Last month, James Portnow’s Game Design Challenge was about reinvigorating the WWII genre. In a nutshell, it was: make it a WWII shooter, make it exciting and new, and make it cheap. The results are quite good. I’m especially a big fan of the photographer game. I’ve wanted to play more games like that ever since I fell in love with Beyond Good and Evil.

My attempt stuck closer to it being a shooter than a lot of the winning entries. Mechanically, I think that you could run my idea as an expansion pack to just about any of the AAA WWII shooters. But where these other games emphasized the comraderie, glory and heroism of one of history’s greatest tragedies, I wanted to emphasize the absurdity and confusion of being on the ground.

ULTRA

In 1939, with the help of intelligence supplied from Poland, British Intelligence broke the ‘unbreakable’ Enigma code that the Germans used for almost all of their cryptographic communications. This was a goldmine of information, which carried with it one serious problem: it often couldn’t be used! If Allied forces acted on knowledge they could only have gained from the Enigma decrypts, the Germans would conclude that the code had been broken and change their system. If the new system was impossible to break, the Allies would be cut off from a vital source of intelligence. Before the stolen information could be used, cover stories needed to be constructed. A scout plane would be sent on an otherwise unplanned patrol and ‘happen’ to come across a German convoy. Congratulations messages would be sent to (fictional) informants, thanking them for passing information. Most of the time, these cover stories could be arranged remotely, but sometimes, they needed a more personal touch…

In ULTRA, the player takes control of a (probably) fictional squad of soldiers tasked with protecting the secret of Bletchley Park. Sent on extremely dangerous missions characterized by strange constraints and absurd orders, the squad of elite soldiers progresses through an action packed campaign across the secret battles of WWII.

Tone and Setting

The battles of ULTRA are behind the scenes events. Players will be the secret heroes of WWII, asked to take on crazy missions and perform covert operations that allow the newsreel heroes to look good. A kind of stoic British stiff-upper-lip sarcasm will pervade the characters and events. Mission debriefs will be period-piece newsreels of the official story which will be in sharp contrast to the true story that the players live out. ULTRA will be a sly-cynical counterpoint to the starry-eyed jingoism of Medal of Honor.

Sample Missions

The missions of ULTRA will be characterized by restrictions designed to maintain a cover story of one kind or another. Instead of kill-them-all run and gun, missions will be a mixture of combat and a kind of global puzzle-solving. We’re not talking ‘open the lock’ puzzles. We’re talking “how can I ensure the Germans identify me as an Italian informant and yet live to tell the tale”.

Pre-D-Day. Intelligence indicates that the Germans are beginning to suspect that we will be landing in Normandy. Take a team, armed as a scouting party to Pas de Calais and land covertly. Encounter German patrols, engage them, but don’t kill them all – they must live to tell their superiors that we were there.

The Listening Post. An allied commander got cocky and sunk too many convoys near the African coast. We need to make it look like we’ve had a listening post in the area for months. Get your team in to an abandoned church covertly, make it look like you’ve been living there for awhile and then have the Italians “discover” you. Your escape should be as spectacular and noisy as possible, but do try to make it out of there alive…

The Warning. A German speaking special operative will be assigned to you. Attack and secure a German radio post without any messages getting out. Then maintain control of the post while the operative delivers misinformation to the enemy. Be warned, there are regular German supply runs to the post. You’ll need to ambush them before they can discover the truth.

The Prisoner. A group of soldiers including an Allied commander with some knowledge of ULTRA has been captured. Disguised as French freedom fighters, mount a rescue operation, discover who he might have been interrogated by, find and kill them. Bring the commander back if possible, otherwise ensure that he’ll remain silent forever. Remember, the French resistance doesn’t have access to the greatest weapons and they don’t speak English…

The Submarine. A U-boat has shipwrecked off the U.K. coast. This is an opportunity to collect critical code books and other information. Capture and secure the sub from any Germans still on board, collect any information you can and then destroy any evidence that you were there. Before it finishes sinking.

