain segments of the game and what was the first time around immersive turned into an annoyance and a (literal) headache. I am convinced that the game would have been a lot better, and possibly a truly great experience, if the trial and error mechanics where removed.

I do not mean to trash Korsakovia and I think it is a really interesting experiment. However, it is such a fine example of how trial-and-error can go wrong and I urge you all to try it out. Considering that it is a research project, I think that is mission accomplished for the creator!


Allowing The Player to Play
The problem with players not finishing games is something that recently have gotten more and more attention in the games industry. After analyzing stats collected, it has become quite evident that something needs to be done. For example, less than 50% of players ever completed Half-Life 2-Episode 1 which, considering the game's length, polish and difficulty, I am sure that is a very high figure compared to other games. This means that more games have started to try out methods at solving the problem. Some examples are:

• In Secret Files: Tunguska one can choose to show all of the interactable areas in a scene (reducing pixel hunting).
• Alone In The Dark allows the player to skip chapters in order to force progress in a game.
• New Super Mario Brothers Wii has a mode where the game takes over control and completes sections for the player.
• BioShock never really kills the player but instead just teleports them to a different part of the map and leaves the enemies and environment in the same states as when the player "died".

While this might sound like steps in the right direction all of these solution suffer from the same problem. They are all ad-hoc and breaks the immersion. The solutions are after thoughts, do not really belong in the game world and feels more like cheats than a part of the experience (BioShock possible excluded as it actually works it into the story). When the player chooses to display items and other interaction points in the game, it turns the game from a living world into an abstract interface. By skipping chapters in Alone in the Dark the player effectively skips part of the narrative and misses out on parts of the experience. The trick used in Super Mario removes any interaction from the game, which is definitively not good for immersion.

Finally, although BioShock is by far closest to having a working solution it still feels tacked on and can easily lessen immersion (for example when forced into respawn, charge with wrench, repeat situation). The player still also needs to overcome certain challenges and are forced to repeat sections over and over. However, there is never a moment where the player is unable to progress, given that they are willing to stay at it, no matter their skill level. It is far from an ideal solution, but a lot better than blocking players from progressing.

I think that the proper way to solve this is to incorporate it as a feature in the game from day one. Making sure that players are not unnecessarily blocked from continuing, is not something that should be slapped on as a side thing. It is also very important that players do not feel that the game is holding their hand every step of the way, something that can be very hard unless planned from the start. It is crucial that players feel that the performed actions and choices are their own and that they are not just following commands like a mindless drone.

Fixing this issue is really important. Games can not continue to deny content to players and demand that they meet certain criteria in order get the full experience. Not only does it discourage people from playing games, it also make it impossible to create more "holistic" experiences. By this I mean games that require the entirety of the work for the player to truly appreciate it (something I aim to talk about an upcoming post). It will be very hard indeed to insert deeper meanings into games unless this problem is dealt with.


Less Challenge, More Immersion
Allowing the player to get the full experience and not having win-to-progress situations is a good start, but just the first step in the right direction. As with Bioshock, the game can still have trial-and-error like moments, where the player is forced to play section over and over in order to continue. This brings us back the problem that I mentioned in the beginning: that repeating a certain experiences will either lessen their impact and/or discouraging the player from progressing. As these "hard to repeat" sequences are crucial in order to expand the horizon of the medium, it is essential that we find ways of adding them. And in order to do so, trial and error must go.

I think that first step towards this is to throw away the idea that a videogames needs to be a challenge. Instead of thinking of a game as a something to be beaten, it should be thought of as an experience. Something that the player "lives" through rather than "plays" through. Why designers are unable to do this probably because they are afraid that it will lessen the sense of accomplishment and tension of a game. Many seem to think that trial-and-error based obstacles are the only way of creating these emotions. I think this untrue.

