Game Design: Theory & Practice- P3 pptx

With a general idea for agame that is interesting to him, the designer will want to work out what his particu-lar game is going to accomplish in terms of gameplay.. With amore specific i

have you create your own really cool mental images based on some suggestions that

we give you on the screen

You were one of the first game designers to get your name above the title on the box I was curious how that came about.

Well, the way thathappened goes back

to Pirates! That was

the first game thathad my name on it Inthose days I wasworking atMicroprose and mypartner was BillStealey who did thebusiness/marketingside of things while Idid the develop-ment/creative stuff

And the previous

game before Pirates! was one of the flight simulator games, and I said to Bill,

“Well, I’m going to work on this game about pirates.” And he said, “Pirates? Wait aminute, there are no airplanes in pirates Wait a minute, you can’t do that.” “Well, Ithink it’s going to be a cool game.” And he answered, “Well, who’s going to buy a

pirates game? Maybe if we put your name on it, they’ll know that they liked F-15 or

whatever, and they might give it a try, OK.” There was a real concern that there wasthis pirates game coming out, but nobody’s going to be interested, because whowants a pirates game? People want flight simulators So it was to say, “Sure, youwant a flight simulator, but maybe you might want to try this pirates game because

it was written by the guy who wrote that flight simulator that you’re playing.” Iguess it was branding in a very crude, early form It was because we were makingthis big switch in the type of game that I was working on, and to try to keep thatconnection between the games

So it wasn’t your lust for fame?

[laughter] No, no Even today, fame is not a computer game thing I think it’sgood It’s still a pretty non-personality oriented business I think that people remem-ber great games, and they know to a certain extent who’s involved But there’s not acult of Robin Williams or, you know, movie stars who really have a cult of person-ality I think it’s good Once we get the idea that we can get away with anything justbecause we’re who we are, that’s not a good thing

38 Chapter 2: Interview: Sid Meier

F-15 Strike EagleTE AM

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But that sort of confidence led to Pirates!, didn’t it?

[laughter] Well, it was a good game Had it not been a good game, that strategywould not have worked

A lot of your games have had sequels of one kind or another, but you have never been the lead designer on one of them Why is this?

I think they are a fine thing to do in general, especially if they’re done well Iseldom go back to a topic primarily because I haven’t run out of ideas yet, so I’drather do a dinosaur game than go back to an older title I don’t have a lot of energy

to get too involved in the sequels Some of them turn out well, some of them turnout not quite so well As opposed to letting the topic fade away, I think doing asequel is often a good idea In an ideal world, I’d like to be involved in everything,but I can’t really do that So I tend to be more interested in being involved in a newproduct as opposed to a sequel It’s certainly gratifying that people want another

Railroad Tycoon or Civilization, et cetera, I think that’s great I’m happy that it can

be done On Civilization III, since it’s being done inside of Firaxis, I’m able to take

a more direct part in that, which I think is good I would have liked to have done

Railroad Tycoon II and do a new Pirates!, et cetera, if I had an infinite amount of

time But it’s just not feasible

I hear a lot of people talking about storytelling in games Usually by storytelling they mean using cut-scenes or branching dialog trees or devices like that Your games have never been very concerned with that side of storytelling.

To me, a game of

Civilization is an epic

story I think the kind

of stories I’m

inter-ested in are all about

the player and not so

much about the

designer There are

players that are more

comfortable in

situa-tions where they’re

making small

deci-sions and the

designer’s making the

big decisions But I

think games are more

interesting when the

player makes the big

Civilization

decisions and the designer makes the small decisions I think, in some sense, gamesare all about telling stories They have a story created more by the player and less

by the designer, in my mind I think in Civilization there are fantastic stories in

every game, they’re just not in the more traditional sense of a story We have,amongst our rules of game design, the three categories of games There are gameswhere the designer’s having all the fun, games where the computer is having all thefun, and games where the player is having all the fun And we think we ought towrite games where the player is having all the fun And I think a story can tend toget to the point where the designer is having all the fun or at least having a lot of thefun, and the player is left to tidy up a few decisions along the way, but is reallybeing taken for a ride And that’s not necessarily bad, but our philosophy is to try togive the player as much of the decision making as possible

Though Gettysburg! had a multi-player option, by and large your games have

been single-player only for a long time What do you think of the emerging larity of multi-player gaming?