Gameplay Mechanics

In support of the cover story missions of the game, missions will be characterized by critical objectives that constrain the player’s actions. Enemy awareness will be a critical factor in most missions. It’s no good dressing up as resistance fighters if none of your victims live to tell command who (they thought) you were. Players will operate on a constant knife edge, trying to keep their people alive and fight effectively while behaving in an authentic manner for the story they are trying to convey to the enemy.

To this end, mission planning will be a critical part of the game play. Players will be given options of different starting points and will have to balance squad load out and equipment between efficiency for the job and believability. If members of the squad are injured, they’ll need to be rescued or killed to prevent information falling in to enemy hands.

Keeping Costs Down

By combining this new awareness mechanic with scripted mission constraints, we will be able to have a wide variety of scenarios without too many different assets. Combat will be at a smaller more intimate scale than most WWII games, allowing us to have simpler AI and avoiding a lot of the costs of a larger scale game. The nice thing about the approach of using known mechanics with different rules of engagement means that a lot of the core gameplay will be a solved problem, minimizing iteration of fundamental gameplay elements.

Doomed to Failure?

The problem with attempting to make a subversive war game is that the people who showed up to play your game don’t want to be called jerks for wanting some escapist fantasy violence. Arguably, this is part of why Blacksite: Area 51 didn’t really work out. It was a middle of the road modern war shooter which seemed to be upset with you for wanting to pretend to be a heroic soldier. ULTRA might let you be a little more heroic, but in a lot of ways it risks making that same mistake.

First Person Shooter, might not be the right vehicle to get players to think about this particular story.

I first learned about Harvey Smith years ago, when I was fanboying about Deus Ex and reading everything I could about how the game was put together. Smith went on to head the in-some-ways-better in-some-ways-worse sequel, Invisible War and then more recently and famously worked on BlackSite: Area 51, notable more for the “it was so fucked up” mini post mortem than anything else.

Years ago, before they were called blogs, Smith maintained a site at Planet Deus Ex (who remembers the “planet” brand”). It hasn’t been updated since 2004 (and before that, like 1998) but it contains a lot of gems about good design. Witchboy’s Cauldron.

In particular, Distinct Functions in Game Units and Features Without Interface are really worth reading. His Half-Life review is also really good and a blast from the past.

At The Escapist, Wendy Despain looks at game design with new eyes.

Did you know you can win the first level of Star Wars just by standing in one place, turning in constant circles and holding down the “X” button? Aunt Wendy got something right. He was thrilled. And when he heard the cheerful chimes, a signal to those of all ages that you’ve won something, there was jumping around and fists in the air and lots of shouting I didn’t understand.

But then the next level came up, and things started to go downhill. The instant it began he looked confused. It took him a few seconds to put it into words, but then he said it. “I already won this level.”

And suddenly, the decision to make Super Marios Bros. World 1-2 happen in a cave is revealed to be utterly brilliant.

Cracked.com’s story about 7 Real Conspiracy Theories reminded me of a game I’ve wanted to work on for ages. I started thinking about it in college when I was simultaneously obsessed with Robert Anton Wilson and Civ II. In keeping with my philosophy that ideas are cheap and that it’s implementation that matters, here’s the game so far.

The main concept of the game is that there are secret masters of history behind the scenes, controlling and crafting events. The player takes on one of these puppet masters, in conflict with all the others, which are controlled by AI (or other players?). The goal is to (secretly) take over the world.

At first glance, the game appears to be very similar to any game in the Civilization series. However, all nations are entirely AI controlled. The player has no direct ability to manage unit production, send out settlers or any of the other standard Civ activities. Instead, they can direct members of their conspiracy to infiltrate organizations and governments, foment dissent, assassinate or indoctrinate leaders and other shadowy things. The idea is to shape history and humanity in a way that matches the ideology of your conspiracy.