Let's first consider accomplishment. While this is normally evoked by completing a devious puzzle or defeating an enemy, there are other ways to feel accomplishment. Simply performing a simple act that changes the game world somehow can give this feeling. For instance planting a tree or helping out an NPC. There is no need for these to be obstacles in order for one to feel accomplishment either and thus any sort of trial-and-error is removed. It can also come in other forms such as just reaching a destination. Also, if designed correctly one can trick the player into thinking they accomplished something, for example escaping a monster even though there was no never a way to fail.

Creating tension is not only possible without using trial-and-error; skipping it may even lead to increased tension! When the player fails and is forced to repeat, there is no element of surprise left and it often also leads to immersion being broken. For example when playing horror games like Fatal Frame and Silent Hill I can be play for quite some time without dying, feeling highly immersed. However, once death (which is part of the trial-and-error mechanic) occurs I am pulled out of the atmosphere and suddenly realize that I am playing a game. This means death lessens the immersion and breaks the flow of the game. But will it not make the game more scary?

Regarding death and fear-factor, consider the following:

1) If the player fears death because of a trial and error system, she fears an abstract mechanic and not something of the game world. By worrying about a game mechanics, the player is pulled out of the experience.

2) Once death has occurred, the player will know what to expect. If killed by a creature that jumped out from behind a corner, the next time the encounter will have far from the same effect.

Instead of punishing the player, I think it is better to add consequences. Even just making the player believe that there are consequences (which Heavy Rain successfully does) can be enough. Also, if one keeps the player immersed then it is also easier for the players to roleplay and convince themselves that they are truly in great danger even though they are not. In our game Amnesia, we are doing our best to reduce the amount of trial-and-error and still retain a really terrifying atmosphere. So far it is looking very good for this approach and we have only seen good things come out of it (I guess time will tell if we pull it of or not). If horror games, that are notorious for using trial-and-error mechanics to enhance their mood, can do fine without trial-and-error, I see no reason why other genres shouldn't.

To sum things up: When one relies on abstract game mechanics for creating emotions, one does so at the cost of immersion and the players ability to become part of the game world.


End Notes
Of course trial-and-error should not be banned from game design. Many games like VVVVVV and Super Mario thrive on the trial-and-error and has it as an integral part of the design. Likewise, many adventure games are supposed to have tricky puzzles, and could not do without them. Some games are meant to be "just games" and to be a challenge to the player. I am not in any way opposed to this kind of design.

However, in other games trial-and-error is just bad and really drag down the experience. In its worst form trial-and-error:

• Discourages players by setting a standard of what sort of players are allowed to continue.
• Greatly lessens the emotional impact of events by requiring repetition.
• Breaks immersion and makes the player focus on abstract game mechanics.
• Forces games to focus on moment-to-moment fun and discourages a holistic payoff.

It is extremely important to be aware of this and to ask oneself if a trial-and-error mechanics really serves the game right. It is only by breaking free of conventions like this that it will be possible to take games into new and existing directions!

I would like to end with some wise words from funny man Dara Ó Briain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdQK4Wp10qo (Check at around 3:18!)
(From a British program called Gameswipe, which is well worth watching in its entirty)

The judgement predicament of audio and graphics.

The answer to this blog is probably going to be that the game industry dug this hole all by themselves and that we now have to live with it.

Since we released the first teaser of Penumbra: Overture in 2006 we have always received the expected comments "the graphics suck", "looks dated", "hmm, is this running on the Wii?" and so on and on. This has also echoed back in reviews, only with a bit more elegant phrasing.

Now four years later, the same pattern (slightly less to be fair) repeats for the teasers that we have released of our upcoming game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. We have upped our graphics game, not only in technical fidelity, but also tremendous efforts has been made with the design and creation of the graphics, far above any of the Penumbra games. Sure, the game industry has taken the graphical technology and fidelity even further during this period, so our efforts are minimized by this. But even so, we have at least tried.

During the same period we have also enjoyed comments such as "the voices are great", "best music evah!", "the ambient noises scared me shi*beep*less"... again, repeated in reviews only with more elegance. For the Amnesia teasers so far this continues, with an almost 100% successful comment ratio for the audio. This is great! But it also puts a core problem out in the bright light, how different the audio is judged compared to the graphics.