popu-I think down the road popu-I would like to get more into multi-player, perhaps even agame that is primarily multi-player But I still enjoy essentially single-player games,

so I’m not sure exactly when or how that’s going to happen Online multi-playergaming is probably the only revolutionary development in our technology we’veseen since I started writing computer games Everything else has been pretty muchevolutionary Better graphics, better speed, more memory, et cetera But themulti-player online thing was a revolutionary change in the tools that we had tomake games I’m interested in doing something along those lines, but I’m not surewhat it would be right now

In an old Next Generation magazine interview, you said, “Games are going to take

over the world It’s going to take a while, but there’s something inherently more engaging about computer games than any other form of entertainment.” Board games have certainly been around a long time, but have not yet taken over the world I wondered what it is about computer games that you find so compelling.

Yeah, I think I stand by that statement I think that it’s the element ofinteractivity that makes them unique They interact personally with you as a player,

as opposed to movies, television, or music, which don’t There’s this phenomenon

of watching television and using the remote control to desperately try to make it aninteractive experience, going from one channel to another [laughter] But theinteractivity of computer games is what differentiates it and makes it so very power-ful Now, we’re still learning how to use that tool and in a lot of other ways we’renot as good as television, movies, et cetera But I think that as we learn to use theadvantages that we have, they’re more powerful advantages than the advantages ofother entertainment media

40 Chapter 2: Interview: Sid Meier

I think that board games are kind of interactive, but they require other players.The computer brings a lot of power to the equation that board games don’t takeadvantage of If anything, the advent of the Internet and multi-player play, that com-bined with interactivity seems to me like a really powerful combination I think as

we learn to use that element of our technology too, games can be very very ling The question that pops up is do people want games that are that interesting to

compel-play? There was the whole Deer Hunter phenomenon, and there was Slingo and

things like that and I’m still working to integrate that into my model of the world,and I haven’t totally succeed in doing that But what that tells me is that there’s abroader range of potential gamers than I am really familiar with And part of ourlearning process is going to be to integrate them into the way that we design gamesand the way that we create games But I still think we’re going to take over theworld

Sid Meier Gameography

Hellcat Ace, 1982 NATO Commander, 1983 Spitfire Ace, 1984 Solo Flight, 1984 F-15 Strike Eagle, 1985 Decision in the Desert, 1985 Conflict in Vietnam, 1985 Crusade in Europe, 1985 Silent Service, 1986 Gunship, 1986 Pirates!, 1987 F-19 Stealth Fighter, 1988 Railroad Tycoon, 1990 Covert Action, 1990 Civilization, 1991 Colonization, 1994 (Consultant) Civilization II, 1996 (Consultant) Gettysburg!, 1997

Alpha Centauri, 1999 (Consultant)

Chapter 3

Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay,

Technology, and Story

“You know what’s the number one dumbest question I getasked when I’m out at some great university lecturing? I’m alwaysasked ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ For about forty years I’vebeen yanking their chain when I answer ‘Schenectady.’ They stare

at me, and I say, ‘Yeah, Schenectady, in New York There’s this ideaservice, see, and every week I send ’em twenty-five bucks, andevery week they send me a freshly picked six-pack of ideas.’ ”

— Harlan Ellison

42

Harlan Ellison might scoff at the idea of trying to explain where ideas come

from Certainly, if you are a novelist having trouble coming up with ideas,

it may be time to wonder if you have chosen the right profession larly, a good game designer, at any given moment, will be able to come up with noless than five solid ideas he would like to try to make into a computer game There

Simi-is no shortage of ideas in the gaming world Aspiring game designers often thinkthey can sell their idea to a development company They seem to be under theimpression that game developers are just sitting around waiting for a hot idea tocome around so they can spend several million dollars to make it a reality On thecontrary, the challenge in game development is not coming up with a good idea, but

in following through and being able to craft a compelling game around that idea.That’s what the rest of this book endeavors to explore

In the arena of computer game design, the process of coming up with a gameidea that will work is complicated by a number of factors fiction authors do notneed to worry about In part this is because computer game ideas can come fromthree distinct, unrelated areas of the form: gameplay, technology, and story Thesedifferent origins are interconnected in interesting ways, with the origin of thegame’s idea limiting what one will be able to accomplish in the other areas Sowhen a game designer starts thinking about the game he is hoping to make—think-ing about it in terms of gameplay, technology, or story—it is important that heconsider how that initial idea will impact all aspects of the final game