Early portions of the game are Player vs City and then Region and then Nation. The conspiracy grows, takes over other groups as puppet organizations, and slowly winds its tentacles around the immediate area. As agents infiltrated different levels of government, the player gains more and more ability to see and then affect the direction of policy-making by the AI Nation. In time, the player encounters another shadowy organization and the real war begins.

The conflict plays out backstage, with assassinations, infiltrations and counter-infiltrations of puppet organizations, occult ceremonies, and the occasional out and out attack on your enemies. Wars are started and stopped, economies collapsed and restored and surveillance systems are created and cracked. Half the battle is getting accurate information about where and who your enemies are.

Once the existence of other secret masters comes to light, the game becomes an exercise in paranoia. Are the leaders that you’ve installed actually loyal? Is the information that you’re getting from your agents compromised? Have you really infiltrated the enemy, or is it yet another front or has your agent been brainwashed? With each passing turn, the player must sift through public information (which may or may not be lies) and secret reports (possibly also lies), attempt to sort out what’s going on and act accordingly.

All the while, the player is attempting to drag humanity toward enlightenment or bring about total submission or cause Armageddon or just built enough new landing strips for their Extra Terrestrial allies.

Aside from the Civ games where you play an apparently undying ruler over millennia, the closest game I can find for this idea is Republic: the Revolution a game I had high hopes for – hopes dashed by the lukewarm reviews. Steve Jackson’s Illuminati also has some inspiring material, though it doesn’t have a world simulator running underneath the main conflict.

Someone should make this game!

Starting in the 1930s, a psychologist named B.F. Skinner did a series of experiments involving rats, pigeons, and something called a Skinner Box. The experiments involved conditioning the animals to activate a lever and rewarding them for the behaviour with food based on a variety of different reward schedules.

It turns out that a Variable Ratio schedule, where you give out rewards after random number of actions is the best way to get an animal to hit a lever over and over again. Unlike more predictable schedules, which are associated with a lull in activity after the reward is given out, Variable Ratios mean that any lever press could be the one that dispenses food. In the delightful language of psychology “Variable schedules produce higher rates and greater resistance to extinction than most fixed schedules.” Extinction is when you stop doing something because it’s stopped rewarding you.

I first came across the Variable Ratio reward schedule in an article on Gamasutra about using behavioural psychology to make games more fun. If you stop and think for a moment, you’ll recognize the schedule in the loot drops of Diablo and just about every MMO and RPG in existence. You’ll see it in the random power-ups dropped by enemies in FPSs and SHMUPs. And you’ll see it in slot machines, Craps tables and just about every other form of gambling.

We have a funny relationship with addictiveness in this industry. When reviewers talk about a game being addictive, it’s high praise. When publishers talk about it it’s a laudable business goal or a selling point. As part of the Civilization IV marketing campaign they released a series of ads and a website for CivAnon, an Alcoholics Anonymous for Civ gamers.

Perhaps conditioned by years of defending ourselves from the charge that games are corrupting the youth, when it comes to the idea that games might be addictive for real we tend to circle the wagons.

At some point, the industry is going to have to take serious stock of the charge the claim that games are addictive. More specifically, that we have a moral obligation that conflicts with our financial obligations to decide how addictive we want our games to be.

Consider this quotation from the Gamasutra article:

The distinct pause shown under a fixed ratio schedule can be a real issue for game designers. Having a period of time where there is little incentive to play the game can lead to the player walking away.

The business side screams “OH GOD NO, we can’t let them walk away from the game! They might stop paying!” The ethical side should be asking “Ok, I want them to like this game and keep playing it, but I also want them to have a rest of their life. Where’s the balance?” Jonathan Blow asked this question eloquently at MIGS 2007. Raph Koster asked it again just last week.

If we can agree that the tobacco industry should be held culpable for deciding how much nicotine to put in its cigarettes and we can believe that there is such a thing as problem gambling, then we have to accept that it’s possible to make games that are too addictive. We have to accept the possibility that we may already have.