I am not going to try and come up with any ideas as to why. That would be going beyond the introduction I make in this blog post. However, as the person in charge of the audio for our games, I feel compelled to give some details about the creation and technology behind it all. How the audio is made, who makes it, what resources we have to spend and what sort of technology that is used. As an independent developer, the resources are very limited, for graphics and even more so for audio.

For Amnesia I do most of the sounds, Mikko Tarmia creates the music and a new friend of ours, Tapio Liukkonen, makes the sounds that requires more time and skill. We also work with AudioGodz to get the voice acting done for the game. The money that we spend on audio is the bare minimum that we can afford to hire these people for as a short timespan as possible.

During a whole project I spend less than 20% of my time creating sounds, this is very little when thinking about the importance of the sounds in our games. I have to cut down on how carefully I create these sounds, I have a library of sound effects that I use to mix and I also record my own raw sounds. If any professional sound engineers were to see how I worked, they would laugh and take pity on me. At times I record things in the room where I have my computer, sometimes directly in front of it, from a noise ratio perspective this is a big NO. But with little time at my disposal, that is what I do.

With this in mind, I would say that the creation of the sounds can be quite sloppy, but in my own defense, having done sounds for games since my first attempt (menu music) in 1997, I think I have some experience and tricks in my pocket to rely on for an improved result.

The main computer that I use when I work with creating levels for Amnesia, including implementing the sounds into the game, is quite old. The sound card is a Soundblaster Live! from 1998, making it similar to what a Geforce 1 is for graphics cards. It has some capabilities that could be comparable to those of graphics cards, such as hardware support for effects like EAX (echo for example) and it can do 5.1 Surround sound. Other than that it is well, pretty old.

The sound technology is rudimentary in our games - play, stop, fade, pan, output 32 or so channels and apply some basic effects (the echo, all tough this is not implemented in Amnesia yet). That is basically it. Try to sum up the graphical features of a game engine this swiftly if you can!*

I could probably go on, but I think that the picture is getting quite clear, that from a resource, effort and technology perspective we are really limited in the audio department. But despite this, the ideas, design and how we implement the audio in the game has so far been very well received. I would argue that we are doing the exact same thing (ideas, design and implementation as key) for the graphics, only with more care and resources, but to an extent in vain.

For a first person type of game it seems that the audio is judged almost purely by the effect, mood and purpose, while the graphics are as far as I can tell, almost solely judged on a basis of technology and production value. There is also a side of it where the audio in comparison to other games does not matter as much for the overall "judgement". While for graphics, the key comparison is how it compares to other games, regardless of development budget.

Why is this? Is it like this? Does it matter? Any comments except good job on slamming the audio of your own game?

*In all ego-fairness we DO have a lot of sound effects in our engine, for example a pretty advanced system for physics sounds. But these features do nothing special to the sounds other than changing volume and pitch. It is pretty much like having cool water effects in 2D pixel graphics. Yet, since it does the job, nobody seems to bother.

Storytelling through fragments and situations

Introduction
Stories are something that is very important to us humans and also a crucial part of many video games. In some games the player is the author of the story, for example in Civilization where you are given some basic start resources and are then free to decide how your story will play out. In other games the designer has the most control of the story and the game mechanics do their best to guide the payer through the narrative (which may dynamic or linear).
While the player-as-author stories are interesting, what I will discuss here is the type of stories that have been designed. Some people have argued that games are inferior at telling these kind of stories, something I do not agree with. While the games out today certainly do not compete with stories found in books and movies, I believe that the problem is that the medium is simply not been used correctly.


Plot-based Stories
Most games that are story heavy tells a narrative using a linear plot; in other words a string of events tied together by sections of gameplay. Most games that have been celebrated for their story such as Half-life 2 and God of War use this design. The concept is basically to force the player into doing certain actions by limiting the amount of interactivity.