Starting Points

Perhaps a quick example is in order Say a game designer feels the need to create agame based around the specific stories of Greek mythology This would be startingfrom a story Immediately this limits the type of gameplay she will be going for

Chances are a Civilization-style strategy game is out, since that sort of game really

has nothing to do with the classical stories of Zeus, Heracles, Ares, and so on Areal-time strategy game is out of the question as well, since it is not good at tellingstories involving only a few protagonists A high-end flight simulator is probablynot going to work either She could, however, still pursue it through an action game,

a role-playing game, or an adventure game Similarly, the technology is limited Inorder to tell the story of the Greek gods, she will need some way to communicate alot of back-story information to the player There will need to be technology inplace that can allow this Furthermore, if she chooses the technology to beemployed by the game at this point, this will have still further impact on what type

of gameplay will be possible For example, choosing an isometric 2D engine willbest lend itself to an RPG or an adventure game instead of an action game If a 3Dtechnology is to be used, in order to tell the story of Greek mythology properly it

will need to support both indoor and outdoor environments, which immediatelyeliminates a lot of 3D game engines.

For each decision the designer makes about the game she is hoping to create,she needs to understand how that limits what the game will be If the designer tries

to fit a type of gameplay around an ill-suited engine the game will suffer in the end:

trying to do a Populous-esque “god-sim” using a first-person, indoor Quake-style

3D engine is a big mistake Just as if one tried to tell the story of the Greek godsthrough flight simulator gameplay, the game would simply fail to work Herein liesthe difficulty with many “high-concept” ideas, often the brainchildren of marketingspecialists who want to capture disparate markets with one product If the parts donot work together, it does not matter how many markets the concept covers: nogamers will be interested in playing the final game

Starting with Gameplay

Starting with gameplay is one of the most common starting points for game opment, especially for designer or management driven projects Thinking about astyle of gameplay is often the easiest core for someone to latch onto, especially ifthat gameplay is similar to an existing game “It’s a racing game!” “It’s a flight sim-

devel-ulator!” “It’s a 3D action/adventure like Super Mario 64!” “It’s a first-person shooter like Doom!” Often a game developer will have enjoyed a game in one of

these genres and will want to apply his own spin to it With a general idea for agame that is interesting to him, the designer will want to work out what his particu-lar game is going to accomplish in terms of gameplay What type of racing gamewill it be? What aspects of racing are we trying to capture for the player? With amore specific idea of what type of gameplay he wants to create, the designer shouldstart thinking about how that will impact the technology the game will require andwhat sort of story, if any, the game will be able to have

Depending on the type of gameplay you are hoping to create for the player, youneed to analyze what sort of technology that undertaking will require Does thegame need a 3D engine, or will 2D be enough or even more appropriate? What sort

of view will the player have of the game-world? Will it be fixed or dynamic? Doesthe action transpire fast and furious with a large number of entities moving around

on the screen at once? Are the game-worlds large or small? All of these questionsand many more need to be analyzed to understand what the game’s engine mustaccomplish in order to properly execute the gameplay idea Of course the technol-ogy you choose to employ for your gameplay must be one that will actually run onthe target system, whether it be the PC, a console, or a custom-made arcade cabinet.You must also ask if the game’s programming team is up to creating the requiredtechnology Technological feasibility may end up limiting the scope of yourgameplay Even worse, will the engine team’s existing technology work or will they

44 Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story

need to scrap it and start from scratch? Is there enough budget and time to trash itand start over? If you find that you need to adapt your gameplay to match theengine, you really are not starting out with gameplay as the origin of your idea, butinstead with technology, as I will discuss below If you are starting out with a gam-ing engine that must be used, it is in your best interest to not fight that technologywith incompatible gameplay Instead you should try to think up your gameplay idea

in terms of what is well suited to that engine

The type of gameplay your game will employ similarly limits what type ofstory can be told An RPG can tell a much more complex and involved story than

an action/adventure game, and in turn an action/adventure can tell a more tial story than an arcade shooter Certain types of stories just will not fit with certaintypes of gameplay, such as the Greek mythology in a flight simulator example dis-cussed previously Similarly, a romantic story might not fit with a strategy game,and a tale about diplomacy would not fit so well with a fast-action first-personshooter Since you made the choice to come up with your gameplay style first, youneed to ask yourself what sort of story is best suited to that gameplay, and try to tellthat tale Sometimes a designer will have both a story he wants to tell and a type ofgameplay he wants to explore, and will attempt to do both in the same game, even

substan-if the two do not go well together Do not try to cobble an inappropriate story, either

in terms of complexity or subject matter, around gameplay that is ill suited to thattype of narrative Save the story for a later date when you are working on a titlewith gameplay that will support that story better And while your technology is lim-ited by what your team is capable of accomplishing in the time allotted, the story islimited only by your own ability to tell it You should pick the story best suited toyour gameplay and go with it

