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Notes from IGS - Day 1 - Session 1

Name:	Tom Bentz
Date Posted:	Mar 12, 2007
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So I went to the Independent Games Summit at GDC and took tons of notes. This first session is a little light but I have about 9 1/2 pages of notes for the first day and about 14 pages for the second day. Not all my notes will be relevant to everyone so I'll be posting what nuggets I think all indies can benefit from over the next few days. It was a great experience and inspiring to listen to indies that are doing it.

Day 1 - Session 1
Keynote: 25 years of Indie Power
Jeff Minter, Llamasoft

In this session Jeff discussed his history making games as an indie and his design philosophy in making original games. These notes refer to his latest game on Xbox 360 live arcade Space Giraffe (Tempest with upgrades). Jeff showed examples of his previous work such as Star Fire for the Commodore Pet, Grid Runner, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Sheep in Space and a few others.

My takeaway notes:
-When a player dies on a level, reduce the difficulty for the player so they don't get stuck.
-Every few levels introduce a new enemy and drop the difficulty down so the player can get used to defeating them. Gradually increase difficulty.
-As the player increases in levels, increase difficulty by the changing the shape of level and changing the environment (referring to Tempest 2000, and Space Giraffe). You can apply this to any game you make depending on what challenges there are for the player.

More to come over the next few days...
Here's some pics of the session:

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Rubes (Mar 12, 2007 at 04:38 GMT)

Thanks for the update. Looking forward to more...

Benjamin L. Grauer (Mar 12, 2007 at 15:45 GMT)

I don't want to be rude, but the statement "-When a player dies on a level, reduce the difficulty for the player so they don't get stuck." is pretty dumb.
You won't have to do this if redoing something doesn't get boring, if the challenges are well made. If it is boring to retry a tougher part of your game, then you must question your whole game design idea.
Because lowering the difficulty at each death is... well... insulting the capability of the player to adapt and learn. Of course, you'll have to calibrate difficulty, but not likely while gameplay.

If you really deadly want to adjust difficulty while gameplay, you must do it with great care and not with such a simple logic as "At each death, lower reactivity/life/strength of foes", it wouldn't work at all with player who have great determination or in case of "accidental" death.

But, eh, people are not so dumb, they each learn from losing and can overcome challenges on their own. That's what make most of the fun, if you take out progressively the challenge you'll have a boring game. Period.

Phil Carlisle (Mar 12, 2007 at 16:00 GMT)

I disagree Benjamin, there is absolutely nothing wrong with dynamically adjusting the base difficulty to match a given player. What if in your situation a player is completely an utterly overwhelmed? Just let them keep trying until they give up?

With dynamic difficulty adjustment (dda) you can adjust the level of difficulty until you have reached a norm for that player, then scale everything from there. I am not suggesting this would be 1 to 1 rule, where you just say "on death, X++", it might be "if user dies N times in a row, add helper Y". At the end of the day, not everyone IS capable of the same response, adjusting dynamically helps level things at the right level for the player.

Logan Foster (Mar 12, 2007 at 16:57 GMT)

Well said Phil. There is absolutely nothing wrong with scaling the game as you have described because it should be the players enjoyment that is key and creating a positive experiance for them, not leaving them bitter and pissed off because they couldnt get past a point in the game.

Tom Bentz (Mar 12, 2007 at 18:51 GMT)

Not everyone will have the same level of experience playing games and if someone gets stuck too much they will get frustrated and leave the game as Phil and L Foster mentioned. It's all about the experience that you want to give the player. Do you want to allow them to get frustrated by leaving them stuck on a level or give them enjoyment by helping them move forward? I can understand that a level should be fun to replay but I dont want to keep replaying that level because some big boss dude always kicks my ass. I will eventually quit playing and the rest of the game will be left unseen. It also comes down to who do you want to target for your game? The more DDA (thanks Phil) you have in your game the more people CAN play your game. If you want to target more hardcore players then leave the difficulty high. If you want to allow EVERYONE to be able to play your game then add more DDA.
Edited on Mar 12, 2007 22:32 GMT

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