Because this type of storytelling is based around forcing the player, it often comes with a very high amount of cut-scenes. Whenever a plot event requires an environment or situation where the player has too many choices, it is no longer possible to keep it within gameplay; all (or most) player control is taken away and a cut-scene is used. Some games (like Resident Evil 4) try and keep interactivity by using quick time events, but this has always felt like a cop-out and unneeded trial-and-error to me . In other games, like Half-life, these moments are handled by blocking the player in some way until the scene is over. In all cases, the normal gameplay is restricted and players cannot progress until the game lets them.

I believe that plot-based story telling has reached its limit*. A fusion of gameplay and story-telling the story can never occur unless it is some type of action scene or in other ways tightly connected to the gameplay. Whenever some emotional and story intense scenario is needed it is showed as a cut-scene. Interactive scenes only consists of very strict and standardized gameplay.

Plot-based story telling is not without its merits though. It fits very well with how it is done in movies and books and one can very easily use practices from these. This makes it possible to plot the different parts of the story early on and have things like characters arcs and tempo quite easily. It is probably because of this that plot-based storytelling is so widely used.

However, I personally find this way of doing it very problematic as it clashes directly with the unpredictability of games. For example, when we did the "meeting of Dr Swanson" event in Penumbra Black Plague, it was very hard to make it all playable and had to have doors mysteriously closing and the like (click here to see, spoilers ahead!!). When making Penumbra we had several other similar problems all due to events that had to happen at specific occasions in a very specific way. Every time we had to sacrifice some part of the gameplay in order to solve it story-wise.

This is troubling! When the most emotional and story-wise important scenes need to rely on taking away interactivity something is very wrong. I think the problem is simply that this type of storytelling is not the best way of doing story in games.


Fragmented Stories
This type of storytelling is evident in games like Bioshock, System Shock and to some extent in many RPGs and normal adventure games. It is about having a certain background story (or similar) spread out over the world. The player must then find these fragments and piece them together. These fragments usually come as notes or character dialogs, each giving a piece of the "puzzle". It is this kind of storytelling that we have mostly used for Penumbra and are using for our upcoming game Amnesia. It is also where I think the future of interactive story telling lie.

Fragmented storytelling allows for much more freedom as it is possible for the player to pick up fragments in different order and even to miss certain fragments without ruining the story. Some kind of order is usually wanted to though, and normally it is solved by not having all fragments available from starts, each level/section of the game containing certain fragments. It is also possible to solve by procedural generation of fragments. This can simply mean that the order of the fragments are independent of the actual interactions (e.g. first note picked is always a specific fragment), something we are using in Amnesia. It can also mean more advanced ways such as generating documents to fit the player, for example censuring certain information in case the player has not found out about other things first. This kind of procedural generation seem very exciting to me, yet it is very unusual in games and I know of no other games that are using it

Fragments does not only need to be text-heavy information such as dialog or notes. It can be graphics in the environment, sounds, character banter, interactions, etc. In Amnesia we try to use as many different types as possible and do our best to create a game where playing and exploring brings forward the story without ever removing control. The great thing about the fragmented design is that it is never in the way of the game and helps the player immerse, instead of the opposite (which cut-scenes might do). When designing Amnesia we have also made sure that pretty much everything is optional and instead of forcing the player to take part of certain story elements (fragments) we have made sure to make the most important things are really obvious (and hard to miss) and the less important more hidden.

While the fragmented story design is used quite a bit (especially as notes and dialog), I think that its potential is severely underused. There is a lot more stuff that can be done in this way. For instance, by interacting with the world the player can find out things, not just about the environment, but about the character too. How will the protagonist react when you try to eat meat (vegetarian?), why does she gets scared when in confined spaces, etc. It can also be about the environment itself, for example how different things work (machines in a sci-fi story) or how the ecology behave. It does not need to be related directly to the background story either, but can be a way of showing character motivations, increase understanding of the game world or just simply to set a certain mood or convey a theme. In books and movies this usually take up large part, almost always using plot-based story telling, and I think that a large problem lies in designer trying to copy this design (something I have discussed before) instead of using techniques more suitable for games.