Starting with Technology

Going into a project with a large portion of the game’s technology already oped is also a fairly common occurrence If this is not the development team’s firstproject together at a new company, then it is likely that there will be an existingtechnology base that the project is supposed to build from Even if the project is touse a “new” engine, this often only means an older engine updated, and as a result,the style of game best suited to the engine will not change significantly Even if anengine is being written from scratch for the project, it is likely that the lead pro-grammer and her team are best equipped to create a certain type of engine, be itindoor or outdoor, real time or pre-rendered, 3D or 2D, with a complex physics sys-tem for movement or something more simple The programmers may be interested

devel-in experimentdevel-ing with certadevel-in special lightdevel-ing or renderdevel-ing effects, and will create

an engine that excels at these objectives The designer is then presented with this

new technology and tasked with coming up with a game that will exploit the ticated technology to full effect.

sophis-Other times it is predetermined that the project will be using an engine licensedfrom some other source, either from another game developer or a technology-onlycompany Sometimes the project leaders have enough foresight to consider the type

of game they want to make first and then pick an engine well suited to that Moreoften, the engine licensing deal that seems to deliver the most “bang for the buck”will be the one chosen Then, with an engine choice decided, the team is taskedwith creating a game and story that will fit together well using that technology.Just as starting with a desired sort of gameplay dictated what type of engineshould be created, starting with set technology requires that the game designer con-sider primarily gameplay that will work with that sort of technology If the engine

is 3D, the designer will need to create a game that takes place in a 3D world anduses that world to create interesting 3D gameplay If the engine is only 2D, afirst-person shooter is out of the question If the engine has a sophisticated physicssystem, a game should be designed that makes use of the physics for puzzles andplayer movement Of course, the designer does not need to use every piece of tech-nology that a programmer feels compelled to create, but it is always better to haveyour gameplay work with the engine instead of fight against it Usually when a pro-ject is using a licensed game engine, that technology will often have been createdwith a certain type of gameplay in mind The designer needs to seriously considerhow far he should deviate from that initial technology, for it is surely going to beeasier to make the engine perform tasks for which it was intended instead of push-ing it in directions its programmers never imagined For instance, the oft-licensed

Quake engine was created for handling an indoor, first-person perspective,

fast-action game involving a lot of shooting Though some teams that have licensed thatengine have tried to push it in different directions, the most artistically successful

licensee thus far, Valve, retained much of the standard Quake gameplay that the engine excelled at for their game Half-Life Certainly Valve added a lot of their own

work to the engine, technology that was necessary in order to do the type of gamethey wanted to do But at the same time they did not try to do something foolishsuch as setting their game primarily outdoors or using only melee combat Whentechnology is handed to a game designer who is told to make a game out of it, itmakes the most sense for the designer to embrace the limitations of that technologyand turn them into strengths in his game

The technology can also limit what sort of story can be told Without asophisticated language parser, it is going to be difficult to tell a story in whichplayers need to communicate with characters by typing in questions Without anengine that can handle outdoor environments reasonably well, it is going to bedifficult to make a game about mountain climbing Without robust artificialintelligence it is going to be hard to make a good game about diplomacy Without

46 Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story

compression technology that can store and play back large sounds, it will be hard

to have huge amounts of dialog and hence hard to have characters whose dialectsare important to the story Without the ability to have large numbers of movingunits on the screen at once, it will be impossible to tell a story where the playermust participate in epic, massive battles between armies The game designerneeds to consider how the story line will be communicated to the player throughthe engine that he must use Trying to tell a story with an inadequate engine isjust as likely to compromise the game as tying a particular story to inappropriate

gameplay Again using the example of Half-Life mentioned above, if the team at

Valve had tried to set their game in Death Valley and involve the player battling

gangs of twenty giant insects at once, the Quake engine would have ground to a

halt and the game would have been miserable to play In the Death Valley nario, Valve might have been telling the story they wanted to, but no one wouldhave cared since the game would have been miserably slow and looked horren-dous For the greater good of the game, the story and the technology must becompatible with each other

sce-Starting with Story

Finally, it is certainly possible that the brainstorming for your game may start with

a setting you want to employ, a story you want to tell, or a set of characters youwant to explore This is probably a less common starting point than technology orgameplay Indeed, since many games have no story whatsoever, the very concept of

a game starting with a story may seem strange At the same time it is not unheard of

for a game designer to think of a story she wants to tell, and only then start ing what sort of technology and gameplay will be best suited to communicating thatstory Any good game designer who thinks up such a story will have a tendency tothink of it in terms of how it would transpire in a game, how the player can interactwith that story, and how the story may unfold in different ways depending on theplayer’s actions in the game-world So a designer may not be thinking solely of thestory but also of the gameplay But the story can be the jumping-off point, the cen-tral vision from which all other aspects of the game are determined.

explor-Of course the type of story to be told will have a dramatic effect on the type ofgameplay the project will need to have If the designer wants to tell the story of agroup of friends battling their way through a fantastical world full of hostile crea-tures, a first-person shooter with teammates might be appropriate Any sort of storywhich involves the player talking to a large range of characters and going on

“quests” for those characters might be addressed with more RPG-style mechanics.Telling the story of the battle of Waterloo could be perfectly addressed in a projectwith wargame-style strategic play, with the gameplay adjusted in order to best bringout the aspects of Waterloo with which the designer is primarily concerned Doesthe designer want the player to have a general’s eye view of the game? In that casegameplay that allows for the tracking of tactics and logistics should be used Ordoes the designer want to tell the story more from the view of the soldiers who had

to fight that battle? Then gameplay that would allow the player to track and ulate her troops unit by unit would be appropriate If conversations with non-playercharacters (NPCs) are an important part of communicating the story, the designerwill need to design game mechanics that allow for such conversations, usingtyped-in sentences, branching dialog choices, or whatever will work best Thedesigner needs to find gameplay that will allow the player to experience the mostimportant elements of whatever story she is trying to tell

manip-Of course, the technology will have to match up with the story as well, ily in order to support the gameplay the designer decides is best suited to tellingthat story If conversations are an important part of communicating the story, theprogramming team will need to be able to develop a conversation system If worldexploration and discovery are a big part of telling the story, perhaps a 3D engine isbest suited to the gameplay, one that allows the player to look anywhere he wantswith the game camera The designer may find that specifically scripted events areimportant to communicating aspects of the tale; the player must be able to observeunique events that transpire at specific times in different parts of the world In thiscase, the programmers will need to give the level designer the ability to set up thesescenes The technology is the medium of communication to the player, and therebythe story is directly limited by what the technology is capable of telling

primar-Good examples of story-centered game design are some of the adventuregames created by Infocom and LucasArts All of the adventure games from these

48 Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story

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companies used very standardized play mechanics and technology The gamedesigners worked with the company’s proprietary adventure game creationtechnology, either the Infocom text-adventure authoring tool or LucasArts’

SCUMM system By the time the game designer came on to the project, hisprocess of creation started with creating a story he wanted to tell Certainly thestory had to be one that was well suited to the adventure game format and thatcould be implemented using the existing tool set Both Infocom’s and LucasArts’tools were general purpose enough to allow the designer to create a wide range ofgames, with a good amount of variation in terms of the storytelling possible, eventhough the core mechanics had to consist of a typing-centered text adventure in thecase of Infocom and a point-and-click graphical adventure for LucasArts The gamedesigners’ primary driving motivation in the game’s creation was the telling of astory, with the designing of game mechanics and the developing of technologymuch less of a concern Just as a film director is limited by what she can shoot with

a camera and then project on a certain sized screen at 24 frames per second, theadventure game designers at Infocom and LucasArts were limited by the mechanics

of the adventure game authoring system they were using Since for both the filmdirector and the adventure game designer the mechanics of the medium were firmlyestablished well before they began their project, their primary concern became thetelling of a story

Working with Limitations

Experienced game designers already understand the limitations placed on thecreation of games by the technology, gameplay, and story When they take part inbrainstorming sessions these game designers have a good gut-sense of how makingcertain choices about the game in question will limit its creation further down theroad For each decision that is made about the game, many doors are closed Whenenough decisions about the nature of the game have been made, it may be that there

is only one type of game that can possibly accomplish all that the designers want.The stage for making major decisions is over, and now all that lies ahead are thethousands of smaller implementation issues