Plot-based story telling does not need to be thrown out though and can still be used effectivly. The problem with fragmented story telling is that it only is only about the past and never about the present. Here plot-based design can help to spice up the story telling. For example, Bioshock, an otherwise pretty free-roaming game using fragmented story-telling, has an important cut scene (check here, spoilers of course) that even use the lack of interactivity as part of the story. The same is true in Penumbra where the infection-with-voice, Clarence, sometimes take control over the protagonist in cut-scene-like sequences.


Situations instead of events
As stated above, the problem with fragmented storytelling is that it is just covers things that HAVE happening and not what IS happening. This does not mean that one has to resort to the plot-based design though and instead of forcing on certain events, one can create situations instead. Creating a situations is large part of our story telling design since Penumbra and way of thinking we have found very effective. It might seem a really fine line between an event and a situation, but I think it is a really important one and will explain why.

In an event (as in a plot-event) one wants something very specific to happen, often including a protagonist action. For example, if a monster enters a room the protagonist hides in a closet. In a situation, one creates a some sort of outside pressure and then it is up to the player on how the protagonist should act, never stopping the normal mode of gameplay. The line between the two can get pretty vague, since a situation can be about getting the player to hide in a closet when monster enters a room, although in a situation this is never forced. A situation is not just a cut-scene + the interaction though and it is more about exposing the player to something and letting them deal with it. Also, situations are more complex to setup as one does not want to lock down the player and let the normal gameplay remain intact.

If there is a certain section of the game where the player should be exposed to a new enemy, but never come too close, this will be done differently using events or situations. In an event, it can be that the player notices something in the shadows and then a cut-scene shows how the player hides. Using situation design, this creature can be roaming certain parts of the map, making sounds and always staying a certain distance. This means that the player may sometimes spot the creature but never face it directly, achieving the same goal. The map can also be set up in such a way, that when spotting the creature, there is always a room nearby where the player can hide, trying to indirectly "force" the player into behaving in a certain manner.

By using situations instead of events, control does not need to be taken away and it is possible to add story elements that happen in the present (and not just in the past). When designing Amnesia, adding interesting situation that connect with the story has been a large design goal. Usually entire maps have been used as the place for the situations and designed around it. We have only started scraping the surface of what is possible though. By focusing on situations instead of plot-events we have come up with many things that have a lot more freedom than events we did in Penumbra, but still communicate the same feelings and story content. We will continue to use this kind of design in the future as it has been extremely helpful so far and we feel that there is a lot more to explore.

Using situations is a bit of a gamble though and one can never be sure that all players will get the intended experience. That is just something one has to live with though. When it comes to interactivity, risk are always involved as it is impossible to plan for every possible outcome. One should of course make sure that the player cannot get stuck, but I think it is well worth sacrificing some security for greater interactivity and possibility of a deeper experience.


End Notes
The more game designers start going away from creating stories that emulate books and movies, the more the medium can evolve. It is only by focusing on the strengths of the medium that we can make make stories only games can tell!

What is you thought on stories using the fragments design? And how are your feelings regarding situations vs events?


*It is probably worth mentioning that Heavy Rain is making some kind of progress in the plot-based design. However this is done at the expense of player interactivity.

Horror Tip: The Statement of Randolph Carter

Name: The Statement of Randolph Carter
Type: Short Story
Link: Complete Text
This is one of my favorite stories from HP Lovecraft and it should also serve as an excellent introduction. It is very short and a perfect example of fear of the unknown. This story really got to under my skin and has served as an important influence when coming up with good scares for our horror games.

It is also interesting to note that the story started out as dream that Lovecraft had and the story is extremely close to actual dream*. This makes the story a sort insight into the disturbing mind of the master himself!

Hope you enjoy it and for those of you that have not read anything by Lovecraft, I hope this makes you eager to read more!

*Read it here. Thanks to Sebastian for the tip!