For three of the games I have completed, Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis, Damage Incorporated, and Centipede 3D, I began development from a different

starting point Coincidentally, one game started with story, another with technology,and the third with gameplay Throughout each game’s development I made everyeffort to remember where the game was coming from and what it was hoping toaccomplish The origins and objectives limited everything else about the game,resulting in only one acceptable game that achieved the goals I had set

Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis

Odyssey started with a story I actually inherited this project at a point where a

sig-nificant part of the 2D technology and RPG game mechanics were in place Somestory existed but it was by no means complete, and I was not terribly excited by it

As my first game project that was actually likely to be published, I immediately set

to work rewriting the story into something in which I was personally invested Foryears I had been wanting to get into game development in order to tell interactive,non-linear stories, and so I immediately set to writing just such a story, wherein theplayer would be presented with moral choices beyond just “to kill or not to kill.” Iwanted to create a game in which the choices the players made would actuallychange the outcome of the story in a meaningful way So I charged blindly forward,with the story as my only concern

Fortunately, the technology and game mechanics that were in place by andlarge supported this story I wanted to tell Where they did not, I changed the gamemechanics as necessary When NPC AI had to function in a certain way to supportthe story, I made the AI work that way When forced conversations becamerequired, where an NPC could walk up to the player and initiate a conversation withhim instead of the other way around, I implemented the appropriate game

mechanic The levels were designed with no other goal than to support the story.Since the levels were not designed with exciting battles in mind, combat situations

in the game were not as compelling as they could have been I was not interested in

50 Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story

the combat so much as the story The constant conflict with strange, maraudingcreatures was something people expected in an RPG and so it remained in, but Imade combat such that it was very much secondary to exploring the story Thisended up turning the game into almost more of an adventure than an RPG, but thatwas fine with me, since it was what supported the story best.

Looking at it today, I can see that Odyssey has many flaws in it But I do not

think that these problems arose because it was a game whose development startedwith a story This may be a rare way to begin game development, but it can still be

a viable starting point If I had possessed a better sense of game design at the time, Icould have taken efforts to make the rest of the game as interesting as the story was,while never undermining or diminishing the impact of the game’s epic tale

Damage Incorporated

In the case of Damage Incorporated, the publisher, MacSoft, had obtained the

license to a sophisticated (at the time) technology that they wanted to use for a

game It was the technology Bungie Software had created for use in Marathon and Marathon 2, two games of which I remain very fond Marathon 2, in particular,

remains one of the best first-person shooters ever made, easily holding its own

against Doom What Marathon 2 lacked in fast-action battles and the atmosphere of menace that Doom created so well, it more than made up for with a compelling and

complex story line, superior level design, and a good (though simple) physics

model As a result of my having enjoyed the Marathon games so much, I decided

to make my game embrace the technology and gameplay that Marathon had

established I would craft my game around the technology that had been licensedand use that technology to the greatest effect I possibly could.

With a starting point of technology, I crafted gameplay and a story that could

succeed using the Marathon technology Of course, we added features to the

gameplay and engine The primary addition to the game mechanics was the player’sability to order teammates around the game-world, thereby adding a real-time strat-egy element to the mix We added to the engine numerous enhancements whichallowed for swinging doors, moving objects, and other effects necessary to create agame-world that more resembled the real-world I was still concerned with story in

the game, though not to as great an extent as I had been with Odyssey Since having conversations with NPCs did not really fit in with Marathon’s game mechanics, I

involved characters through the player’s teammates, who would chatter amongstthemselves as the player maneuvered them through the game-world

One of the game’s weaknesses was that at the start of the project I did not fully

understand the limitations of the Marathon engine It was best suited to creating

indoor environments, so when it did create outdoor areas, they ended up lookingfake, especially when they were supposed to represent real-life locations on Earth

Modeling the exterior of an alien world in the engine, as Marathon 2 had done, was

one thing, but creating environments that looked like the woods in Nebraska was

another Around half of the levels in Damage Incorporated are set outside, and

none of these outdoor areas ended up looking very good If I had understood thetechnology better, I could have designed the game to take place in more indoorenvironments, thereby better exploiting what the engine did well

52 Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story